Chapter 26: Seeker Solidarity

Subject: Caim Location: Riventread

“Oh, you poor thing~,” a stranger sympathized, drawing out the syllables of each word.

Male or female, human or other, it was difficult to tell. Caim could barely see whoever was approaching through the bloodied mess that had become his face, but they didn’t look human.

Caim kicked back against the gravel he was sitting on, scuttling away until his back was pressed against a tall rock pillar. The only reason he knew the rock was there was that he hadn’t moved since finding it.

He couldn’t escape, not in the state he was in.

Whoever was approaching was probably a seeker, but Caim had barely survived the last carapaser onslaught, and his fight-or-flight reflexes were screaming for him to flee.

“It’s ok, Initiate. I am a Lifemage. My sister is peerless. She will protect us while I heal you~.”

Rubbing blood and sweat from his eyes, Caim saw a small humanoid creature knelt before him. Another just like it stood with her back facing Caim and the speaker. She clutched a strange weapon with a jagged blade.

“Surrender your body to my brother, and he will make you whole again~,” she promised, without turning to face them.

The female seemed more determined to watch their surroundings than sound overly friendly. Their odd speech pattern made Caim uneasy, but he couldn’t detect malice in her words. Perhaps it was the fear of something new.

By process of elimination, Caim decided that these must be cartemi, the only species he had yet to encounter. He only remembered Alice mentioning humans, faron, and cartemi.

Through blurred vision, Caim saw a blue fur-covered hand reaching out to him. On second thought, it looked more like a cross between a paw and a hand, with small green pads on the underside of bulbed fingertips.

“Your armor is disrupting some of my virasense probes, Initiate, but I don’t think you have any serious harm. I will Mend you~,” the kneeling cartemi assured.

Caim tried to slow his breathing, allowing his healer’s fingers to slide across his chin. Caim saw what he thought were retracted claws, nestled within fur on the tips of each finger.

It was a little late to attempt to escape. On top of that, it would probably be rude.

“I can’t pay,” Caim admitted.

He stared into the layered irises of the cartemi. Black pupils were surrounded by a ring of bright blue. A final layer of deep blue iris enclosed the rest. The color disparity was noticeable.

“No payment desired~,” Seru assured.

The healer caught him staring, and his black lips curled into a coy smile.

“I can feel the pulses of your heart~,” the cartemi Lifemage whispered. “My name is Seru. You are safe in my care. Oh, and that’s my twin sister Tami behind me~.”

“C-Caim.”

Seru’s eyes shone gold when his magic activated.

The cartemi’s skin was completely coated in fur. Small white horns poked out atop the fur on his head, rounded at their tips. Really, they were tiny nubs.

Seru’s followed Caim’s stare with a momentarily guarded curiosity. Caim knew it was rude, but he just couldn’t look away when this creature, like nothing he’d seen before, was so close in front of him.

“First time seeing my kind?” Seru gently inquired.

“... Yes.”

“You are still young, and we tend to ourselves, but it is odd~.”

Seru didn’t have any hair like a human would, though his fur was somewhat thicker on his scalp. His ears were higher than a human’s.

When Seru saw that Caim was still staring, the cartemi’s ears twitched twice, and his mouth curled into a full smile. The smile revealed two pairs of fangs on the upper row of his teeth, which were otherwise similar to a human’s.

Seru was no longer guarded. It was like he’d seen something that changed his mind about Caim. As to what, Caim couldn’t guess.

The healer was calm, but the fangs did make Caim a little uneasy.

Then the effects of the magic took hold.

Subject: Seru Location: Riventread

Seru Embris locked eyes with the wounded human, feeling something more than casual empathy for his fellow seeker. This was more than just any poor, wounded Initiate.

He’s different.

Tami would always laugh when Seru shared thoughts like these with her, but he knew what he felt was more than just an overactive imagination.

The humans called this kind of thing a soulsense, but Seru was as distanced from their culture as any cartemi. He believed it had to do with his connectedness with pulse through particular magical energy channels.

It was muddied by the imprecision of intuition, yes, but it came from somewhere. Just because Seru couldn’t put it into words, that didn’t mean he should ignore it.

Something about Caim’s physiology didn’t feel like the other humans Seru had healed. It was hard to see beneath all that armor. Still, a Lifemage’s virasense was attuned to identifying abnormalities in the body of their target. That is how the mage could decide where to focus their healing.

Seru was forced to suspend his contemplations and expend more energy on the spell. The armor was really getting in the way, actually. Something else was “off”, if that was the right word to describe it.

His organs are… different? And that strange metal in his spine. Probably from an old wound, it doesn’t look recent.

Seru was definitely not an expert on humans. However, he probably knew more about treating them than he did treating cartemi. Humans controlled Shroud, it was just a fact.

The Embris twins often traveled between cities for the very reason that they never felt very much at home anywhere. He and Tami had been separated from the cartemi migrant community they were born into after the intervention of a certain Hexknight.

Unwilling to dwell on discomfort, Seru returned his attention to Caim.

The way he’s staring at me is different, too. It’s pleasant, but I don’t think he’s attracted to me. What is it, then?

At that moment, Seru’s virasense focused on analyzing the human’s brain. He wasn’t trying to read Caim’s thoughts, that was impossible. Seru was just casually scanning his target’s body while doing mental upkeep on the spell.

The shock was so tremendous that he almost lost control of the Mend spell.

