Chapter 10: A New Hope

The gigantic open space where the Battle of Red Fields had taken place was at least three hundred yards across at it’s narrowest point. It should have been reassuring that the lack of trees would deny cover for any magic beast to approach us unobserved. However somehow that vast desolate field where so many men and women died only made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end even more. Perhaps it was my imagination playing tricks on me but I swore I could almost feel something sinister turn it’s eyes on us as we took our first steps onto the field.

“That way,” said Cat in a hushed voice, pointing ahead of us and a bit to the left. I nodded and began to stalk in that direction, my center of gravity low and sword held up at the ready. We walked the first hundred yards or so slowly and without seeing anything out of the ordinary, my eyes constantly scanning in all directions for any sign of movement. Oh, how I sorely missed my javelins in that moment. Any creature attempting to charge us through that open field would have received a face full of throwing spear to the face before it could even think to close within a hundred yards. I’d have to get replacements for the rest of my gear as soon as I had the chance.

“So, good news is that we’re definitely getting close,” Cat said, doing her best to sound confident but I still caught a thread of nervousness in her voice. “The bad news is that the feeling of danger keeps getting stronger as well. I can’t tell at all where it’s coming from anymore.”

I merely nodded at that. However there was nothing for it. We were committed now. With my head on a permanent swivel we continued slowly moving forward.

As we continued along I started seeing something odd. There was torn up vegetation and churned earth sporadically. I poked one of those torn up areas with my sword. There was nothing underneath except a bit of soft earth and hard packed dirt. Still, the sight put me on edge. No forest animal that I knew of would tear up some earth in such a fashion for no apparent reason.

“How much further?” I asked Cat, trying to keep my voice casual for her sake.

“We’re really close now,” she replied with a frown. “Maybe another ten feet or so I think.”

My arm was starting to ache and go numb from holding the [Uncommon] sword for so long but I resolutely ignored it. At last Cat came to a stop, biting her lip as she stared down at the earth. She walked around in a small circle once, keeping her eyes firmly on the ground.

“It’s here,” she said, her voice holding a tinge of excitement. “Maybe a foot or two down. Are you going to dig it up or should I?”

I frowned. Well that was certainly a relevant question, now wasn’t it? On the one hand on the surface it made more sense that I keep watch while she worked. However thinking about it more deeply it was unlikely that anything could cross the clearing we were now in the middle of to accost us before being spotted long in advance. That only left the digging as the biggest unknown hazard. For all I knew this mystery item could set you on fire just by touching it. Not that I thought it likely, but then again the sum total of all that I knew about powerful magical artifacts could easily fit into a thimble. If anyone was going to take the biggest risk it was going to be me.

“I’ll dig,” I said. “You keep watch. If you see anything unusual, anything at all, you say something right away. All right?”

“Got it,” she said, already turning away to keep an eye on the field around us.

“Good girl,” I said, tone teasing.

“Sod off, Gar.”

I chuckled at her response before turning to my half of the task at hand. Sheathing my sword I got on my knees and began the difficult and inglorious process of digging a hole by hand. There was a reason the humble shovel was a standard part of everyone’s kit in the legions. I kept an eye out on our surroundings as much as possible and dug with vigor. The quicker we finished and got out of there the better I would feel.

After a few minutes of work my hand struck something that was very smooth and hard and that definitely wasn’t a rock. Despite my reservations I felt my excitement building as I worked those last few moments to pry out the object from the earth. When I finally pulled the object out, somehow the dirt and earth seemed to fall away from it like water off a duck. In my hand was now a perfect sphere roughly the size of my fist. Even someone like me could tell that it was magical right away. Something that looked like a mix between red water and thick mist swirled energetically all throughout the inside of the sphere giving it an almost hypnotic appearance. After looking at the hyptnotically glowing sphere for a few moments I could almost start to believe that something like a whole other world was actually contained within it.

“Well? What did you find?” Cat asked impatiently, to her credit not once looking away from scanning around us for danger.

