The glob of pale green arced through the air, landing squarely one of the flower’s petals. Erich held his breath, waiting for the flower’s tongue to penetrate the skinned rock imp or for the petals to curl up as it began to devour the dead creature.

  Nothing happened.

  Erich cocked his head to the side slightly. The flower just sat there, smelling like a bakery making its morning bread while the chunk of imp meat slowly slipped down the side of the petal.

  He licked his lips, the taste of the fruit already on his tongue despite it not having made an appearance. That was the first thing he’d checked when he found the new flower. Then, after not discovering his quarry he remembered that the previous flower had dropped its fruit after consuming the bodies of two of the flying imps.

  Ten or so minutes of shaving the stone camouflage from a rock imp later, here Erich was, feeling a little foolish as he watched a plant sit there. He set down his pack, pulling out a canteen and taking another sip of the foul water. Constant hydration was necessary due to the oppressive heat that hadn’t let up in the slightest since Erich had arrived in hell, but more than anything he wished that hydration was coming from one of the flowers’ fruits.

  Erich closed his eyes for a second, taking in a deep breath and holding it for a second before releasing it. Behind his eyelids, his vision shown brightly, starlight glinting through the hole in the clouds as lightning rained down on the burning forest.

  His eyes snapped open, and Erich turned back around to walk toward the cinderborn marker, refreshed from his brief inward journey. The flower still called out to him, but that was a problem he could resolve later. For now, he was more or less full and had two full canteens of water left.

  With one final longing glance back over his shoulder at the flower, Erich fixed his attention on the next marker. Whatever else might happen, there was plenty of walking left for him to do, and there wasn’t any real reason to put off his journey.

  He walked on and on. The sky remained red, the rocks remained orange, the forest swayed in an almost imperceptible breeze, and the blue patches of rocks continued to crop up without any pattern or logic around the cauldrons of turquoise liquid. The only real way to mark his progress were the stakes left by the cinderborn smugglers every five hundred or so feet.

  The heat and smell ground down on Erich as he traveled. He was growing more acclimated to both, but it didn’t seem likely that he’d become fully accustomed to the choking scent of sulfur while he trudged through the sauna that was the valley. It didn’t take long before he was sweating again, forcing him to take another swig of the stomach roiling water.

  Erich wiped his forehead, eyes darting rapidly from one of the blue patches of landscape on his right to the forest that surrounded the river on his left. He had only been walking for a little under an hour and already another half a canteen of water was gone. Mentally he adjusted the time his journey would take to include frequent sojourns through the jungle to refill his supply of water.

  Distantly, he heard a familiar buzzing sound, and Erich hurried toward the forest. It took him maybe a minute to cut his way some twenty or so feet as the clamor of the flying imps grew louder.

  He was confident in his new abilities against enemies that fought on the ground. The rock imps had strong, camouflaged shells, and the slug imp’s acid was difficult to deal with if he let it get too close to him, but neither of those monsters could move quickly enough to threaten Erich if he saw them coming.

  After fighting a couple of times, Erich was beginning to understand what Sathis was getting at when the old cinderborn had forced him to fight the scavenger in the unclaimed lands. The differences in Erich’s speed and power were absurd. His technique with Magma Blossom might not be as good as it was with the Swaying Willow Blade, but the present version of Erich could easily physically overpower his older self regardless of the difference in skill.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t help him much against the flying imps. Erich only had one sword, and as strong as the weapon he’d inherited from Sathis was, he could only fight one monster at once. Even the rock imps had almost overwhelmed him when they surrounded him.

  With flying monsters, it would only be worse. They could attack him from all directions simultaneously, and even if Erich could kill two or three of them, that wouldn’t stop the rest of the imps from dragging him to the ground and clawing the life from him.

  Worse, the imps didn’t seem to fear death. In fact, they seemed to welcome it, feeding cannibalistically on their kin with just as much glee as they’d attacked him. Only the flower had managed to make them retreat, and they were almost as dangerous to Erich as the imps themselves. More so if he considered the way they influenced his emotions.

  Maybe if he had better armor or a second combat art, he might be able to fight back properly, but as things stood, a swarm of flying imps was to be avoided.

  Sure enough, barely five minutes later they dotted the sky, a swarm of buzzing and chattering locusts that combed over the landscape looking for any life. Erich dropped into a crouch as he watched their approach, trusting the tree cover to keep him hidden.

