Glittering eyes stared at him reproachfully.
"Ulric half of those plants are phenomenally potent lethals. I have three of them in vials on mine belt, in case I need to slay Greaters, such as that [Goliath Macer] from a few days ago." His partner said evenly.
"Tell me you did not try eating those." She demanded.
"I did not try eating those." Ulric replied immediately, complying with her orders and so not truly lying.
She continued to stare at him and he cracked.
"Okay, I definitely did try eating those." He admitted.
Now she did shake her head at him. Absently thumbing her bow, he heard her grumbling to herself in her native tongue. In there he caught "Should have gone with the [Dusk Centipede] on him" which he was almost certain was a reference to their meeting in which she'd grazed his calf with an arrow coated in [Striped Bark Snake] venom, which had made him ill rather quickly but hadn't killed him outright as it was supposed to have. Her brother Brighteyes, whom Ulric was escorting home from his kidnapping, forced the reluctant sister to provide the antidote before Ulric's heart stopped. Ahh, yeah, come to think of it, that was sort of why he'd nicknamed her Taipan. Fast, beautiful, and deadly venomous.
Turns out part of his reforging had given him a more or less peak human body which had come with some measure of poison resistance. Nothing so grand as immunity, he just needed a comparatively larger dose than expected for his size. He'd probably managed to develop something of a tolerance for some compounds while he'd, very carefully, tested different plants for edibility back in the early days in the glade. Partly it was thanks to the genetic fuckery of the Watcher, guiding evolution in a sort of optimized path. Vardan creatures were all more resistant to biochemical attack than the creatures of his old world. Some monsters developed magically assisted toxins that were potent enough to slay even those things that had resistance to the less infused varieties of glandular warfare.
Taipan had for sure inflicted some nasty bit of poison on that huge armadillo thing, the [Goliath Macer] he guessed it was called, and it had continued fighting, albeit it the creature would have succumbed to the toxins eventually. Problem was, they kept getting pinned between their protection of the Orlethrem and the monsters. That didn't give them the space and time to simply kite the bastards while the envenomation did its job, as Ulric had long since gathered was one of his charming wife's favored tactics.
"The Eternal Gaze truly works implacably." Taipan laughed lightly.
"Yeah, well, good thing too, cause Old Wonder Boobs the Cosmic Voyeur tossed me naked into what might be one of the most dangerous places on the entire continent." Ulric reminded her.
His wife patted his shoulder knowingly, "And thereby saved you the time of learning Varda's rules slowly or wasting all of its efforts by your dying to some weakling warrior or a feral dog or some such stupid thing years down the winding forest's trails of life."
Ulric snorted at that assessment. Got that shit right. Slow learners didn't long survive the [Forest of the Forgotten].
"Yeah, so, anyway, you wanna piece of this dude or what lady?" Ulric asked, offering a leg of the scorpion thing to his wife.
Taipan smiled gently and signed "Gratefulness" as she took it, tearing into the meat with sharp teeth with gusto.
"So much better would the creature be had we butter." She said, licking her fingers after munching down on the pale pink flesh.
"Word." Ulric agreed.
Having fulfilled his husbandly duties of feeding his spouse, Ulric saw to their shelter set up, not wanting the woman to aggravate her ribs and leg any more than possible. The sooner his partner was back to full battle readiness, and capable of resuming her scouting duties, the happier he'd be. Taipan roaming the wilderness nearby was like wearing a cozy weighted comforter on his mind. At the very least, he knew they'd get some kind of early warning if skulking fiends came a knocking.
Following the shelter, he made a couple of rounds around the perimeter of the Elven caravan, checking on the separate campfires to see if their denizens needed anything or to simply offer a courtesy greeting. Ulric was an asshole but he strove to avoid rudeness, and walking by a campfire in the fading light without so much as a wave of hello was sort of prickish in his book. Perhaps his monster hunting had earned him the Heaven's blessings because there was no more disturbance along the course of his walk. Anything out there that might be outside his sight made sure it stayed that way and that was just how he liked it.
When he completed the rounds, Taipan had their bedroll ready and patted it to indicate he should take rest with her. Her invitation was all the more welcoming for the absence of her clothes. When a lady that pretty tells you to take a seat, don't ask questions brothers, sit the hell down. Ulric followed his own wisdom and shed his armor, with a little help from dexterous Elven fingers. Once liberated from the confines of plate, mail, skirt, greaves, and gauntlets, his helmet long since retired to his belt that day, the weary man enjoyed the comforting warmth of his mate. A proper soporific was the cozy embrace of the Elf and her deep even breathes. All too soon he mumbled something unintelligible into her hair before drifting off to sleep.
Twice, Ulric woke in the night, never gaining complete consciousness, and pulsed his core's magic to sweep the surroundings with electromagnetic perception, finding no sign of enemy, and twice returned to slumber without remembering waking. The sneaking things that had been skirting the camp felt the thrum of latent power, an awakened core humming like a high voltage line, and fled into the night for easier prey.
The Twins rose ever earlier in the mid spring season, though it was more gradual a process than his old Earth, thanks to the longer orbit of Varda around her binary suns. Once he'd untangled himself from being used as his regal partner's body pillow, wiping a thin streak of her drool from his chest once that delicate task was accomplished, Ulric completed his morning workout of balance and stances and then suited up for a fresh chance to see just what Varda could throw at them. He hadn't got much farther than stoking some coals for a breakfast fire before he was joined by a bleary eyed Iriel'en princess, who had left the teepee flap bare assed and without evident concern about it.
