NOVEL WEB Chapter 20: Riptide
(Small POV shift)
Kalin's eyes stayed locked on the boar. The bowstring in his hand was taut and dug into his fingers. But he couldn't feel anything. The sweat running down his back, the itchy brushes of the grass around him—Nothing.
The boar moved a little, shaking the reeds of grass. His arm tensed, but he remained patient. Kalin's entire body grew so still flies buzzed around him, and sharp pricks on his shins told him mosquitoes did too.
Kalin needed this kill more than anything he had ever wanted. His love, Tari, shone in the back of his mind. Her jet-black hair and the lopsided smile she wore at his jokes. She had been so shy in the beginning, so unsure of whether to take him seriously.
A fallen noble had recently come to town, flaunting his remaining wealth and began courting Tari after he had a spat with Kalin.
Ridiculous as it seemed, Tari's parents wanted her to marry him. It was obvious to even the blind that this noble was only here for a short while before he left for Firegrave, and Kalin knew what his plan was.
He would abandon Tari after the marriage and leave her tarnished.
He couldn't allow that. The dishonour. She didn't deserve to suffer because the ignoble bastard hated Kalin.
He needed to kill the boar before it knew he was hunting it. Sky boars were notoriously hard to catch; they could sense minor changes in the air forty meters around them and transform into mist that couldn't be harmed.
One shot. That was all he has
There was a loud snap as Kalin released the arrow.
The boar was fifty meters away, hidden in the tall grass of the plains, and yet the arrow pierced its skull smoothly.
Kalin let out a breath, smiling. Within a few minutes, he was at the corpse. He first bowed and thanked the boar before packaging it and raising it over his broad shoulders.
He rubbed the sweat from his brow; his tanned skin and black hair were matted with dirt from his day-long hunt of the boar.
"With this, I'll buy a house with the rest of my savings," Kalin said to himself, "Then I can trick Tari's parents into letting us marry."
It was a stupid idea, but it was the best he could come up with. Kalin's mother had always said he was the dumbest of her children, only managing to become a hunter.
His family had long left Castaway Valley, and he was the last thing on their mind.
Tari wasn't just his best friend. She was crafting, hunting, epic stories and someone who shared his love of animals—she was everything he loved in this bitter world.
He was an incompetent wretch, but she was the only thing he didn't want to lose.
The grass shook.
Tari turned, crouching quickly. He narrowed his eyes and crawled slowly.
Hound? He hadn't let much blood spill…
Then like a rip in clothes, the grass began parting rapidly towards him.
He abandoned all caution, running as fast as he could. The sharp grass whipped against his face as he ran, and the muddy earth splattered as he ran.
His breath became ragged. He stole glances behind him, it was getting closer. He reached a decent clearing, and dropped the boar, drawing his machete.
He couldn't escape, so he would fight.
The thing tore through the grass like a raindrop, but then it stopped just a couple steps in front of him, covered by the grass.
Kalin's heavy breath pounded in his ears. There was a sound filling the small paddock. A buzzing that rose more and more the longer he waited.
Why was it just standing there? He tightened his grip on the machete.
"Show yourself!" he roared, shaking with fury, and the desperation he had known all his life.
The buzzing grew to a deafening crescendo that cut into his skull. The grass parted.
A twisting mass of silvery liquid stood before him, its body creating a painful buzzing.
"Wha—"
It leapt towards him like a flash of white, piercing his wrist and slithering into his body.
Kalin screamed and clawed at the liquid mass, stumbling back and falling over. Then pain came, like nothing he had ever known.
The buzzing filled his entire being, running up his veins and destroying his ears. It felt like his mind was being shredded into pieces, and the pain wasn't something he could understand.
It coursed through him like every part of him was being sawed down violently. He fell to the ground, shaking uncontrollably. Blood poured from all his orifices.
The last thing his bloody eyes saw before he died was the Halo.
■——■
The wind pushed hard over Lucen, scattering his meagre effort to comb his blond hair. He wore simple leather armor with worn-out gloves.
The Grey Keep's massive form twisted behind him. He walked green fields beside the dark castle, surrounded by the rest of Warren's loud class.
On his right was the towering mass of darkness that lived behind the Grey Keep. The Void was like a thin mirror of darkness, liquid and cold. Things coiled and swam behind it in inconceivable shapes.
The mirror of darkness ran as far as the eye could see, and from this close—It pulled him. The wall of darkness had a morbid gravity that brushed over his skin and made his hair stand on edge.
Lucen stood at the back of a very uncomfortable group of Warren's best students, their voices hushed and their eyes flicking to the darkness.
Warren finally stopped and turned to face them. The grey-haired man was dressed as impeccably as ever, and he addressed them calmly.
"First things first, don't get any close to the edge, it'll pull you in," said Warren solemnly. "Today, we are here to train on fighting large beasts."
He pointed at the void. "Some knights will bring some Shapeless Wolves soon. But first, I wanted to teach you more about the Line."
The Line was the perfect boundary between what was the normal world and the Void.
"There are no official timelines on when the Void appeared," Warren explained, "But the people who lived here before the empire could not stop Void creatures from entering the world. Sometime after the empire was founded, the Alchemists developed the Dividers."
Warren raised a curious device made from bones and strange gold and purple crystals. He passed the device around so all his students could examine it.
On Lucen's turn, he found that the device had Lurker hound eyes, Thunder rhino horns and an assortment of beast parts. The Lurker hounds were used to make Oculus because of their high mana perception.
So this device monitored the border with those eyes, and the other beast parts served key roles in containing the void.
"They are planted in the ground in a long line that runs for thousands of miles between seven Keeps just like this," said Warren, drawing a line in the sand with seven points.
"A Grand Knight must always be in the Keep, managing the Line, or gaps will appear. We must defend this line with our lives and exterminate the wolf pack.
A sharp sound of something tearing filled the air.
They all jumped, drawing their weapons. Lucen's silver spear appeared in his hands, he wouldn't be surprised if the Line broke the first time he visited. That was just how bad his luck had been recently.
Men began to pour from a rip in the clear black mirror, wearing Lightcloak sigils. Lucen let his spear disappear, sighing.
The space behind the smooth darkness of the void was a chaotic storm of darkness and light, turning and mixing in unnatural ways. Like a boiling cloud of chaos.
Out of that chaos, a beast was pulled, hovering over the ground as it writhed in its chains.
The chains were a glassy gold material that burned into the skin of the black beast, causing steam to rise around it. The wolf, if one could call it that, spasmed and flickered, its body warping and changing shape to try and escape its chains.
Was it too late to tell Warren he was sick today?