Chapter 36: Forgotten Contract

Subject: Sonia Location: Redtinge Overgrowth

In all her years as a seeker, Sonia had never seen anything like this. She’d hunted the lower jungle for just under a year now, about 17 months, and it was because of that accumulated experience that she knew crossing paths with a Tralmuck should have been the end.

They were slow creatures, but running from them wasn’t a good option. Tralmuck were cautious predators, only appearing when all other paths were blocked off. Their bodies could be likened to a walking army, capable of launching an untold number of natural-born spells from its knotted flesh.

Slow as a Tralmuck was, it could only catch prey by temporarily exerting dominance over other blightbeasts in the jungle. They fell in line and surrounded the prey, which was Sonia’s party, in this case.

It had blocked off the precise path leading back to the Redtinge Spire. The seekers would have to break through to get to safety, and hope they would be among the few parties to see a Tralmuck and live.

Kent, the party leader, had ordered a cautious advance. It was the right approach… but it only gave them a slightly higher chance of survival compared to opting to face the multitude of beasts amassing in other directions.

Even three Seeker Champions with combined experience like theirs couldn’t handle one of the nine terrors of Redtinge.

Sonia was the only one who could see what was happening, because only her Cartemi eyes could pierce the dense fog. However, that didn’t mean her brain could make sense of it.

Kent was a Cloak Forgecaster, putting him the furthest back. Between him and Sonia was their Midknight Shieldmage, Nevan.

Sonia was no Vanguard, but she was the only one who could see the naked human straddling the gargantuan blightbeast before her.

Three seeker champions, all of whom had been silently preparing to die. They’d each faced their own personal swell before teaming up, and it didn’t matter. Seekers could die in a moment and there would be nothing they could do to stop it. Sometimes, it felt like the Blight was getting stronger with the seekers.

A human… Is she a seeker? Why is she naked?! That impact before, was it a spell?

Curiosity brought Sonia closer to the human as the Tralmuck fell. Cartemi were stereotyped by a curious compulsion, one that would drown out reason in favor of experiencing something new.

The first cartemi explorers to leave their island and arrive at the meredine lands, the enemy of Shroud and its allies, didn’t adequately prepare for the hardships unrestrained curiosity could bring.

Sonia had really only heard the stories. Shroud’s human-supremacist culture was troubling, but those monsters beyond the border were sadistic beyond measure.

The first cartemi found something new, and they paid the price. Sonia didn’t have such self-destructive drive. Possibly, it was because she had assimilated.

But… This sight was something new.

The Tralmuck had unleashed everything in its arsenal to free itself from the unexpected attacker. Grotesque grasping limps of organic-ethereal flesh burst from its body and curved in toward the human, who was doing something indescribable to the wound she’d made.

The stranger didn’t so much as look at the menacing limbs. Sonia couldn’t believe how a person could focus so intently in such chaos. Kent and Nevan were frozen in place, and Sonia quickly motioned to them that they should continue to wait, and prepare to fend off the creatures to the rear.

The other blightbeasts wouldn’t likely intervene unless they tried to run, if stories could be believed. That was the hope.

The human was winning! The Tralmuck slowed its trashing, succumbing to the damage.

What rank was this seeker?! Could she be a fabled Blightbane? No, the sixth rank was reserved for walking disasters. In fact, even a capable Seeker Warden would be able to defeat a Tralmuck if they were prepared.

This lone human didn’t look prepared. She looked...

The jungle came alive, erupting in a terrible wail that hurt Sonia’s sensitive ears. She clamped paws tightly over her ringing ears and her vision blurred.

It wasn’t a sound a living creature could produce. Sonia doubted that even the Tralmuck was capable of generating such a noise.

It could have been a wild clash of magic energy. Sonia’s augmentations didn’t sound like much of anything, and she didn’t consider herself a true mage, so she couldn’t speak to the truth of the explanation.

When Sonia could finally open her eyes again after having recovered from the sensory overload, she saw the glimmer of the Tralmuck vanishing into the void. A glimmering blightseed was laying on the ground, but the human didn’t seem concerned with the prize.

The human, wounded and weary, was staggering over to Sonia. Sonia was frozen in place, unable to process the fact that a single unarmored seeker had been able to defeat a Tralmuck.

The stranger’s fair skin was marred by terrible burns, in the early stages of healing. But there were flecks of red and black rock clinging to bare flesh, like bizarre armor. This detail only came in better focus as the stranger grew closer.

She wasn’t entirely naked, no. Not if Sonia could count the belt. At least, it looked like a belt. Squinting allowed her to make out burns on the belt’s pouches, which weren’t particularly bursting with the essential provisions a seeker would normally bring to a festerfont.

The stranger was mumbling to herself in her wounded delirium.

