Reap what you sow [solo]

[Leo Varniak]

18th (?) day of Spring, 512 AV His boot dislodged a tiny pebble from the edge of the narrow mountainside path. Leo watched it plummet down, disappearing from view. He couldn't even begin to estimate the extent of the fall, only that his foot always wandered a bit too close to the edge. Every now and then, even with his back against the mountain, he barely had enough room to convince himself to go on. He might have cursed the sea voyage on the Blue Horizon, but this was far, far worse even under ideal conditions. He sighed. These conditions were far from ideal. He could smell another storm coming by now. He thought the storms always smelled a little like Ivak, and a little like Leo himself. The last time, it had rained red and he'd had a hard time telling himself it wasn't blood. Whatever it was, he'd found refuge under a big rock and waited it out; there was simply no sense in letting that thing see more of his skin than strictly necessary. The clouds shifted in irregular patterns. People always saw funny things in those whimsical strands, sheep and talking heads and assorted household items. For some reason all Leo was reminded of by these clouds was gaping wounds and deformed organs. Once he thought he could see Ssena's mocking grin up there, but then he'd had to take his eyes off the sky and plant them firmly on the treacherous path ahead. How many days had it been? More than ten, but he'd lost count after the first big storm. The sky had turned to shadow, only ruptured by green flashes that heralded devastating lightning bolts. Each left a smoldering crater in its wake, the very rock metamorphosed into alien glass-like crystals. Leo couldn't tell if that storm lasted one day or three, and it all had gone downhill from there. He'd lost half his rations to the storm, and narrowly escaped the bolts from the heavens. He'd only survived because he'd been lucky enough to be in the middle of a fortunate mountain pass with plenty of cover. Knowing he'd literally brought this upon himself was little consolation. Time stretched out endlessly across the marred mountain ranges of Kalea. Magma flowed underneath his boots, from one chamber to the next, carving intricate halls of fire in Semele's secret bowels. He could feel all of that with amazing clarity, better even than anything he'd ever seen with his eyes. He knew that he could cause many of these peaks to erupt if only he wanted to. It was his right, and his privilege as Ivak's first. It'd also get him killed ridiculously fast, for he may be immune to fire and lava, but a rolling boulder would flatten him just like the next person. It wasn't like there wasn't already enough chaos and devastation around him. If he, a champion of the gods, could barely survive here, so close to his natural element, the average person truly didn't stand a chance. The wind started picking up, bringing along a strange, unknown smell halfway between sickly sweet and spicy. Leo barely had enough time to register its presence, when he was hit squarely by a huge gust of wind. To call it wind would have done it a disservice - a sonic shockwave would have been more like it. Leo was thrown back like a ragdoll, his left arm scraping against the mountainside and leaving a trail of bright red blood along his trajectory. Then the path curved suddenly around the mountain, and he obviously did not. He found himself clinging to a sharp, jagged rock with both hands, his only baggage dangling from his shoulder. Below him was the infinity. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead and a droplet fell down the precipice. His fingers were slipping; his will may be strong, but his body was weak. Clenching his teeth, Leo formed a cushion of Res behind his back and realized it into air with an explosive upward push. His back screamed with pain, like he'd been kicked by a wild mustang, but he was propelled up just enough to regain the trail. He rolled sideways, hitting the mountain wall with his forehead. He was alone with his feverish breathing and his madly pumping heart. Another blast of wind would have killed him right there and then, and he knew it. But there wasn't another blast. That'd have been far too merciful. He found his footing after an eternity. He reached into his last remaining bag and bit into the first thing he found, a piece of stale cheese. He took a sip from the waterskin, too. His supply was quickly dwindling, but he'd been unable to replenish it thus far. Every single stream he'd come across had been contaminated one way or other. The one little lake he'd seen was a sorry scene of dead fish slowly rotting under a sickly Syna. It wasn't easy, coming to terms with the fact he'd caused all of that, but he still couldn't let it kill him now. The long journey East continued. Sultros or death.

