20. Locke
LOCKE
The crawling vines mock us as we skirt the edges of the Silent Forest, careful to keep just out of reach.
We’re forced to walk further inside the Whispering Canopies than I’d like, but I’ll take the howler monkeys and whatever else might be in here over the vines that are fucking hellbent on shoving down my throat.
I can still feel the way the Killing Tree had slithered inside, had started to impale me .
. . The way the vines had burrowed into my skin .
. . the way it had felt when I’d ripped them out.
I shiver, horrified all over again. I’d thought I’d known danger. We’ve battled two Minor Bosses, survived a few intense moments, and yet, around every corner, I’m still shocked by the brutality of this place. At least I’ll have the strength to combat it soon.
The vines slither along the ground to our left, waiting, eager for us to accidently walk too close. They undulate with eagerness, lazy right now, but I know if we step a millimeter too close, they’ll snap out and take us.
Bastards. Just like Cipher.
Everything in this place is a fucking bastard. The water lizards. The crawling vines. The howler monkeys.
Stryker.
Fucking Stryker. Whatever that asshole is, he’s going to be a problem.
I saw the way he’d looked at Vesper, like he wanted to eat her alive.
I don’t blame him. I’ve looked at Vesper a few times like that, too.
Okay, more than a few. Especially when she’d played along with Stryker’s flirting and suggested we could all three . . .
“Are we certain we’re going the right way?” Vesper asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“What?” I answer, jerking my mind away from thoughts of her sandwiched between us. “Oh. Let me check.”
I flick open my map, the movement so fluid now it’s like an afterthought. I don’t know how long we’ve been here really. A week? Less than that? More? The sun rises and falls, which should make it easy to count the days, but I can’t seem to remember how many times it’s set since we arrived.
“Six days, ten hours, thirty-one minutes, and twelve seconds,” Cipher supplies helpfully while I study the map. He’ll pop in every now and then when he feels like it, but mostly, my mind stays blissfully silent and free from his voice. From what I understand, it’s not the same for Vesper.
“Looks like we’re about to leave the Whispering Canopies—”
NEW ZONE UNLOCKED: Welcome to the Leaf Cutter Empire
Cipher’s overly sensual purr fills my head as the notification pops up in front of my face.
We’d stepped over the line abruptly, and I’d almost been unprepared for the announcement.
I grimace at the way Cipher’s voice fades away, as if some tantalizing tease.
These fucking notifications are getting ridiculous. Even if it turns me on a little . . .
“What an interesting piece of information,” Cipher says to me alone. I know he only says it to me because Vesper doesn’t ask what he means. She always asks.
“Fuck off,” I grunt under my breath. Which only makes the system laugh. See? Bastards. Every bit of this place.
“The Leaf Cutter Empire,” Vesper repeats out loud, her voice significantly less provocative than the announcement, and yet still overly appealing. Every day, I look forward to hearing her speak more and more. “So, we’re still in the Verdant Nexus region then.”
“Seems like it,” I comment, rolling my shoulders.
They’re still sore after the tangle with the vines, but not as sore as my neck.
The bruises there probably stand out in stark contrast against my skin.
At least my ink likely hides most of it.
That way, when Vesper asks me if I’m okay for the hundredth time, I can lie and say I’m fine.
“There’s a safehouse in this zone,” I announce while I study the map. “And a Minor Boss.”
The regions of our map are revealed as we explore them.
They remain grey until we enter the section, then it populates, but the only markers on the map are safehouses until we encounter something else.
The Minor Bosses don’t just show up for us to hunt them down either.
There’s just a notation next to the zone name that there’s a Minor Boss within it, just as there’s a notation if there’s a Major Boss.
From what I can see, there is only one Major Boss in the Verdant Nexus and it’s in the Whispering Canopies, which is why we’re trying to give it a wide berth.
Neither one of us is prepared to fight a Major Boss.
Even with all my cockiness, I don’t think I’m strong enough for that as a Tier One.
It’s best to wait until we’re both stronger to start collecting the keys.
There are three Minor Bosses here, two of which we’ve already killed.
The tiny icons appear on the map once we’ve completed them, marking where we’d received the achievement.
If I hover my hand over the icons on the map, tiny description menus pop up describing the Minor Boss.
We only have one more to go before we can move onto the next region and find more Minor Bosses to kill.
We’re gonna have to grind hard if we want to level up fast. Something tells me that we’re going to need our stats in our favor more than they are.
I tap the character menu on my interface and watch as my stats pop up in front of me.
