Heretical Fishing

Book 3: Chapter 61: Cleanse

The forest sailed by below us, countless colors blurring into a single blanket of green. Over mountains and across valleys, Borks and I flew, never once changing direction. I destroyed more than a few trees in my passage. Each time I landed, I carved through swaths of them like a scythe through so many stalks of wheat. I didn’t spare them a second thought, the safety of my friends taking priority. At the speed I was traveling now, we’d get there in less than an hour.

“Not fast enough...” I muttered, wracking my mind for a solution. “Borks, can you teleport to the east without an exact destination in mind?”

A slight pulse of hesitation came from him, followed by a much-stronger wave of determination.

I skidded to a stop, obliterating another dozen trees. Borks leaped down, and the air shattered as a black portal unfurled. Scooping him into my arms, I shot through it. We emerged high above the forest, and because of my connection to Borks, I could feel where we’d teleported from, a whisper of his chi coming from that direction. It had worked. We’d appeared kilometers closer to Tropica.

“Did you make the destination high so we didn’t appear underground?” I asked Borks as we dropped to the ground.

He let out an affirmative ruff.

“Good boy. Bark at me whenever you can portal again.”

Bracing himself in my arms, he nodded. His reserves were depleted from how far we’d traveled, but even now, ambient chi refilled his core.

Taking turns leaping and portaling, we traveled faster than ever before. When I took us sailing over a hill, I spotted the source of the acidic-tasting chi.

A blackened circle of trees broke up the forest’s monotony, every leaf on them having decayed and fallen. Our trajectory continued, and I crashed down only a few hundred meters away from the clearing. I’d noticed the acidic feeling the entire time we traveled, but now, I could smell it too. Borks lifted his nose to test the air; he regretted it immediately. Shaking his head and letting out a series of snorts, he wobbled, seeming to lose all sense of balance.

“Woah!” I stilled him with a hand. “You okay?”

He made a hacking noise, his balance only getting worse. Having seen enough, I grabbed him and jumped, crashing through and obliterating the canopy of a tree on my way clear of the area. When I landed on a distant hill, I cradled him in my arms, gazing down at him. Thankfully, his breathing eased and he sat up, his legs firm beneath him.

“What was that?” I asked. “Are you good?”

He nodded, staring down at the spot from which I’d leaped. He let out a low growl, its meaning obvious. Poison.

Whether because of my relative strength or comparatively weak sense of smell, I wasn’t affected. “Are you okay if I leave you here, mate? I wouldn’t ask otherwise, but—”

A sense of reassurance washed over me. Borks understood the urgency.

Smiling, I rubbed his head. “You’re a good boy. Rest up, buddy. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Firming my jaw, I leaped for the circle of black marring the beautiful forest, and when I landed in the center, I covered my mouth, doing all I could to keep out the noxious smell. It hadn’t been bad from afar. From here, it was like breathing in battery acid. An odd hint of something herbal accompanied it, only making the scent more pungent.

I released chi from my core, surrounding myself with a firm layer of shielding.

The relief was immediate, and I almost released a slow breath out of reflex. There was a makeshift shack in the center of the clearing. I reached out to grab the door, only for it to crumble within my grasp. Leaping back despite my protection, the door fell to the ground, shattering into uncountable fragments. I strode over them on my way to the entrance, the pieces crunching beneath my feet. As I peered into the squat building, I cringed. Everything within had been made of wood and was rotting before my very eyes.

I sent my awareness out toward it, feeling the decay happening in real-time. There was a stone bowl on top of a warped bench, even its hardened body turning a sickly brown color.

Not a bowl, I realized. A cauldron.

Not at all caring for my moment of clarity, the table gave way dramatically, disintegrating to nothing as the cauldron fell through it and crashed to the floor. Before the roof could rain down on me like noxious confetti, I left the hovel, and the moment I was back outside, I firmed my jaw. Someone or something had awakened here. There was no doubt about it. If the toxic chi was any indication of their character, this person had to be found.

I shot thin strands of chi out, scouring every direction for any hint of a foreign core. I found Borks pretty quickly, and as he sensed my attention, I got the distinct impression that his tail was wagging ferociously. On and on my chi stretched. Yet no matter how far I went, there was neither hide nor hair of anything suspicious. If whatever being had ascended here was present, I’d have known. Which left two possibilities: they’d left, or they’d perished. Considering just how damaged the area was, I suspected the latter.

But it was better to be safe than sorry.

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Gathering my strength, I leaped straight upward. The resulting shockwave made what remained of the shack, and more than a few rotted trees, fall to pieces. While skybound, I scanned the forest, seeking any hint of contamination. There was... nothing. Beyond the toxic clearing, all was well. Most of my worry fell away as I returned to the forest floor, bending my legs and landing much quieter than I’d left it. I raced toward Borks, and when I got there, I was happy to find him well.

“Feeling better, mate?”

Bark! he replied, giving me a full-body wag.