[Leo Varniak]

21st (?) day of spring, 512 AV The last of his food was consumed early in the morning. His water could last another couple days under tight rationing. Things were starting to look quite grim, if they hadn't been until now. Leo's progress had been slow and difficult. He'd conquered the mountain that had almost claimed his life, but the plateau that came next was not without its own challenges. For one, there was precious little cover from the elements and the Djed storms. Thankfully, the mountain ranges Leo had put between him and Wind Reach, as well as the days rolling one past another, were causing the storms to hit less hard than before, but that didn't make them enjoyable in the least. It simply meant he now had a chance at survival where he previously wouldn't have. The fog rose almost suddenly, early in the afternoon. Visibility dropped almost to zero over a span of chimes, and the air turned chilly. Leo did not like the iridescent undertones to the phenomenon - they made the scene feel surreal and betrayed its unnatural origin. He did not need his eyes to navigate Kalea, though. He knew roughly where he needed to go by simply studying the underground magma flows - Sultros, the Isur capital, was an abyssal city whose huge empty spaces stood out in the subterranean landscape of highly volcanic Kalea. It seemed obvious to him that Sultros was his only chance of living through this. Going straight to Alvadas was absolutely out of the question. Not without wings. It was perhaps funny that he still took the time to shave even in his current predicament. Being clean shaven marked the difference between a man and a barbarian in his mind, and he never failed to do so. Being able to take some time for himself and his image was akin to showing the world it couldn't take his humanity. He wouldn't be reduced to some animal, not by Kalea, not by anything. The fog's smell brought back memories of the incident with the wind. It was still there, softer but lingering at the edge of his senses, the sickly sweet aroma mixed with something hot and spicy. It invaded Leo's nostrils, just strong enough to perceive, but impossible to ignore. He would have welcomed anything that could dispel the vile stuff, even the red rain from the earlier part of his journey. But it didn't rain, and even the last storm had been mostly thunder and lightning. Lights had rocked the sky, making it hard to tell day from night. Leo kept advancing through the fog, waiting being a luxury he could no longer afford. He was out of food and running out of water. By far not an accomplished wilderness survivalist, he still knew he was supposed to look for water first, then food and then shelter... or was that the other way around? The lack of water and wildlife was starting to get unnerving. If it's like this now, what could the Valterrian have been like? he found himself thinking. Suddely he could feel newfound admiration for those who'd been through that and had not only survived, but managed to raise a new generation. If they'd been able to do that, then Leo could get out of Kalea in one piece. Just as he was thinking such things, the ground ahead of him exploded. Leo covered his head with his hands to protect it from the shower of falling debris, old rock raining down like shrapnel. The alien smell suddenly got stronger and almost caused him to gag. He tried to look ahead to make out the source of the trouble, but the fog made it hard to see even that far. A faint hissing sound was all there was to be heard, but was it a consequence of the explosion or something else? Leo's heart was pounding in his chest, and he sensed a strange feeling make way through his very core. He'd never felt like this. For a moment, Leo did something completely unexpected. He lost control. He created Res between his hands, ignited the outer section as with any respectable firebolt, and shot it out, in front of him, into the fog. It was swallowed without a sound. "Die, whatever you are!" With a guttural sound, Leo started over right away and shot another bolt of flame into the unknown. And then another. And then another. His breathing heavy and ragged, he caught himself just as he was about to form a fifth spell. 'What in all of the Ukalas am I doing? Shyke, am I losing my mind?' His arms dropped to his sides, and the world fell silent. Shooting precious Djed into a curtain of fog, without a precise goal. What was wrong with him? He was supposed to acquire information with due caution, and then act on it. His own reaction totally caught him by surprise, until he added two and two and drew the connection. 'The gnosis.' It had to be Ivak's marks. They were messing with Leo's clarity of thought. Under intense stress, they were drowning his judgment in distracting emotional upheaval. Suddenly the Valterrian made perfect sense. This was something to watch out for. This could become a big problem. Despite the mindless attack, nothing had stepped out of the fog. Leo drew a deep breath to calm down. His temper cooled down to more habitual levels, he advanced gingerly until he could see the site of the explosion in some detail. The hissing sound seemed to originate from the smoldering ruins. The ground had cracked in ways suggesting that it hadn't been a lightning bolt from above, but rather a discharge of energy from the soil itself. He closed in on the edge and squatted down to examine the smoking rock. He could see no sign of living beings behind this. Yet it didn't seem volcanic either, or he would have felt it well in advance. Then a fine gleam between two rocks caught his eye, and he noticed something fluid seeping into the ground. It trickled as if moved by its own will, taking on iridescent hues reminding him of the fog. As a wizard, the word he was groping for came to him within seconds. Two words, actually, neither of which overly reassuring. Wild Djed. How it'd gotten into the soil was anyone's guess, but Leo supposed it may have come from rainwater or through underground springs contaminated by a magma flow. That didn't matter much. What mattered was that he had been walking on a carpet of this wild substance, completely unpredictable. High concentrations of the stuff could apparently turn explosive. The vibrations of his approaching footsteps must have triggered the burst. Tread softly, for you tread on death.

