[Ashborn-B1] 47. Taste of Death (Patreon)

XLVII

Taste of Death

“Just hold on a little longer!” I called over the wind without any real gusto in my voice. The girl was hanging limp between Ashwing’s talons. It was no way to carry a charge, but it was safer than me trying to hold onto her while we were flying.

Too bad I didn’t follow the other monks. If I had, I could’ve simply dropped her on their doorstep.

Faint flickers of flame on a hill within the darkness caught in Ashwing’s pupils. She steered us down.

Rin woke from her meditation, attention honing on the unconscious, third party.

“Long story,” I said. Jumping from Ashwing’s back, I showed her three tokens. “They had two more from other groups they hunted.”

“Lucky,” she said. “Less work for us.” She glanced up at the end of her statement and coughed. “How do you feel?”

I paused. My shoulders depressed with an imaginary weight.

“Aware,” I said.

Rin raised her brow. “Right…does that mean you came to a decision?”

“Thought on it on the way back.”

Ashwing gently put the girl down near the campfire.

“And?” Rin asked.

“We’ll need a set of rules. First, we’re not hunting any of the Orthodox clans.”

Rin deadpanned. “Do I look like a demon to you? Did you think I’d hunt down children too?”

My mouth opened and closed. “Maybe?”

She shook her head and sighed. “Any other rules? None of the Unorthodox sect are considered ‘good people’, so finding targets won’t be an issue.”

“We give every group a chance to hand over their token first,” I added.

She frowned. “That means no sneak attacks…”

“I know,” I said.

She tilted her head and tapped her feet. “Fine…I doubt there’s anyone but some elites and the omens that can take you in a straight up fight anyway.”

I glanced at my status.

Level: 17

Class: Ashenkeeper - Sacred

Stage: Late Novice

Titles: [Flame Rebirth, Dragon’s Dogma I, Dragon’s Dogma II, Herald of the Western Mountain]

Soul Aspect: [Sacred Ashen Garden]

Skills: [Keeper’s Prerogative (Common), Keeper’s Bond (Common), Keeper’s Mind (Common)]

Vitality: 13 (16)

Strength: 12 (30)

Dexterity: 14 (17)

Fortitude: 18 (21)

Perception: 13 (16)

Arcane: 28 (31)

Free Points: 0

Sacred Ashen Garden

Cinderwing Tree: Peak

Ashenblood Tree: Late

Balekin Tree: Middle

Given my current repertoire, I couldn’t help but agree with her. The Black Fang trio had been around level twenty, yet I’d dismantled them. I doubted even Senna would give me trouble at the moment.

Rin wanted to speak but a yawn stole her words.

“I’ll take first watch,” I said.

“You sure? You were out fighting while I was just sitting here.”

“I’m sure.” I settled into the lotus. When a long moment passed without hearing the girl retreat to her bedside, I looked up.

Her ocean-eyes studied the air, pupils following a near invisible haze around me. She crouched and put a hand on my shoulder. “I can stay up with you if you want?”

Putting my hand on hers, I gently plied away her fingers. “I’ll wake you in three hours.”

She nodded and went to bed.

Without wasting any more time, I entered the garden. My summons—except Ashwing, who was standing guard outside—perked up as I entered the flaming garden. I only gave them a cursory greeting before focusing on the cindertree.

Normally, the cindertree buried the corpses of the entities it absorbed near the tree closest to their nature. Not this time. Instead, the interrupted the otherwise flatland around the sacred tree. Energy seeped into the great system of roots up its bark, and climbed one of the trunks towards a single branch.

A bud sprouted from the limb of the cindertree. It was nothing but a bump. But it was growing at a visible speed, albeit at a snail’s pace.

Thousands of questions raised all at once, but I shoved them aside.

‘Three bodies…’

Aedan said I only needed one. But I didn’t feel anything. ‘Not yet at least.’ My head swivelled to regard the space inside my soul. My ears twitched. Wailing all around was a low but sharp sound. One like a dagger aimed at the abdomen.

‘Not yet,’ I thought. But soon.

Exiting the garden, I found Ashwing’s beak at eye-level. She pecked my cheek.

I smiled. “I’ll be fine.”

She blinked. A gleam entered her pupils, which said: “you’re not fooling anyone.”

