Chapter Thirteen

Hyacinth didn't smell it. Harmony didn't sense it. It was Adric yanking the pair of them backward from a vicious square mouth of teeth rising out of what looked to be a flat stretch of earth that clued them in. The creature's tongue shot out nearly matching the speed Harmony was getting pulled away. Not too dissimilar from the kind of attack Hyacinth could make, except this tongue split into multiple tentacles.

[Cold Touch] lashed out, coming up short of what she liked the skill's chill to be. Bloody seals. Still, the writhing appendages tried to reach her even partially frozen. Adric's free arm held his dust-stone sword and swung in shattering a frozen chunk off the end, causing a high-pitched squeal from the monster that hurt Adric and Harmony as much as the beast had to hurt. [Final Silence] knocked the sound away, but they were left with ringing ears.

Ambush countered, now they had space to evaluate the enemy. Vaguely cube-shaped, its not-flesh pulsed and shifted with the colors around it, blending in then not. It avoided all the extra senses around soul sight, necrotuned feelings of life and death, inspection, and mana-style skills.

"Mimic," Adric grunted. "Never fought one. Benji told me that sometimes people will sneak them in to assassinate people. Nasty creatures. Cold should work well."

The whole thing wasn't too much bigger than a mossifant. Here the weight of the seals could be felt, as this had her second-guessing exactly what she could do now. Theoretically, a full-sized Hyacinth crashing into it at high speeds should be enough in a battle of competitive mass. But the familiar wasn't offering himself and Harmony couldn't shake the unease of how it moved, faded in and out, and resisted all inspection.

"I chill and you smash." [High Kick] was all defensive. Dart in and hop out. Tagging it with her best synergy of [Cold Touch] and [Mend] to freeze a chunk while Adric followed up to smash pieces off. It screamed but [Final Silence] continued better than cotton in their ears. The synergies and sideways usage of the skills while under all the seals burned with a light strain that she muscled through with a beat of stamina from her [Heart].

[Disintegrate] finally got some use as she splashed her newest and lowest level skill, eating scars out of it when she could. The eraser aspect wanted to remove the problem this monster presented.

A grind of a battle after she'd gotten used to dramatic final blows. It was hard even to predict how the mimic would attack. Adric got marked twice, once to shield her as the tentacle touched his bare skin; the effect was like he was cut by a blade rather than smacked by a semi-solid tentacle. Harmony healed what she could as they ground it down.

When it stopped moving, she couldn't sense if it died. Only the rewards revealed confirmed it. Spheres of energy holding what looked like a chunk of hard biscuit and a sealed glass pitcher of water floating out of the slowly dissolving ooze.

They cautiously approached it. Adirc went to the rewards while Harmony let her fingers sink into the edge of the remains. It's dead, it should be hers. Without the seal, this might be easier but she doubted it with how alien it felt. Working on touch alone, she rubbed the goop between her fingers and applied measured castings of [Manipulate Dead] and [Renew Spirit] with prods from [Disintegrate] and [Mend] to take apart and put together things.

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Unusable, completely unsuitable as a material for crafting clothes for either of them. It was like a shifting container of body, soul, container, and skills with other aspects she hadn't explored enough. She couldn't separate the component parts into anything useful. Hints of chaos and every element speckled through it as though it could become anything, yet with a complete repulsion meaning nothing could be made out of it. The one giant skill that felt dead and dying at what harmony could consider its heart or brain was similarly useless. [Claim the Remains of Power] felt offended by the oversized glob of blended erratic skill. The moment she ceased concentrating on figuring it out, the concept slipped out of her senses as though it was a bad dream.

"What can you tell me about mimics?" Harmony asked Adric who was waiting nearby with the rewards.

"Only what Uncle Benji has told me. Campfire stories. Being restricted to Naewauld or Hazeldown has limited our interaction with more than the odd thing tourists bring in, or what's deemed acceptable at trade hubs. Assassination tools which can be disguised as objects, scenery, pets, and even people. Hard to kill, resistant to poison, you want to use fire, acid, or cold otherwise you're guessing which skill will work. They were campfire stories while I visited him at Fort Rabble. Try the food." The bar-like biscuit had scores and he snapped off two small bites. Handed one to Harmony and tried to feed Hycinth who was sticking out of Harmony's cleavage.

Hyacinth huffed and shook his head before giving in. [Feed] wouldn't fill a belly. But it was the way he melted in pleasure that convinced Harmony to take her bite.

The cube melted in her mouth and as she chewed it, it was like a three-course meal at Ma Bell's table. Every chew brought out a new flavor. Bacon, potatoes, roasted fowl, as it ended it was a succulent dessert. Was that blueberry pie? She could taste the color and had to check her skin to see that it wasn't turning blue.

Like eating a whole litter of kittens, Hyacinth gushed through their [Familiar Bond].

Clearly, it was subjective to the eater, but better than that one square made her feel full. The pitcher of water was next. It quenched their thirst, but more than that a healing effect rushed through her. Easing the strain of the fight on her body and skills, her skin even felt moisturized after the exposure of the walk. One gulp was enough.

They had to walk around the indentation that had held the mimic as after only minutes the whole corpse had faded away. Senses on alert now she felt nothing, and neither did Hyacinth. Empty as it felt, there had to be more out there.

Blind, they took turns collecting rocks and tossing them at the landscape, trees, and bushes as they made their way to the camp. When a tree they checked tried to take a bite out of Adric they knew that wouldn't be enough. The smaller mimic wasn't as much of a problem as the bigger one. [Cold Touch] and [Disintegrate] were enough to take out the man-sized one, as it hadn't been that big a tree. It rewarded them two squares of food and a vial of water in the same protected bubble that seemed to be the Ascendant Games reward system.

[Disintegrate] and [Cold Touch] became the preferred probing tool. It did let her explore the limits the seal put to [Cold Touch] and get more of a handle on her newest skill's range, strength, and how it interacted with different materials. [Mana Rotation] lost its boosting ability. [Shadowed Graves] helped there some at least for her necromancy bases skill, but it was clear after a little experiment that maintaining the field skill without known targets to feed it wouldn't be viable and when she killed a bush-mimic it didn't recharge the skill at all, such an anathema it was.

The bush ended up being part of a pack of bushes, enough of a hassle she tossed up Hyacinth letting his force crash down and smoosh some of them after shifting to a bigger size, but not as big as Harmony had seen him get. One had managed to shift into a spike and impaled his tough skin enough to require a [Mend]. That was a problem for future fights.

Their base form seemed to be chest-like cubes of teeth at least and Harmony didn't love them large or small. If Mimics were the only beast type here She'd have a word with Haz'el Ri personally regardless of the consequences after the games ended.

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