I’d been so entranced by the otherwordliness of the sphere that I hadn’t even thought to identify it yet. With an effort of will I used my [Observe] ability on it.

Item: [Stone of Apotheosis] (bloodlust)

Rank: Rare

Consuming four Stones of Apotheosis will set your level to [Level 21], initiating you onto the Path of Apotheosis. Your class and skills will be partially determined by which Stones of Apotheosis you consume.

“Holy shit!” I yelled, suddenly flabbergasted and overwhelmed. “Cat, it’s a-”

That was the moment the magic beast exploded out of the hole I’d just dug.

A cloud of dirt hit me in the face, blinding me, as the magic beast screeched with a deafening sound like a thousand diseased birds of prey. A history of violence had me automatically punching into the thing that had startled me instead of flinching back, which undoubtedly saved my life. My fist connected with what felt like the emaciated body of a child at the exact same moment as dagger like teeth snapped closed so close to my face that they tore a bloody strip of skin right off my nose.

The impact from my fist sent the thing that had just attacked me flying away from me, buying me a scant precious moment of time. I wasted a second wiping my arm across my eyes to clear my vision. When I looked up again, the thing was already mid air and flying back at me, arms outstretched and an impossible jaw stretched wide open filled with metallic looking teeth.

Once again instinct had me moving into the thing as it flew at me, surging forward and grabbing it tightly with both of my hands around it's neck. As I grabbed a hold of it I finally had a split second to get a good look at whatever the hell it was that was trying to kill me. It’s body looked like what a child might look like if it were starved to death and then flayed of skin, red and meaty all over with three fingered hands ending in thick yellow nails. The head of the beast was the most disturbing however. It looked three times too large for the size of it’s body, and over two thirds of the head was simply a large mouth filled with needle sharp metallic teeth.

It tried to bite me but with my hands around it’s neck I forced the thing's mouth to keep well away from anything important. When it realized it couldn’t bite me it started thrashing violently like a fish on a hook, twisting against my arms with shocking strength and clawing at my arms with it’s dirty yellow nails. The creature shrieked again in that horrible wail like a thousand dying raptors right in my face, the volume so painfully loud that I thought my eardrums would burst. With an overwhelming surge of fury I opened my mouth and yelled right back in it’s face, letting out all of my frustration and anger and fear with everything I had in a wild, primal scream of my own.

Then I saw the large rock next to me and proceeded to slam the magic beast’s head into it with everything I had.

I slammed the creature’s head against the rock again and again about ten times before it stopped moving. Then I slammed it’s head against the rock ten more times until it’s head was just an unrecognizable pile of mangled meat. After I was absolutely, positively sure it was one hundred percent dead, I finally let go of it’s ruined neck. Then I let myself fall on my back, panting for breath, shaking all over as I tried to ride out the battle high.

Celestials, that thing had scared the shit out of me.

When I somewhat had my wits about me again a minute later I lifted up my head and looked for Catherine. She was crouched by my feet, holding the Stone of Apotheosis in one hand and looking at the corpse of the magic beast with a curious and fascinated expression on her face. At first I was worried that seeing the… brutality of what I had just done had scared her. Civilians, and young girls in particular, weren’t known for reacting well to bouts of extreme violence. When she saw me looking at her though she turned to me and positively beamed, looking happier and more excited than I had seen her in a long time.

“Brother, that was the coolest thing I have ever seen!” she yelled in a high pitched girlish shriek.

I stared at her for a bewildered moment before letting my head flop back down to the ground. “Cat, don’t take this the wrong way. But I seriously think there might be something wrong with you.”

“Ha! I’ve always loved stories of horror and darkness and gore. Is it so weird that I’d be excited to see it in real life?”

“A little, maybe,” I said with a frown. “Weren’t you scared at all?”