If she ain't worried about it, I guess I'm not, Ulric told himself, still uncertain about Elven standards for modesty. There had to be rules for it, but damned if he could ever figure them out. In any case, Ulric Einar would not be the one complaining about this vision of female form, long legs displaying the shift of perfect musculature beneath soft skin, hips flaring with a fantastic bottom, and taught stomach leading up to equally well sculpted arms and shoulders. He whistled softly in appreciation. The lass did birthday suit under the golden light of early morning like a champion.
His approving gesture earned him a slow turn and a dancer's pose.
"Ten out of Ten, Taipan." Ulric informed her, receiving a gracious nod of acceptance of his praise in return.
She smiled and tussled his short, white growing hair, rejoining, "You have come along, my Glade Chief, I find you now sit at a strong eight and half out of ten."
The hair was a gift of having been burned horrendously by a pyromancer nearly half a year gone now. He'd come real close to kicking the bucket then and had lost all the hair on his body. What grew back in had grown in white, except for his beard, which retained its dark brown coloration. Those worst burned places on his arms and legs never did grow hair properly. Bastard Captain Firecracker. Although, Taipan did seem to like his august appearance so it wasn't all bad.
Since she'd come within striking distance, and so ill defended, Ulric took the opportunity to pinch her rump. Supple flesh mishandled thusly drew a startled yelp and a slap of hands to drive him away, which he reluctantly did.
"Sorry Lass," Ulric apologized without feeling, "Autonomic response. A reflex. Your cheeks bare to the wind draw my hands like magnets the iron filings."
Taipan glanced around the campsite and surroundings to see if her cousins could see and found no sign that any were awake and about. When none became apparent, she waggled her hips at her mate teasingly, knowing what it did to him.
"Oy! You're about to start something you damned well know you can finish!" Objected Ulric, stricken by the display.
Having her stroll around nude was one thing, having her doing a belly dance right next to him was a whole other ball of wax. She was killing him over there.
"I am just reminding my Honor of what pleasures he will know when I am recovered enough to mount him." Taipan taunted, continuing to rock and sway.
Damn you Bald'rt genes! She knew damned well that was at least a week away. He groaned in misery.
"You are a cruel wench, with deviltry in your heart." He complained, mesmerized by the motion.
"Then perhaps you should not excite me with your grabby paws, yes?" She replied, ending her torment.
Victory was hers, this time.
Ulric held up two fingers in surrender, "Mea culpa! Aye, Taipan, you have won. I will refrain from reaching for paradise, even though the sight of it tempts my weak will."
The smug Elf strolled, slowly, into the tent to dress, having dominated her partner's will after he had instigated her rightful rebuttle. All according to her keikaku.
Greatly relieved was he when the troublesome Shadow returned from their mobile domicile clothed in her hunter's garb. The sensible, stout clothing was designed for function, not to abuse his sensibilities in her not so subtle attempts to rule him through flirting promises. All was fair in love and war and the two did not divide so cleanly in his Taipan's mind. Nor, really, in the minds of any of the Aes'r, only it was the Deep Woods Elves that took it the farthest.
Putting matters of the bedroom aside, Ulric now had to contend with the chore that was moving this merry band of travelers along to safe havens. In as straight a line as could be managed out here in Prespang's rugged coastal high lands, the Orlethrem had made some forty kilometers yesterday. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. That put them probably a day or so out from Kistalfer and her ships. Ulric wondered how badly this would go, this attempt to secure vessels to make the passage through the Rivergate, the arching fortification, controlled by Prosper, that permitted travel between the inland sea Vatyn and the great river Zelas.
He probed his scrape hip, scabbed and a bit less tender compared to the day before, healing more rapidly than any injury in the Before while he thought the matters over. There was no way that they approached the city with this bedraggled lot strung out around him. How likely was it that news of the goings on along the coast had reached the overlords of these scattered City States? Three weeks or, no, maybe closer to a month since Bartala. Two weeks since the raids on those Bane sites. Delayed as communication likely was, thanks to his sorting out the ports and vessels carrying Prosper's agents on his way from Bartala, it would not be wise to count on the ignorance of the enemy to dictate strategy overmuch. The problems now made his engineering work figuring out doping solutions for graphene films seem trivial. Microstructure physics and electrochemistry were tricky, but navigating the minds of humans, plus one malicious over mind that may or may not be an old as shit Elf, was downright daunting.
How do you take advantage of human nature when the other guy wasn't even human?
"The clouds portend rain, Ulric." Interposed his partner, her study of the whispy cirrus high above and the red dawn of distant sea clouds that frequently preceded weather.
Of course they did. If nothing else, he was now understanding of just where all the damned water came from to feed those Celestin and Iriel'en forests. His plateau acted as a sort of rain reflector, the high walls redirecting these water laden trade winds back South, to drop their moisture as they skirted around the kilometers high shelf.
"Best be on with it then," Ulric rejoined stolidly, "By your memory, we've got another day through this rough country and then we have to figure out how to get all these folk on arcs back to the promised land."
It was going to be a long as shit day, and taxing. Ulric was now on scout duty and the scout's job was to cover twice the ground that the main party did. At a minimum. Leaving the wrangling of the Orlethrem to his Shadow, Ulric headed out to determine their path and to clear it of threats, making long zig zagging canvasses of the territory.
