Chapter 9: Wilderness Camp

Subject: Inis Location: Absence Woodland

The Absence Woodland was in a somewhat precarious spot, wedged between places Inis did not want to be. This was where she made camp while visiting the festerfonts outlying the Advantide Bastion City.

The dominant tree species of the woodland was called the Fraletree, but Arvorloc Evergreens were interspersed throughout the denser areas. Inis had set up her camp within one such area.

Fraletrees had thin, medium-height trunks covered in delicate white bark, growing straight into the air. They had small green leaves, which grew sparsely on short, thin branches. This made them a poor source of concealment from predators, especially in the colder months, when the tree would gradually crumble away to a husk. A new tree would rapidly grow when warmth returned to the land.

Vigilantly, Inis scanned her surroundings for predators and other pursuers. She was in the clear. Even so, she would tread carefully so as not to leave an obvious trail. Inis would breathe easier once she was less exposed.

The Arvorloc Evergreens were ideal for concealment. Thick, deep green trunks of heavy, knotted bark grew only slightly shorter than Fraletrees on average. However, their many branches would spread far in all directions. Voluminous blue-green leaves clung to these branches throughout the year. These trees were the perfect cover.

Inis saw more Arvorlocs as she walked deeper. She was nearing the end of her journey back to camp, and her muscles were sore.

I am feeling drained. I rarely cast that Solflame Embrace spell because of how much it depletes me. Should I use a respite shard?

Inis pondered shattering a “respite shard”, which was the market term for a specific kind of crystalline spell vessel. It would reinvigorate her at the expense of the vessel.

The crystals themselves could be used to store many forms of spells, depending on the quality of the crystal. Still, the two most popular varieties were the respite and regen varieties. The user didn’t need need to know how to cast the spells to use them,

No, I can handle it. Those are expensive, and I can’t waste any more money.

Subject: Inis Location: Absence Woodland

The city was one place Inis did not want to be. Also on the list were the areas near Shroud’s border, the festerfonts, the deeper wilderness territories to the west, and the main roads connecting these places. Shroud Enforcers and the military patrolled the city, the paths, and the border.

Inis reached the outer boundary of her camp. She knew she was here from the distinct cluster of five Arvorlocs that she had chosen to conceal it. The next step was to breach one of her safeguard spells.

Her eyes followed the gently flickering orbs of light that guarded her home as she walked the safe path to the interior of the camp. One wrong move wouldn’t kill her, but it would be a pain. These were protection and concealing enchantments and upkeep spells. They were expensive to maintain.

Even knowing the proper path, the flickering lights weren’t the difficult part of arriving home. A separate spell would activate now that Inishad come close to the camp. Crossing the boundary was like swimming through heavy air. She didn’t yet know how to cast a version of this particular spell that would not interpret her body as a foreign force and attempt to impede her passage. So long as she was casually shuffling through, she would be fine.

Inis came to a stop beside the blue tarp of one of her camp’s tents. She let her satchel slide to the ground with a soft *thud* upon the hard, deep brown soil. A semicircular arrangement of wall tents was pitched around a wagon before her. This was home.

This temporary setup was the closest it came to a home for Inis. She lived in the wilderness wherever she traveled, and there were many reasons to do this. For all the things the camp lacked, there were crucial advantages to such a lifestyle.

First, Inis didn’t need to pay boarding costs. Her research into the Blight was a personal project, so it didn’t pay. That made it all the more important to cut costs wherever possible.

The second advantage of living like this was that she was far from the extreme paranoia of the Shrouded Theocracy’s Enforcers. Inis’s experiments were somewhat unconventional to the outside observer. She had learned this the hard way. Shroud policy was to answer curiosities with violence.

The Shaden and their revolting anxieties about The Strangers. Any scrap of knowledge or unholy light might taint them, right? How convenient that they are trained to avoid controversial thought.

Her path had strayed from her that of the average citizen early in her schooling. But she was sly, and she practiced the right words to say to avoid being punished.

“It is brazen hypocrisy, really,” she grumbled as she stretched her sore arms.

The Hexaline were the worshiped deities of Shroud, but two of these six symbolized aspects of Inis’s life.

Korsa, The Wanderer would approve of Inis camping out in the wilderness. He symbolized curiosity, with the stipulation that excessive curiosity was exclusively the purview of the Hexaline deities, not the humans or the “subhumans”.

Inis used to play a game on her peers in school using stories about Korsa taken from holy scripture. She would elaborate on these divine accounts of Korsa, changing his name and inventing just enough to make it difficult to tell who the story was about. Inis made sure not to alter the overall message. She would ask her peers whether the individual she described was a faithful Shaden or whether they were tainted by The Strangers.

Once, she got caught by her teacher, and she had narrowly avoided getting punished. Thinking quickly, Inis had explained that she was motivated to help others learn to question the excuses of the tainted. People will often claim that they are merely following the divine Korsa. The faithful should see through these blasphemous excuses. It is the pride of the tainted to believe they are pure enough to act as the divine Korsa would without becoming tainted in the process.

Then there was Rute, The Engineer. She symbolized the progress Inis sought through her work, and the forethought she hoped to use along the way. In her faithful school days, Inis would pray to Rute. Rute was responsible for continuing the Remnant’s holy mission of creating order from chaos, extending the influence of the Hexaline despite the interventions of The Strangers.

However, The Covenant of Shade would always taint something good. Shaden faith preached that Rute also symbolized “pious ambition”, a word synonymous with slavery in Inis’s mind.

If I had continued on my old path, they might have offered to let me work for them instead of dying, even if I did get caught. Not anymore, not now that I’ve turned out like this. Whatever. I wouldn’t work for Shroud anyway.