  Once again, there were about twenty of them. Erich had no way of knowing whether they were from the same swarm as before, only with replenished numbers. It didn’t matter all that much at the moment, but if the imps had some way to replace their fallen in a matter of hours, he might be in trouble.

  They continued onward, flying over the river that occupied the center of the valley. The imps were almost overhead with a flower tentacle shot free of the forest, skewering one of the monsters.

  The remaining imps scattered in all directions, the buzzing of their wings raising an octave as they tried to zip away from the flower. Another two unlucky fliers were plucked from the sky by additional tongues, and Erich shifted slightly as he watched the scene.

  Each of the flowers had at least three tongues. They couldn’t move, but if he needed to fight one for any reason, he would have to dodge three high speed attacks in a row.

  Unlike fighting an entire flock of imps, that was possible, but by the same token, Erich would rather avoid it. Battles might be a good way for him to earn aether, but each imp he’d slain was only a little more than a couple week’s worth of aether collection on the surface. Given that he was naturally absorbing almost three times as much aether just by breathing hell’s dank air, it didn’t seem worth it to risk his life for such modest gains.

  True, advancing to the second tier would solve a lot of Erich’s problems. Even if he didn’t have a technique he could learn to fill the slot a new tier would open, Erich could only imagine how much an improved image would temper his body.

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  He pursed his lips, thoughts trailing back to Sathis as he watched the imps fly away. It was strange to think of the cinderborn as his master, after all he had only known the man for a week, but in that time the old man had imparted more wisdom than Erich had learned from four years of training under Elias. It might not be quick for him to turn that wisdom into workable techniques, but all of the basics were there. All Erich would need to do is form a connection between his ideas and image through hard work and practice.

  Of course, he’d need to have an epiphany of some sort to use as the basis for his technique first. Sathis had been clear that the epiphanies weren’t something you could force. Practice and contemplating nature were two of the most common ways to spark one, but there was no way to control when and where the inspiration would strike.

  A sour expression darked Erich’s face. Only a week and Sathis was already a central figure in his life. After Gwen, Harold, Kaden, and Timothy, the cinderborn was the person he’d been the closest with. A depressing fact, but being pathetic didn’t make it untrue.

  Now, all of his companions were dead. The only people in the world that he had any connection to were Elias and Ben, and even if everything had gone well in the war, the chances that Erich would return to Burrwood and the stony faces of his family were slim to begin with.

  It was freeing really. Every connection to Hollendil was severed with one spell. Even the army didn’t know that Erich was alive, so it was barely even deserting. In some ways, it was actually a bit frightening.

  For the first time in Erich’s life, his future wasn’t mapped out for him. Since he was a child, Erich knew that he was going to enter the academy and become a soldier. Once he joined the academy, he began living in the bunkhouse and trained daily. From sunrise to sunset, Erich’s schedule was laid out for him in meticulous detail. Even his short breaks for socializing with his classmates were limited to narrow slivers of time that were designed to help them regain mental energy.

  The war was just as regimented. Nothing but training and guard duty under a lightless sky. There was always someone to tell him when and where to go.

  Finally, that was all done. It had cost the life of everyone he considered a friend, but now Erich could truly go where he wanted and truly be himself. The only problem was that he didn’t know what that meant. He had lived for his family, his country, and his friends, but Erich had never actually lived for himself. It felt like he was dangling over a void, clinging to Sathis’ final request as his only lifeline.

  In the sky, the imps were long gone. There was no reason for Erich to stay crouched in the forest, but he didn’t move. Instead, Erich remained perfectly still, eyes unfocused as he chewed anxiously on his lower lip.

  Sathis had promised him power and prestige, but was that what he truly wanted? When he was in the imperial army, he’d been happy at times. Stolen moments laughing along with Harold, Gwen, and Kaden. That had been nice, but he didn’t have any freedom. Ultimately, all of his friends had managed to die in an excursion that was even more pointless than the entire war itself.

  If he were living in a story, Erich would have planted his sword into the pile of corpses that he’d left in the cave and sworn revenge, but that seemed like almost as much a waste as the time he had spent learning his inferior martial arts. Even if he won, what would it gain him? Nettlewisp was dead. There wasn’t any grand conspiracy or greater design to Harold’s death. Just a junior officer being sacrificed on the pyre of his superior’s ambition.