Two more scorpions he found, this time with his [Ceraunoperception] up and not facing limited battery in his core and he blasted them with [Lightning Javalins], the crackling violet lances of his magic ripping through the soft interiors almost ignoring the chitinous armor. The creatures never even got the chance to rise from the shallow burrows that left their backs and tails exposed. He didn't bother harvest their cores, it was time he couldn't afford to spend and he didn't want to be bogged down with extra weight for little purpose.
The craggy plateau was changing. Slowly, but surely, the terrain was falling more steeply away from the fjords and cliffs to a rolling series of hills and rocky beaches, visible from his position on the crest of a small rise. They'd have a long, winding descent ahead of them but the next few leagues would be far easier to get across than was the highlands. By the looks of it, the low hills were pretty typical coastal forests and grassy meadows. He dearly hoped the gentler terrain wouldn't also welcome more wildlife to bother them.
Satisfied with his bearings, Ulric returned to his winding back and forth back towards the caravan. An hour later, he was walking again by the wagon carting along his wife. Her lips pursed when he told her of the waiting landscape.
"It is likely that we are come closer to Kistalfer than I had thought." She told him, before shooting a look back at the rest of the carts and their accompanying draft animals, the healthier refugees walking alongside to lead the placid beasts.
"I do not believe we will be welcome within the walls of the city, not with so many of the Orlethrem. It is almost impossible that it would be believed that you owned so many Aes'r slaves, that kind of wealth is rare, especially from the barbarian tribes." She thought aloud.
He nodded with that, it was his opinion as well.
"Such were my thoughts." Ulric agreed, before asking in a hushed tone, "But what to do about them all? Hide a few leagues shy of the city and have myself go alone, to prevent questions?"
A gentle pat on his shoulder and his Shadow said without irony, "The last time I left you to enter a city's walls unattended you started a riot, slaughtered a group of Prosper's thugs, and murdered a Baron in broad daylight before rampaging across the open seas."
Right. Well. He couldn't very well say she was wrong now, could he?
"I think, this time, we will try the slave gambit. I will go with you, alone, with a false collar. We will take our harvested kills into the city with us, and play the trader game again, it works well if you are not allowed to lose your temper and kill anyone." His expert in counterintelligence gently reprimanded.
"Trade season will be in full go, with many passing through. The beating my kin have given Prespang's forces and the reinforcement of the blockade will provide uncertainty in the ports, as did your villainy on the high seas." Taipan smiled, recalling his story of raiding Prosper flagged vessels and sending them, and the magisters with them, to the briny deeps.
"Many were the soldiers who deserted rather than face the wrath of the Aes'r. It would not be so out of the ordinary for a warrior who had collected a valuable trophy to have fled the field when their commanders were slain and their units scattered, as many were. These vagrant warriors will cover our approach nicely. The only real problem is explaining our wealth, although I think our possession of several lucrative cores, including a half dozen [Gilded Queen's Rose] from your initial salvo on the nursery will help with that." She continued.
Huh, he hadn't figured that she'd take the time to procure those but his Shadow was, it seems, ever the hunter and couldn't let those spoils go to waste. Ulric scratched the beard that was filling in along his jaw, pondering the set up. It was good. Better yet, it was mostly similar to the ploy they had already been planning to run and he was less likely to get confused and fuck it up somehow when under pressure.
"Alright Taipan, your judgment seems sound. We will follow your lead then." Ulric decided.
Given that he was more or less complete dog water at a ruse or subtle con, it was best to let someone who could play the game correctly be in charge.
"Is it possible that I can play dumb and let you do most of the talking?" Ulric inquired.
"It would probably be for the best that we do it that way, yes." Confirmed the Elf riding next to him without sarcasm.
She knew he was terrible at misdirection as well as he did. Just like he had a knack for how to connect seemingly unrelated pieces of datum and create a broader picture of cause and effect or correlation. The pair of them complimented one another's strengths well and filled gaps in the other's weaknesses. It was a similarly effective relationship in combat, one's talents covered the other's deficiencies. After all, as much as Taipan liked to vanish into the mists to come at her opponent's flanks, sometimes, what you really needed to do was to grab them by the throat and punch their face until it looked like ground beef. Problems were not always nails, requiring a hammer. But sometimes they were, and that was a fact.
"Swell." Chuckled Ulric, gladly relieved of the burden of subterfuge.
They ended their strategy meeting there, the caravan was approaching the set of planned switch backs to climb down from the highlands into those coastal forests he'd spotted. Near as he could tell, from this vantage, they had ten kilometers of descending and another thirty or so of rolling meadows. These were, in contrast to the scraggly thickets of the highlands, well forested, those trees hidden behind the shelter of some large sand dunes that lie between the sea's winds and the soft hills. It was still up to him to ensure that no ill came to the group and he would do this duty as well as he could.
Constant pulses of Ceraun against his skin, Ulric swept the descent carefully with his detection at the maximum range. He didn't have the best resolution but he was mostly on the lookout for anything alive, not necessarily counting their fingers and toes, if they had any. It was an interesting spell was [Ceraunoperception], like an electric eel or shark's sensitivity but dialed up to work in air. He was actually able to feel the increasing humidity as the storm system approached, the permittivity of the air shifting with the increase in water content.
His senses were sharpening, along with his overall mental state. The almost constant readiness to face enemies and regular skirmishes against men and monsters and combinations thereof were shaving the weaknesses from his modern man's sensibilities. That little bit of reservation he'd had when they'd started this trip were mostly gone, replaced by the internalization of the awareness that threats are best destroyed before they manifest themselves, not after.
