A light summer drizzle greeted Tsem the morning of his hunt. It wasn’t exactly auspicious, but he’d worked in the rain plenty of times before. He took a deep breath, calming his nerves. He could do this.
Valesin still slept soundly in his lair. It felt odd to set up a formation without him spouting guidance over his shoulder. Without the surety and confidence his teacher and his many minute corrections brought, failure felt far closer, and success that much more tenuous. There was nothing to gain from inaction though, so Tsem moved forward.
He’d spent weeks in this area of the forest, and he knew exactly where the two bladebear territories resided. Tsem would only need to set up one formation for his plan. The other bladebear could be tracked in the traditional way. Of course, it mattered which territory he put his formation around. One would be far trickier to stay hidden and unobserved in than the other.
The first bladebear’s territory, the one he intended to set the formation around, was across the stream and some distance to the north of Valesin’s lair. There was next to no underbrush here and few hiding spots, the exact type of area that sent shivers along Tsem’s spine. A lack of cover meant demonic beasts could spot him from farther away. When one unexpected encounter with a demonic beast could easily result in his death, taking such details lightly would just be stupid.
From his time snooping along the edges of the territory, Tsem knew of a few locations that could work to lay glyphs. The first wasn’t a far walk. Not far from a set of markings left by the bladebear, one of those odd blue trees sat by itself. Such trees were not necessarily good spots to lay down glyphs, but this particular tree resonated quite well with both the second and third rules. It was set on a slight hill, the trees immediately around it all fallen. From how clean the breaks looked to be on the broken trunks, it was a safe bet that a large demonic beast had intentionally cleared the area out, no doubt to make it easier to return. The gap in trees and the slight hill made this tree far more significant than the many others in the forest, and if some large demonic beast really did come here regularly, the formation would gain a boost from the second rule too.
Tsem carved a glyph into the tree’s bark, but he left it incomplete. He would only draw his aiming line once the other glyphs had been placed, and he needed to gather an item to track before he could complete the sample and tracking lines.
With the first step complete, Tsem noted just how far he was from creating something that could actually track the bladebear. The formation was not, after all, designed to track a living thing, it was supposed to find an item. He did have an idea for that though.
The item he wanted to use as a sample had to be something the bladebear itself kept with it. Since it was a wild animal, Tsem couldn’t exactly expect it to be carrying around anything with it. That said, the formation worked on a fairly broad definition of item. If Tsem could find a lock of the beast’s hair, he knew he should be able to create a strong enough connection with the beast that the formation would point him directly to it.
To that end, Tsem took a little bit of a risk enroute to the area where he would lay his second glyph. He crept along the very edge of the bladebear’s territory, looking carefully for anything it had left behind. The cover here was thin, not as bad as inside the territory itself, but riskier than he liked. He didn’t find the hair he was after, but left embedded in the middle of one of the beast’s many markings was a claw.
Bladebear claws were a little different than the claws of your average beast. They were in fact where the name of ‘bladebear’ came from. The beasts, according to the Da family hunting manual, did not exclusively draw upon demonic qi. They also drew in earth qi. This was what they used to form their claws, or rather, a better description might be claw sheaths. They gathered the earth qi into dense stone, coating their claws in the substance, and over the course of days, they were left with stone blades, far better at ripping and tearing their opponents than the claws of their birth.
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Tsem moved forward, his eyes locked, focused on grabbing the earthen claw from its resting place. That was when it happened, in the moment of inattention when he realized what he’d found. He stepped on a round, smooth root, so eager to get to his prize. Already slick from the rain, the root offered no traction. His foot slid straight off it. As he fell, he tried to pull his arms in, but he was too late, two branches snapped off the tree with loud cracks.
For a moment, Tsem thought he would be fine. Nothing seemed to react around him. Then he looked up. A form was diving at him from above. He braced and put his hands up, there was little he could do though. He’d already experienced what a Ghalri raptor’s attack was like. He’d barely made it a dozen steps under its assault. He wasn’t sure what he was up against, but, here, it couldn’t be good.
The bird landed harmlessly beside him, giving the softest of calls. Tsem looked in surprise. A regular bird, not a Ghalri raptor or other demonic beast that ruled the skies here. He sighed in relief, pulling himself back up to his feet and removing the claw.
He would have liked to put the whole event behind him, but it was a sobering reminder of exactly what he was up against. He may not have attracted a demonic beast this time, but that might not be true next time. One mistake and he could easily meet his end. All the monsters living out their lives around him were lethal. He was the lowest rung on the list of predators here, and yet he had chosen to be here, chose to continue to be here. Tsem sat down for a moment, thinking. Perhaps it would be best for him to just leave now, to beg at Da Kanuk’s city. Surely someone would take him in. He could work after all. It might not be a great life, but it would be a life.
Something in Tsem rioted at the thought. He knew what it was, the same childish wishes that had made him ask a foolish question of a divine beast centuries older than himself. A memory flashed through his mind, him sick in bed, much younger, looking up at his mother. He’d looked at her warm smile, and he’d asked her. “Tell me about the one with the warrior cultivator.” She had frowned slightly, her smile wavering. “I…I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
The memory bored itself into his mind, latching on and staying. Tsem lowered his head a little. He’d been telling himself he was out here to prove something to himself for his parents’ sake, but that wasn’t true, not really. His parents had jumped at the opportunity to head to the frontier, true. They had encouraged him to believe he could be more, true. Those hadn’t been their real goals though; those hadn’t been what they’d really wanted. No, they had just wanted him to be happy. He was the one who had shown them that his happiness would be found in becoming more than he had been born with.
The realization weighed him down, and as he found the locations for his two remaining glyphs, he slowly changed his thinking. He had no intention of changing his immediate course. His parents had, no matter their reasons, wanted him to grow beyond his means, and he remained determined to do so, despite the danger. After all, it hadn’t stopped them. There was more than that now, though. His end goal was changed. He had no desire to rise to the heavens like the heroes in the stories his mother had read him. He just wanted the strength to do what his parents had tried. He wanted to be able to support those that mattered to him. Where that would take him, he didn’t know. It was a hazy path, one whose mist he’d need to clear, but it was something.
The two other glyphs were both placed on the same blue trees. One of those spots was a truly incredible find. Whatever had cleared the patch of trees around his first glyph location had made another similar patch around his third. It was incredible for the formation, though, Tsem privately admitted to himself, probably quite bad if such a monster was regularly visiting this area of the forest.
He made another trip around the territory, carving the missing lines into place. When he finally returned to the first glyph and placed his sample, his breath caught. He waited a moment and nothing happened. It always took a formation a moment to start functioning, so, Tsem forced himself to be patient, to hold off on assuming he’d failed. When another few moments passed, he threw his hands up frowning, considering where he might have gone wrong. There was a devastatingly long list of possibilities. He’d just begun the process of considering each when he felt a flicker. The formation was working! Oh, it was weak. Far fainter than those Valesin had shown off. Tsem had to concentrate to sense the tethers, but it was working.
He felt a few different lines attached to various points in the formation. They all felt weak, but one felt noticeably stronger than the others. Tsem paid attention to that one, he felt how it was slowly moving, the other end pulled along by something, the bladebear that he was looking for.
Tsem turned to the south, to the territory of the second bladebear. Now was the time for the dangerous part. He’d considered how to lure the demonic beast to its fellow quite a bit, but in the end, between the need for accuracy and the simple lack of other options, there was really only one thing that would work as bait: himself.