[Leo Varniak]

There was no way around this, unless one could fly. Last Leo had checked, he couldn't do that just yet. Taln had been the one blessed with wings, and he'd had to die in the process. Not that Leo envied the Velispar hybrid in any way; he felt just fine in his human skin. It did little to remove the inconvenience of having to make his way through a narrow pass stuffed with Wild Djed. 'Let's see if I can't trigger it from a safe distance,' Leo's more rational side came to the rescue. He picked up a jagged rock and tossed it ahead, right on top of a patch of iridescent Djed. It reminded him of the rainbow-shiny fluids he'd sometimes seen splashed outside a tanner's workshop, except this substance was no more liquid than it was solid and gas, and the color patterns changed all the time even as the eye kept watching. The rock did absolutely nothing. It didn't cause any major explosion or set off a chain reaction bringing the Djed into nothingness. Yet merely approaching it had caused an outburst. 'Talk about double standards,' Leo reflected, the situation giving him pause as the sun rose higher in the sky, barely peering through the thick fog. The way things were looking, he was going to have to tap into some greater power. The realization brought him no great joy - every time he'd used Ivak's powers in the past, someone had died, and this time he was the only human around to suffer the consequences. Leo quickly considered the alternatives, found none that included his survival, and set himself to the task. Dropping to one knee, he pressed his palms against the cold rock of Kalea's crust. It was not Semele he sought, however, but something deeper, something scorching and relentless, flowing underneath Mizahar like boiling veins of blood. Elsewhere, he might have had trouble finding the underground vessels of magma - certainly not in Kalea, not now with the major volcanic explosions that had taken place in the last few days and were in part still going on. He became acutely aware of the magma's pressure against the rock, and felt it propagate upwards until his feet registered it too. A nice underground river, bubbling with infernal heat. Suddenly he was one with the hot depths of the planet. He was the smoking magma, he was the thick flow of molten rock through forbidding caverns. He had the key to unleash that tremendous energy, if only he would decree that it be so. "Release," Leo whispered. He pictured the magma raging as in a flood, the river breaking the flimsy levees placed in a vain effort to contain it. The ground started shaking as Leo tried his best to control the event. It was no use; he had the power to rouse, but not the power to abate. The entire valley trembled, as if groaning in pain. Cracks opened all over, releasing sulphur vapors into the atmosphere. A jet of magma shot out of a fissure, instantly turning into hot lava. A viscous drop of lava landed on Leo's shoulder, eating through his clothing but not harming his skin in the least. As an effect of the sudden rise in temperature, the fog seemed to dissolve all around Leo. As the Wild Djed also interacted with the lava, it evaporated like snow in the sun, swirling in unnatural, mathematical patterns. The shaking began to subside; thankfully, the ground here still ached with the initial release caused by Ivak's liberation and the reaction had been weaker than it'd have been otherwise. Leo took a tentative step on the still steaming ground, then took his boots off to keep them from burning to a crisp. He'd need them later, and his feet had no qualm about a splash in an inch or two of lava here and there. Just as he was congratulating himself on surviving this, he heard a low, rumbling noise that did little to reassure him. He lifted his eyes to the surrounding peaks and blinked. It took his mind a few moments to process what he was seeing. 'Wasn't the snow supposed to be further up?' Then the avalanche was upon him.