Sonia was a seeker who’d experienced the swell once before, so she knew that this jungle was a perfect place to meet the end. The end of your life, or merely your life as an ordinary human, depending on whether you were able to overcome the swell. You commit to the path of the seeker, the Blightbane, or you die.

This human wasn’t dead yet. Just what was her rank? Sonia couldn’t even keep track of all of the questions she wanted answered.

She grew closer. Though she and Sonia were about the same height, at the short average of a cartemi male, the human seemed to surge taller with every step. The perceptual change was brought on by the stranger’s domineering intensity.

Heterochromatic eyes, one enigmatic purple and the other deep green, trapped Sonia’s form in their wild saccades.

Blond, almost white, hair, might have reached the stranger’s chin, were it not slicked with sweat and jungle grime. It almost seemed to be dyed black at the tips.

Sonia quietly gestured to the exhausted stranger, urging her to come closer. Her curiosity joined with an instinct to ease this fellow seeker’s obvious suffering. She thought that the human might be hiding exhaustion and pain, as evidenced by her sorry state.

This was an incorrect assumption.

The stranger tackled Sonia and she felt the impact of the soft ground hitting her light armor. The startled cartemi was too surprised to react, looking into frenzied eyes, laced with the telltale discoloration of magic, pale violet, in this stranger’s case.

No awareness of one’s surroundings could be seen in these beautiful, passionate orbs. That deep green, and that complementary purple. Sonia doubted the human even knew what she was looking at.

“Poor thing~” Sonia whispered. “You’ve been through something terrible.”

After Sonia spoke, the human jerked back.

“What’s your name?” Sonia asked.

“I-I’m…” the human struggled to communicate, or perhaps to grasp her surroundings. “I’m Inis. What are you? Why can you talk?” the stranger mumbled.

A human’s eyes were ill-equipped for this environment, afterall. A Seeker of her obvious caliber should be used to seeing cartemi from time-to-time, so that couldn’t explain it.

Inis is an odd name for a seeker. It does sound familiar, though. Wasn’t there a scientist named “Inistra”?

“Get away from her!” Nevan yelled, startling both Inis and Sonia.

Sonia tried to rush to Inis’s defense, but she found she was thoroughly pinned to the ground. The human must have been augmenting her strength with magic. It was an easy explanation.

“Wait!” Sonia called out, but it was too late.

She heard Nevan activate his offensive shielding spell and begin to charge.

Inis leapt to her feet.

“You talk too?!” she mumbled in a tired, confused voice that seemed bereft of emotion, even for a human.

Nevan arrived with his shining green offensive barrier of magical energy, encasing lightweight white metal armor. Sonia’s party member was going to attack if she didn’t stop him. His eyes couldn’t pierce the fog to see that the aggressor was human. And, honestly, Inis didn’t look all that human in this condition.

Sonia jumped up to intervene, but when she’d been knocked to the ground, the air had been forced from her lungs. She leaned back and sucked in a deep breath to recover.

I remember! Inistra was a scientist, a seeker specialist. Something bad happened to him... and it had something to do with what he tried to do for the seekers … I barely remember that much, but it doesn’t matter. We can help Seeker Inis get back safely.

Nevan’s shoulder connected hard with Inis’s locked arms. The force knocked her back a step, but magic must have allowed her to absorb the impact.

I need to protect her! Sonia thought, but the words wouldn’t come.

“Be careful, Nevan. The other blightbeasts have backed off, but watch your surroundings! I’m starting the engine. Sonia! What are we up against?”

“… Are you behind this?” Inis demanded, but she didn’t seem to be speaking to any of them.

She was looking down, while Nevan entered another blind charge. Suddenly, Sonia’s eyes nearly lost track of her. Inis had darted behind Nevan.

Nevan froze in place when he heard the words. The figure of the woman, though shrouded in fog as she was, must have finally reached him.

Sonia saw him looking for her, as if to beg his companion for answers. Then, he shook off the confusion and dipped his shoulder low, surging towards

“Wait!” Sonia pleaded, struggling to her feet

“What’s going on?” Kent called out.

“First you spur me on, then you hold me back? Make up your mind!” Inis growled, still talking to no one in particular.

Poor thing.

Nevan and Inis danced around each other. Inis was distracted. When she finally took a moment to focus, a powerful spell fired from her outstretched palm.

Inis’s target was thrown back against a tree on the edge of the clearing, but he was otherwise unharmed. Inis, on the other hand, grunted in pain.

She swayed in place before turning to face Sonia again, striding forward to grip her hands around the helpless cartemi’s neck.

It didn’t hurt. Why didn’t it hurt?

Inis peered close at Sonia while she held her in place, and a glimmer of recognition appeared. It was faint, and it wouldn’t last long.

