Suddenly, Faryn sprang up from the bushes ahead. The wisp twisted to avoid her, and then, I was on it. My blade cut apart its bark-like armor and penetrated the soft flesh beneath. With an overhead cut, I sundered the beast in two. Sap spilled out from the severed halves and coated the ground in thick, green goo.
“Well done.” Faryn smiled at me. “We’ll make a woodsman of you yet.”
She crouched over the body, peeled back its wooden skin, and removed what looked like a cage made of tiny bones.
“A skeletal corral,” she said as she displayed the item. “Most Augmentors prefer the term ‘bone-cage.’”
Inside the bone-cage was a shard no larger than a cell phone, glowing with an eerie green light.
“The core,” Faryn explained. “Take it.”
I reached down between her hands and broke the skeletal corral before I removed the core. It tingled in my hand, much like the electrifying feeling of channeling practice.
“You use these for potions?” I asked.
“No,” Faryn siad. “That’s for you. You can absorb it to gain power over the element of wood.”
“Absorb it how?”
She leaned forward, opened the front of my robes, and ran a trail down my skin with her fingertips. Then, she took my hand that held the core and pressed it against my chest.
The tingling grew and spread across my skin, into my muscles, and through to my heart. The glow of the core spread, seeped into me, and faded from sight. At the end, I crouched, empty-handed, and grinned at the feeling of power within me. I was a little dizzy, and my body swayed.
“Augmentor’s Sickness,” Faryn said. “You have to be careful not to absorb too many cores while there is still fighting to be done.”
“So, now I have the power for wood technique?” I asked, all eagerness despite my lightheadedness.
“Try it.” Faryn leaned back.
I raised my hand and opened a path within me, a way for the power to flow. Something trembled in my fingers, but there was no great magic, no burst of light or darkness.
“It’s doing nothing,” I protested. “Can you give me a few tips to make it work?”
“Lessons are learned through failures,” Faryn said. “And your failure was trying to run before you could crawl. You’ll need more cores before you can master even the simplest arts.”
“Then, let’s get hunting.” I rose to my feet. Now that I’d had a taste of this power, I was eager for more.
Over the next hour, we caught four more wisps. Three of them I was able to cut down after Faryn helped me corner them. The fourth would have got away if not for Faryn’s arts. It turned suddenly as I was chasing it and caught me by surprise. As it raced past, I swung and missed with my sword, but Faryn raised her hands, and roots shot from the ground, ensnaring the beast. It struggled but was brought down, ready for me to finish it off.
“That was the Strangling Roots technique,” Faryn explained as we extracted the core. “One day, maybe you’ll master it.”
“One day like today?” I pressed the core to my chest.
Faryn shook her head and smiled.
“So very young,” she said. “So very keen.”
“So, what can I learn today?” I asked.
She stretched out her hands and pointed them at a tree. Thorns shot from her palms before burying themselves in the bark.
“Stinging Palm technique,” she said. “One of the simplest wood techniques. At low levels, it is little more than an annoyance. With experience, you can fire larger projectiles, poison them, or make them splinter into shards to do real damage to your foes.”
“And I can learn that now?”
“Not until you’ve absorbed another 20 wisp cores.”
“Twenty? But it’s taken us this long to catch five!”
“Then, you’d better get back to hunting.”
We kept heading through the thick undergrowth and sun-dappled clearings of Danibo Forest. Faryn kept us from the dark interior of the forest so that we stuck instead to the thinner woods close to the city. When I asked about going further, a troubled look crossed her face. I wanted to know what lay behind it but sensed that pushing now would only drive her away.
Hour after hour, we stalked the wisps, bringing them down with sword, staff, and spells. Every time I absorbed a core, I could feel the power growing inside me, the wisp’s Vigor adding to my own. It was a rush that grew stronger with each new hit. I’d never been into drugs, but I imagined that this must have been what the good ones felt like.
As the light faded, Faryn found us a place to camp for the night. She had gathered wood for a fire, along with berries and rabbits to eat. As she prepared to roast the rabbits, I marveled at her ability to thrive out here.
“When did you find all that stuff?” I asked.
“While you were catching the last few emerald wisps,” she said. “You were doing so well, you didn’t need me anymore.”
I smiled with pride, particularly pleased to hear those words from her.
“I’m just one short now,” I said. “If I can get it, I can learn Stinging Palm.”
“Then, go.” She waved me away. “I’ll call for you when the food is ready.”
I stalked away from the fire, sword in hand while I watched for movement amid the deepening shadows. Soon, I was far from Faryn, alone in the woods.
Then, I saw it, that final wisp I needed, standing beneath the outstretched arms of a vast oak. I crept toward it, one silent footfall at a time, all of my attention on my prey.
I was so focused that I almost didn’t see the monster approach. At the last moment, I heard the thud of a footfall and turned to see it towering over me. A vast beast,
