NOVEL FROG Ch. 7: Stealth
As Cass strode deeper into the forest, the path widened and the underbrush thinned. Above the canopy thickened, with less and less of the storm-ready skies visible, until the only light was the glowing mosses and lichens. What plants remained at the ground level were few and far between.
Here and there, grew enormous bushes beneath open shafts in the canopy. Each leaf was wider than dinner plates to catch every sliver of dappled light that dripped to the forest floor. Vines were more common, twisting up tall trunks, chasing distant lights far above. Mushrooms were common across the forest floor. Most were no bigger than her pinky, a few larger than her torso. They came in every shape, from wide caps to slender trumpets to formless masses.
She was glad for her flashlight again. She kept it on its lowest setting, the light at her feet, using it to avoid tripping over gnarled roots or exposed stone. With any luck, it would be one more dim light in a sea of bioluminescence.
Behind her, she heard a rustling. She spun, her feet heavy as lead. Her eyes scanned the sparse undergrowth and the pillars of trees. The rustling continued. Drawing closer. Her heart thumped in her chest.
Slowly, she pocketed her flashlight and moved her hands to the base of her staff. She didn’t know the first thing about staff fighting, she could only hope it wasn’t too different from swinging a baseball bat.
She didn’t know what was coming. She could only hope that it would be manageable. No magic, she hoped. No crazy status effects. No claws.
She could still run, she realized. Just because she had a quest to fight something didn’t mean she had to listen. Running had worked out just fine for her so far.
But what if it was faster than her?
The air was slow between the trees. The wind whipped along the cliffs losing most of its power on the outer trees and undergrowth long before reaching these dark depths.
She could probably still Wind Step, but she couldn’t be sure how far it would take her or where she would end up.
A twig snapped. Her breath caught in her throat.
There was a silhouette through the trees. It was big. Bigger than the hound. Taller than her. A crown of antlers sparked blue and white on its head.
Blue-tail Deer Lordling
Lvl 15
She didn’t read the rest, her eyes freezing on the level. This was not something she could fight.
The only saving grace was the deer wasn’t moving directly toward her, but almost parallel. If she could just hide…
There was a wide tree between her and it, barely a foot to her left.
She moved slowly, her heart pounding in her chest. No sudden movement. Soft steps across the forest floor. Not a sound as she moved. Quiet as a draft through an old house.
It was the longest foot of her life. She held her breath even as she pressed her back against the rough bark of the lightningwood.
Her ears strained for the sound of its approach through the sparse undergrowth. As she did, she let herself finish reading the description Identify had provided her.
[A young male blue-tail deer of the West Forest. Too young to have females of his own but too old to attend an older lord. A lordling like this will search the forest for other young males and challenge them to duels fought with their antlers and their potent magic to win or impress mates.]
This was an adolescent? Oh lord, what had she gotten herself into? Clearly, the forest was even more dangerous than the cliffs. She couldn’t—
Skill Earned: Stealth (lvl 1) (Wind)
[Slink through the shadows through places you should not be or do not wish to be found. Unseen as the wind. As quiet as a breath.
Passively reduces one’s presence to others to a small degree.
Active use greatly reduces one’s presence to others and advises on how best to move one’s body to mitigate detection.
Association with the Concept of Wind increases the effect of these bonuses while user is in motion.
Modified by Dex.]
The system window appeared before her eyes and with it came a warmth in her chest. A calm. A certainty that she was not about to be found just yet.
She was lighter on her feet like they barely touched the forest floor. All at once, she knew that she could do better than this. If she shifted slightly, she would blend better with the irregular shadows cast by the lichen.
Was this the effect of this skill?
How did that work? How did she know more about Stealth than she had thirty seconds ago?
She hadn’t been taught. She just knew.
Her heart thumped in her chest despite her held breath. How did she just know? What else could she just know? Where did the system draw the line between knowledge and opinion? Between opinion and personality?
The lordling brushed up against the opposite side of her tree, yanking her back to the real and immediate crisis. Its antlers rubbed against the bark.
Cass held her breath. She didn’t dare to move. She didn’t dare to breathe.
Why didn’t it go away? Why was it still there?
There was a crunch. The snap of a branch from a tree. The grind of leaves between teeth. The slow shuffle of the lordling through the underbrush.
It was rounding the tree.
Cass’s heart pounded in her chest. It was going to see her.
Would it attack? Herbivores could be even more vicious than carnivores on Earth. Male deer could be highly territorial. It didn’t need big teeth and a killer appetite to decide she needed to die for trespassing.
She needed to move. To run. To hide.
But if she moved, it would hear her. She needed to remain still.
Stealth has increased to level 2.
No. That was wrong. She was certain of it. She could move without attracting its attention.
More than could, she had to if she wanted to remain undetected.
Cass sidled around the tree’s trunk, Stealth guiding her feet over the dry forest floor. She could see the patches of crinkly leaves. Could feel how the skill wanted her to shift her weight.
The lordling nosed the ground where Cass had been hiding, munching on a low-lying plant.
Stealth pointed out another tree on the opposite side of the lordling. Cass would be safer there. She needed to only make it.
Her heart pounded in her ears. That might all be true, but it would take only a single mistake for the lordling to see her in between the trees. It needed only look up and over its shoulder.
But she could do it. Stealth whispered its encouragement. Its certainty.
She took the first step. Then the next. Stealth directed the third.
She brushed against a shrub on the fourth, the hissing rustle of branches as loud as lightning in her ears.
Stealth told her to keep moving. It was just another sound among many. The wind in the trees. Just another noise of the forest.
The lordling didn’t look up.
She took the fifth and then the sixth. Like a ghost, she slipped behind the next tree, safe for another minute.
Stealth has increased to level 3
It was, objectively, a strange feeling. It felt more like she had always known how to move like this. It felt good. Like she was more complete now than she had been without it.
It felt as natural as breathing.
As alien as the glowing forest around her.
Behind her, she heard the lordling moving off. Slowly, too slowly, the shuffle of its body through the undergrowth disappeared among the other quiet noises of the forest.
She let out a relieved sigh.
This was good. Stealth was what she needed most in this world. She could choose her fights. They didn’t all need to devolve to a mad dash away.
And that was good, no matter where that knowledge had come from.
She shifted her hands back up her walking stick and ducked out from the tree she had been cowering behind. Neither her stick nor her feet made a sound in the loose detritus of the forest floor.
A small grin slipped across her lips as she continued deeper into the forest, actively using stealth to move from the shadow of one large tree to the next, like a ghost on the wind.
As she skulked deeper into the forest, she inspected the skill’s description again. Most of it was self-explanatory except for the “Concept of the Wind” bit. It seemed like it empowered her skill somehow. Why though, she did not know.
Her other two skills–Wind Step and Identify–didn’t have the “(Wind)” tag after their level, suggesting they weren’t being boosted by the Concept the way Stealth was.
But why not? If any skill was to get a boost from Wind, wouldn’t it be Wind Step?
If the system had answers to her questions, it kept them to itself.