Reforging had, rather swiftly, caused him to discard the prevailing notions of law and lack of aggression as positive emotions from his old world. Passivity was unacceptable out here. There had been though, a lingering tendency to be defensive, to respond to provocations rather than to actively suppress them. It was a fine line to ride, asserting yourself amongst peoples as a being not to be trifled with but not being hostile outright. The best analogy he could make to explain his attitudes now was it was a little like carrying a firearm. You didn't walk around with a finger on the trigger, that was too overtly threatening. However, you kept a slug in the chamber and the safety off, ready to rock should anyone or anything decide it wanted trouble. He found the seemingly universal expectations that individuals deal with problems rivals and enemies openly and with extreme prejudice incredibly liberating. It was probably that side of him that had been strangled in the Before, one of the sources of his anxiety being that he could not face his aggravations head on.
Speaking of which, there were some critters roaming down below, looked a bit like a mountain goat, long beards hanging from their chins, eyes with those horizontal pupils, and great spiraling horns. Beefy looking dudes too, Ulric noted, they were closer to the size of a brahma bull than to the typical mountain goat. Sharp hooves gripped the slope with surety and their agility could not be denied as they clambered weightlessly around the path through which the wagons would be traveling shortly. Ulric paused, crouching low to observe these newest denizens of the wild. He had maybe a quarter of an hour before the caravan reached this position, long enough to see if the creatures would move along on their own and to evaluate them as threatening or not.
It wasn't long before he had his answer.
A bulky, heavily furred form that reminded Ulric of a chimpanzee but too big across the shoulders and too heavy in the head clambered up a boulder and squatted on short legs, it's long arms flexing impressively, even from his distant point of observation. The creature had big fangs, similar to a gorilla, and appeared herbivorous, chewing a stalk of some vegetable, no, wait, a tree sapling by the looks of it, and made no aggressive moves whatsoever. The goats froze at the sight of the creature's silouhuette against the horizon. They then charged with abandon and Ulric got a look at another bit of Vardan evolutionary horseshit.
Clouds formed between the spiraling goat horns and Ulric's core could feel the gathering power there. The lead goat lowered its head and the thickening dark thunderhead between its horns lined up with the back of the inattentive sasquatch on its rock. Churning legs powered the goat up the boulder and, at the last moment the gorilla finally noticed the incoming danger. Too late. A thunderclap lifted dust and the goat shot forwards, burying its head directly between the shoulder blades of its target, a flash of light simultaneously flaring brilliant and the gorilla thing was blasted from its perch, smoking fur and patches of fire across its form as it fell to roll down the incline bonelessly. It was, without a doubt, dead as shit. The goat, now joined by three of its companions bleeted hoarsely across the landscape, declaring their victory.
Hmph. A lightning wielding goat. Ulric dubbed them [Thunderhorn Sheep], for obvious reasons. They appeared uninterested in the ruined corpse below, instead turning to graze on sparse grasses and vegetation on the hillside. Ulric was somewhat flabbergasted by the blatant hostility. Those monsters must be territorial as all hell to have that kind of response to what appeared to Ulric to be a more or less completely herbivorous and docile creature. Being nice paid off in the Vardan wilds about as well as it did dealing with its peoples.
He had to admit some amount of professional curiosity, from one wielder of Ceraun to another. The ram, or was it a doe?, had used something similar to his [Surge] ability, gaining a very intense burst of power and speed and had also charged its horns with an actual storm cloud, which defied what he knew about meteorological workings. Right between those spiraling horns had been the life cycle of a cumulonimbus cloud in miniature with its little anvil top and the incus or whispy cirrus border of the flat top from wind shear. That shouldn't form like that, for a whole mess of reasons. Ulric had a feeling he was looking at a more complex manifestation of mana. Like a lightbulb going off, he realized that was it precisely. The sheep monsters weren't pure Ceraun they had the Caelum and maybe even Aquae combination that was particular to a different flavor of magic altogether, storm magic.
He hadn't really ever "tasted" storm mana with his own core. Using his [Core Pulse] was one of the primary ways he had to diagnostically parse out the exact harmonics of a new type of mana and it was how he'd developed his original suite of spells back in his time in the glade. He'd never been close enough to the source to do it with Kataigis, storm mana, and this was a remarkable opportunity to do so. Once he had the manaform in its entirety to study in detail he'd be able to synthesize it with his own mana, effectively unlocking a new branch of magic.
The only reason he hadn't done so with Sano to learn healing magic was that that shit was difficult. Sano mages amongst the Elves were specialists that studied their craft for decades. Ulric might be able to cheat a little with knowledge of biochemistry and anatomy but he'd not had the time to apply himself in that way. Absent training, he'd just give himself super cancer or something similar if he tried to manipulate life magic. The same had been true of the other more complex interwoven manaforms. Subtle combinations of Terra to specifically focus on metals or minerals, doing things to directly convert water to steam, there were almost infinite variations of mana but each step away from the basic forms were an order of magnitude more complicated to handle. Ulric wasn't there yet. He came closer all the time, but time was something that had been in short supply ever since leaving his burned out and, or, carved house in the bole of a dead [Godtree].
This right here, this prepackaged little bit of Kataigis, in the form of the core of the [Thunderhorn Sheep], it was perfect for his needs.
"Sorry little sheep, but you are now a sacrifice for Science." Whispered the reforged engineer.