  What would Erich even do? He was the victim of an entire system, not a single man or woman. Suppose he declared war on the entire Cothleer Empire. Even if he turned into the martial arts prodigy that Sathis seemed to think he would, that would just mean bathing all of Hollendil in blood as he fought his way toward the homeworld of the elves.

  He was just one man, not even in the second tier. For now he had a goal, survive his journey through hell. After that, he could finish Sathis’ request and return his sword. That should give him time to figure out what exactly Erich wanted to do with his life. Hopefully.

  A croaking sound disrupted Erich’s wildly gyrating thoughts. He looked up. Sitting on the branch of a nearby tree was a large lizard, maybe four feet long. Each of its oversized golden eyes stared at him through slitted pupils. Its tongue darted out, licking its nose

  Erich froze. It had definitely seen him, but unlike the other imps he had encountered so far, it didn’t make a move to attack him. In fact, it didn’t move at all. Slowly, the dark green coloration of its hide shifted slightly, matching the leafy pattern of the trees behind it until Erich could only see the animal’s abnormally large eyes.

  It was a gecko, not a lizard. There weren’t any scales on its body, and its skin seemed to shine in the sulfuric heat. One second stretched into another, and almost half a minute later, the animal still wasn’t moving

  He felt a little dizzy. It was like Erich was falling into the amber depths of the gecko’s eyes. Distantly, he realized that the animal hadn’t blinked. Its eyes had been open when he first spotted the animal, and they hadn’t closed since.

  Erich felt calm. Part of him was screaming that there is no way that he should be so relaxed around a potentially hostile animal in an inhospitable environment such as hell, but the deep gold of the gecko’s eyes smothered those cries.

  It was like drowning in honey. The minute Erich’s eyes met the gecko’s gaze, it stuck to him, sweet and alluring. No matter how he kicked and thrashed, it gripped onto his limbs and began slowly pulling him in.

  With a strangled scream, Erich jumped to his feet, drawing a burst of mana from his image. The strange attraction toward the gecko disappeared for a fraction of a second, and he used that opportunity to snap his eyes shut.

  Shaking his head rapidly, Erich tried to clear the dizziness and fog that had crept up on him. The mana running through his system made him feel a bit more in control of himself, but the sensation of losing himself just because he made eye contact with a monster was more than a little disconcerting.

  The gecko croaked at him again. Erich opened his eyes, careful not to match gazes with the creature. It was in the exact same spot as before, crouching on a branch and watching him carefully.

  Carefully, Erich lifted his sword, shifting to a double handed grip to prepare himself even as he dropped into a tense crouch. Just as he was about to lunge toward the gecko he heard a sound.

  Something croaked behind him. He froze. Something else croaked off to his right and then behind him again, but this time at a different angle.

  He pivoted slowly, heels digging into the muddy jungle soil as he turned around.

  Three geckos sat in the trees behind him. Two were stuck to the trunks of the trees themselves, their sucker tipped hands carefully avoiding the thorny vines that criss crossed their perch. The final monster also sat atop a branch.

  Somehow, while he had been distracted by the first gecko, the other three had used their camouflage to sneak up behind Erich, surrounding him. None of the creatures were moving, but there was no way for Erich to retreat down the path he had cut into the jungle. If he wanted to escape, his only option was the poisonous thorns that covered the trees.

  Icewater ran down Erich’s spine as he realized that the geckos, no they almost certainly were imps, on the tree trunks were larger than the one he’d already encountered. More worryingly, their eyes were crimson. The gecko on the nearby tree branch was the smallest of the four, its eyes the pale blue of freshly frozen water.

  “By the blood of the angels” Erich whispered.

  The gecko imp’s blue eyes flared with light and a fist of force hit him in the shoulder, knocking him back onto his heels. Erich’s left hand left the hilt of his sword, swinging back behind him frantically as the impact from the magic pushed him off of his feet.

  For a second, he thought that he would be able to get his arm behind him in time and stop his fall, but then the imp’s eyes flashed a second time. The blow didn’t do any damage, but it did send his falling body flying into the forest.

  Erich’s back hit a tree, knocking the wind from him, but he hardly even cared. Instead, he looked down in horror at the scratches covering his exposed arms. Already, he could feel the poison seeping into his body.

  He looked back up. Both of the red eyed geckos had left their trees at some point. They sat on the jungle floor in front of him, watching carefully as they waited for the thorns to do their insidious work.