Here's the second chapter for the week!

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Chapter 23: A Clue

Clicking his tongue, Kaz stepped back from the dead groundhog on the outside dissecting table that he had built. Having gutted the animal and pinning it open onto the table stained Kaz’s apron and hands with blood. Blowing his breath out between his cheeks, he walked over to the washing basin and thoroughly cleaned his hands. Whistling a quick marching tune, “The Flight of Jebe,” Kaz flipped his notebook open to the section that he was working on.

“Mm. Here it is. The inner muscular structure of the giant groundhog.” Turning his attention to his specimen that was flayed open on the thick wooden table, Kaz started to take intricate notes on the groundhog’s anatomy. Spreading his mana sense around to make sure that no humans were near, Kaz used his new Blood Manipulation spell to drain the rest of the blood from the corpse. He had not done this when he was opening up the groundhog earlier because the villagers that delivered the corpses always liked to stay and gawk at what Kaz was doing. Smirking, Kaz carefully telekinetically pooled the remaining blood from the corpse into a bucket near his feet.

Blood Manipulation was Kaz’s most recent acquisition from the Book of Blood. It had been nearly two weeks since he had arrived, and he had gotten at least a dead groundhog a day. It was an amusing sight indeed, for every morning some of the villagers would haul a dead giant groundhog on a cart over to his hut. Sometimes, Temur would come to banter with Kaz every fifth groundhog. Paying the man with a smile, Kaz was genuinely happy at the prospect of getting his hands on so many dead groundhogs. Animal blood, was very similar to human blood. Kaz suspect that this was because humans and animals share many natural similarities within their bodies, but he didn’t take the time to organize his thoughts on this matter. Understanding more and more of the Book of Blood was much more important right now.

With a word, Kaz shaped the blood from the bucket into a ball and brought it up to eye level. Chanting quickly, Defile Blood was casted and the bright red blood blackened almost immediately. A strong scent of rot was also starting to come from the ball of blood, so Kaz called down his Blood Spirit which was watching for dangers from the sky.

The Blood Spirit came down obediently, and waited patiently in front of its master. Nodding, Kaz applied the rotting blood to the Blood Spirit’s right ethereal right hand. Having learned methods of improving his minion’s strength with blood from the Book just last week, Kaz was busy experimenting with his Blood Spirit. After a short while, all of the black blood ball had been absorbed by the minion’s right hand. Stepping back to look at his efforts, Kaz was pleasantly surprised at the results.

“The previously bloody hand turned light grey at first, then progressively got darker. At this point, the spirit’s hand is ash grey. It doesn’t seem to be darkening any more. This must mean that the groundhog’s blood is losing its tempering effect. Perhaps I need to use a different type of blood? Using more blood now would seem to be a bit of a waste.”

Sighing, Kaz started to use his thin charcoal to sketch the internal anatomy of the groundhog. With the blood being drained, the entire skinned carcass of the animal was a dark red, indicating that the groundhog’s muscular structure was denser than most other animals. Motioning for the blood spirit to use its unmodified left hand, Kaz had the spirit carve up the carcass of the groundhog so that he could studying the insides of the muscles as well. The blood spirit’s left claw sliced cleanly through wherever Kaz indicated. Satisfied with the corpse, Kaz sent the spirit to keep watch high in the sky with the Reaper spirit.

Resuming his whistling, Kaz continued to fill the pages of his notebook with detailed anatomical drawings and notes.

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At a makeshift camp a half day’s ride from Abaza, Inquisitor Chekov sat on a rock as he stared at the map in his hands. The sun was hanging low in the western sky, illuminating the plains with a soft orange light. Having followed Kaz’s trail south for about a week, his plans were disrupted when a rainstorm came and wiped out the trail. Their quarry had stopped leaving the trail of dead animals as soon as the forest had ended.

“Little bastard. I guess it was obvious even to him that leaving a trail of dead bodies on a plain would be too easy. Oksana! When are your scouts going to get back?” Beckoning for his scoutmaster to come, Chekov’s bad mood radiated almost in a visible halo around him.

