Chapter 4: Part 4: The Taste of Dirt Between Your Teeth

It took Sebastian a while to manage to finally make it to his feet without feeling like his stomach was going to rebel and give his lunch an encore performance all over the forest floor.

Even once he did regain his feet, he had to lean against the side of the tree for a bit, breathing through his nose while the world flailed like a drunken three-legged manticore around him. It came with backup too — another one in miniature repeating the same performance on the inside his head, a headache that throbbed with every injudicious movement.

Standing there, he realized could feel the depression under his fingers where his body had impacted the wood even though the leather of his gloves. Some of the bark even flaked off under his hand where he had damaged the tree when he must have been thrown into it.

Sebastian brushed the debris off on his pants leg — gingerly — his whole body by now starting to feel like one massive bruise.

When he felt he could walk without embarrassing himself, Sebastian tracked down where the djävul had fallen, picking his way carefully as he limped across the torn-up forest floor, the ground scored and pitted from the fight.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to go far at all.

The djävul was even bigger laid out in the dirt, sprawled hard on its right shoulder, the impact of its body striking the earth in its fall leaving an impressive gouge around it.

Sebastian listened carefully but he could hear no breathing, no heartbeat from the creature now.

The silence was sweet indeed to the relieved Relict's ears, reassuring Sebastian the djävul was dead. His makeshift spear was rammed so deep into its thick neck it had pierced clear through to the other side. The creature's own weight had signed its death warrant where it must have fallen on the thing.

One of the creature's antlers had cracked clean off, the splintered end giving the otherwise terrifyingly magnificent djävul a strangely ratty and worn look. Sebastian looked around, spotting it half-wedged under its own clawed hand.

Handy that — he wouldn't have to spend the time hacking it off himself to collect the evidence he would need to claim the bounty on this thing. Like fuck was he going through all this only to get stiffed at the end of it just because he felt a little too knocked about to bring back the proof.

It took some doing, but with the aid of the antler for leverage and his freshly sharpened hunting knife, Sebastian soon had the gallbladder wrapped up in his foraging pouch — the one he wore on his left side where the nasty, oftentimes outright poisonous stuff went. Definitely not the larger one on the right where he would tuck away the fiddleheads and mushrooms and other gleanings he would find along the Path that so often supplemented his dinner.

Relict bodies were tough — the mages had certainly seen to that. But still, not that tough that he would be foolhardy enough to pack them in the same pouch and risk them mixing.

Prizes in hand, Sebastian limped off in search of his mount; listening intently for the sound of a grazing horse. He finally tracked it down not too far from where he had in vain tried to tie it to a birch tree to keep it well out of the way of the fight.

The bastard was smart — kept untying or just flat out chewing through any knot or rope Sebastian used.

Who knows? Maybe he would actually keep this one instead of selling it on at the end of the season. Ride it all the way up the pass to Eldfäst and get Destan or Oskarl or Emrick to help him train it to be a proper Relict’s mount like their own.

It took some doing with his eye swollen shut; his sense of everything a little off. Felt far too much like his trainee days again, back when the instructors would have them spar and do all their chores blindfolded, or with one or the other eye covered.

They said it was to improve their reflexes, the trainees' sense of awareness.

But Sebastian had always figured it was just because the instructors were sadistic bastards. Old washed-up had-beens that liked to make the trainees' lives as difficult as their frankly limited imaginations could think up. All while still coming under the loose definition of "training", of course.

Not like they hadn't done far worse to the boys in their charge all in the name of turning them into the perfect monster hunters, into the perfect Relicts.

Or whatever they would call Sebastian anyway.

"Perfect" probably wasn't the word that would come to mind for most of his old instructors.

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Wonder of wonders, there were still two vials of Caladrius left in his saddlebags.

An easy enough potion to brew in the spring when the ingredients were plentiful, but this far into autumn he was having to carefully ration them — and that was even before half his supply had gotten smashed up.

He weighed the glass vial in his hand, watching the faint shimmer of magic swirling with the mundane inside; the luminous motes of blue dancing with the flecks of crushed snowspire petals and other ingredients that made up the mixture.

Well, if now wasn't the time for it, he didn't want to think about what truly wretched state he would have to be to rate one.

He drank it down, grimacing at the taste, before cramming a handful of heavily seasoned jerky in his mouth.

He wasn’t really hungry — felt downright nauseous actually — but he knew his Relict metabolism would need the fuel to heal his body. The spices preserving the gamy meat helped rid his mouth of the potion's bitter aftertaste, but did nothing to help settle his heaving stomach — aggravating it even further.

But otherwise, he risked his body burning through the protein in his own muscle as it healed itself. Especially enhanced as it would be now by the potion he had just taken, and…That was just a bad idea all around.

So Sebastian managed to choke his hastily eaten meal down and even more, keep it down — though not without his stomach starting up a protest he could really do without right now.

Through it all, his horse stood patiently, ears swiveling back and forth with one large brown eye focused on its owner's strange behavior. It had adapted rather well to an inordinate amount of strange since it had come into Sebastian's possession, all things considered.

He patted his horse on the withers, then tucked the remainder of the jerky back into his pack. He carefully transferred the gallbladder to the bag he kept his more dangerous reagents in — the one lined with swamp wyvern leather and spelled against most leakage.

Then he nearly fell over trying to get into the saddle.

Ugh.

Sebastian took a moment, resting his forehead against his horse’s shoulder until the world stopped spinning quite so fast, the scent of the animal and the leather of the saddle filling his nose. His horse shifted its weight from one hoof to the other hoof at its rider’s unusual behavior, but otherwise remained calm, settling quick enough that Sebastian didn't have to use Dimma to spell it into complacency at least.

He wasn’t sure he could, to be honest. Not right this moment anyway.

Fuck was he in trouble.

 

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