Chapter 2-48: Silver and Moonlight (1/2)
“The dogs can follow the corpse back where it came from. You don’t really think a dead thing wandered ten miles over a ridge line and through the forest to here, do you, Papa? It would go downhill and follow the terrain. That leads away to the northeast. The only way it would end up here is if something dragged it up to the hills so it would follow the slopes down when it woke up.”
Her father’s face was getting flinty. She had gently prodded him over the years to keep up with his shooting and hunting, and he was a fine skeet shooter. The fact she saved him and the other kids a lot of money on ammo was a thing.
She didn’t touch a firearm herself, of course, although she encouraged all of her siblings. When they saw how good she was with a crossbow, none of them bothered to say anything about it.
And they all knew where the silver bullets were kept.
“So, you want to find out where he died, and what actually killed him, Samantha?”
“Papa, they left the corpse to walk down this way. That means they aren’t that far away. They got their taste of killing someone. They’re going to kill again.”
“Yeah, they are.” He looked up at the sky. “It’s probably too late to set out tonight. How about we get ready and set out at first light tomorrow?”
Samantha nodded slowly, looking at the suddenly ominous woods. “I’m going to get my crossbow and scout the first mile back with the dogs.”
“Be careful, Samantha,” he said, totally unnecessarily. She’d been shooting game in the forest since she was four. He could still remember the scene of her walking out of the woods with a fully dressed-out six-point stag being towed behind Bowser using a custom harness when she was five years old. She had ground up the horns long ago for some alchemical concoction...
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What she called Rune Chemistry was without a doubt extremely valuable to the family, and she quietly sold stuff online that generated a great deal of money over time. Concentrated rations, water pills, and the like saved a lot of weight when hiking. Most of it she re-invested in more stuff to sell, taking off some for buying special projects.
The mithral-edged short sword was only twenty-four inches long, but she wasn’t truly strong enough to use a full sword right now, and she wasn’t going to be dragging a rapier around in the woods. Just that edging of starsilver had cost ten thousand dollars, but she wasn’t going to be putting alchemical silver that couldn’t hold a decent edge on a Weapon.
The rest of the family would have been astounded to know that she actually had a magical Weapon... but she was a Natural Swordswoman, and she needed a sword nigh as much as she needed to breathe.
Powered Level, Primos Practice. Hard to practice without a decent Weapon. If you couldn’t butcher your way to fast Levels in combat, there was only dry, endless repetition, learning, improving, conditioning, and creating positive Karma for yourself that way.
She had carefully been encouraging her whole family into this or that activity, and her siblings didn’t know it, but they were all Nulls now, and so were some of their friends. She had been showing them the basics of Rune Chemistry, and Jill and William were particularly enthusiastic about it, and even her mother liked to work on some of the simpler stuff, spinning useful stuff out of weeds and berries and good, hard work...
As planned, her mother had leaked some of the easier stuff, with low sales potential, out to her circle of friends, and they were slowly being distributed. How to make proper Dreamcatchers; Embroidery effects, designs, and Patterns that made subtle Wards and reinforced a Threshold; actual recipes for poultices that worked; and other minor effects. Using Alchemical variations of them would have cost an arm and a leg, but with steady time and effort they were spreading out.
One of the neighboring farmers had protested that such things didn’t actually have any power. His affronted wife had brought in Sister Evana from the temple to Flora, who had acclaimed in delight at how subtle and marvelous the designs of the simple hangings on the walls were at reinforcing the house’s Threshold and keeping out random minor spirits. Bocephus Durkon had shut his mouth and never said another word about it, while the tale got around, and sewing circles suddenly became A Thing with real purpose behind them.
These things couldn’t actually be made by Powered, and so couldn’t be made by arcane devices. Rune Chemistry, totally Natural Alchemy. Hedge Magic and Folk Magic, huffed the arcanists and Alchemists, but they couldn’t dispute the fact that such things actually worked... and given the internet age, the whole thing could proliferate very quickly.
Herb gardens had been popular for a long time, if only because they could be sold to local Alchemists or healers for something. They were now rapidly becoming essential for any family that wanted to protect themselves better.
Her time was coming, and she had to prepare to step away from her family to protect them.
The book she was writing was nearly done. Then she would need to design the production process, and see it implemented.
It would make her a decent amount of money, without failing. Natural Alchemy was going to help spread the broad, low power, and prepare the way for the Forsaken.
But first, there was a werewolf who couldn’t control himself that needed to be killed.
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There hadn’t been anything around the immediate trail, the dogs had no problems following the trail out for a mile.
She wasn’t actually expecting anything, but she had the dogs sniffing to see if anything had followed the trail.
But it wasn’t nightfall yet, and the night is when weres had the most problem maintaining control.
She was expecting the were to come down to check on its victim this night... and the dogs would smell it if it did. By stopping here, she would distract it by thinking this was as far as they’d pursued the matter.