“My rangers should be coming back within the day. They were going to the villages of Labinsk, Pechora, and Darhan.” Oksana replied in a crisp manner. She knew that Chekov’s mood was bad, and that he was a particularly violent man whenever he was frustrated. Even though he was trained in ways to control his emotions as an Inquisitor, the man lets his frustration get to him. I guess it can’t be helped, he’s a freshly trained Inquisitor after all.

Gnashing his teeth just a bit, Chekov dismissed Oksana with his hand as he turned his attention back to the map. He couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious. It had been nearly a week since had lost the mage’s trail. This slowed down their progress immensely, as they now had to send scouts out the neighboring villages to probe for information, and painstakingly explore for clues in a mile radius as the Inquisition team made its way south.

“Hah...Abaza is the only village left that’s even remotely close to our location. There’s absolutely nothing to the north and east, but the swamps are to the southwest. I’ll have to send somebody to Abaza while the rest of us continue south. I don’t think the little bastard’s made his way to the swamps yet. Even if he did, there’s no way for him to get through safely. The maps that he obtained from the previous hunter killer team don’t even cover the southern swamps at all. Hell, even the map provided by the Inquisition’s geographers only cover about three miles deep into the swamp.” Grabbing a large piece of jerky from his knapsack, Chekov began to viciously tear into his snack. Chekov came from a butcher’s family in the capital, and discovered his powers rather early in life. Recruited into the Arcane Library at a young age, he eventually sought the path of the Inquisitor when he came of age at 16. After eight years of backbreaking training and schooling, he graduated from the Arcane Library as a full Inquisitor. This was his first mission, and one that he could not afford to fail.

Seeing Chekov start to brood, Oksana sighed and went over to her tent. They had settled down here to spend the night in order to wait for the scouts to come back. Inspecting her bow, she noticed that her bowstring was beginning to fray at one end. Frowning, Oksana began to restring her bow as she waited for the scouts to come back.

A short while later, three riders could be seen coming to the came from three different directions. Although they did not arrive at the exact same time, they arrived within minutes of each other. Dismounting quickly, the scouts walked in front of Chekov and stood at attention.

“Well? What news do you have for me?” Still visibly in a poor mood, Chekov seemed to spit out the words. Although Chekov’s frustration was visible to others, the three scouts were extremely well disciplined after almost three decades of experience between them.

“Sir. Labinsk and the area surrounding the village are void of any traces of our quarry.”

“Sir, Pechora and the area surrounding the village do not contain traces of our quarry.”

“Sir, Darhan and the area surrounding the village do not contain traces of our quarry. However, the caravan that was resting there did report some news that may be of interest.” Chekov, hearing the last scout’s report, instantly snapped his attention onto the third scout. “Explain. Quickly.”

“Sir. The caravan from Darhan was coming back from Abaza in the south. Although everything about the village was normal, they reported that there were four extremely damaged giant groundhog corpses alongside the road going to the village. It seems that the groundhogs were trying to ambush a traveller, or travellers, who used unknown methods to viciously kill the creatures.” Excitedly, Chekov stood up as he brought out his black notebook to jot down everything that the scout had said.

“Mm. What are your conclusions as to the direction that the mage has gone?”

“The caravan pointed me in the direction of the corpses, but by the time I investigated, there were no trails leading away from the carcasses. In addition, the caravan’s passing along the road has obscured any possible tracks that the rogue mage might have made. I would suggest that we send a scout to Abaza to probe for information as the rest of us head southwest towards the swamp.”

“Hmm. How long ago do you think that these giant groundhogs were killed?” Still taking meticulous notes, Chekov continued to question the scout for anything related.

“I cannot accurately estimate the time of death. Some of the corpses were in the state of accelerated decomposition, and no animals would go near these. I can only say that I believe to the best of my abilities that it has been a little over two weeks since they died.”

