The Madman's Guide to Miracles

Well fuck, as long as she doesn’t harm me.

I forced my mind flat, immediately summoning the most aggressively aggressive brain rot content I could think of loud soap cutting videos, crunching floral foam, and soft spoken soap bar tapping just to keep my thoughts completely, irreversibly unreadable.

Pulling my focus inward, I called up my status.

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SIGIL

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Name: Aseren Voric Azthal

Classification: Horror

Status: Unawakened

Rank: Greater Beast → Lesser Beast

Evolution: Mature

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I stared at the lines for a second, then dismissed them with a quiet breath.

No wonder I felt so out of it, both physically and mentally. Bloodburst had forced my rank down. Once the blood frenzy wore off and I spent six days unconscious, my body finally settled back into what it could actually handle.

I reached into my pouch and pulled out the old, yellowed leather map the amnesiac old man had handed me before everything went to shit. I unrolled it against my knee.

Four Regents marked. Three left. The Broodmother’s glowing ink dot was gone, leaving only a faint smudge.

My eyes caught the Ferryman’s marker. He was no longer at Blackwater Quarry. His dot was drifting north, cutting right along the border of Blackbriar Manor—the domain of the Lady of Steel.

The more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. If the Ferryman was heading toward Blackbriar, the beasts in the area would probably follow him toward the center, which should leave the mountain route to Saint Aldren Monastery relatively clear.

And then there was the Lady of Steel. She was completely solitary and apparently killed anything that wandered into her territory, so the outer edges of her domain should be pretty quiet too. At least, that’s what I was hoping.

As long as she didn’t decide to kill me, I might actually be able to make it through.

It was a risk, but it was the best path I had.

"We’re going in from the eastern side. If we keep to the edge of the territory, we should be able to reach the mountains without getting too close to the center where the corruption is taking place," I said, without looking back.

She didn’t respond.

I kept walking either way, annoyed. "Just stay close and don’t wander off. I don’t feel like coming back to look for you."

Still nothing.

I frowned. She’d been following me the entire time. Even when I wasn’t paying attention, I could hear the faint rustle of her dress behind me. But now there was nothing.

I slowed down and finally looked over my shoulder.

She was gone.

I stopped walking. "...What?"

I looked down at my hand. The pale metal ring on my index finger felt faintly warm against my skin. I shook my hand.

Could it be...? Is she inside the ring? But how?

"You in there?"

Nothing.

I stared at it for a second. "Welp."

I shrugged and kept walking.

I shoved the map back into my pouch, adjusted my grip on Mercy’s hilt, and picked my way down the broken eastern cliff path.

The descent was rough, but manageable. The valley floor was thick with violet spore-fog and mud that suctioned against my boots, forcing me to keep low and watch my footing.

At one point, something large cracked through the ironwood trees a hundred yards off. I dropped behind a mossy boulder, waited out the heavy thuds until they faded, and kept moving.

The deeper I went, the thicker the fog became. It clung around my legs, making it hard to see more than a few feet ahead. I kept to the eastern edge of the valley, using the mountain as a guide.

Then I heard a loud crash.

A horse screamed somewhere ahead.

"...What the hell?"

I slowly moved toward the sound, keeping one hand on Mercy.

When I reached the trees, I found the remains of a crashed carriage. Three men in battered armor were scattered around it, struggling to get back up.

And then I saw her.

A young woman was crouched beside the wreckage, trembling as she desperately tried to pull one of the men to his feet. She was beautiful. Almost absurdly so. Her long hair was covered in dirt, her clothes were torn from the crash, and her wide eyes kept darting toward the forest.

"Please... please get up..."

She looked completely terrified. And judging by the way she kept staring into the fog, she clearly had no idea what kind of place she’d just crashed into.

I stared at them from behind the trunk of a bloated ironwood, taking a slow breath through my mouth. Four people. In pristine, silver-plated steel armor.

In a place like this, nobody wore shiny metal armor unless they were completely out of their minds or had no idea where they were. The wrecked carriage behind them had fancy gold trim on the door frame, and the girl’s mud-stained dress was made of heavy, smooth fabric that looked completely impractical for walking through mud.

"W-Who?!" the girl gasped, scrambling backward into the dirt, her ruined sleeves catching on a jagged piece of wood. "Identify yourself!"

One of the armored men—a middle-aged guy with a broken shoulder plate and a bleeding temple—staggered to his feet, drawing a broadsword with a hand that was trembling like a leaf.

"My lady... stay behind me..." he wheezed, spit and blood flecking his chin. He raised his blade toward my tree, his legs wobbling on the slick, black moss. "Out... foul beast of the fog... We are..."