I huffed and rubbed her feathers. “I suppose not.”

But there was nothing to do about it. It was a waiting game, now. And wait I did.

Snapping firesticks interrupted the quiet spell hanging in the tomb. The cold tried to wash over me and swallow me like it did any other insignificant being, but the breeze broke on Ashwing’s back. Still, though denied one avenue, the cold was ever-present, and found its way in through my breath.

Essence cycled through my veins to expunge the frost. ‘Sticky.’ That’s how the cold felt. Like spilled honey underneath a boot. Like how the Death would stick to you once it found you in this place, how it would keep you animated and trapped for who knew how long.

Like my garden would.

My heart slammed harder in my chest as heat coursed through it.

Then finally came the moment.

Water built up inside my mouth like I was chewing, and I swallowed.

When I’d first unlocked my summons and felt our ‘connection’, I’d thought of it like an invisible wire. A way for me to sense them and give them instructions. But then they started communicating with me, revealing that the wire was more of a path. A two-way lane both parties could use. That’s what happened when fighting Erri. Saber’s fury, his emotions, raced down the road into my heart, cranking up my own fury skill. And when I concentrated on Skul’s cool flames during the fight with Senna, it was his appetite for souls that roved through our bond and gave us both more power.

And so as the water in my mouth went down my throat, I knew it was the bodies the cindertree fed on that I was tasting.

Breathing paused. Ashwing turned towards me, the campfire’s light reflecting off her feathers.

Head tilting, I swallowed again. My shard thrummed. With each oscillation, the taste deepened. So did the frown building on my forehead. I half-rose and leaned on one leg.

‘This is…’

The shard flared like a sun finally poking through the clouds. Before my mouth even had time to process the flood of taste, I was dashing to the edge of the hill.

Wheezing and hacking coughs dragged Rin from the shallow waters of sleep she was floating in.

Blinking, she let her eyes adjust to the darkness. A shape was on all fours some ways away from the campfire. They heaved, and a wet sound slapped against the earth.

Rin turned to the other side of the fire, where the monk girl was still lying unconscious.

“Ashe,” Rin said. “You alright?”

“I’m…fine…” another heave cut off her sentence.

Grogginess was pushed to the side as Rin pushed herself out of her sleeping bag.

Ashe’s bird summon—Ashwing, Rin thought the name was—watched her step towards its master.

The stare sent a shiver down Rin’s spine.

‘Do they not have any limit?’

She’d never heard of a summoner that could evolve their summons. But then there was a first time for everything.

Rin stopped next to the near collapsed Ashe. Half of the girl’s body was outside the firelight, leaving the dark to cloak her. But there was just enough light to see the many puddles of…

“Are you sick?” Rin asked, tone rising.

Her teammate wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve and rose. “No…it’s just…the taste.”

“Taste?”

Ashe spit on the ground. “The spirits. They taste…bad.”

Nails dug through the wavecaller’s hair. ‘The tomb finally get to her?’ The place was creepy, but she couldn’t imagine what spirits Ashe was speaking—Oh. Those spirits. ‘Didn’t know they had a…taste.’ Not that it was hard to imagine. She was basically eating them, right?

Rin’s chin turned over her shoulder towards her sleeping bag. Specifically, the satchel beside her sleeping bag. If it the problem was taste…

She trod back, retrieved a bottle containing red liquid, then returned while wiggling the drink in her hands. “You want some? Recipe from back home.”

Ashe eyed the drink like she was offering her drugs.

“Nothing crazy,” Rin assured. “Diluted extract from a mix of berries.”

‘And alcohol.’

But the drink was too strong to draw more than three tugs from at once, so the alcohol wouldn’t ever kick in.

Slender, hesitant fingers clasped around the bottle. Ashe sniffed once, stared the wavecaller down, then gingerly took a sip. Not careful enough to prevent a drop rolling down the side her mouth and down her neckline.

Rin’s gaze lingered there until it was drawn back up by a bulging throat. A few thick swallows glided down.

Rin pulled the bottle back when Ashe tried to take another swig. “Save some for me, will you?”

“Sorry.”

Rin shook her head. ”How’d she even…”

Ashe got to her feet. “Thanks.“ She trudged back to the fire. “You can go back to sleep if you want to.” There was about an hour left in her shift.

