Was that too much? Fern watched in silence as the anomaly studied the jerky and bark. It was a sign of sorts, yet the anomaly failed to recognize it. He pocketed it as if it didn't mean anything.
Or…did he notice what it meant, and put it where it was safest? A safe place where her scent could still spread?
She watched in silence even as the anomaly spoke. Xavier. An odd human. A boy, with the means to change forms as if it meant nothing.
It should not have surprised her after all she had seen, yet watching Xavier turn into the very Hnolls he defeated the day before took her by surprise anyway. Even their presence felt exactly the same.
It was…curious.
It was also intriguing that Xavier spoke to her…or tried to. She wanted to remain hidden, to stay away from the anomaly, but her body moved out of the shadows even before her mind could comprehend what she was doing.
Fern said nothing, protecting herself from the implications her answers could have, but she responded in another way. They communicated, and it only made her more curious.
The human, Xavier, didn't seem like the humans they were taught to fear. He smelled different, and he was not all that scary. He awakened something within her: a seed of interest.
Fern wanted to know more about him and make sure nobody would find out about him. For Fern didn't know what her people would do with him if they found him.
I can't keep him hidden forever. But… A heavy sigh escaped her lips as she melted into the surrounding plant life. She traversed the endless network of roots and emerged in the Eserian Grove.
It was as beautiful as ever. Towering trees surrounded the grove in their true majesty. Their branches stretched far and wide and intertwined with each other, forming a dome covered in blue glowing moss, verdant vines adorned with thorns that shimmered like stars, and flowers that absorbed and redistributed the sun's rays across the weaves of the Fey. For they were Fey.
All residents of the Eserian Grove were Fey. From the folks of Eserian, but also those cast aside by their own people. The Eserian Grove was all they had left. They had nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to go if the Hnolls or other intelligent monsters and races were to claim Eserian for themselves.
Just like the Zertian Empire had been trying to for the last few decades.
Fern shuddered, the bark on her cheeks cracking as she thought back to 'that' day–the day her tribe abandoned her, sacrificing her to the divine beasts of Eserian, only to suffer the consequences of their actions nonetheless. They were burned to the ground days after abandoning her, and she still didn't know what to make of it. Her family, her entire clan, had left her behind to die, but did they really deserve to die for it? Sometimes, she believed they did. Other times…she was grateful they abandoned her.
After all, she was only alive because they did what they did. She would never have met the people of the Eserian Grove if she hadn't been abandoned.
But that made her decision all the more difficult. Fern was unwilling to abandon the anomaly. She saw herself in Xavier. He was older than she had been, yet he was still weak, helpless.
That, however, did not absolve her responsibility to the grove. To her people.
The Fae greeted her, asked about her patrol, and she…she was lying to them, hiding Xavier's existence.
Why did she do that? And why did she want to return to watch him when it hadn't even been a hundred heartbeats since she returned to the grove?
Maybe I'm sick.
***
Xavier Halur
Core: Tier-1 (3.9%)
Primary Power: Shift
My Status hadn't changed all that much. I expected there to be greater gains for defeating three Hnolls. Then again, Essence was never said to be easy to gain. Using one's Power was said to strain the Core, which would then recover by absorbing the Essence that filled the realm. How that worked, I didn't know, but it was something everyone could confirm.
The passive accumulation of Essence was also why the type of Power one received in the Choosing was so important. As a Chosen with a Baking Power, one couldn't earn any Essence working as a blacksmith–except through hunting, which wasn't very blacksmithy. Nor was it all that simple to hunt with a Baking Power either.
Powers were the path to the future, chosen by none other than the gods. With Shift, I could do quite a lot, but it didn't feel like I gained much Essence from using it. It was almost as if using my Power didn't generate Essence, but that wasn't possible. Or was it?
"Even if there's no passive effect, I can transform into literal monsters. Monsters stronger than myself," I chided myself.
Combat Powers were important for all those deciding to join the Order, become mercenaries, join a noble house, or become explorers, as they were the only Chosen with the means to actually fight powerful monsters. Monsters did not awaken Powers like humans. They accumulated Essence, which stimulated not only their physical growth but initiated evolutions and mutations as well.
Every Tier, a monster would gain an even greater amount of strength than most Chosen. Their strength was so great that even Chosen with Combat Powers rarely explored the wild alone. Even in larger groups, it often led to unwelcome surprises. After all, a single extraordinary evolution or mutation could transform a monster at the second Tier into a being strong enough to destroy entire towns, to kill dozens of combatants at the same Tier, all because it evolved into a monstrosity.
And that was the very reason Shift was so powerful. All I needed was to expand my Accessible Shifts, and I'd be able to kill such monstrosities alone. As long as I had the perfect shifts to exploit my foes' weaknesses, I wouldn't have problems defeating them. Or…shouldn't have.
But that was a thing of the future. For now, I had only four different Accessible Shifts, with one being my human self. That was nowhere near enough to fight Tier-2 monstrosities or even powerful creatures at the first Tier.
My to-do list was long, and I could consider myself lucky to be in the perfect area to catch up. The threats to my life were a little bothersome, and they still scared me shitless, but the strength I'd acquired in the last two days more than made up for that.
Strength births confidence. Grow stronger to protect yourself. I told myself, tightly gripping my new blades.
I needed strength. First, to survive in this place. Then, to figure out how to best deal with Earl Nuer, his people, and that rat of an Order Wizard.