The Third Step: Chapter Twenty-Eight

As the Asomatous lay beneath me, screaming and begging for its life, my eyes began to glow, strings of constellations woven in rainbow light, without the burning golden stars, burning brightly, and the entire world around me began to slow. 

The imprint that I’d gained from Fortune, without even knowing that I’d formed it, was a strange one. It was far less active than the imprint of resolve, which granted me access to roots of resolve early, and that actively empowered several of my spells. Most of the time, it didn’t seem to do anything at all. That said, there were a few instances where it had done something.

The first and most blatant had been in the ascent of the Crysite central mountain range. Once people who I cared about were put in danger from the desolant attack, I’d felt it, despite the fact that my mana senses were struggling to even work that high up, and couldn’t have extended across thousands of miles of countryside. 

But there had been other, smaller instances of the imprint activating before, albeit in a much smaller way. When I’d met with Edgar and Meadow to discuss Edgar’s own fortune imprint, I’d had an instant where I could see the cords of connection, thick bindings that connected me to people like Meadow, Orykson, Ikki, Elio, Edgar, and more people besides. 

I didn’t know why or how that particular application activated here and now. Perhaps my experience with death had loosened the barriers that prevented me from normally being able to visualize such connections, perhaps it was the weight of two mages clashing in a battle of convictions, and perhaps most likely of all, it was sheer, dumb luck. But as the Asomatous screeched, I could see the strings of rainbow light flowing from the Flock to others, just like the light that bound the constellations together. 

In it, I saw a mirror of myself. 

Both the Flock and I were warriors of fortune. We had both had our lucky encounters that had helped us rise to power that most people shouldn’t have been able to manage. The Flock’s path had cut short at the peak of fifth gate, but even there, the Flock had found natural treasures that helped it reach for the peak of what a fifth gate could be.

But it went deeper than just fortune. There was a reason the Flock had been formed. Across the hundreds of years that Obsidian Forest had existed, an uncountable number of humans had broken the cordon to plunder resources from the natural world. 

Even I was here for that reason. I had a good reason for it, but I was entering an ungoverned zone that was set aside to preserve the natural world and give creatures like the Flock, Kysgott, and other sleeping dragons a place to be. 

If I killed the Flock here and now, it wouldn’t change things, not really. The lack of a major anti-human predator would encourage an increase in delving, and that would result in more and more animals crying out as they were hunted for resources. That, in turn, would cause hate and resentment and anger to build up and begin birthing more spirits, until eventually one or more of them climbed the ladder and began killing humans again. 

Killing the Flock would only reset a cycle that had been ongoing for a long time, a cycle that had been reset in the past, and would doubtless be reset again. I didn’t need to reset the cycle. I needed to break it. 

Maybe the Flock did deserve death. It had chosen to kill, I’d seen as much myself. It might not have chosen to hate, but it did choose to kill with such abandon. 

Butt also had the capacity to change. To grow. 

If it had the ability to change, and I killed it, then I was the one deciding that it didn’t deserve life. That it didn’t deserve a second chance.

If someone was capable of changing for the better, I had the responsibility to help them try.

Nobody deserved to escape their due for the actions they’d taken, but everyone deserved a second chance. 

Maybe that was ignorant and simple, but I believed it sincerely.

In the slowed time, I felt my lip twitch into a small smile. Elio had been the first one to say as much to me. He’d called my viewpoint “A childish, naive way of looking at things. One that will get you killed. But it is better to die a happy fool than rot as a bitter old man.”

Maybe one day this worldview would get me killed, but at the very least, I could stick by those principles. Here and now, I had the chance to break the cycle by forcing the Flock to shift its strategy. It could be born of hate, guided by its hatred of humans, and unable to forgive humanity, but still restrain itself to driving people out of the cordon. It could fight them, as many of the animals in this area did. After all, the bird that had attacked me had done so on its own first, and summoned the Flock to join and assist it. 

In an ideal world, I’d be able to get the cordon to be tightened, to make it nearly impassable for humans to enter, but I couldn’t control the Obsidian Forest’s government, nor did I know what the ripple effects of such an action would be. I didn’t live in an ideal world, though. But with the world I did live in, I could limit bloodshed. I could try and prevent more people from dying, rather than just resetting the cycle. 

And as I traced the lines of fortune connecting the Flock to the world, I could see the thin line connecting it to me. Through that line, I could feel the Flock, and it could feel me. I tugged on it, opening the channel between us, and I felt the backwash of vitriol deep enough to nearly stagger me. I was a human, and the spirit was made of hate. Hate seeped through every action, even its positive and good ones, like its love of birds. That was an alien concept to me, but it was true for the Flock. 

The Flock hated me. Hated me more than any other person that had dared to enter its lands, because more than its base hate of humanity, the Flock had a hate born of fear. 

