Threads of the Soul

Absolutely nothing. That's what was left of the loot they were supposed to get after that horrific battle with a small army of goblins. No bodies, No goodies, Not even a drop of stinking blood. Nothing. All gone.

Well, that's how it felt to Seth anyways but it wasn't exactly true. For one thing there was definitely more than a few drops of stinking blood, perhaps stinking might have been more than just an inflammatory tone with how rancid the stench was.

It was that same blood that was slurping at Seth's boots with every step, dragging them into the crimson stained mud and refusing to let go without a little bit of a fight.

The only goodies really in question were the scrap weaponry and the truly depraved clothing that they had woven together out of not animal hide. Definitely not something that they wanted and absolutely not what they needed. But he couldn't understand that part. If the bodies were taken away by some sneaky scavenger beast, like an Owl swooping down or a wolf passing by, then why would their clothing be left?

Even if it had been taken off them by the scavenger, then surely there would be some form of damage on them. But there was none, except from the damage that had been sustained through the battle.

He might have been a terrible tracker, but even he knew that Wolves didn't stab people. Well… Maybe they did now, but even so they wouldn't use swords to do so! Or maybe they did… The world is pretty weird now.

Bah, Whatever. It didn't matter. Either way he still knew that the markings made in the depraved clothing was caused by his hunting party. They hadn't been torn off the bodies.

So where the hell had they gone? It was like he was looking at a world after the rapture, as if something like that could ever happen to those wretched little things, or the week after Christmas when all the snowmen… melted.

Lifting his boot, Seth gazed at the viscous brown substance, a mixture of blood and mud, as it dripped down from his sole in a long, thick bridge before dissolving into the ground.

'They melted?'

Placing his boot back down on the ground, Seth looked over the scene again with a new eye. More specifically, with the same set of eyes that were now glowing a faint, yet pure white.

As he swept his gaze over the now empty field, his eyes glowing with his self named 'Soul Sight' he had expected to see the lingering remnants of the Hemogoblins souls. Even if the bodies had dissolved, for whatever reason, surely the souls would remain… right? Yet as he looked around, there was nothing.

The only remnant that he could see was on the only remaining corpse, which happened to be the mage, but everywhere a body had melted there was absolutely nothing.

He made sure to do a few checks, just in case he missed something. First a few glances over the entire scene before, out of sheer annoyance, starting to check through the piles of 'clothes' one by one with his 'Soul Sight' active. Keeping his eyes in his 'Soul Sight' for too long was starting to burn his eyes, it felt like he hadn't blinked once the entire time, until eventually he had to start taking breaks between the inspections just to give his eyes a few moments of rest.

Only when his eyes were truly boiling, as if they were the main ingredient in the soup of the day and it was nearly ready for dinner time, did he finally make a discovery!

Quickly turning his vision back to normal, Seth kept his eyes clenched closed and only finally opened them when he was sure that they wouldn't spontaneously burst into flames. Using his new puppeteered Dirk he lifted the goblins wretched clothing, since he refused to actually touch it with his hand, Seth crouched down and snatched the object in question out from the blood infested muck.

Resting in the palm of his hand, no bigger than a 50p coin, was a stone. It was flat on one side, being more rough on the other, with slightly rounded edges and an uneven shape. It was the type of stone that some eager, yet ill informed, archaeology enthusiast might dig up and mistake for an ancient arrowhead before tossing away when they realised how worthless it was.

In fact, that was the same urge that Seth very briefly had when he made such a discovery.

Instead he pushed down that urge and gave the stone a very brief, and very painful, inspection with his soul sight that showed something quite peculiar. The stone had a soul. At least that's what it looked like at first.

But when he fed his threads into it, he felt no response. There was no devouring of a tiny fragment nor awakening of an ancient being split into 7 tiny, useless looking stones. There was just a stone that slightly glowed under his peculiar eyes.

Indeed, on second thought the signal that he got from the stone was far too weak, it's light too dim and pathetic, to ever be a real soul. When he brushed his thumb over the deceptive stone, he could feel intricate markings carved into its flat surface. He noticed that these markings, upon closer inspection, were a similar writing to the strange language that made up his floating friend, Angel.

Although there were some differences, with the writing on the stone being far more crude and jagged while Angels were smooth and looked as if they had leapt directly from a typewriters page.

"What's that thingy?"

A soft and warm sensation pressed against his shoulder and cheek, but Seth didn't bother taking his eyes off the rock as he examined its markings.

"Do you have to do that?"

"Have to? No. Want to? All the time."

Cynthia nuzzled her head onto his shoulder more, the rest of her body simply melting into a pile instead of bothering with the oh so human concept of bending over. Yes, naturally the soft and bouncy thing resting on his shoulder was just Cynthia's head. What else would it be?

"You never answered the question though Silver. What is that thing? Or have you just developed a special fascination with rocks?"

"I think it has something to do with why the bodies are missing. You did notice that, didn't you?"

"Duh, of course I did. Why do you think I'm here annoying you?"

"Hmm… And here I thought you just did that for fun."

"Usually, but sometimes it also has a purpose."

Like a living emoticon, Cynthia's face morphed into the perfect cartoon expression of smugness, even forming a pair of cat ears on her head before morphing back to her usual appearance.

Seth couldn't help but crack a smile at her antics, shaking his head softly before tossing the stone up and catching it again.

Rolling the stone in his hand, he stood up and began to squelch his way over to the only remaining corpse of the battle. The Hemogoblin mage.

"I'm starting to think that those things weren't alive, not properly. This stone has a tiny hint of soul energy on it, just like the Wraiths did with their cores except, this is far too weak. I mean there is barely anything there anymore, just the dregs at the bottom of the glass."

"I don't know Silver. They seemed pretty alive to me. But what? Those stones are supposed to be their souls or something?"

"I'm leaning more towards the something. I bet if you looked through the remains of the rest, where their bodies melted, that you will find a stone like this."

As soon as he reached the mage's corpse, Seth immediately crouched down and began to root through its clothing. Not even bothering to worry about the material they were made out of, only about proving his theory right.

While he was searching the body he kept talking, although perhaps to Cynthia it sounded more like rambling.

"Think about it, why do they collect the blood? Sure they could be drinking it. But then why not just drink it straight away? Why gather it in a big ball in the sky or cover themselves in it? Why, especially in this world, would you waste food like that?

I mean it can't have been easy for this guy to hold the ball like that. Surely they could have come up with a better way to transport it. Unless…"

"Unless they weren't planning on transporting it either."

"Bingo."

Closing his fingers around a small pound, Seth ripped it off the mages body from where it had hung around its neck. His dagger unsheathed itself, obeying the whims of its master, it soared through the air and sliced the bottom of the pouch. As soon as the blade split the fabric, the contents began to pour out, spilling across the dirt, revealing a collection of stones similar to the ones in Seth's hand.

As the dagger returned to its sheath, Seth shared a knowing look with Cynthia before glancing at the pile of stones. A silent count in their heads confirmed that there were more stones here than the amount of Hemogoblins they had faced.

Thankfully they had found these things just in time, god only knows what would happen if they had let the mage get away. It could have caused untold-

{Hunter groups, please return to base. I repeat, Hunter groups please return to base. We have a problem.}