“Good boy.” I fussed the top of his head. “Can you go tell everyone that it’s okay?”

He cocked his head at me, speaking a thousand words with that one expression.

I rubbed behind his ear. “I’m gonna go tell Barry and the gang about what I found here. As soon as I let them know, I’ll meet you all back at the lake. Shouldn’t be gone for more than an hour or....” I tapped my chin. “Actually, I might come back here to try cleanse it first, so I could take longer.”

Showing complete trust in me, he licked my hand a few times in less than a second, then turned and fled, slipping into his long-boi form as he tore a portal in space and leaped through it. A few kilometers away, high in the air, he turned to face me. His entire body wagged once more when he caught me staring.

“What did I do to deserve such a good boy?” I asked myself with a smile.

When Borks finally disappeared from sight, I turned and ran, sprinting further east. The sooner I told everyone of the potential danger, the sooner I could return to the lake and our day of fishing.

***

Hidden beneath the ground of what used to be his shack, Solomon’s everything was wracked by another wave of pain.

He curled into a ball and held his legs close, praying for the agony to vanish. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had succeeded in his ascension. He had made a potion that started the process of his awakening.

And now, he was dying.

Though he couldn’t tell how he knew, he was certain. It might take days or even weeks, but his destruction was assured if he didn’t do anything. Solomon would find a way out, though. He had to.

Each time his torment resumed, a part of him wished his life would end. But the episodes always passed, leaving him gasping for breath in his sealed-off compartment.

As soon as he’d regained consciousness and realized he’d ascended, he acted quickly. Solomon had dug a hole in the earth where he stood, only pausing when pain shot through him. He’d sealed the entry with wood and layers of earth. When the wood started to crumble, dissolving beneath the toxic chi of his creation, he used small punches to pack the earth tight.

As soon as he’d been enclosed and the walls were no longer threatening to cave in, he poked a tiny hole in his cavern, then started the small fire. He'd thrown the last of his herbs, those that were used by the Cult of the Alchemist to hide their manipulation of chi, in the flames. The leaves and stems had been mostly blackened, but when they caught fire, the smell that rose from them was familiar. Within moments, he’d been surrounded by a detection-dampening haze.

He was just getting over another wave of agony when the beast arrived.

He thought he imagined the vibration that ran through the surrounding soil, but then a great huffing sound came from nearby, making his blood run cold. Solomon froze, and in the silence that followed, a human voice breached his awareness. He couldn’t make out the words, but it was definitely a male. As quietly as Solomon could, he sealed the hole to the outside world and went very, very still. Over the next few minutes, there were another series of vibrations and sounds, all building within to create a monolithic wall of anxiety.

A cultivator and a spirit beast had detected his awakening. They had come to end his life.

Though he hadn’t heard the cultivator’s words when he’d spoken to the beast, he was sure: it was not the voice of Tom Osnan Jr. The revelation that there was more than one uncollared cultivator on the loose should have set his mind to boiling, but with the echoes of anguish lingering in his bones, he didn’t particularly care about the details.

Another wave of torment came, smothering him in misery. This was the longest yet, and when it finally ended, tears rolling down his face to pool on one cheek.

Clenching his jaw, Solomon focused on the outside world, trying to detect any hint of the cultivator. Blessedly, it appeared as though his ruse had worked; the cultivator hadn’t found his place of hiding. Even if Solomon wanted to leave, to flee now that the coast was clear, he wasn’t sure he could. When he’d first dug this hole, he thought it a temporary dwelling. A place he could hide until his body recuperated.

With every new wave of searing agony that arrived, he became less and less sure that he would live through this. Unless something changed, this place would be his tomb. He laughed bitterly, his cult’s concealing haze making his throat sting when he inhaled.

“Not a cult,” he croaked out, tears welling in his eyes. “A church.”

He had become the Alchemist of prophecy, using a potion to awaken. And here, alone and trapped underground, his church’s celebrated deity would perish. He would have laughed then, but the next wave of suffering came. Before his consciousness faded, he hoped—prayed—for his end.

What could have been hours or days later, Solomon opened his eyes when a shuddering vibration shook his burial chamber.

“Welp,” came a muffled voice from above. “Smells just as bad as I remember.”

There was an odd accent and inflection to the voice, tugging at Solomon’s memories. A part of his mind sought to eke out the source.

“Wouldn’t wanna ruin a good pair of pants,” the voice continued conversationally, uncaring of Solomon’s efforts.

Pants...?

Solomon had a long moment to consider the confusing statement before an odd sensation washed over him, making his skin tingle. At first, he thought it was the next episode of torment—but the pain never arrived.

It’s chi, he realized. The cultivator had found him.

Solomon should have been distraught. Should have railed and fought for his life. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that it would be quick and painless.

“What is that...?” the voice asked, filled with curiosity.

The next moment, the stranger’s chi drove into Solomon, washing through his entire body. All but paralyzed, Solomon’s eyes went wide as the stranger’s essence infiltrated his core.