Last Life

IT HAD BEEN ONE HOUR since the Duke and his troops left, and I was still messing with the bar in the cage. As it turned out, the metal the cage was made of was not as simple as it seemed. I thought energy would be enough to break the contemptible bar, but all my efforts were only enough to slightly crumble the outer layer of its surface. I did not despair, though. My method had gotten me somewhere at least — the bar was gradually getting thinner.

While busy with the bar, I made sure to monitor everything around me. And I was liking what I saw less and less with every passing minute.

It all started with flocks of birds taking off from the forest into the sky. Small and large, predators and potential prey, they all raced off in the same direction as the Duke’s party with panicked chirping, paying one another no mind.

Beneath that, clouds of insects flew the same direction and, a few minutes later, land animals started appearing on the forest’s edge.

Not bothering to find the quickest way, they ran straight into the lake and swam across it toward my cage. Moose, reindeer, wolves, a mother bear with cubs, a couple large lynx, and many smaller forest creatures — like the birds, they all forgot their hostilities and fled the giant storm cloud, which covered the sky from horizon to horizon.

The water in the lake came to life. It started bubbling like a cauldron over hellfire. Lake creatures started to appear on its mucky shoreline. Small and large crustaceans, turtles, snakes, frogs — a few minutes later there were so many of them the lakeshore resembled a slithering carpet. And that carpet came crunching, hissing, and squelching in my direction. Now and again, I saw fish jumping up on shore. Every living thing was running away. Away from the ever-encroaching Shadow.

The flow started coming in.

The Wing of Strix was clearly gaining speed. The forest, swallowed up by the Shadow, howled and barked like a huge, wounded beast. Seemingly, not every creature in the glade managed to escape.

All that time, I kept trying to break the steel bar but I had already realized I would not manage. The flow was just coming too fast. Most of the creatures were still in the middle of the lake when the wall of the forest ceased to exist.

I felt a pressure in my temples. Blood flowed from my nose down my chin. A familiar briny flavor appeared in my mouth. My furiously pounding heart was about to burst out of my chest. I grabbed both hands onto the bar and started pulling desperately. I tried to shout, but the ghastly howl was so loud I couldn’t hear the sound of my own voice. Then I was swallowed up by darkness and the world faded to black.

* * *

I awoke to a vicious chill paralyzing my whole body. Powerful gusts of wind repeatedly took my breath away, slamming my hard-suffering carcass into the cage bars.

I attempted to look around but saw nothing. I couldn’t even open an eye. It was only a few seconds later when I touched my stiff eyelids with shivering fingers that I realized it was dried blood.

Slowly picking off the hard crust, I looked around half blind and immediately regretted it when I discovered myself flying through the air. My cage, coiled with thick tentacles, was being carried by a giant flying creature somewhat reminiscent of a stingray.

Its cable-thick tentacles had slightly crushed the cage in a few places but were unable to fully break through the steel barrier. When I realized that, at first, I thanked all the gods I had not managed to escape my miniature prison.

The Duke had clearly taken every precaution. Actually, no... Not exactly... I’d have bet my hand he never would have guessed some big, huge flying stingray would decide to fly away with my cage.

When the initial shock had passed, I realized that I was already inside the Shadow. And most likely, I was quite far from where the Duke had left me. I didn’t have time to properly consider the reasons he did that. But once I got out of this jam, I would ask the ugly bastard why he wanted to feed me to the flow. I tried not to think about the fact I could die at any moment. Giving up hope went against my rules.

With a cursory glance at my body, I concluded no changes had taken place. Either physical or energy. As a matter of fact, my reservoir was full of mana, while the energy metabolism process in the system was going at an accelerated rate. I figured that was exactly what saved me from dying of hypothermia. Also, I finally realized that I could spend time in the Shadow without special adaptations such as stryker armor. Honestly though, all my clothes were completely threadbare. Like moth-eaten rags, they hung off me in ragged strips.

As for the world around me, I wouldn’t say it had changed all that much. Regular air. A huge forest below cut through by winding serpentine rivers.

The sun was perhaps less warm, and I had the constant impression that colors were less vibrant. It was as if the world around me had faded.

I looked up. The sky was blanketed with a dense gray haze through which peeked a slightly dim sun. As if it was just about to start raining.

