Chapter 600: Touring The Forest II
A small pond. The surface of it barely larger than the clearing the second base had occupied, ringed by the ancient root formations that had shaped the depression over centuries, the water still and clear in the way of deep forest water that had not been disturbed recently.
The clarity was remarkable.
In a forest with the history of this one, with the corruption that had been present in its soil and water for however long the demons had been stationed here, clear water was not the expectation.
But the pond was not just clear.
It glowed.
Not brightly — not the conspicuous luminescence of active essence constructs or magical sources. The subtle, suffused glow of something that existed below the surface and expressed itself upward through the water’s depth rather than at the surface. Soft. Blue-adjacent without being blue, the color of something that had no precise name because it had not been encountered often enough to need one.
Damien looked at the surface.
At what moved beneath it.
Not the ordinary inhabitants of a forest pond. The shapes beneath the glowing surface were distinct from anything he had seen in the water bodies he had passed through this forest — not the rapid, darting motion of common fish, but something more deliberate, the movement of things that occupied their space with the awareness of creatures that had existed in it for long enough to have no reason for urgency.
Long. Translucent at the fins, the body carrying the same quality of light as the water they moved through, as if they were less fish and more the physical expression of the pond’s luminescence given shape and independent motion.
He stared at them.
And then something in the back of his memory moved.
Not a recent memory. Not anything from the months in this forest or the time since his exile or the period of rebuilding that had followed it. Something from before. Something from the specific, bounded world of a childhood that had existed under conditions he had not chosen and had been removed from abruptly and had spent considerable time since trying not to think about more than was useful.
A table.
Not a large table, or a formal one, or the kind that important occasions required. A smaller table in a room that received afternoon light differently from the rest of the house, a room he had associated with occasions that were good rather than the occasions that were expected.
The fish had been a delicacy.
That was the word that had been used, by people who used words like delicacy with the specific ease of people who had always had access to delicacies and had not developed the relationship with that word that came from its absence. He had not used the word himself at the time — he had been young enough that the vocabulary of what he was eating was less interesting than the eating of it.
But he had eaten it.
More than once. The occasions that the smaller room with the afternoon light had been for — the specific intersection of a good day and the particular fish being available and someone in the household having decided the combination warranted a meal worth remembering.
He had remembered it.
He didn’t eat it often. Not as a source of grief or longing in the direct sense, not in the way that some childhood memories had sharp edges that needed managing.
But in the passive way that certain sensory experiences persisted — the specific quality of the taste, different from everything else he had eaten before or since, the way it had occupied the palate with something that had no comparison because it was not common enough to have developed comparison.
Essence Carp.
That was what he was looking at.
A pond full of them, here in the Forest of Twin Disasters, glowing faintly in the water of a depression that had apparently been undisturbed enough and essence-rich enough for long enough that they had developed a population.
He looked at them for a long moment.
Cerbe’s middle head had drifted toward the pond with the interest of a creature that found anything glowing at ground level worth examining.
He raised one hand.
"No," he said.
The middle head retreated.
Aquila had also oriented toward the pond, the golden eyes reading the surface with the focused attention of a predator identifying prey.
"No," he said again.
Aquila looked at him.
Then at the pond.
Then away, with the specific quality of something that had been told no about something it found interesting and was processing its feelings about that.
Damien dismounted.
He crouched at the pond’s edge, the water clear enough that he could read the depth — not deep, maybe three meters and a half at the center, the essence fish moving through the full column of it without preference for surface or bottom. The closest one was within arm’s reach of the bank.
He watched it.
The light it carried was not external — not the reflection of the pond’s ambient glow. It came from within the fish itself, the essence it had accumulated expressing through its translucent body as something visible from outside. Which meant the concentration in this population was significant, the fish having had the time and the environment to build up what they carried.
He thought about the last time he had eaten one.
He thought about the room with the afternoon light.
He thought, briefly, about who else had been at that table. "Damon and Uncle Osbourne. I wonder what they are up to now."
Indeed, it was his uncle that had always taken them to that special room just for this delicacy, claiming it would strengthen their body and heighten their senses. His body felt stronger and his senses were heightened.
’Was he really saying the truth?’
Damien didn’t know anymore. He had no idea if the carps he ate had somehow influenced his growth to this level.
Then he shook his head. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. It didn’t matter to him again.
He filed the thought.
Stood.
Looked at the pond for one more moment, the gentle luminescence of it visible even in the forest’s canopy-filtered daylight, the fish moving through their undisturbed depth with the patience of things that had never had reason to be otherwise.
He summoned Luton’s attention — the slime had been riding in its usual position and had, uncharacteristically, not attempted to investigate the glowing water despite it being exactly the kind of thing Luton typically approached with interest.
He realized, looking at the slime, that the restraint was probably intentional.
Luton had read his reaction.
He looked at the pond one more time.
"Leave them be for now," he said.
Whether he was saying it to Luton or to Cerbe or to Aquila or simply to the air was not entirely clear.
He mounted Fenrir.
The wolf resumed its walk without being directed to, the heading unchanged, the forest closing back around them as the terrain rose back to its normal elevation and the pond’s glow diminished behind them and then was gone.
Damien rode through the forest and said nothing for a while.
Luton settled on his head.
Cerbe distorted the air to his left.
Aquila was magnificent to his right.
The seventh altar was ahead.
He would get there when he got there. And maybe when he was done with whatever the get was and had unlocked the thing sealed in this forest, he would come back to this spot to eat Essence Carp to celebrate how far he’d come.
Nothing that, Damien’s ride continued.
Fenrir’s pace remained unhurried, the wolf navigating the terrain with the same easy authority it brought to everything, the path northeast holding without requiring Damien’s active direction.
The forest around them had settled into the particular rhythm it maintained in the middle hours of the day — not the active dawn movement of creatures beginning their cycles, not the heightened evening atmosphere of things converging toward the end of theirs. Just the steady, breathing continuity of a living place.
Cerbe walked to his left and generated its ambient heat.
Aquila was magnificent to his right and knew it.
Luton sat on his head and weighed nothing.
The demon announced itself poorly.
That was the first thing Damien noticed — not the presence itself, but the quality of the announcement. Most demons of any significant grade that had survived in this forest for the duration of the demonic occupation had developed, through necessity, some degree of awareness about the difference between approaching something carelessly and approaching it with the tactical patience that surviving in a competitive environment required.
This one had not.
Or perhaps it had once and had not recalibrated since the change in the forest’s hierarchy that Damien’s weeks here had produced. Whatever the reason, it emerged from a section of dense undergrowth to the right of Fenrir’s path with the direct, committed approach of something that had identified a target and was not interested in patience.
Damien read it before it fully emerged.
Grade Four.
The density of the presence was clear — not the overwhelming weight of the Grade Three demons that had tested him in this forest, not the relatively manageable Grade Five range that had populated most of the engagement in the last several days. Grade Four. Significant, real, carrying the genuine threat that grade represented.
Also something else.