Glittering eyes stared at him reproachfully.
"Ulric half of those plants are phenomenally potent lethals. I have three of them in vials on mine belt, in case I need to slay Greaters, such as that [Goliath Macer] from a few days ago." His partner said evenly.
"Tell me you did not try eating those." She demanded.
"I did not try eating those." Ulric replied immediately, complying with her orders and so not truly lying.
She continued to stare at him and he cracked.
"Okay, I definitely did try eating those." He admitted.
Now she did shake her head at him. Absently thumbing her bow, he heard her grumbling to herself in her native tongue. In there he caught "Should have gone with the [Dusk Centipede] on him" which he was almost certain was a reference to their meeting in which she'd grazed his calf with an arrow coated in [Striped Bark Snake] venom, which had made him ill rather quickly but hadn't killed him outright as it was supposed to have. Her brother Brighteyes, whom Ulric was escorting home from his kidnapping, forced the reluctant sister to provide the antidote before Ulric's heart stopped. Ahh, yeah, come to think of it, that was sort of why he'd nicknamed her Taipan. Fast, beautiful, and deadly venomous.
Turns out part of his reforging had given him a more or less peak human body which had come with some measure of poison resistance. Nothing so grand as immunity, he just needed a comparatively larger dose than expected for his size. He'd probably managed to develop something of a tolerance for some compounds while he'd, very carefully, tested different plants for edibility back in the early days in the glade. Partly it was thanks to the genetic fuckery of the Watcher, guiding evolution in a sort of optimized path. Vardan creatures were all more resistant to biochemical attack than the creatures of his old world. Some monsters developed magically assisted toxins that were potent enough to slay even those things that had resistance to the less infused varieties of glandular warfare.
Taipan had for sure inflicted some nasty bit of poison on that huge armadillo thing, the [Goliath Macer] he guessed it was called, and it had continued fighting, albeit it the creature would have succumbed to the toxins eventually. Problem was, they kept getting pinned between their protection of the Orlethrem and the monsters. That didn't give them the space and time to simply kite the bastards while the envenomation did its job, as Ulric had long since gathered was one of his charming wife's favored tactics.
"The Eternal Gaze truly works implacably." Taipan laughed lightly.
"Yeah, well, good thing too, cause Old Wonder Boobs the Cosmic Voyeur tossed me naked into what might be one of the most dangerous places on the entire continent." Ulric reminded her.
His wife patted his shoulder knowingly, "And thereby saved you the time of learning Varda's rules slowly or wasting all of its efforts by your dying to some weakling warrior or a feral dog or some such stupid thing years down the winding forest's trails of life."
Ulric snorted at that assessment. Got that shit right. Slow learners didn't long survive the [Forest of the Forgotten].
"Yeah, so, anyway, you wanna piece of this dude or what lady?" Ulric asked, offering a leg of the scorpion thing to his wife.
Taipan smiled gently and signed "Gratefulness" as she took it, tearing into the meat with sharp teeth with gusto.
"So much better would the creature be had we butter." She said, licking her fingers after munching down on the pale pink flesh.
"Word." Ulric agreed.
Having fulfilled his husbandly duties of feeding his spouse, Ulric saw to their shelter set up, not wanting the woman to aggravate her ribs and leg any more than possible. The sooner his partner was back to full battle readiness, and capable of resuming her scouting duties, the happier he'd be. Taipan roaming the wilderness nearby was like wearing a cozy weighted comforter on his mind. At the very least, he knew they'd get some kind of early warning if skulking fiends came a knocking.
Following the shelter, he made a couple of rounds around the perimeter of the Elven caravan, checking on the separate campfires to see if their denizens needed anything or to simply offer a courtesy greeting. Ulric was an asshole but he strove to avoid rudeness, and walking by a campfire in the fading light without so much as a wave of hello was sort of prickish in his book. Perhaps his monster hunting had earned him the Heaven's blessings because there was no more disturbance along the course of his walk. Anything out there that might be outside his sight made sure it stayed that way and that was just how he liked it.
When he completed the rounds, Taipan had their bedroll ready and patted it to indicate he should take rest with her. Her invitation was all the more welcoming for the absence of her clothes. When a lady that pretty tells you to take a seat, don't ask questions brothers, sit the hell down. Ulric followed his own wisdom and shed his armor, with a little help from dexterous Elven fingers. Once liberated from the confines of plate, mail, skirt, greaves, and gauntlets, his helmet long since retired to his belt that day, the weary man enjoyed the comforting warmth of his mate. A proper soporific was the cozy embrace of the Elf and her deep even breathes. All too soon he mumbled something unintelligible into her hair before drifting off to sleep.
Twice, Ulric woke in the night, never gaining complete consciousness, and pulsed his core's magic to sweep the surroundings with electromagnetic perception, finding no sign of enemy, and twice returned to slumber without remembering waking. The sneaking things that had been skirting the camp felt the thrum of latent power, an awakened core humming like a high voltage line, and fled into the night for easier prey.
The Twins rose ever earlier in the mid spring season, though it was more gradual a process than his old Earth, thanks to the longer orbit of Varda around her binary suns. Once he'd untangled himself from being used as his regal partner's body pillow, wiping a thin streak of her drool from his chest once that delicate task was accomplished, Ulric completed his morning workout of balance and stances and then suited up for a fresh chance to see just what Varda could throw at them. He hadn't got much farther than stoking some coals for a breakfast fire before he was joined by a bleary eyed Iriel'en princess, who had left the teepee flap bare assed and without evident concern about it.