He paused, coughing violently.

Foul beast of the fog?! Do they seriously think I’m some kind of monster?

Well, I mean, technically, they’re not wrong.

A chuckle suddenly came from inside my head, making me flinch.

HEY! If you’ve been there this whole time, why the hell didn’t you talk to me earlier?!

"I needed to replenish my Ether," it murmured.

I stared ahead for a moment. "...You could’ve mentioned that."

"Tsk."

"We’re lost!" the girl blurted out, her composure completely shattering. "We’ve been lost for three days! The horses ate a purple mushroom and went insane! Please don’t eat us!"

I stepped out from behind the trunk, keeping my hands visible and away from Mercy’s hilt. "Who are you people?"

The girl drew herself up as best she could while crouched in the mud, trying to brush dead twigs from her hair. "I am Lady Aurelia, of the House of Astoria! We were sent to investigate the eastern roads... but our guide died yesterday, and our map blew into a tar pit!"

House of Astoria.

I blinked. Okay, so she’s some kind of noble. That explained the shiny armor, the fancy carriage, and the fact that none of them seemed to have any idea how to survive out here.

"We were attacked by the terrain!" Aurelia snapped, a tiny flash of pride surfacing before a wet squelch from the nearby bushes made her instantly jump two feet in the air and hide behind the bleeding soldier. "Sir Richard, what was that?!"

"I... I don’t know, Lady Aurelia," Sir Richard muttered, his knee joints visibly shaking inside his plate armor. "The fog... it moves..."

Before I could say anything, the treeline behind the carriage shuddered.

A dull, wet tearing sound echoed through the gloom.

From the thick violet mist, two creatures slithered out onto the road. They looked like giant, hound-sized ticks, their bodies covered in dark shells with glistening, translucent sacks of fluid bubbling on their backs. Eight jointed legs stabbed into the dirt, clicking in a terrible, rhythmic unison.

"Monsters!" Aurelia shrieked, clutching Sir Richard’s dented cloak. "Sir Richard, do something!"

"My lady, there are three of us and two of them have broken ribs!" Sir Richard yelled back, his voice cracking horribly.

The two guards on the ground tried to stand, but one groaned and collapsed back into the mud, his leg bent awkwardly.

The first tick-like creature hissed, its jaws spreading wide as a glob of yellow fluid sprayed onto the wet dirt, instantly dissolving a patch of moss with a sharp, acrid sizzle. It lunged straight for Aurelia.

"Oh, for fuck’s sake," I muttered.

If they died here, the noise and blood would draw whatever else was living in these woods right to me.

I blurred forward, drawing Mercy in a single fluid motion.

My rank had dropped back to Lesser, but my body was still Mature. The blade caught the first creature right under its jaws as it leaped, the heavy steel biting deep into its throat. I leveraged my weight, slamming the monster sideways into the mud and stomping my boot onto its head until the shell cracked with a sickening pop.

The second creature veered toward me, the sack on its back glowing bright yellow as it prepared to spit.

"Left!" a voice suddenly echoed in my ear.

It wasn’t Aurelia. It was her—the priestess, speaking directly inside my head from the ring.

"Its leg joint is cracked on the left side!" she murmured smoothly.

I swung low without thinking, my blade clipping the monster’s weakened leg. The creature stumbled awkwardly, its acid stream spraying wildly into the air and raining down harmlessly on a dead log.

I spun inside its reach, driving Mercy straight down through the center of its pulsating back.

Green, foul-smelling fluid exploded across the mud. The monster twitched twice, then went limp.

I stood there, breathing heavily, wiping the goop off Mercy’s flat before sheathing it with a sharp click.

Silence fell over the road.

Sir Richard was staring at me with his mouth wide open, his sword lowering inch by inch. The other two guards were staring at the dead bugs in shock. Lady Aurelia was frozen, her wide eyes darting from the dead monsters to me, then to the splatter of green blood on my sleeve.

Aurelia’s screech tore through the damp, spore-heavy air, loud enough to set my ears ringing. She wasn’t pointing at the twitching, acid-dripping carcass lying in the mud. She was pointing directly at me.

"I-It spoke! Sir Richard, it spoke Common, but look at its eyes! Look at the blood!"

She stumbled backward, tripping over a gnarled ironwood root and collapsing onto her rear with a loud, wet splash. She scrambled away on all fours, her gold-embroidered skirt churning through three inches of toxic black sludge.

"It’s a shape-shifter! An evolved Horror! It killed those things so it could eat us all by itself!"

