“Can you feel that?” Will asked, passing a gossamer thread of miasma past Loth’s horns.

The former kobold frowned, eyes closed.

A moment later she put up her left hand, matching the direction of the test miasma.

A typical Climber with a specialization in Focus like Loth could reliably tell if another Climber was using Abilities nearby, but a Climber’s Abilities were bold and searing, blazing with Charge and burning their way through the ether.

The Devourer of Worlds was made of subtler stuff, and to the untrained mind, it was nearly impossible to differentiate from background noise.

In fact, the ‘noise’ that Will heard from miasmatic structures was exactly what people were perceiving when they detected an Ability at play with Focus. Certain miasmatic structures were very quiet.

The Devourer of Worlds was one of those ‘very quiet’ things. It was intensely visible to Will’s Uru Drake Eye, but it flowed seamlessly across the terrain, barely disturbing the surrounding miasma.

They had figured this ‘sound’ aspect out as they experimented with increasing Loth’s detecting Abilities. After sitting and discussing their plans, they had both come to the conclusion that Loth needed to at the very least needed to be able to know when The Devourer of Worlds was nearby and be able to avoid it.

Neither will nor Loth wanted Loth to end up dead.

The first couple days they spent every spare moment trying to track down the monster, but on the third day they had to admit that the creature was laying low.

It was going to be an endurance game.

Come on, Devourer, I’ve got things to do this month, Will thought with a scowl a week later, practicing his miasma control while Maribelle dished out the day’s food. She’d become taken with the concept of cooking, said it was like playing with dolls.

This happened when Loth and Will rounded up the food in the Stronghold that would go bad, organizing a menu by sorting most perishable to least.

Maribelle had lit the fire under the massive pot with disinterest, but when the enormous dragon took the three-foot long ladle daintily between thumb and forefinger and stirred the pot, her eyes lit up and she had begun giggling uncontrollably.

Now she was a ‘chef’ and cooked everything. Usually badly. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

“Come now, you have to eat your broccoli,” Maribelle cooed, ladling extra broccoli from the simple stew into Loth’s bowl.

Loth and Will were too jaded as Climbers to object to being treated like dolls if it meant someone else was responsible for the cooking.

She sat down next to Will, who took the opportunity to steal the greens out of Loth’s bowl, replacing them with a couple scoops of extra grubs from her barrel.

“Nooo, you have to eat your veggies.” Maribelle said, nudging the back of Loth’s wing with a single claw.

“Kobolds can’t eat green things. Root vegetables like potatoes and carrots are okay, but grains and greens give her a stomach ache.” Will said, taking a bite of broccoli. It was why she never ate pastries, actually.

“Dragons can eat greens just fine.” Maribelle said, dropping a bit of mundane lore about an esoteric subject.

Loth paused, looking up from the map and glancing ahead with a frown. She opened her mouth and ran her tongue along her teeth.

“Are my molars flat?” She asked, turning to Will and opening her mouth wide enough to take a bite out of his shoulder.

Will peered along the row of pristine ivory with a contemplative frown.

“Yeah, the back three or so.” Will said.

“Huh. That’s interesting.” Loth mused, turning back to the map.

“You didn’t know?” Will asked.

“I perceived it, but knowing requires conscious attention, and many things have divided my attention since I changed.” Loth replied, her eyes watery.

What? Is she upset about not being a kobold anymore?

“How about me, how about me?” Maribelle interrupted Will’s thoughts, desperate to be included, her jaws opening wide enough to swallow Will whole.

“Yeah, you’ve got some at the back.” Will said, turning back to Loth. Whatever emotion was there was gone already.

Loth was contemplating a piece of broccoli.

The dragon-kin popped it into the back of her mouth and crunched down on it.

“Yep. Still tastes bad.” Loth said with a pout.

“Wait until you try brussels sprouts,” Will said. “Broccoli are tame by comparison.”

“If I can truly eat anything now, I suppose I’ll need to try some bread.” Loth said.

“We can start slow with meat pies.” Will said.

Loth nodded, her expression distant. She didn’t speak so Will just left the air open for her to speak her mind..

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“Will, I’ve been looking for the right moment to take my Class Advancement.”

Will blinked. “You haven’t done it yet?”

“Until recently I’ve been trying to achieve certain milestones before taking Class Advancement. Those milestones have been achieved, and I’ve just been looking for the perfect opportunity to do so safely with the least amount of witnesses. Not being able to perceive The Devourer of Worlds has highlighted my own inadequacy and reminded me that there’s no such thing as perfect.”

She glanced at Will.

“I know it’s risky to do it now, but it would be worse to remain in my primary Class the entire time. You think you could watch me for a few hours?”

“Of course. You did the same for me.” Will said with a shrug. “If The Devourer of Worlds shows up, I’ll get you away and leave Maribelle to her fate.”

“Hey!” Maribelle interjected, poking Will with a torso-sized claw.

Loth nodded, downed the rest of her stew, then laid down, folding her hands across each other.

Loth closed her eyes.

MMMMMMM

“WHOAH!” Will exclaimed as a pillar of miasmatic structures wove itself out of nothing in the sky above, descending down on Loth and piping her consciousness out of her body.

Will made a sketch in his legend. Never know when it might come in handy.

He’d seen flickers of these pillars from a distance since Climbers came to Will’s Stronghold specifically to get their Class Advancement, but this was…extraordinarily robust. Will could see the complex miasma and Charge pumping through the structure, connecting Loth to…wherever her mind was going.

Extraordinary and over the top. Just like everything else she does, Will thought, leaning on his chin.