If she ain't worried about it, I guess I'm not, Ulric told himself, still uncertain about Elven standards for modesty. There had to be rules for it, but damned if he could ever figure them out. In any case, Ulric Einar would not be the one complaining about this vision of female form, long legs displaying the shift of perfect musculature beneath soft skin, hips flaring with a fantastic bottom, and taught stomach leading up to equally well sculpted arms and shoulders. He whistled softly in appreciation. The lass did birthday suit under the golden light of early morning like a champion.
His approving gesture earned him a slow turn and a dancer's pose.
"Ten out of Ten, Taipan." Ulric informed her, receiving a gracious nod of acceptance of his praise in return.
She smiled and tussled his short, white growing hair, rejoining, "You have come along, my Glade Chief, I find you now sit at a strong eight and half out of ten."
The hair was a gift of having been burned horrendously by a pyromancer nearly half a year gone now. He'd come real close to kicking the bucket then and had lost all the hair on his body. What grew back in had grown in white, except for his beard, which retained its dark brown coloration. Those worst burned places on his arms and legs never did grow hair properly. Bastard Captain Firecracker. Although, Taipan did seem to like his august appearance so it wasn't all bad.
Since she'd come within striking distance, and so ill defended, Ulric took the opportunity to pinch her rump. Supple flesh mishandled thusly drew a startled yelp and a slap of hands to drive him away, which he reluctantly did.
"Sorry Lass," Ulric apologized without feeling, "Autonomic response. A reflex. Your cheeks bare to the wind draw my hands like magnets the iron filings."
Taipan glanced around the campsite and surroundings to see if her cousins could see and found no sign that any were awake and about. When none became apparent, she waggled her hips at her mate teasingly, knowing what it did to him.
"Oy! You're about to start something you damned well know you can finish!" Objected Ulric, stricken by the display.
Having her stroll around nude was one thing, having her doing a belly dance right next to him was a whole other ball of wax. She was killing him over there.
"I am just reminding my Honor of what pleasures he will know when I am recovered enough to mount him." Taipan taunted, continuing to rock and sway.
Damn you Bald'rt genes! She knew damned well that was at least a week away. He groaned in misery.
"You are a cruel wench, with deviltry in your heart." He complained, mesmerized by the motion.
"Then perhaps you should not excite me with your grabby paws, yes?" She replied, ending her torment.
Victory was hers, this time.
Ulric held up two fingers in surrender, "Mea culpa! Aye, Taipan, you have won. I will refrain from reaching for paradise, even though the sight of it tempts my weak will."
The smug Elf strolled, slowly, into the tent to dress, having dominated her partner's will after he had instigated her rightful rebuttle. All according to her keikaku.
Greatly relieved was he when the troublesome Shadow returned from their mobile domicile clothed in her hunter's garb. The sensible, stout clothing was designed for function, not to abuse his sensibilities in her not so subtle attempts to rule him through flirting promises. All was fair in love and war and the two did not divide so cleanly in his Taipan's mind. Nor, really, in the minds of any of the Aes'r, only it was the Deep Woods Elves that took it the farthest.
Putting matters of the bedroom aside, Ulric now had to contend with the chore that was moving this merry band of travelers along to safe havens. In as straight a line as could be managed out here in Prespang's rugged coastal high lands, the Orlethrem had made some forty kilometers yesterday. Not bad. Not great, but not bad. That put them probably a day or so out from Kistalfer and her ships. Ulric wondered how badly this would go, this attempt to secure vessels to make the passage through the Rivergate, the arching fortification, controlled by Prosper, that permitted travel between the inland sea Vatyn and the great river Zelas.
He probed his scrape hip, scabbed and a bit less tender compared to the day before, healing more rapidly than any injury in the Before while he thought the matters over. There was no way that they approached the city with this bedraggled lot strung out around him. How likely was it that news of the goings on along the coast had reached the overlords of these scattered City States? Three weeks or, no, maybe closer to a month since Bartala. Two weeks since the raids on those Bane sites. Delayed as communication likely was, thanks to his sorting out the ports and vessels carrying Prosper's agents on his way from Bartala, it would not be wise to count on the ignorance of the enemy to dictate strategy overmuch. The problems now made his engineering work figuring out doping solutions for graphene films seem trivial. Microstructure physics and electrochemistry were tricky, but navigating the minds of humans, plus one malicious over mind that may or may not be an old as shit Elf, was downright daunting.
How do you take advantage of human nature when the other guy wasn't even human?
"The clouds portend rain, Ulric." Interposed his partner, her study of the whispy cirrus high above and the red dawn of distant sea clouds that frequently preceded weather.
Of course they did. If nothing else, he was now understanding of just where all the damned water came from to feed those Celestin and Iriel'en forests. His plateau acted as a sort of rain reflector, the high walls redirecting these water laden trade winds back South, to drop their moisture as they skirted around the kilometers high shelf.
"Best be on with it then," Ulric rejoined stolidly, "By your memory, we've got another day through this rough country and then we have to figure out how to get all these folk on arcs back to the promised land."
It was going to be a long as shit day, and taxing. Ulric was now on scout duty and the scout's job was to cover twice the ground that the main party did. At a minimum. Leaving the wrangling of the Orlethrem to his Shadow, Ulric headed out to determine their path and to clear it of threats, making long zig zagging canvasses of the territory.