“Very well. The three of you are dismissed. Go back to your tents and resume normal watchman duties when it is your turn.” Deep in thought, Chekov shooed the three scouts away as he stared at his notebook.

Later that night, when the Inquisition team was eating dinner around the fire, Chekov stood up from the rock and directly went towards Oksana. “Oksana. I need you to go to Abaza.”

“Now?” Looking up from her stew, Oksana’s voice sent shivers down the rest of the team’s spines. Disregarding her attitude, Chekov continued.

“Yes. Now. If you start now you’ll make it there by morning. You can gather information and probe around there while the rest of us start scouting to the southwest. You’ll meet us right….here.” Pointing to a location southwest of their current location and directly west of Abaza, Chekov gave Oksana a hard look. “You’re the best ranger that we have here. This might be a lead, and you’re the best tracker that we have. You can find the clues that the others, myself included, might miss.”

“You don’t need to flatter me. I’ll be heading out now.” Putting her half eaten bowl of stew down, Oksana slung her newly restrung and waxed recurve bow over her shoulder. Opening her utility sack, she pulled out a small yellow flask. Downing the Felis potion in one go, Oksana went to and mounted her horse. With a snap of the reins, the scoutmaster bolted out of the Inquisition campgrounds. Riding on a pitch black horse at night, the only things visible by themselves were the softly glowing eyes of the rider and her horse. Damn those mad experimenters back at the Arcane Library. I know that they spent decades figuring out how to breed night vision into these horses, but now I have to abandon dinner in order to travel. I guess I can get something to eat at the village once I arrive. Grumbling to herself silently, Oksana’s figure seemed to fly across the grassy plains under the new moon.

Unseen by Oksana or the rest of the Inquisition’s forces, a red spirit high in the sky was observing them. Seeing one of the rangers get on a horse and head to Abaza, the red spirit sliced its way through the sky towards Abaza and its master.

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Sitting in front of a makeshift fire in front of his hut, Kaz and Temur wondered when their lives had sunk so low. Each of the two men had a metal skewer of groundhog loin in their hands. Wooden skewers were far too weak and would snap under the weight of the meat. Making them bigger was too much effort, so they had chosen to go with cast iron skewers instead.

“Temur, when was the last time you said you tried groundhog meat?” Squinting at his share of the meat, Kaz didn’t seem too excited at the prospect of chowing down.

“Well, Kir, it’s been at least a decade. Us village folk don’t generally eat the bastards, the flesh is really hard to separate. Say, how did you manage to make such a clean cut anyways?” Even the strongest of men in the village had trouble sawing through the groundhog meat, so Temur was curious as to how the average looking scholar could have done it.

“When you’ve been cutting into these bastards daily for about two weeks, you eventually figure out the best way to slice them up.” Sheepishly, Kaz looked at the rest of the cuts of meat still roasting above the fire. “When are you going to bite into that cut of meat? It’s the loin. We’re starting with the most tender part of the animal first.”

Pulling a face, Temur hesitated for a bit then bit into the middle of the meat. Struggling to rip a piece of the meat with his teeth, Temur shook his face from side to side as he pulled the skewer away from his mouth. Finally, he was able to rip a piece of the meat into his mouth. Sheepishly looking at Kaz, Temur started to chew. About five minutes passed, and Temur was still chewing. Temur had a look on anxiety on his face now, but he still continued to chew. Another five minutes passed, and Temur stopped chewing. Turning his head to look at Kaz, Temur looked as if he was about to cry with his mouth full of meat. Meanwhile, Kaz was under an immense struggle to not burst out laughing as he kept the straightest face that he could.

“If you really don’t like it. Just spit it out!” Bursting into laughter, Kaz put his skewer back onto the iron rack above the fire. “I guess some things weren’t meant to be eaten eh?” By this point, Temur had already spat out the groundhog meat, and was slowly massaging his jaw.

“Demons below Kir! I could swear to you that even after all that chewing, I made exactly zero progress on that piece of meat. I told you that we rarely eat the little bastards.”