Rin regarded her sleeping bag. “I think that’ll make me more tired.”

She only required a few hours of sleep a night anyway.

Her bum touched the ground beside Ashe. The girl was staring into the fire as she licked her lips.

“Say,” Rin said on a whim. “Have you ever drunk alcohol before?”

“Does champagne count?”

Oh boy, was she glad she stopped her.

‘Can’t believe she chugged like that though if it was her first time.’

That taste must be quite a bad indeed. ‘Better keep an eye on her.‘Zukr would be quite the punch for the uninitiated.

I longingly glanced at the satchel hanging from Rin’s hip.

“Stop staring,” she said, eyes closed in meditation. “You’re not getting more.”

I turned away with a huff.

Two tastes did battle in my mouth. One called up images of vineyards and a gentle summer sun. The other drug me into the depths. It’d been hard for me to envision the dump Rin described in her remembrance of home. Not anymore. The taste of the Black Fang cultivators must’ve been akin to that of a rag used to scoop up part of the waste inside that dump, to which a handful of shit had been added for good measure.

‘Do I have to go through that every time I consume a human?’ My skin crawled just thinking about it.

I blinked away my tears and tried to exhale the savour.

The maze had no stars to light up the night sky, so the darkness was like a predator on the prowl. There was a buzzing on the wind as if a thousand bees had poured out of the underworld and were now roaming the land unseen. Clouds of white breath exited my lungs and fell to the floor but rose again and dissipated when they reached Saber.

I’d replaced the bigger Ashwing for the cat, which exuded more heat. He shielded me from the frigid gust, his body large enough to curve around me entirely while comfortably resting his head in my lap. In his latest stage, the line of fire sprouting from how crown had grown to run partly down his spine, and parts of his fur, especially near the legs and shoulders, were permanently on fire.

I honed my attention on him—anywhere that wasn’t my mouth would do.

All three of my summons were now bigger than me, though Skul was arguable since he was only a head. If their increase in size kept up at later stages, I’d soon be an ant in comparison.

And not only physically.

My hand went to my hip and grasped air. Mother had trained me my whole life, yet the need for me to fight myself was lessening.

Saber pressed his head into my belly.

“I know, buddy,” I whispered. “That’s not a bad thing.”

Joining the fray put me in more danger than it was worth—whatever summon I had stopped mattering once my throat got slit. Moreover, if I was fighting myself, that took attention away from overseeing the battlefield and directing them.

Perhaps one day I could do both at the same time but that day wasn’t today.

But it didn’t need to be.

Fires passed behind my eyes and morphed into the image of the woman on the mural. Her inhuman nature, the cindertree looming in the distance behind her.

I turned to my two new abilities.

Keeper’s Bond (Common): The keeper tightens the connection between herself and one of her summons, allowing her to internalise one of their aspects. Internalised aspects enhance both the summoned creature and the keeper.

Keeper’s Mind (Common): The garden lives in the soul of the Keeper, whose influence of it is not limited by touch. Allows the keeper to interact with garden constructs from a distance.

My fingers raked across Saber’s fur. I’d not yet experimented with Keeper’s Bond, but if it was anything like before, tightening my connecting was to make myself of one mind with my summon.

How exactly this was supposed to enhance me wasn’t clear, but my ancestor may be a foreshadowing. For both the bond and mind skill.

The latter mentioned interacting with garden constructs from a distance, which was why I could now dematerialise my summons with some focused thought. Portals were included in that definition. But what else was? Did everything inside my garden count as a construct? What about the trees themselves?

Maybe. As with many other things, I’d have to take my time and see.

‘I still have my summon abilities to work on too.’

All three had gained a new ability.

Truly, I had my work cut out for me—

A hand covered my mouth as a hiccup escaped my lungs.

“Your hour has already passed,” Rin said.

And though my eyes watered, I was loathe to head off.

“I think I’ll—”

My chest spasmed. Another hiccup.

I frowned.

Rin swallowed a chuckle. “It’s best if you go to sleep. You may not be able to sleep all of it off.”

“Sleep what off?”

“Just trust me.”

Lips pulled into a line, but I took her advice.

Feeling a bit of dizziness strike me, I rolled out my sleeping bag and Saber positioned himself again to shield me from the wind. The bowels of sleep dug their hooks into me moments after my head touched the softened interior.