[Leo Varniak]

White. So white, so much of it. It was rampaging down the mountain side like a tidal wave, like Morwen's frozen revenge for the inferno he had stirred. It was all Leo could do to stare in awe for a moment as the true proportions of the snow slide. Disturbed by the shaking and the temperature increases caused by various eruptions in the aftermath of the storm, the snow was doing what it did best: fall. The front was perhaps one mile long, and running would be pointless. As mentioned before, Leo couldn't fly. He would have to take this and survive, or he might become the shortest-lived champion who ever was. His previous training on the snow returned to the forefront of his mind. It had been Syliran snow and not Kalean, but proportions aside, the principles didn't really change. Normally, fear would have made it nearly impossible to concentrate in time for magic casting. He found, however, that fear was gone from his spirit. It had no longer a place within him and ironically, he had the goddess Ssena to thank for it. The sick-looking strawman mark he carried halfway between his neck and shoulder, the symbol of her triumph, could also be the instrument of his salvation. With his mind in perfect lucidity, Leo extended his arms in front of him and made Res in the form of thick vapors. He had the tendrils of silvery smoke surround him completely, shaping them into a rough sphere of sorts. Then he drew from the two elements he knew, fire and air. He turned the middle layer of vapor into fire and air, making sure they did not mix to create a paraelement but instead interacted with each other to form a cushion of very thick, hot air all around himself. The outer layer he turned into fire and fire alone, resulting into a sphere of flames that all but swallowed him. Finally, he called upon his new gnosis to amplify the outer fire, spreading it outwards just as the avalanche swept against him. Anyone watching the scene would see a pitched battle of snow and fire, one advancing and one retreating. Water melted and boiled, flames were quenched. Acrid smoke rose from the impact of the two opposing force, and for a moment it looked like they remained in stasis. But it was mere illusion - a newly made champion, and only a mid-level Reimancer, couldn't have stopped the slide. The snow was over him a few seconds later, sweeping him away under a cold blanket of freezing death. He did not know how long he was unconscious from the impact, but slowly he came to. He couldn't see a thing. He tried to move his legs and couldn't. He was trapped under the snow. Again, his mark of Krivas came to the rescue and granted him the ability to think clearly under such extreme stress. He had air down here - his cushion had made sure of that, maintaining a gap between his body and the crashing snow mass. Enough to survive for a while, at least. He had stopped feeling cold, though, and the new sensation of dull warmth was far more worrisome. He was losing heat fast. 'That'll teach me. No part of the world exists in splendid isolation from the rest. I should have seen this coming. Actions bear consequences. Big actions, big consequences.' He channeled what Djed remained to him into his hands, warming them up and generating enough heat to melt the surrounding snow as he clawed his way out of this death trap. It was no longer a matter of magical ability; it was a matter of will to live. He never knew how deep was the ceiling he had to dig through, but it certainly felt endless to him at the time. The cramped space made his movements less efficient, tiring him down even further. When he emerged, spraying cold snow all around, it was the middle of a gelid spring night in Kalea. His breath, short and ragged, came out in tiny clouds of steam. His food was lost. He evaluated his situation coldly, as if he'd heard it from someone else. 'At this rate, I'll be dead in two days.'