Will heard a sound, so quiet he almost didn’t pick it up. A brief occlusion of miasmatic background sound, as if someone had passed behind him, blocking out the sound for a heartbeat.

Will glanced back and spotted The Devourer of Worlds peering over his shoulder, looking down at Loth.

“Son of a bitch!” Will shouted, scrambling away while scooping up Loth’s limp form with Phantom Hands.

“Son of a bitch!” The Devourer of Worlds shouted in Will’s voice, skittering backwards.

Oooh, that’s not good.

No one had mentioned anything about this thing could speak. The fact it was copying Will meant it was still learning. That meant that in one exchange with Will it had found itself inadequate, retreated, and decided to learn language.

This thing was super dangerous, like, Loth-level dangerous.

“What’s wrong?” Maribelle asked, approaching, her forelimb approaching the snarl of miasmatic structures unwinding from the creature’s empty core.

“Maribelle RUN!” Will shouted, sending a phantom hand past the Devourer and shoving Maribelle backwards.

With his left hand, Will conjured a magic missile and sent it towards the Devourer.

Will’s Magic missile was the culmination of all his research up until this point. The spell took a picture of his chose destination and encapsulated it along with dimensional energy in a ball of miasmatic structures.

The self-propelled capsule moved itself forward, trying to match its destination with the picture Will had given it.

When it hit, the miasmatic sphere unzipped, released tension and brought several dozen tiny dimensional coils together, causing a flurry of of dimensional blades to tear outwards in a wide cone about three feet long.

It was Wills first original Ability. Most of it had been copied from Ghoul’s extensive repertoire, with just a little twist that Will had applied using his experience with dimensional energy and Map. It was primarily made to kill other Climbers in a way they didn’t see coming.

“Maribelle RU-“ The Devourer shouted as it created a rough copy of Will’s magic missile before the Ability blew up in The Devourer’s face.

Or its….web? Form?

An instant later, Will’s magic missile impacted against the Devourer and popped, sending out dozens of dimensional blades that would’ve rendered any flesh body into a few dozen bloody chunks.

The Devourer’s form was shredded instantly, the gossamer threads of its funnel-shape scattering to the wind.

Will listened for the announcement that The Devourer of Worlds had been defeated.

…

……

Nothing.

“Crap.” Will muttered.

The ‘form’ that they had seen was a fake.

Was it trying to fake its death or do reconnaissance? Will thought as he bundled Loth up and motioned for Maribelle to join him in the air.

After some deliberation, Will decided to drop the idea that it had been trying to fake it’s death. Faking one’s own death required a set of knowledge and beliefs more in line with being raised in a society. Instead it was more likely to be sending scouting Abilities similar to Will’s Phantom Eye in order to gain more knowledge on its foes.

“Where are we going?” Maribelle asked as Will

“As far away as possible.” Will replied. “I’ll just stay on the move until Loth wakes up. It shouldn’t be able to keep up.”

Shouldn’t.

“Quite foolish of her to choose now to Advance her Class.” Maribelle said, glancing over at the unconscious Loth.

That rankled.

“Not at all.” Will replied, keeping the edge out of his voice. “If she hadn’t, we’d still be sitting around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for it to show up again. The Devourer of Worlds only showed up because it was an incredibly inconvenient, dramatic time to appear.”

“Is that…how it works?” Maribelle asked.

Will frowned, actually thinking about it.

“In my experience?” Will replied. “Yes.”

“Have you considered that your experience may be…atypical?” Maribelle asked.

“Also yes.” Will said, spotting movement below them.

“Dodge right.” Will said, whipping himself off to the left as a lasso of miasma whipped up in front of them.

“Dodge wha-“

Too late, the lasso sank into Maribelle’s neck, burying itself in her spine.

Will tossed Loth into the air and use Phantom Hands to grab Maribelle’s neck right around the point where the lasso had sunk in.

“Will, what are you -ACK!”

Will broke Maribelle’s neck.

Will could feel it as the past and present overlapped, the miasmatic structures in the lasso overlapped with the wound.

The miasma became the wound as it vanished.

Rather than fight to try and cut the miasma out and possibly risk losing control of the situation, Will had decided to become the instrument of fate and deliver the wound himself so that he could have more control over the aftermath.

A broken neck was not instant death. It was merely imminent death. There was an important distinction, if one could be even more imminent with the healing.

Will took out a Supreme healing potion and formed a syringe with Phantom Hand’s armor, leaning on his experience with healing his own internal wounds.

Sourdough x6

Will injected the limp dragon just as she began falling through the air, right along the path where the miasma had buried itself in Maribelle’s neck.

Maribelle’s eyes fluttered open, her wings snapping taut, tail flailing to regain control.

“OOOOW!” Maribelle shouted in full dragon-voice. “WHAT THE ABYSS WAS THAT FOR!?”She demanded, rolling in midair and trying to gore him with her claws.

“You got hit with an Ability that would’ve caused you to crash and break your neck.” Will said, catching Loth while weaving around Maribelle’s thrashing.

“So you decided to do it instead!?”

“Minus the crash.” Will said, spotting another loop rising from the forest into the air.

He shot it with a magic missile, intercepting the gossamer thread of fate before it could catch either of them.

An instant later, a more refined version of Will’s own magic missile shot out of the woods. It didn’t seem to have Will’s understanding of his Map Ability, which meant it couldn’t steer based on a mental tag, but it was fast, and dangerous.

That’s what I was afraid of, Will thought as they dodged.

“Let’s go higher.” Will said. “We can’t afford to keep showing this thing our hand.”