Two more scorpions he found, this time with his [Ceraunoperception] up and not facing limited battery in his core and he blasted them with [Lightning Javalins], the crackling violet lances of his magic ripping through the soft interiors almost ignoring the chitinous armor. The creatures never even got the chance to rise from the shallow burrows that left their backs and tails exposed. He didn't bother harvest their cores, it was time he couldn't afford to spend and he didn't want to be bogged down with extra weight for little purpose.
The craggy plateau was changing. Slowly, but surely, the terrain was falling more steeply away from the fjords and cliffs to a rolling series of hills and rocky beaches, visible from his position on the crest of a small rise. They'd have a long, winding descent ahead of them but the next few leagues would be far easier to get across than was the highlands. By the looks of it, the low hills were pretty typical coastal forests and grassy meadows. He dearly hoped the gentler terrain wouldn't also welcome more wildlife to bother them.
Satisfied with his bearings, Ulric returned to his winding back and forth back towards the caravan. An hour later, he was walking again by the wagon carting along his wife. Her lips pursed when he told her of the waiting landscape.
"It is likely that we are come closer to Kistalfer than I had thought." She told him, before shooting a look back at the rest of the carts and their accompanying draft animals, the healthier refugees walking alongside to lead the placid beasts.
"I do not believe we will be welcome within the walls of the city, not with so many of the Orlethrem. It is almost impossible that it would be believed that you owned so many Aes'r slaves, that kind of wealth is rare, especially from the barbarian tribes." She thought aloud.
He nodded with that, it was his opinion as well.
"Such were my thoughts." Ulric agreed, before asking in a hushed tone, "But what to do about them all? Hide a few leagues shy of the city and have myself go alone, to prevent questions?"
A gentle pat on his shoulder and his Shadow said without irony, "The last time I left you to enter a city's walls unattended you started a riot, slaughtered a group of Prosper's thugs, and murdered a Baron in broad daylight before rampaging across the open seas."
Right. Well. He couldn't very well say she was wrong now, could he?
"I think, this time, we will try the slave gambit. I will go with you, alone, with a false collar. We will take our harvested kills into the city with us, and play the trader game again, it works well if you are not allowed to lose your temper and kill anyone." His expert in counterintelligence gently reprimanded.
"Trade season will be in full go, with many passing through. The beating my kin have given Prespang's forces and the reinforcement of the blockade will provide uncertainty in the ports, as did your villainy on the high seas." Taipan smiled, recalling his story of raiding Prosper flagged vessels and sending them, and the magisters with them, to the briny deeps.
"Many were the soldiers who deserted rather than face the wrath of the Aes'r. It would not be so out of the ordinary for a warrior who had collected a valuable trophy to have fled the field when their commanders were slain and their units scattered, as many were. These vagrant warriors will cover our approach nicely. The only real problem is explaining our wealth, although I think our possession of several lucrative cores, including a half dozen [Gilded Queen's Rose] from your initial salvo on the nursery will help with that." She continued.
Huh, he hadn't figured that she'd take the time to procure those but his Shadow was, it seems, ever the hunter and couldn't let those spoils go to waste. Ulric scratched the beard that was filling in along his jaw, pondering the set up. It was good. Better yet, it was mostly similar to the ploy they had already been planning to run and he was less likely to get confused and fuck it up somehow when under pressure.
"Alright Taipan, your judgment seems sound. We will follow your lead then." Ulric decided.
Given that he was more or less complete dog water at a ruse or subtle con, it was best to let someone who could play the game correctly be in charge.
"Is it possible that I can play dumb and let you do most of the talking?" Ulric inquired.
"It would probably be for the best that we do it that way, yes." Confirmed the Elf riding next to him without sarcasm.
She knew he was terrible at misdirection as well as he did. Just like he had a knack for how to connect seemingly unrelated pieces of datum and create a broader picture of cause and effect or correlation. The pair of them complimented one another's strengths well and filled gaps in the other's weaknesses. It was a similarly effective relationship in combat, one's talents covered the other's deficiencies. After all, as much as Taipan liked to vanish into the mists to come at her opponent's flanks, sometimes, what you really needed to do was to grab them by the throat and punch their face until it looked like ground beef. Problems were not always nails, requiring a hammer. But sometimes they were, and that was a fact.
"Swell." Chuckled Ulric, gladly relieved of the burden of subterfuge.
They ended their strategy meeting there, the caravan was approaching the set of planned switch backs to climb down from the highlands into those coastal forests he'd spotted. Near as he could tell, from this vantage, they had ten kilometers of descending and another thirty or so of rolling meadows. These were, in contrast to the scraggly thickets of the highlands, well forested, those trees hidden behind the shelter of some large sand dunes that lie between the sea's winds and the soft hills. It was still up to him to ensure that no ill came to the group and he would do this duty as well as he could.
Constant pulses of Ceraun against his skin, Ulric swept the descent carefully with his detection at the maximum range. He didn't have the best resolution but he was mostly on the lookout for anything alive, not necessarily counting their fingers and toes, if they had any. It was an interesting spell was [Ceraunoperception], like an electric eel or shark's sensitivity but dialed up to work in air. He was actually able to feel the increasing humidity as the storm system approached, the permittivity of the air shifting with the increase in water content.
His senses were sharpening, along with his overall mental state. The almost constant readiness to face enemies and regular skirmishes against men and monsters and combinations thereof were shaving the weaknesses from his modern man's sensibilities. That little bit of reservation he'd had when they'd started this trip were mostly gone, replaced by the internalization of the awareness that threats are best destroyed before they manifest themselves, not after.
