Roy knew that if he didn’t do something, and fast, they were all done for. He would never reach The Crater, never find a teacher, and never reach his goals. His eyes flicked frantically around until they alighted on a massive boulder protruding from the side of the mountain. He knew he would be taking an enormous risk, but drastic times called for drastic measures.
Cycling his Essence up to his hands, Roy began throwing formless blobs at the boulder. There was no time to form his proper technique, and it wouldn’t do him any good in this situation. He needed destructive and explosive power, and he needed it fast. Since the Essence was only half-formed, more than half of them went off early, exploding mid-air with massive booming sounds of displaced air.
He threw another one right into the face of the deer hanging on to Ferry and the Beast let go, more in surprise than anything, when the Essence exploded in its face. With the Beast releasing them, Ferry’s pace increased once more, but Roy knew they weren’t in the clear just yet, so he continued lobbing masses of destructive Essence.
They hit the ground, exploding with massive detonations that shook the hillside and sent loose dirt and stone spraying in all directions.
“Oh. I see what you’re trying to do,” Geon said as another formless blob detonated. “You’re trying to…”
He cut off as Roy finally hit his target, the Power Essence hitting the base of the massive, protruding boulder and blowing it loose. The stone hung in place for a long moment, teetering on the edge, before it tipped forward and began rolling down the hill, picking up speed and carrying with it yet more stone.
Roy’s feeling of jubilation was quickly squashed as stone began raining down around them. A chunk of rock larger than his head flew by, narrowly missing his right arm, and slammed into a deer that had been lunging at them.
Yellow level Beast or not, the jagged stone tore clean through the deer’s ribcage, taking it down the mountain as it went. Roy threw a glance over his shoulder as the sound of falling stone grew to a deafening roar, and felt his heart practically in his throat.
The entire side of the mountain was falling towards them; a wall of stone, dust, and uprooted trees moving at an incredible speed. He could see the Essence as well, a wall of brown, gold and silver, headed right for them. The deer higher up the hillside were caught up within seconds, their bodies crushed beneath the weight of hundreds of tons of earth and stone.
The ones closest to them immediately gave up the chase, running to escape the wall of death falling towards them instead. They were nearing the bottom of the mountain now, but Roy knew that momentum would carry the landslide a good deal into The Crater and that they would have to outpace it, even once they hit flat ground.
Ferry’s body oozed with black Essence as she poured everything she had into her Movement technique, her lithe body rocketing down the hillside ahead of the avalanche of stone and out on flat ground. Her speed slowed considerably once she hit the ground, and Roy watched in horror as the rumbling wall hit the ground with an explosion of dust and continued gaining on them.
Every time Roy thought he couldn’t possibly find a situation in which he would be more terrified, the world seemed to want to prove him wrong. And so here he was, on the back of a ferret, running for their lives from a mountain that was trying to kill them.
He threw his body forward, burying his face into Ferry’s fur and urging her to run faster, even as he felt the ground rumbling beneath his feet and the sound of approaching death grow ever louder. He didn’t look, praying to whatever gods would listen to allow them to make it out alive.
Then, just as quickly as it had started, the noise stopped. The ground stopped shaking and the clattering of stone came to a halt. Ferry continued running for a good half a mile, before coming to a shuddering halt, her legs collapsing out from under her as she lay on the ground in an exhausted heap.
Finally looking up, Roy saw how close they’d come to death. A wall of stone and debris stood not five feet behind him, and he now understood why Ferry had continued running as she had. Eyes wide, he stared as a few stones clattered down from the pile of stone, coming to rest at his feet.
It took him a few moments to realize that he’d been holding his breath, and he let it out in an explosion of air. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Roy dismounted from Ferry’s back and slumped to the ground as well. Lying on his back near the ferret, Roy stared up at the sky, hardly believing that they were still alive.
The two of them lay there for a few long minutes, Ferry recovering from the run, and he, trying to calm his racing heart from the ordeal they’d just survived. Finally, he began to laugh, almost hysterically, his voice echoing out in the deathly silence that the landslide had left in its wake.
He was alive! They’d made it! If he could survive that, he could survive anything.
A loud roar cut through the silence of The Crater, instantly cutting off his laughter and sending fear spiking through him once again. He shot to his feet, warily scanning his surroundings, with both his eyes and senses. At first, he thought that some of the deer had come back for him, but this roar had sounded different. It was deeper, meaner, and more threatening.
The ground behind him was littered with stone and debris, but the land before him stretched wide, with tall spires of stone stretching into the stormy skies. A dense mass of Essence entered his perception. It was more powerful than anything he’d ever sensed before. He knew right away that this was not a Beast he could fight, nor one that Ferry could outrun.
Slowly, his eyes traveled up a tall spire of stone until they alighted on the source of the Essence: an enormous mountain lion colored a deep blue, with gold swirling lines covering every inch of its body. Golden light blazed around it with such intensity that it nearly blinded him, and the crushing presence of the power it radiated was enough to make Roy’s entire body tremble in fear.
“Geon,” Roy said, hearing the unmistakable quiver in his voice. “Is that…?”
“Oh yes, that is undoubtedly a Beast at the Green level. I guess this is goodbye then. It was nice knowing you, Roy.”
23
Shah Koya was, as usual, not happy. He’d thought that he’d have no trouble hunting down the culprit, as the man from the Diadei clan had told him he was on death’s door. However, it seemed that the man had been lying to him. He was not at all surprised that a Diadei would do that to him.
He, Izu, and Kozu had tracked the Essence trail to a campsite that had been recently abandoned. There were signs of the Beast the Diadei clan member had mentioned, as well as the Martial Artist, but neither were to be seen. He’d then been faced with a choice: follow the unknown Martial Artist, or give up and try heading back to the village.
Ultimately, his stubbornness had won out, and he’d decided to go after the Martial Artist. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life looking for a place to fit in, and even if another clan did take him, he would be an outcast, much like that freak, Roy. With that as his resolve, they’d headed deeper into the Waterwood, following the trail of Essence all the way.
It hadn’t taken him long to realize that their prey was moving much faster than they were. Seeing as he had a Beast to ride and they were stuck walking, he could hardly say that surprised him, but it hadn’t improved his mood, which had been growing steadily darker as the days dragged into weeks.
From their general direction, Koya thought it was fairly obvious where they were headed. The Crater. Why a White level Martial Artist would be headed there was beyond him, and he was certain he was at the White level now. He wasn’t bothering to hide himself, which could only mean that he didn’t know how to.