THE UNBOUND MORTAL

Chapter 10

The waterfall roared like a falling mountain, curtaining the mouth of the narrow cave in a sheet of white foam and cold mist.

Logan stumbled through the curtain, his boots catching on a slippery, moss-covered ridge of stone. He hit the damp ground on his right shoulder, rolling once to absorb the fall before his breath caught in his throat.

A wave of blinding fire surged through his left arm.

The burned skin from his wrist to his elbow was gray, cracked, and weeping clear fluid. The cold river water that had soaked his jacket only made the scorched flesh throb with a deep, sickening pulse. His ribs ached from the shockwave of Christian’s firebolts, and the sulfur dust coated the back of his tongue like bitter ash.

He pushed himself up onto one knee.

The sharp, metallic sound of a cocked trigger cut cleanly through the roar of the waterfall.

A cold iron bolt hovered two inches from the bridge of Logan’s nose.

The crossbow was made of blackened ash-wood, reinforced with bronze wire. The iron quarrel notched in the groove was coated in a sticky, iridescent emerald grease that smelled faintly of rotten almonds.

"Don't twitch," a woman’s voice whispered from the shadows of the cave. "One drop of Emerald Wyrm spit will turn your blood into hot porridge in six seconds. Your bones will melt through your skin before you can take another breath."

Logan did not move. He did not raise his hands, nor did he lean away from the poisoned iron point.

He stayed still, his breathing shallow, and let his eyes adjust to the dim, green-tinted light of the cavern.

Behind the crossbow stood a young woman, perhaps nineteen or twenty years old. Her dark hair was cut jaggedly at her shoulders, tied out of her eyes with a strip of greasy leather. She wore a heavy leather alchemist’s apron over a torn tunic, stained with bright yellow acid burns and dried purple berry juice.

Above her forehead hovered a pale, sickly green interface that flickered like a dying candle:

[Sophia Evans — System: Alchemical Apprentice (E-Rank) — Level: 3]

Her fingers were wrapped tightly around the wooden stock of the crossbow, but Logan noticed what an ordinary fighter would have missed.

Her weight was resting entirely on her back heel, tilted away from him. Her left elbow was shaking from the strain of holding the heavy weapon. Her breathing was fast and shallow, her collarbones jumping with each breath. 

Most importantly, her eyes were darting repeatedly toward the upper right corner of her vision, where her low-grade interface was desperately trying to calculate Logan’s threat level.

[Target: Logan Carter — System: ??? — Threat: Undefined]

The flickering light of her own defective system was blinding her to his physical posture.

"You're one of Gabriel's dogs," the woman spat, her knuckles whitening on the trigger. "Or did Brandon Cox send you to finish what he started at the apothecary in the Lower Ward? Did he promise you a bag of silver to drag my corpse back to the Council?"

"If I were an Inquisitor," Logan said, his voice flat and dry, "there would be three squads of Vanguard archers setting fire to the riverbank behind me instead of just one dead enforcer bleeding out in the gorge."

Sophia’s eyes narrowed. "An enforcer? Who?"

"Christian Morris," Logan replied. "He won't be using his hands anymore. But he lit a beacon before his throat closed. You have about twenty minutes before thirty armored hunters reach this ridge."

Sophia stared at him. She glanced at the ruined, blackened sleeve of his canvas jacket, the fresh blood dripping from his boots, and the cold iron bodkin tucked into his belt.

"Christian Morris is Level Eight," she whispered, her voice cracking with doubt. "A B-Rank Executioner. He can turn a wild boar to ash with a wave of his hand. You... you don't even have a status ring around your neck. You don't have a mana aura."

"He relied on auto-targeting," Logan said simply. "His system told him where I would be. He didn't look at where I actually stepped."

Sophia didn't lower the bow. "Liar. A mortal can't dodge a B-Rank tracking spell."

Logan didn't argue. He turned his eyes away from the crossbow and looked past her shoulder into the depths of the cavern.

The cave was small, dry, and filled with the sharp, clean smells of crushed mint, dried wormwood, and bitter vinegar. 

Along the stone walls sat three makeshift wooden tables held together with leather cord. On the tables were dozens of glass vials, clay bowls, a small copper distillation coil, and a mortar filled with a grayish-green paste.

Beside the mortar lay three ingredients: crushed silver-leaf thyme, bruised black nightshade berries, and a slab of boiled swamp-pig fat.

Logan looked back at the woman. "You're making a burn salve," he said.

"What if I am?" she hissed, keeping the iron point level with his forehead.