Subject: Caim Location: Riventread

Unlike in Shimmerden, Caim was now consciously experiencing the effects of the healing magic. He was awake and focused entirely on what was being done to him.

He had imagined a radiating warmth. While that was indeed a component of the overall feeling, there was so much more to it.

Caim twitched under an onslaught of energetic impulses cascading through him. Each wave would target a wound on his body, seeping through his armor, and then assault him with microshocks of fluctuating degrees of warmth.

Seru leaned closer and placed a second hand on Caim’s chest, gently holding him in place.

Caim saw the cartemi’s eyes widen. Seru tightened his grip.

An unstable pulse of energy rocked Caim, but Seru held him in place. Caim’s savior seemed to have known the pulse was coming, and he looked apologetic.

Did he make a mistake or something?

And just like that, it was over. Seru leaned back and exhaled a sigh.

“Thank you,” Caim said.

Seru looked weakened. Despite whatever price the spell had extracted, he cracked a cheerful, fanged grin.

“Don’t mention it! Now that you are feeling better, could you tell me what happened~?”

How should Caim explain his predicament to this stranger who had taken the time to treat him?

“I was stupid. I’m supposed to be a mage…”

Grateful as he was, too many difficult-to-process emotions still surged through him, and his attention drifted away from answering the question. But Seru seemed like he really wanted an answer.

“What do you mean by that? What are you~?” the cartemi probed, with just a hint of anticipation in his voice.

“What? Oh, I am a mage, I guess. But I only know one spell, I think, and it can’t really handle groups of blightbeasts. I got overwhelmed.”

Seru didn’t seem satisfied by Caim’s answer. The cartemi’s face, tremendously more emotive than a faron’s, had been looking for something more in the way of explanations from Caim.

Tami turned around and glanced down at her brother with concern. Then, the cartemi female studied Caim’s face.

Compared to Mille, her layered green eyes were significantly more sympathetic. This was relative to the personality archetype Caim had automatically applied. Truth-be-told, he didn’t actually know what she was really like.

Tami seemed like a disciplined person going about their duty. She had been mostly quiet until the healing was finished.

“You are a Cloak, fighting alone~?”

Caim nodded.

“You should cling to the edge of the outskirts. Less prey, but less danger~.”

I still don’t really understand this “layers” business. I just know I’m not supposed to cross from the “outskirts” to the “body”.

Right now, danger could only really mean more carapasers. There weren’t many other varieties of blightbeast out and about.

“It’s difficult for me to understand where the edge even is,” Caim admitted. “With Shimmerden, there is an entrance to the cave. And here I thought a wide-open space would be better.”

“Is this your first contract?” Tami asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Those seekerstones can tell you where you are,” she explained, pointing to a pillar in the distance. “You just need to learn how to read them.

Caim noticed that her voice trilled less when she spoke seriously. It helped him identify that the topic was vital, that it was dangerous information to live without.

“You can’t always rely on what you see coming at you to defend the festerfont~. You’ll have days like today, where it's mostly just these weaklings, and other days where there will be blightbeasts you’ve never seen before attacking you.”

Caim let the information sink in while Tami took a moment to notice how he could have taken her words.

“Oh~. I meant that they aren’t much for Seru and me,” she clarified after remembering that Caim had been brutally battered by the “weaklings”.

He just shook his head quickly and smiled to show he didn’t take offense.

Caim was bewildered. He faintly remembered Mille saying something about the pillars, but he thought she was speaking figuratively. Caim thought the experienced clerk was telling him that he would learn to use the pillars as points of interest in a mental map that he’d develop over time, not that they were literally points on the festerfont map.

Tami motioned for her brother to switch places with her, and he somewhat reluctantly did so. She knelt down and began to explain how to read the pillars.

Seru continued to watch over them the whole time. Every once and awhile, Tami would give him a wry grin, and he would quickly look away. His sister would chuckle each time that happened.

Caim focused on trying to learn this new skill that would help him stay alive.

Subject: Caim Location: Riventread

When it was finally time to leave, Caim thanked the Embris twins again. Without their guidance, he might not have made it back out of Riventread.

To think I almost crossed into the body. That would be bad, right?

“It was your first time,” Tami noted. “You should have gone in with a party, but many still do it this way.”

“But sis... he is a Cloak,” Seru protested.

“Yes, I forgot. I’m sorry. The armor confused me again.”

“That armor saved him,” Seru added, shooting a fascinated look at Caim’s back. “You got so beat up... but the cloth isn’t even torn.”

“Even with fancy armor, you still need to find a partner,” Tami insisted.

She looked around for any blightbeasts. Seeing none, the cartemi stood behind her brother and put her hands on his shoulders. He leaned back against her and grinned.

“Find someone like sis’ to protect you,” he suggested.

“Are you a Vanguard?” Caim asked Tami.

She shook her head. An expected response, given her light armor.

“I’m a Midknight.”

Like Alice, he remembered.

Caim had seen other seeker pairs on his way through the festerfont. It made sense that less difficult contracts wouldn’t need more than two seekers.

What do I do about a party, though? I can’t get close to anyone, or they’ll find out what I am…

Caim had managed to keep some of his identity concealed from Alice and Mille, but eventually, he would need to tell them.

“You have helped me a lot,” Caim said to the Embris twins.

“Seekers should stick together,” Seru cheered.

“Like bro says, we’re on the same side,” Tami seconded.