[Leo Varniak]

He found shelter where he could, a cave so small it would have been more appropriate to call it a niche on the mountain side, after straining his other gnosis mark, the one that let him notice the potential in things, on the rugged wall above. When he failed to see the potential for another avalanche, he convinced himself it was reasonably safe to enter. Or maybe he just wasn't using the mark right or a single one wasn't enough to catch something so subtle and quickly changing. Right now he was running out of options and he had no choice but to take risks. It had been a foolish notion to think he could navigate Kalea post-storm without being a master of wilderness survival. You might wield great power in your sphere, but Leo had come to learn that power was situational. All the fire in the world would not fill his stomach here - and what was even worse, he could not recall seeing much in the way of edible wildlife. The storm must have killed a lot of it, perhaps disrupted migratory patterns, and driven plenty of animals into hiding. Leo wasn't a hunter either. He could not feed off tree bark, which was pretty much the only organic substance he'd come across. As he managed a few bells of rest with his back against the mother rock of Kalea, he found a little Djed returning to him, enough to get his warmth back and his clothes dry again. As the sun dawned, chasing away the coldest bells of the night, he could take pride in mere survival. At least water wasn't a problem here, once he melted it from the fallen snow. His stomach rumbled with need, however, and without food eventually there would be no more Djed and a little later no more Leo. Making his way out of the shelter, he resumed his journey, leaving behind the valley that had almost become his tomb. He kept his eyes open for potential prey, but the entire morning shifted into afternoon and still he saw nothing at all. The world here looked like it had been emptied of all life. He spotted the carcass of something like a mountain goat, but it had begun to rot. That alone might not have dissuaded a truly starving man, but the corpse showed signs of mutation and thermal scars indicating it had fallen to the storm, probably taking in Wild Djed. Only a complete madman would consider eating such a monstrosity. Then, in the afternoon, he almost didn't believe his eyes when he spotted a small furry shape hopping between a group of rocks and some grass that was barely alive. Fearing hallucinations, he rubbed his eyes but the vision of a white rabbit remained. Food. A source of food. It didn't look very fat, truth be told, and judging by the yellowish grass it had been feeding off that was no surprise. Fat was a luxury few could afford in Kalea, but it made little difference to Leo, who couldn't eat snow either. He pondered how to capture it without real hunting skills. The little beast had noticed him well before he did it, and was watching him fully alert but perhaps slightly curious. If he approached in any way, it was sure to simply hop away from trouble, into some hole where the hungry human could not have followed. What the man had that the rabbit didn't was magic, and the intelligence to use it. He quickly enumerated his options and went for a subtle approach. First, he made no further motion towards the beast; instead, he sat down on the ground and pretended not to care one bit about the prey. Quietly, he emitted coils of serpentine Res from his fingers and let them wind off in complete silence. They sneaked between gravel, slithered calmly among blades of dying grass, almost transparent to the eye. It was taxing on him, especially because of the distance which made the final part of the plan much harder as he prayed for the beast to stay put and just keep eating the grass. In the end, however, he managed to have the rabbit completely surrounded by a closed path of Res. Then, all he had to do was ignite the circle and run over to the terrorized beast, which had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide; the fire was higher than it could possibly jump. He had to rush, lest the fire burn the prey and ruin all his hard work. He was upon the creature in an instant despite the tiredness creeping up on him. Ignoring the fire altogether, he grabbed it. It tried to bite with everything it had, but Leo would not be denied. He broke its neck with a violent snap, and all of a sudden it had stopped kicking, resting limp in his arms. It was a scrawny one, really. But it made all the difference here. The fire that night was one of the most welcome places he could remember in a long time.

[Leo Varniak]

