Threads of the Soul

Snatching a small rectangular device from where it had hung on her waist, Cynthia quickly brought it up to next to her head. Obviously, she had no physical need to actually do this, since she didn't have ears to hear things with and instead used… Actually Seth had no idea how she heard things.

But considering the fact she could do it when she was nothing more than a formless puddle on the floor, he was pretty sure that ears had nothing to do with the process.

The device she was currently speaking into, and that had previously made noise, was naturally the final of the trio of system gifts. The Communication device. He had seen it briefly back when they were trying to escape the office hellscape; One of their 'camping' companions had picked that option when it was presented to them.

"A problem? Is that really all you're going to give us? What kind of problem exactly? I mean could you be any more vague Steve?"

{You see we are… wait, How did you know it was me?}

"You mean other than that weaselly voice? How could I forget it after the last time?"

{It's not weaselly…}

"So what is it huh? You better not be calling me to tell me you and your buddies ate strange things again. Lemme guess, your ass turned green so you could complete the Barney look."

{STOP CALLING ME BARNEY!}

Cynthia began to move away from Seth and took the conversation, which had turned into something more akin to petty bickering. Although even once she had reached a distance that her words were inaudible, he could still hear a few choice words being shouted down the line towards her.

Shaking his head, Seth moved his focus away from Cynthia torturing the poor plum coloured man and instead onto something far more important.

LOOT!

Of course, who didn't love this part. You did all the hard work, now it was time to get the goodies. Even if the universe had spit in his pie a little with the lack of other corpses to loot, at least with the mage no one would be able to contest his right to the loot. Not that they seemed bothered with doing such a thing anyways, too focused on gathering food above all.

But he had plenty of that right now, far too much for just himself even with preservation. It would be a waste to keep it all, not to mention just a downright asshole move.

However, where it was obvious to share basic and essential resources like food, loot on the other hand? Cold, inedible and hopefully shiny loot? That was all his, at least for now.

As Seth turned back to the body, he could feel the natural urge to rub his hands together in delight and anticipation, but long gone was that sacred ritual. Left with only the one grubby little mitt, he immediately went to work searching through the mages body again.

It was a far more in depth search than the last. Before he knew what he was looking for, and had found it fairly quickly to boot, but now he was focused on finding every little secret the blighter had on him.

He tore his way through its grotesque clothing, searching through every inch of its body, including inside of its shoes. The only place he had the dignity, and the lack of stomach, to search through was its prison wallet.

He may have been a loot fiend at heart but even he wasn't depraved enough to go elbow deep in a goblin just for the hopes of a few more shinies.

When he was finally sure that he had collected everything of use or interest, he made sure to gather up the scattered stones. He was curious about the meaning of the carvings, if they could be replicated or changed. The fact that this mage could use them to create such life-like creatures that were devoid of real life and seemingly acted independently of the caster. It would be wonderful if he could copy such an ability or make ones of his own.

Once he was sure he had gathered up all the stones, he used his threads to invade the lifeless remains of the irritating goblin mage before gobbling up the remnants of its soul. A soul that, to Seth's eyes, appeared as a mass of pulsating black sludge instead of the white sun he was used to.

He was thankful that he couldn't taste it when his threads were slurping it up, he could imagine that it probably tasted like something truly and utterly disgusting. Like mouldy cheese left out in the blazing sun for an entire month, scooped up into a blender before being mixed with fresh garbage and sewer water. Or perhaps even worse, it could taste like black liquorice.

The moment he thought of it, he immediately regretted giving himself those horrific mental tastes, but it still wouldn't stop him from taking the soul for the sweet sweet stat points.

[Your Spiritual Score has increased.]

Just hearing Angel whisper those words into his mind immediately washed away the dreadful, imaginary taste lingering in his mouth.

Opening his hand, he counted his gains from the conquest of the mage but, unfortunately, it wasn't a very impressive haul. There were a few gems of various sizes and colours, although just from a brief examination he could tell they weren't exactly normal gemstones they had plucked from a jewellery store. He could feel hints of power, of some kind of strange and unknown energy, radiating from within them but he couldn't identify what exactly it was.

His first thought was that they were like the soul cores he received from the Wraith, but his threads did nothing to them, so he simply decided to put them to the side for later study. He wasn't quite at the point of eating random rocks to see if anything would happen.

The only other thing of note, other than the gems and carved stones, were a small collection of misshapen coins. He had never seen the metal they were made out of before, but they were definitely coins of some variety.

There was writing on one side, although in what language he had absolutely no idea, surrounding the image of a face while the other side had a decoration of an all too familiar creature, a dragon. Curiously enough, it was not the depiction of the dragon that caught his attention, instead it was the face on the other side. The main reason being, the face was not of a goblin.

That's not to say it was human either. With two sets of eyes, no nose and a pair of horns curling from its forehead, whatever this figure was it was certainly not human.

Tucking away the enigmatic, and disappointingly unhelpful, loot, Seth moved away from the body and strolled over to Cynthia, who was just finishing up her conversation. As the mud sucked at his boots and squelched under every unsteady step, he was desperately hoping that wherever they would end up next would be back on some solid ground. City boys like him were not made for anything but good ol' fashioned, natural grown concrete.

"So, what's the verdict? What did the plum have to say?"

"Oh good, you know about that. Good news is, they haven't been eating any more strange plants they found. The bad news is, they seem to have attracted the attention of a lot of beasts.

Once I got someone useful on the line, I was finally able to get some details out of them. It's not the first time we've had attacks on the home base, let me be clear. That many warm bodies surrounded by food and emitting all sorts of smells just screams 'all you can eat buffet' to anything that might wander by.

However, that's all it ever was. Wandering beasts. They came around by happenstance, never large numbers or huge predators that had better hunting grounds. Most scavengers or if there were any groups, small ones. Never more than a dozen."

"Why do I feel like there is a but coming along…"

"Because there is. But… That seems to have changed recently. We've only been gone a few days, the other group less so, but ever since we left they've been getting a rising amount of attacks. They've become more frequent and more daring. The groups are getting bigger and so are some of the beasts too.

Of course, I had to ask if they had seen anything suspicious roaming around other than the beasts and…"

"Let me guess, someone saw little red men."

"Damn right. Seth there are more of those things out there and they know where we are. They're probing us, softening us up. God only knows how many of them are out there."

Letting out a sigh, he glanced over at the people that he had been hunting with the past few hours. Even if it had been a short time, he had grown closer to them, some more than others. Cynthia especially, he already thought of her as another one of his sisters.

If he really wanted to, he could walk away. He could go it alone, just him and his puppets, and try to survive for as long as he could. But he knew that wouldn't last long. More importantly, that wasn't who he was.

Only a heartless bastard could walk away when someone was helpless like that, and an especially worse kind to say that he was justified in doing so. The type of heartless bastard that was hiding with all those people and would definitely throw countless in front of him just to save his skin. Like hell was Seth going to let that happen anymore.

"Looks like it's time to settle some scores then."