Her exuberance dimmed a bit, but by no means fully disappeared. “Well, yeah. When it was alive. But you took care of it. It didn’t stand a chance against you! And it was just a magic beast. So what if I think its awesome seeing it’s brains splattered everywhere? It’s not like it’s real anyway.”

Some part of me felt like there were one or two things really wrong with that statement, but I was feeling too emotionally wrung out to try dealing with it right then. Instead after a long awkward pause I changed the subject. “So did you figure out what that rock you have in your hand is yet?”

“No,” said Cat with a little frown as she turned over the swirling red sphere in her hand. “I can feel its magic like a bonfire in my brain but this new magic sense of mine doesn’t tell me anything else. What’s it called? What does it do?”

With an effort I sat up with a grunt. I looked at the stone with slightly wide eyes, still having a hard time believing what we’d just found. What Catherine had apparently somehow sensed from damn near a mile away.

“That little sister,” I said, making an effort to sound as dramatic as possible. “Is a Stone of Apotheosis.”

Catherine just gave me a blank look. I rolled my eyes. She might have been smart but at eleven her education was, understandably, still very much incomplete.

“Also known colloquially as a Stone of Power,” I added dryly.

Her eyes widened to the size of chicken eggs and she gasped. Ah, there it was. Now she got it. That was the reaction I’d been looking for.

“No fucking way!” she breathed, staring down at the sphere in her hand with wonder.

“Hey, language,” I scolded her out with a frown.

“Sorry,” she said, sparing me a quick apologetic smile before going back to staring at the stone. “I can’t believe it. Even most nobles never see one of these. Only the most powerful and wealthiest of the noble houses supposedly manage to get their hands on Power Stones.”

“Yeah. We could buy an entire village with how much that thing is worth. Hells, if we haggled it right we might even get two,” I joked.

Cat stood up and frowned a little as she held the stone up to the light. Despite looking a little like glass no light seemed to penetrate it. She seemed to think something through at length before she spoke.

“Why would we want to buy a village? I found this thing buried in a random field somewhere in the wilderness. No one else could have found it. That stupid [Curse] seems to be good for something at least,” Cat turned to look at me then, her pale blue eyes serious and intense. “Who is to say I can’t find three more?” She paused for a second. “How about seven more?”

I made a skeptical face at that. “Finding even one in the wilderness had to have been a million in one lucky break. I’d be shocked if we found even one more, let alone seven more.” Besides I wasn’t sure I could handle my little sister going from no levels to suddenly breaking the level cap. Could someone who wasn’t even a [Level 1] even absorb the Power Stones?

“You don’t know that,” Cat insisted. “For all we know these stones buried under a few feet of dirt all over the place and just no one knows to look for them. There could be hundreds of them just laying around under our feet for all we know!”

I raised of skeptical eyebrow at that. “If that were true I’m pretty sure the whole province would be full of holes from one end to the other,” I pointed out. “Besides, I don’t know how Power Stones are formed but this place is very… significant. It probably takes some very specific circumstances for one to appear.”

Cat looked confused at that. “How is this place significant?”

I froze. I realized I hadn’t told her what had occurred here. She must have seen something on my face because suddenly her expression turned soft and understanding.

“Was it something from the war?” she asked me gently.

I gave her a jerky nod. “Yeah. Big battle. Very bloody. Probably the second bloodiest one of the entire war.”

Cat nodded and made a sound of understanding. Then she stood up, walked up to me and held out the stone. “Hey, how about we get out of here? I’m kind of eager to get going. Galia isn’t suddenly going to get up and come to us after all. And who knows? Just maybe we’ll run into more Power Stones on the way and I’ll get to prove you wrong,” she said before sticking her tongue out at me.

I blinked before grabbing the stone and rising to my feet. Going with a sudden impulse I ruffled her hair, earning myself a startled squeak, a stinging hand and a half-hearted glare. The sight brought a genuine smile to my face. I really did have the best little sister.

“Right you are,” I said, injecting some pep into my voice and finding that at least in that moment it came surprisingly easy. “Let’s get going then.”