The days were cold, and the nights colder still. Had Leo Zaital been anything other than fire itself, he'd have perished countless times from sheer hypothermic shock. Even so, the cold got into his bones sometimes, challenging his very essence and threatening to nullify him at the core. On the upside, as he left Wind Reach further and further behind and as more time passed from the peak of the storm, he spotted more and more wildlife on his travels. Life, or what was left of it, resumed. It couldn't pretend nothing had happened, but it continued nevertheless. In turn, that meant more food for Leo. He practiced his Res traps daily, getting a little better at springing them every time. He wasn't getting fat by any means; indeed, he was losing weight and knew full well he would not be able to sustain the journey indefinitely. He had simply slowed down his fall into Dira's realm. He'd never traveled so far, for so long, under such conditions. And what was most maddening, was the touch of the unknown. Take away from a man the simple information of how many days of travel are ahead of him, and you shake his confidence at the very root. Leo was now fearless, but the rational anxiety over his future, the constant worry, the helplessness wore on his mind constantly. They made the hunger worse, the exhaustion fuller, and seemed to dull his senses. He realized with a certain shock that he could no longer remember the date. One day had simply faded into the next until he'd lost count. To him, this was a descent into chaos. He was becoming a barbarian in this land. Without directions, without maps, with only the sun as a very limited point of reference, Leo marched on. It was all he could do to avoid the most perilous valleys and skirt the tallest mountains. After another five days or so, it became obvious to him that he couldn't possibly get to Sultros in this state. The mountain range under which the Isur made their home was even higher than that he had just left behind. There was no way he could ascend there without rock climbing equipment and substantial training, or something with wings. Once again, he regretted leaving so suddenly. If he'd helped the Inarta through the aftermath of the Storm, he might have found safe passage on the back of a Wind Eagle. 'Or they would have put you to trial for letting Ivak loose upon the world and half-destroying their city in the process,' another voice objected inside him. He'd never know if he had made the right choice or not. It was probably useless to waste energies on it. He couldn't change the past. Thinner and gaunter by the day, Leo estimated he'd covered a few hundreds of miles in uneven stints when he came across something new. It was late morning, and he was still on the lookout for his soon-to-be lunch, but so far he had no luck capturing anything and the prospect of a march on an empty stomach was getting more and more likely by the moment. His eyes, now trained by sheer survival instinct to take in a scene and relay anything important to his mind, registered something glittering in the distance. No animal he knew could shine like metal. He approached cautiously, but the weather was good, and visibility made him confident. It was a dead man. The sun reflecting off the tip of a spear had caused the glitter. A warrior, Leo considered, probably one of those barbarians he worried he'd become. Short, thin, underfed, still looking fierce and brutal despite the onset of death. He'd been here for at least two days in Leo's estimation. He also had grievous bite marks all over the body, yet hadn't been devoured. Wolves could have done that, but hadn't fed off the body. Very odd. The sheer thought of looting the corpse disgusted Leo, and he left the incident behind, hoping it wouldn't amount to anything in the remainder of his own journey.

[Leo Varniak]