Reforging had, rather swiftly, caused him to discard the prevailing notions of law and lack of aggression as positive emotions from his old world. Passivity was unacceptable out here. There had been though, a lingering tendency to be defensive, to respond to provocations rather than to actively suppress them. It was a fine line to ride, asserting yourself amongst peoples as a being not to be trifled with but not being hostile outright. The best analogy he could make to explain his attitudes now was it was a little like carrying a firearm. You didn't walk around with a finger on the trigger, that was too overtly threatening. However, you kept a slug in the chamber and the safety off, ready to rock should anyone or anything decide it wanted trouble. He found the seemingly universal expectations that individuals deal with problems rivals and enemies openly and with extreme prejudice incredibly liberating. It was probably that side of him that had been strangled in the Before, one of the sources of his anxiety being that he could not face his aggravations head on.
Speaking of which, there were some critters roaming down below, looked a bit like a mountain goat, long beards hanging from their chins, eyes with those horizontal pupils, and great spiraling horns. Beefy looking dudes too, Ulric noted, they were closer to the size of a brahma bull than to the typical mountain goat. Sharp hooves gripped the slope with surety and their agility could not be denied as they clambered weightlessly around the path through which the wagons would be traveling shortly. Ulric paused, crouching low to observe these newest denizens of the wild. He had maybe a quarter of an hour before the caravan reached this position, long enough to see if the creatures would move along on their own and to evaluate them as threatening or not.
It wasn't long before he had his answer.
A bulky, heavily furred form that reminded Ulric of a chimpanzee but too big across the shoulders and too heavy in the head clambered up a boulder and squatted on short legs, it's long arms flexing impressively, even from his distant point of observation. The creature had big fangs, similar to a gorilla, and appeared herbivorous, chewing a stalk of some vegetable, no, wait, a tree sapling by the looks of it, and made no aggressive moves whatsoever. The goats froze at the sight of the creature's silouhuette against the horizon. They then charged with abandon and Ulric got a look at another bit of Vardan evolutionary horseshit.
Clouds formed between the spiraling goat horns and Ulric's core could feel the gathering power there. The lead goat lowered its head and the thickening dark thunderhead between its horns lined up with the back of the inattentive sasquatch on its rock. Churning legs powered the goat up the boulder and, at the last moment the gorilla finally noticed the incoming danger. Too late. A thunderclap lifted dust and the goat shot forwards, burying its head directly between the shoulder blades of its target, a flash of light simultaneously flaring brilliant and the gorilla thing was blasted from its perch, smoking fur and patches of fire across its form as it fell to roll down the incline bonelessly. It was, without a doubt, dead as shit. The goat, now joined by three of its companions bleeted hoarsely across the landscape, declaring their victory.
Hmph. A lightning wielding goat. Ulric dubbed them [Thunderhorn Sheep], for obvious reasons. They appeared uninterested in the ruined corpse below, instead turning to graze on sparse grasses and vegetation on the hillside. Ulric was somewhat flabbergasted by the blatant hostility. Those monsters must be territorial as all hell to have that kind of response to what appeared to Ulric to be a more or less completely herbivorous and docile creature. Being nice paid off in the Vardan wilds about as well as it did dealing with its peoples.
He had to admit some amount of professional curiosity, from one wielder of Ceraun to another. The ram, or was it a doe?, had used something similar to his [Surge] ability, gaining a very intense burst of power and speed and had also charged its horns with an actual storm cloud, which defied what he knew about meteorological workings. Right between those spiraling horns had been the life cycle of a cumulonimbus cloud in miniature with its little anvil top and the incus or whispy cirrus border of the flat top from wind shear. That shouldn't form like that, for a whole mess of reasons. Ulric had a feeling he was looking at a more complex manifestation of mana. Like a lightbulb going off, he realized that was it precisely. The sheep monsters weren't pure Ceraun they had the Caelum and maybe even Aquae combination that was particular to a different flavor of magic altogether, storm magic.
He hadn't really ever "tasted" storm mana with his own core. Using his [Core Pulse] was one of the primary ways he had to diagnostically parse out the exact harmonics of a new type of mana and it was how he'd developed his original suite of spells back in his time in the glade. He'd never been close enough to the source to do it with Kataigis, storm mana, and this was a remarkable opportunity to do so. Once he had the manaform in its entirety to study in detail he'd be able to synthesize it with his own mana, effectively unlocking a new branch of magic.
The only reason he hadn't done so with Sano to learn healing magic was that that shit was difficult. Sano mages amongst the Elves were specialists that studied their craft for decades. Ulric might be able to cheat a little with knowledge of biochemistry and anatomy but he'd not had the time to apply himself in that way. Absent training, he'd just give himself super cancer or something similar if he tried to manipulate life magic. The same had been true of the other more complex interwoven manaforms. Subtle combinations of Terra to specifically focus on metals or minerals, doing things to directly convert water to steam, there were almost infinite variations of mana but each step away from the basic forms were an order of magnitude more complicated to handle. Ulric wasn't there yet. He came closer all the time, but time was something that had been in short supply ever since leaving his burned out and, or, carved house in the bole of a dead [Godtree].
This right here, this prepackaged little bit of Kataigis, in the form of the core of the [Thunderhorn Sheep], it was perfect for his needs.
"Sorry little sheep, but you are now a sacrifice for Science." Whispered the reforged engineer.