TIER 1 - KNUCKLE DREG
Wastrel, entry-level
STRENGTH: 12
AGILITY: 10
VITALITY: 11
WILLPOWER: 10
CHARISMA: 9
LUCK: 10
FRACTURE POINTS: 0
CORRUPTION: 5%
I currently have three skills that I can use as a Tier One.
Brawler’s Instinct. A passive skill that gives me bonus damage when I use my fists, improvised weapons, or fight in close-quarter combat.
Splinter Strike. This one says it’s an active skill with a thirty second cool down every time I use it.
That one is just a focused kick or punch that increases my chances of breaking bones.
The last skill is another passive one called Pain Ignition.
Each injury I suffer boosts my strength by one for thirty seconds.
That’s the one that most intrigues me. Does that mean if I keep hitting, I’ll continue to get little boosts to my strength throughout a fight?
I don’t exactly know how the skills work. There isn’t much description and I assume I either missed it before or its purposely vague. It could be both. Regardless, I’ll have to figure it out as I go.
“What monsters do you think we’ll be facing in this one?” Vesper asks, her tone casual as if we’re not discussing some creature that’s going to try to kill us. I don’t think we’ve run into too many of them that haven’t immediately tried to kill us.
I close my menu and focus on the path Vesper cuts in front of us. “Don’t know,” I quip.
I can’t even guess what we might find here.
This place is full of creatures and things that don’t exist in Dross, let alone in the entire Cradle.
I’ve seen a few books in my time in Mother Remainder’s rooms, but none of them spoke of animals.
They were mainly about ancient history and those were so boring, I’d given up reading them after a few pages.
Even if they had been about animals, I wouldn’t have been interested enough to read them all the way through.
I have a hard time focusing on the words for long and times past don’t really matter anymore.
Only here and now matters. The future barely matters unless you’re thinking about survival until the next rotation.
The Ascendants make sure we don’t look any deeper, and I’ve played right into their hands.
I can’t wait to chop them off.
“We should head inward,” I say, opening the map again briefly to check we’re headed in the right direction. “There’s a safehouse ahead, but I don’t think we’re going to make it there tonight. We’re going to have to camp, but at least we won’t be near the vines or the Killing Trees anymore.”
I look to my left on instinct to find the vines still crawling along the Silent Forest floor, still mocking us despite our escape.
A shiver runs through my body as I remember the vines trying to force their way into my mouth.
I don’t know what would have happened should they have succeeded. I don’t want to know.
“Look at that!” Vesper whispers, pointing to a large colorful creature fluttering in front of us. “What is that? It’s so pretty.”
I frown. “I think it’s a bird.”
We have birds in Dross, small brown finches that are difficult to catch and don’t make a good meal, and large vultures that taste worse than Harrow Bars.
None of them are as colorful as this one.
It’s as large as the vultures we have, but that’s the only similarity.
Its beak is curved and sharp, a bit of black around the tip of it.
Its head is a bright, crimson red that flows partially down its body before it runs into a bright yellow and even brighter blue.
Around its eye, a white patch marks the skin.
It watches us with intelligent eyes as it lands on a tree branch and hops back and forth.
That beautiful blue color that had marked its wings is now folded up so we mostly only see the red and yellow.
“That is a Scarlet Macaw,” Cipher announces for the two of us. “A parrot that once lived in the Rainforest. Now extinct, like most other species there.”
“It’s beautiful,” Vesper breathes. “Hi there,” she coos to it, waving at it.
I roll my eyes at her gesture. It’s an animal. It’s not going to respond.
The parrot tilts its head at her. “Hi there,” it repeats mockingly and we both tense.
“Many species of parrots are capable of speech,” Cipher says. “This typically manifests in mockery as that is the easiest way to learn.”
“Wow,” Vesper says. “Do you think—”
SQUAWK!
We both stare in horror as the crawling vines snap out and wrap around the macaw.
Bright colored feathers fly in the air and flutter down.
The strangled sound of it cuts off abruptly as the vine snaps its neck before dragging it down, down, down to the ground.
We watch as the bright body, the red feathers like blood, is dragged deeper into the Silent Forest. A tree shifts and a maw opens.
CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH.
I take a step back. Vesper covers her mouth.
“Well . . .” I say, staring at the feathers on the ground, the only evidence left behind that the creature was ever there. “I guess we know why it’s called The Silent Forest now.”
Vesper turns wide, horrified eyes to me, but she inches forward, carefully, and plucks the feathers off the ground that aren’t within range of the vines. She stares at them, at the brightly pigmented color, and then they disappear into her inventory.
The silence left behind the violent moment is deafening.