All territory within the thick walls isolating Shroud from the rest of the continent and the islands around it was controlled by the theocracy, and crossing this boundary was nearly impossible. A solitary person who did not possess an advanced mastery of many branches of magic wouldn’t stand a chance. She didn’t really want to leave the country of her birth even if she could. Nonetheless, she didn’t appreciate feeling restricted.

Just because the territory was within Shroud, that did not make it safe. Even for citizens like Inis. Many dangerous beasts prowled the wilderness beyond the city. Not blightbeasts, just predators. Predators that actually needed to eat to survive, unlike blightbeasts.

Enforcers regularly patrolled the roads, which were used to travel in relative safety. Inis would use these roads when going from one city to the next, often disguising herself as a merchant to explain why she carried so many strange tools.

Before unpacking, Inis surveyed the compact wagon that carried her from place to place. She ran her hand over the smooth metal, painted and treated black and brown to look like wood. This wagon had been expensive, but it was extremely durable, and she saved coin on upkeep costs.

I’ll upgrade it as soon as I can afford to. Using it like this is such a waste, but what am I to do when there are so many other expenses?

The wagon was worth much more than anything a lowly merchant like the one she was pretending to be could typically afford. She kept it disguised as an older generation model. However, she could not conceal the sound and performance of the engine that pulled it.

Inis began taking her things from her satchel and stowed them in containers arranged around the wagon. Each memgel canister would be tucked away. She would pack up her headset in its case. Then, all of her emergency supplies would be restocked before she did anything else. She needed to be ready to run at any time.

Subject: Inis Location: Absence Woodland

Finally finished unpacking and restocking, Inis began dragging tools out from beneath the cover of a tent. She tried to be gentle with the sensitive equipment, but the eagerness to try this new experiment filled her with giddy energy.

Inis didn’t sleep in this tent. It was there to provide cover for her supplies in wilderness weather. Her wagon doubled as bedding once she had unpacked and made camp.

I’m positive I’m far enough out for this. I just walked the path, and these tools don’t make that much noise on their own. The only way I’d be discovered is if I somehow made an extraordinarily loud sound, and an Enforcer happened to be marching by at that exact moment. That would be just my luck.

The theocracy didn’t patrol the wilderness more extensively because there was too much ground to cover. It would stretch forces too thin for no real benefit. Though little of what Inis was doing was explicitly illegal, for the most part, Shroud didn’t need a legal justification to hinder her or do much worse.

They simply won’t let me experiment to my mind’s content.

That was why Inis couldn’t set up camp on the roads, so she would study a location before selecting a secluded and relatively safe place to hide.

Though it was only a minor offense, there were laws against living out in the wilderness. Shroud mainly set these to keep order and to control citizens that might disrupt trade, but it also served to protect the foolish.

People would get it into their heads that if one was outside the reach of a festerfont, they were safe. The Blight was attention-grabbing because it was peculiar. It appeared to be unbound by natural laws, so it was memorable as a dangerous force in the world. City dwellers, living in safety most of their lives, often forgot what they had to be afraid of. They might start to think they could handle it even if the authorities warned them not to try.

Unlike the average citizen, Inis was capable of defending herself. Her encounter with the talusfang was evidence of that.

Inis was a fairly practiced mage, but she was self-taught. This left gaps in her overall comprehension of magical theory. Her mentor had filled some of these gaps, but she had decided to focus more on teaching Inis other things. It was hard to feel as grateful as she knew she should be, but the fact that she realized this at all was evidence of her mentor’s wisdom.

Never grow complacent. Don’t let pride or overconfidence turn you into your own enemy, Inis. You are weak.

To refocus herself, Inis quietly recited her recitation while checking the “warding stones” around the camp. These smooth black vessels were a partial technological substitute for a living mage. They would perform regular upkeep on a stored spell once it was cast, and they would do so for as long as they held fuel to do so. Each night, Inis would supply them with energy from her own body. If she needed to, there were artificial fuel supplies to turn to, and she often did so just to top the warding stones off.

It was valuable to be a mage when living like this. The numerous spells to help conceal Inis’s camp and add layers of early detection warnings in the event of a trespasser were invaluable. Because of these efforts, Inis felt reasonably relaxed, leaving all of her possessions in the middle of the wilderness.

It was mostly people that she was hiding from. There wasn’t much she owned that another living creature might want. She made sure to regularly seal containers of food.

This thought reminded Inis that she should harvest the Elshen leaves conveniently growing around her. The ferns concealed her, but they could also be ground up and used to absorb some of the blightseed’s outer layer.

Living like this really is the best way.

Many researchers had hypothesized that the outer layer of a blightseed contained the majority of seed’s extraneous matter. This couldn’t be absorbed by the body and could be safely removed with the proper tools.

Inis would need to do this if she was going to be successful. The reason seekers didn’t do it was because it was difficult and time-consuming. It required tools they likely didn’t have access to, and it could result in the loss of the vital nutrients within, which were both in solid and liquid form.

I’ll need to liquefy all of it.

Another reason Inis was out here was to be close to the objects of her study. Festerfonts and the blightbeasts they spawned were her primary means of gaining understanding.

She began clipping the tips of Elshen petals, collecting them into a bag. She snipped them with the same scissors she had used to harvest them. Even though that wasn’t the task they were designed for, Inis wasn’t dexterous enough to make use of a better set of scissors anyway.

The final reason Inis was here was that she preferred to be alone. The quiet wilderness was serene, especially on nights like these. It was much more preferable to a noisy city.