I switched to true vision and started studying the creature carrying me off to the northeast further and further from the frontier. The monster’s energy structure glowed a saturated hue of dark lilac. Beyond that, it also had crimson and amber channels woven in.

All the lines stretched to an enormous three-color reservoir. When I realized what I was seeing, a chill ran down my spine. Three big, huge bruts! The largest was lilac. It was the size of a bull’s head. The crimson and amber ones were smaller.

Thinking about how much energy was contained in them, I gave a loud gulp. At the very least, it was enough to allow this creature to fly without care... Hm... Or perhaps it was more swimming through the air. I was perfectly aware that it simply would not be possible for a body of that shape to fly without magic.

I was distracted from contemplating that miracle by many creatures suddenly squealing loudly from all directions. I first shivered at how nasty it sounded. The creature carrying my cage didn’t like it, either. Based on the stronger wind, we must have started flying faster.

The squeal came again, this time closer. What kind of disaster was about to befall me if even a giant stingray was trying to run away? My blissful ignorance didn’t last long. Just a few seconds later, a flock of agile big-toothed flying squid-like creatures fell upon the huge stingray.

There were dozens of them. Squealing and squeaking, they sunk their teeth into the giant’s back, stomach and tail with squelching sounds. The stingray wailed out loud and long, then started dropping. One of its tentacles, the thinnest one full of sharp bone spikes, started deftly attacking the squids, tearing their bodies to pieces.

But that was just the beginning. The sounds of aerial combat had attracted more combatants. High in the sky, I heard a broken rumbling, then a moment later a huge dark blob came crashing down on the stingray’s back from the shaggy gray storm clouds. Followed by another, and another.

The giant, beset by even more foes, wailed out with redoubled force, then my biggest fear came true. Judging reasonably that survival was more important than its treasure, the stingray brought all its tentacles into the fight, including the ones holding my cage. A moment later, the steel box went hurtling toward the ground with me in it.

I was saved by the fact that the stingray had descended to a matter of yards above the treetops before dropping its prize. Essentially, after a brief moment of freefall, my miniature prison crashed into a tree and, rolling down the branches, got tangled in its sprawling crown.

No matter how I tried to regroup, I hit my head hard on the steel walls several times. But I did not pass out.

The cage hung from some thin branches, slowly rocking as if at sea while I hissed mutedly, furiously rubbing a particularly aching bump on the back of my head.

And overall, the series of tumbles had left my body looking like one solid hematoma. Thankfully though, my reservoir kept mana circulating through all my channels just fine. It wasn’t perfect. I still had several unhealed strains. But overall, one could safely say I got off easy with just a little scare. It all could have ended much worse.

The loud aerial battle slowly moved away from me. When the sound of the ghastly flying creatures finally fell completely silent, the forest all around me came to life.

Trying to keep my breathing inconspicuous, I started looking around carefully.

The luscious crowns of the huge trees wove together to almost fully blot out the sky. Dim rays of the evening sun shot timidly down through sparse gaps in the thick foliage. In jagged lines, they provided light to the effervescent forest fauna.

The wide tree trunks were covered in a thick layer of vines with fancifully curved leaves resembling animal claws.

The ground was covered in a thick layer of leaf litter, moss, and time ravaged rotten pieces of old tree trunks and branches. I’d have bet my hand that the apparently flat surface was positively teeming with natural traps.

All the “wonder” was in constant motion and living a life of its own. Several tree branches had yellow slime colonies the size of my hand stuck to them. At times, they languidly climbed from place to place, leaving behind slick black trails.

Among the bushes, I spotted a big, huge spiderweb and its owner hanging in the middle — a bright purple spider with a spindly body as big as a dog.

There was a swarm of pill bugs around the roots of a rotten stump, their semicircular backs glimmering in the dim rays of the shadowy light.

The heavy, humid air was slightly intoxicating, breaking my train of thought, but it was unmistakably warmer than in the sky. Swarms of midges, colorful beetles, and flies raced haphazardly from side to side, adding more detail to an already very colorful scene.

After a close inspection of the cage, I realized I was going to have to continue to dump energy into that bar. The fall had caused practically no damage to the steel walls of my prison. I was holding out hope that all the flying would put the door locking mechanism out of commission, but those hopes faded quickly.