Others had killed the Flock’s birds before. They’d tracked it, attacked it, and it had even been forced to manifest in order to catch people. Some of those people had managed to hurt it a bit. But I’d brought it to the point where the Flock knew it might actually die. 

More than that, I’d scared the Flock with my growth. 

When it had first manifested, I’d barely been able to flee it, and had been saved by the emergence of the cwn anwnn. 

When joining the cwn anwnn, I’d only been able to scratch it and take out its birds. Though I knew the reason for that was buying Dawn time to charge her breath and playing the role of a support mage via Tortoise Time, to the Flock’s eyes, I hadn’t been a threat. 

When I tracked it back to its nest, I’d lashed out with an attack at the Flock’s own level, and cut it in half. Somehow, in less than the span of a day, I’d grown able to cause pain and real damage that would take days to restore itself from. But I’d still been limited to the blademoss. 

When the fight itself was going on, I’d somehow reached out to a ghost and practically ate the spirit to increase my own power, at least as the Flock saw it. Within the span of seconds, a minute at most, I’d gone from heaving a single attack that could hit it to being able to hit it with the entirety of my magical repertoire. 

When the Flock had used its emergency measures, it had done so with hate born of fear, unleashing three Arcanist level bombs at me, in order to ensure it could blast through my armor and kill me. It had very few Arcanist level artifacts, given that most people who it killed were spellbinders, but it had spent them just to kill me. 

When the Flock had finally killed me, leaving me as nothing but a charred corpse stabbed on a log, it had thought it had won. The hardest fight that it had participated in, but it had emerged victorious. It had felt my soul leave my body and exit its perception. 

Then I clawed my way back from death. 

I knew why each of those things had happened, but the Flock didn’t. In its eyes, I was existentially threatening and horrifying. The Flock was terrified of this… creature… that had no respect for the tyranny of gates, grew at an absurd pace, and could return from death itself.

It would never forgive me for the pain and humiliation I’d dealt it today. That was probably a good thing, since any of its mental space that was directed to me was space that was not going to others. 

It was well possible to hate and obey something. I’d seen that growing up, working with customers in the bakery. There were some horrible, disgusting people out there. When I was a teenager, more than one greasy old man had made comments on my body, and I’d had to serve them with a smile, because it wasn’t worth the scene of trying to throw them out. 

“You will not go out of your way to kill humans who enter your territory any longer,” I said, my voice resonating oddly as I spoke, the cord connecting the Flock and myself growing deeper. “Attack those who violate the sanctity of the cordon, drive them off, behave in the same manner as the birds that you hate how much you adore them. Act in accordance with the wild birds, and keep the balance.” 

The truth was, I didn’t need the Flock to believe in my ideology. With how much it hated humans, it likely wouldn’t buy into my views. I hoped that it might, with time, soften, and learn to turn its hate to something else. But I didn’t expect it to. 

No, I just needed it to fear me more than it loved to kill. 

“Or else what?” the Flock said, and it was as if thirty thousand voices spoke in harmony. 

“Or else I come back,” I said. “And I take you out of this forest with you until you learn better, even if it takes decades. I’d prefer to avoid that, as it will just start the rising of a new asomatous, but I will do it.” 

I didn’t know how, not exactly. But I knew that if it didn’t change, and keep changing, I’d figure out a way. 

I was sure Orykson could design a spirit trap, and even if it was out of my price range, what was a little more debt? And even if he refused on the basis of my unpaid debts, I knew others. Elio might be able to design some sort of spirit-sealing gem that I could purchase on loan from him. Kene’s grandmother was capable of making seventh gate artifacts, and was an abnegation mage. Azalea’s husband might be able to design a containment method, as an enchanter capable of making Arcanist level items. Kater was an Arcanist level spirit that would doubtless have a method to do it, or else her wife Olive might be able to construct a warded cell to contain it. 

I looked at the Flock, reaching deep within, and felt a cord of resonance rush along the string binding us. In that moment, the Flock saw my own connections, and my own conviction, and it knew that I was deadly serious. The spark of fury born fear glowed brighter within it. 

“Fine.” 

At those words, the cord between us solidified, and I felt my fortune imprint accept it. It wasn’t a contract or binding in the way I understood it. It was something deeper, the acknowledgement of ripples after a stone had been thrown on the lake, and the knowledge that throwing a stone would result in disturbing the pond. The imprint did not force action on either of us, and yet it imposed deeper ones at the same time. If the Flock chose to break its word, it would reap the harvest it had sown, as surely as the sun would rise in the morning. 

The rainbow world of slowed time returned to normal, and I swept my hand to the side, the dragon’s breath missing the spirit and scouring a line in the earth, before spluttering out, quiet falling over the clearing.