The human was succumbing to virastarvation. That’s why the spell had hurt her. Her body was running dry.

Sonia’s ears picked up Kent beginning to crank the wheel of his “Dispersal Engine”. Metal gears ground together and the custom machine churned to life.

That was the talent he offered to the group. In addition to his tactical expertise as party leader, Kent was an up-and-coming Forgecaster who’d dedicated himself to making magitech tools for managing the trials of the Redtinge Overgrowth festerfont specifically.

Inis stepped back and released Sonia, who wasn’t sure what to do.

The human was swaying in place, mumbling to herself. It seemed like she was having a full-blown conversation with herself, but even keen ears couldn’t distinguish these incoherent ramblings.

As the fog began to clear, drawn in by Kent’s Magitech, Sonia was propelled forward by a sudden desire to protect the dignity of the stranger. She rushed forward and unclasped her small pack, retrieving a strand of body bandaging in one fluid motion.

“Why didn’t you warn me,” Sonia heard the stranger mumble as she got closer, eyes locked on the menacing figure of Nevan, bathed in his newly-cast defensive barrier.

Nevan was on his feet, but he listened when Sonia held up a wordless hand to stop him from reengaging in earnest.

Still mumbling, Inis looked around her, seeing Sonia extending the bandage to her.

Sonia wished she had something better to work with. When everyone calmed down, she was sure the others would offer something.

The otherwise pale white skin of the human was red with solscarring around the eyes. They would continue to scar the longer the mage continued to manipulate sol without a filtering unit.

Come to think of it, the human didn’t have any sol fuel in her belt. Could Sonia’s eyes be deceiving her?

“Come here,” she offered the bandage. “You are hurt and exposed. I will help~”

“I already… life is … complicated than ... and survival…” Sonia managed to catch a handful of words.

The human wasn’t displaying any sense of embarrassment or weakness. In fact, after taking down the Tralmuck single-handedly, she was more imposing than the band of Seeker Champions combined.

Sonia wasn’t one of those Cartemi who fancied the anatomy of other species, so she couldn’t speak to that form of beauty, but she was captivated by the strength of the creature silently struggling in front of her.

“What?” The human asked, addressing Sonia for the first time. “Oh… Thank you.”

Not even upon realizing Sonia standing there was the human embarrassed. She took the bandage, unconcerned about the people around her. Her worries were about something else.

Just what was the human thinking about? Sonia desperately wanted to know

Subject: Inis Location: Redtinge Overgrowth

You helped us experience things, and it was hard…

Inis deactivated her virasense, no longer able to maintain it, so close to losing consciousness.

We can be more, if you want to adapt their strength in us. Also, we would be able to eat.

“Then why did you stop me?” Inis accidentally asked aloud.

While listening to Shade’s response, Inis wrapped the bandage around her body as best she could.

Two human males had turned around, possibly to give her privacy. Even if Inis wasn’t experiencing this surge of emotions, she wasn’t concerned by things like this. Not when there was so much more in life to worry a person.

We wanted the option. This joining hasn’t been easy to understand. One of these three could be food, but the others are like us.

“They… no,” Inis refused. She was horrified by her hesitation.

She didn’t understand why Shade was acting like this, but she could somewhat understand its confusion. She was confused by many of these thoughts. How could she not realize she’d been fighting seekers?!

A seeker named Sonia was helping her while she stood largely unresponsive. She didn’t have the energy.

“Nevan is the armored one, and Kent is the one wearing the brown cloth and hide armor. I have some food~. Please eat it so you don’t…”

Inis grabbed the sandwich offered to her and ravenously inhaled it. A piece of bread dropped to the ground and she crouched down to retrieve it, not even bothering to brush dirt off before eating too.

Then, Inis turned and started walking away, feeling ashamed and angry at the time. The shame was a long time coming. How could she lose herself to an experiment gone awry?

“I promise… If I can’t control my emotions by the time I get back… I’ll turn myself in,” Inis choked out, still catching her breath.

Inis thought about this for a moment before amending her promise.

“Not to the Enforcers… I’ll go to the Blightbane. They won’t understand, but at least they’ll know what to do about what I’ve done to myself.”

“Nevan! She’s going to-” Sonia called out, but her voice was far away.

Inis heard footsteps rushing up behind her, but they were an impossible distance away.

We can’t let us, Shade stated. We will watch. I… will observe.

What are you doing?! Inis demanded.

Someone caught Inis’s body before she even realized she was falling. Her eyelids were too heavy to open, but she fought against the coming coma to demand that Shade explain what it was trying to do to her.

I’m giving you… you. There is more to become, but knowing I’m here will only interfere with that process. I’ll remember these things we've done here for the both of us.