My epic arrival did not go unnoticed. At first, of course, the creatures only stared at the strange steel box but, around an hour later, I had my first visitors.

They were a group of insects with bodies similar to ants, but the size of large cucumbers. Twitching their long whiskers and clacking their mandibles, they spent a little while studying the bars of the cage. Their fire red chitin backs were covered with small, curved spikes while their wide faceted eyes glimmered in the rays of the shadow sun.

They had yet to notice me, but I figured that was not for long. I was under no illusions that I could coexist peacefully with these creatures. They would certainly try to eat me.

I switched to true vision and started hurriedly studying my potential foe. A cursory scan of one of the ants revealed that I was dealing with a creature that had magic circulating in its energy channels. At first, I lost my breath when I saw its little two-colored reservoir. Two wheat-berry-sized bruts, one crimson and one amber, pulsated in time with the energy driving them. I turned my questioning gaze on the other insects and saw an ambiguous picture. Just a few of them had reservoirs. The others had energy structures with no magic.

Finally, one of the big ones decided to cross the line and crawl in between the bars of my cage. Turning its narrow head side to side and constantly twitching its long whiskers, the ant took a few steps forward and stopped. After that, its head turned unfailingly in my direction. Its black faceted eyes flashed with darkness.

For a few moments, it stood perfectly still. After that, it started slowly turning its back to me, raising its abdomen. In true vision, I could see the amber energy in its body activate, then start to pool in the middle of its plump abdomen. I had no need to see what happened next.

I moved sharply right. And a few moments later, a small toxic yellow mass hit the floor where I’d just been sitting. The metal surface started hissing furiously and giving off smoke.

What a nasty brute! Not waiting another second, I walked forward and, slamming my still relatively intact boot down full force, smashed the poisonous bastard’s head open on the floor.

I heard a faint crack. I quickly pulled my foot back from the still moving body and observed the other ants’ reaction. They froze for a moment, then the five largest ones came over to their comrade’s twitching corpse.

The invasion had essentially begun, and I started preparing for active defense. For the next few minutes, like a mad market dancer, I furiously stomped the insects crawling in my direction. A few of them managed to spit their magic poison at me, but they were all too slow. They’d simply come up against a painfully fast opponent.

I couldn’t say how long our stand-off lasted, but at a certain point the ants simply stopped coming. The entire floor of the cage was littered with their dead bodies, in some places over bright yellow poison.

Breathing heavily and glancing around tensely, I looked around at the battlefield and breathed a sigh of relief. Whew... I’d basically fought them off...

Pulling air in through my nose, I winced. The stench of the poison was unbearable, but there were also upsides. I noticed with satisfaction, that the swarms of bright flying insects, which were initially interested in what was going on down here, started keeping their distance from the cage. The sharp acidic smell of the poison scared away all small creatures from my steel “fortress.” Hopefully, it would be enough protection to let me spend the night in relative peace.

Catching my breath and taking a short break, I started examining the body of the first ant I slew. Scanning revealed that both of the bruts in its chest were brimming with mana.

Swallowing with a scratchy throat, I pushed carefully on its chitin armor with the tip of my boot and, holding two ant legs like chopsticks, extracted both of the little crystals from the dead insect’s chest.

Grabbing the crimson brut in two fingers, I drained its energy. My reservoir immediately reacted to the healing stream and started redirecting it down all my channels.

Oh, yeah! I watched with a happy smile as the crimson mana started regenerating strains and microtears. A wave of warmth immediately ran through my body.

The brut’s energy was enough for approximately a quarter hour. After I drained it, it transformed into worthless gray dust. The next hour I devoted to gathering loot. All told, including the two first bruts, I made away with twenty-four little crystals — one dozen of each color.

After draining another three crimson “grains” and observing the regeneration process, I decided to start cleaning up my temporary living space. The half-crushed bodies of the common ants went flying out, while those of the dozen mage ants I decided to put to use. Or rather, I wanted what was left of the toxic acid in their abdomens. Because when I surveyed the metal surface where the toxic liquid landed, I saw that I now had a chance to get through the troublesome bar faster than I thought at first.

“That will do,” I whispered with a smile an hour later, wiping the sweat from my brow.

I had a small section of steel bar in my hand. I was free to go. Glancing at the dark sky, I sighed heavily. Tomorrow, my journey home would begin.