It wasn't meant to be. That day, for the first time since leaving Wind Reach, Leo felt watched, observed. So far he'd only met desolation and emptiness on his path, but as life returned little by little, vastly changed, he would need to keep in mind that for every prey there was a predator. You couldn't have one without the other and a human's role in Kalea's Unforgiving occupied a delicate balance between the two. He was long lost by now, headed in the general direction of the rising sun, but with too many detours to count. Lacking most forms of climbing equipment and the skill to use it, he was forced into deep valleys and gullies that made perfect ambush spots. At least it had stopped raining in strange colors. Kalea's lunar landscapes rolled slowly as he went on, more tired by the day. Already he could not remember the last time he'd slept in a real bed, with a roof over his head. That night he even failed to secure an opening in the rock, let alone a cave. He made his makeshift camp in the open, ate his meager dinner in front of a fire he'd built with his power, and watched the stars above. He was, literally, in the middle of nothing, with no indication of where he might be, or how far away from civilization. Still, the stars shone equally for everyone and the thought somehow comforted him in his absolute solitude. He resumed his journey the next day, and the feeling of being watched was still there, nagging at him like a tingling at the base of the neck. He wondered if he wasn't picking up feral emotions through his sensitive gnosis. It seemed a little stronger than it had been at first - closer, more focused. Even so, his normal senses were at a loss here. He saw nothing unusual in the rough scenery around him, and the only difference was a slight, but gradual increase in daily temperatures that hinted at his traveling South. And that night, he heard the howling. Far away, where the mountainside merged with thick evergreen woods, carried by the breeze. Leo was no stranger to wolves, but this particular cry somehow felt different. There was a maddening tone to it that reminded him of Allistir Varniak while he screamed at his mother just before he'd strangled her. It unsettled him, but he could not place a finger on the reason why. It continued throughout the entire night, and Leo did not get any sleep. Not even a chime. The howling only subsided at daybreak, leaving him tired and paranoid. He cursed silently as he moved out of his campsite, exhausted before the day's march had even begun. The very clouds seemed to mock Leo as he stirred, sore and miserable. The entire day inched along much on the same note, and Leo did not make as much progress as he had hoped. He found himself in need of frequent breaks, his concentration hampered. Again, he failed to see anything unusual around him. He was marching down a seemingly endless valley between two massive snow-capped peaks. The ground was harsh and rugged, but passable. The nature around him felt hostile, but not any more so than it had been so far. Only, he knew he was being hunted now. He couldn't be positive it was the same thing that had killed the barbarian from the previous day, but it certainly seemed that way. And again, the howling kept him awake that night, too. It sounded closer now. Leo huddled by the fire, looking out in the distance, but his eyes were no match for the darkness. Whatever haunted these lands, it wanted him specifically. It was waiting for him to grow weary and eventually succumb to sleep - Leo knew this on a purely intuitive level. The barbarian hadn't looked like he had put much of a fight, either. A man could only last so long in the wilderness without getting any sleep. The Azenth was already close enough to a breakdown from all the other abuse he had taken; the constant menace would only wear him out faster. The howls did not subside until sunrise, but Leo knew better than to sleep then. Whatever creatures were stalking him, he doubted sunlight could banish them. Drained of all energy, Leo moved out. His limbs felt sluggish and unresponsive. He'd never felt so alone and abandoned as he did right now; it was as if he found himself at the epicenter of all disgrace in the world, the only actor performing a monologue with a very bitter ending. How much longer could he last without Nysel's embrace? How many nights? If only he had someone to take turns with... if only he had some form of protection from this invisible enemy. He stopped on his tracks. Maybe there was something he could do after all. That day, Leo set aside a few bells to prepare for the incoming night. Ideally, he would have preferred nice, thick berries for this, but the season did not allow for such luxuries. He went for blood instead. He captured two rabbits instead of one with the usual tricks, and one of them was used specifically for the blood. He had gotten a hold of a small, elongated piece of kindling which he had sharpened with Ivak's sacred blade, Ivlir, until it resembled a quill or pen. He produced one of his old books from his backpack and ripped off a few pages that had blank spaces on them. Finally, he sliced the rabbit open after binding it, the cut deep but not instantly deadly, and dipped the makeshift pen to soak it in blood. It was certainly a cruel thing, but a man fighting for his immediate survival will do cruel things on occasion. He drew simple, pragmatic glyphs in blood. Little more than a circle with a proximity-based trigger. The only remotely fancy thing about it was the way Leo excluded himself from triggering the glyph. There were several ways of doing so, but the one he was most familiar with consisted of drawing a certain symbol near the trigger; it resembled a hand, only reversed. The hand representing the crafter, its being reversed hinting at the negation of a command. He'd done this before, just not with such improvised materials and in such a state of mind, which made everything far harder than it needed to be. Thankfully, Glyphing came with a certain level of tolerance as to the proportions and exactness of its components. Leo had enough experience drawing glyphs to know what he could and couldn't get away with. Usually you wanted to craft them in a safe, comfortable place, but you could make them while squatting in the middle of the Unforgiving if you had to. Once he had six glyphs in place that looked like they might even work as expected, he proceeded to charge them with Reimancy. It was a careful process, forming Res on the palm of his hand, shaping it into a globe, igniting the outer part and gently pushing it into the glyphed circle. As he gave the final push to the spell, he set fire to the inner section as well. The fireball disappeared into the paper with a satisfying hissing sound. He repeated the process five more times. Once, he failed. The glyph had not been properly executed, and the page simply caught fire instead of absorbing the spell. Leo grimaced, but estimated that five would suffice. They would have to do.