“Well yeah you did. But you didn’t really know why they weren’t fit to eat besides telling me that it was really hard to cut them into small enough pieces to cook.” Grabbing Temur’s once-bitten skewer, Kaz placed it back onto the rack.

“Sure, the meat smells real nice once seasoned with a marinade and cooked, but that muscle density is absolutely ridiculous. Why do you think they’re so muscled anyways? I’ve had giant wolf once in my life and it wasn’t nearly as muscled even though it was larger.” Bringing a flask of water to his mouth, Temur tried to wash out the taste of the groundhog from his mouth.

“Perhaps I didn’t use enough sours in my marinade. I’ll need to gather some more lemons from the trees around here.” Bringing out his notebook, Kaz started to write in the section that he had created about how useful the groundhog was as a food source.

“Eh? You even used a marinade for this shitty piece of meat? What was in it?” Ever curious at things that he did not know, Temur listened to Kaz carefully.

“I used three cups of red wine, two cup of apple cider, vegetable oil, salt, pepper, local berries, two cups of lemon juice, and a smattering of herbs. I mixed all of that in clean buckets and soaked the meat in it overnight. I got all of these ingredients from Olga at the Cossack. I paid her with five silvers for her ingredients, but I think they might have been wasted on the groundhog meat. I want to try using more sours next time but I don’t know if I want to undertake such a task anytime soon.” Pulling a face, Kaz thought of all of the other meat that he could have seasoned with that much marinade. At the very least, it would have been far easier to eat than this pile of garbage.

“Hmm. That sounds like a standard marinade that Olga uses for fresh pork, beef, or lamb. However, why was there so many sours in yours?”

“Sours such as lemon juice, apple cider, and red wine help break down the meat in a way. We don’t exactly know how it does this, but we know that it does. I already knew how hardy the meat was when I was slicing it, so I decided to use more than double the standard amount of sours to try and soften the meat.” I was really using the blood spirit’s clean left claw to slice the meat, though. That thing cut through this crap like a hot knife through butter. Who knew that the groundhog’s flesh would still be akin to leather even after that?

“So why does the groundhog need so much muscle? It doesn’t seem like it makes that much of a difference between it and similar sized creatures in terms of fighting capability.”

“Look at the dirt on the ground. It’s mostly soft soil perfect for digging. However, the groundhog has extremely powerful short limbs for digging really deep underground. The soil is soft for a short stretch, then it becomes hard because the weight of everything above has been pressing down on it for decades if not centuries. There aren’t any mines around here so nobody has the incentive to dig down and disturb the deeper soil. Can you imagine having to shift soil that’s so far deep underground? The weight would be immense as it pushes down on you and you’re trying to shift it above or to the side. The groundhog does that, however, because it can with these powerful muscles.”

“So do these things live their lives down there?” Temur was really learning a lot and since Kaz’s words sounded logical, Temur didn’t question them.

“Mostly, yes. They sleep, hibernate, reproduce, and grow up down in their burrows. Some scholars believe that their burrows reach the width of villages, but we don’t have any easy way to confirm that. Plus, nobody wants to pay for an expedition to dig up a bunch of giant groundhog homes in the first place. A few dedicated scholars have been petitioning the Imperial Library for funding to do so, but every year the budget ‘surprisingly’ does not allow for such expenses.”

Temur was about to reply when a black rider on a black horse rode up in front of them. The woman dismounted, dressed in pitch-black leather armor. Her face was hidden with the exception of her eyes which seemed to glow like a cat’s, even in broad daylight.

“Are you Kir, the travelling scholar from the Imperial Library?” Her voice sounded accusatory, as if she thought he was guilty of something.

Kaz beamed at the woman, having prepared an appropriate background story ever since his reaper spirit had informed him of the scout’s approach last night.

“That’s right. Say, has Miss eaten yet? I have this wonderful roasted groundhog loin that’s dripping fat right here.” Taking his previously uneaten skewer of groundhog loin, Kaz offered it to the scout.

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