Sir Richard’s already pale face went completely white. He practically threw himself in front of her, raising his broadsword with both hands. His knee plates clanked together like broken tin cans.

"S-Stay back!" he bellowed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched squeak before he hastily cleared his throat. "By the authority of the House of Astoria, I command you to—to refrain from devouring the Lady Aurelia!"

I stood there with my hand still resting on Mercy’s hilt, staring at the four of them in absolute disbelief.

"I literally just saved your lives," I said, my voice flat.

"That’s exactly what a clever monster would say to lower our guard!" Aurelia shrieked from behind Sir Richard’s hip, her eyes wide as saucers as she peeked around his shoulder. "Sir Richard, hit it with the Astoria blade technique!"

"My lady, I can barely stand, and my shoulder is dislocated!" Sir Richard hissed out of the side of his mouth, not taking his terrified eyes off me for a single second. "And... and the Astoria blade technique requires two working arms!"

The two injured guards on the ground were feebly trying to crawl away into the bushes, dragging their heavy silver armor through the mud like oversized, panicked turtles.

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, feeling a massive headache coming on.

I should have just kept walking, I thought. I really, really should have kept walking.

The ring on my index finger gave a tiny, subtle throb of warmth.

"Their panic is remarkably inefficient," the priestess’s voice murmured softly inside my head, a light, invisible vibration against my skin. "Though, to be fair to the girl, you do look like something that crawled out of a mass grave."

Shut up, I thought back.

I took a single step forward to try and reason with them, and Sir Richard immediately let out a strangled yelp, swinging his sword wildly at thin air.

The blade was so heavy and his posture so terrible that the momentum nearly dragged him face-first into the mud.

"Look," I growled, pointing Mercy’s sheathed tip toward the ruined carriage. "If I wanted to eat you, I wouldn’t be standing here debating it with you while your guards try to fight me with broken ribs. I’m human. I’m just dirty."

Aurelia blinked from behind her defender, her panic faltering for a fraction of a second as she looked at my blood-spattered coat, my worn boots, and then back up to my extremely annoyed face.

"A... dirty human?" she repeated, her voice dripping with skepticism. "In the middle of the Eastern border? Wearing that?"

"Yes," I grunted, turning on my heel toward the cliff trail. "Now, since I’m apparently a terrifying monster, I’ll be on my way. Good luck not getting eaten by whatever heard you screaming."

"Wait!"

Aurelia scrambled up from the mud, completely abandoning whatever royal posture she had left. "Wait! Don’t leave!"

"Make up your mind," I called over my shoulder without slowing down. "Am I a monster or your escort?"

"You’re an incredibly rude human with a sword!" she yelled back, taking three splashing steps after me before stopping, her wide eyes darting nervously into the dark, whispering treeline. "And... and we will pay you double if you don’t let the fog eat us!"

I don’t even know what I’d do with the goddamn gold notes or whatever the hell they use here. Whatever. I needed to talk to some humans anyway, and I could definitely use some information.

I stopped, taking a slow breath and looking back over my shoulder at the pathetic squad drowning in three inches of swamp muck.

"Fine," I grunted. "First rule: you shut up and do exactly what I tell you. Second rule: if you complain, I leave you behind."

Aurelia opened her mouth, probably to give me an aristocratic lecture on respect, but a low, wet gurgle echoed somewhere deep in the violet mist.

She snapped her lips shut, nodding frantically instead.

"Grab those two," I said, nodding toward the two guards groaning in the dirt.

Sir Richard staggered over, his dislocated shoulder dangling uselessly as he helped them up. Between the two of them, they managed to haul their broken bodies to a shallow rock ledge set into the cliffside—just deep enough to keep off the worst of the spore-fog.

I didn’t bother offering a hand.

Instead, I unslung the heavy meat cleaver from my belt and walked back over to the two dead ticks.

I crouched in the sludge, wedged the heavy, square edge of the cleaver between the monster’s head plate and thorax, and slammed my palm down hard on the spine of the blade. With a sickening, wet CRACK, the thick shell split wide open.

Inside was a bunch of grey, slippery flesh. I had no idea if it was poisonous, edible, or meant to be cooked, but I was starving, my body was running on pure fumes, and meat was meat.

"W-What in the light of the Heavens are you doing?!" Aurelia squeaked, watching from six feet away with wide, horrified eyes.

"Getting dinner," I said, using the cleaver’s broad edge to hack out a massive, ungodly chunk of the raw muscle.

"You’re going to eat that?!" she shrieked, backing up until her spine hit the stone wall. "That is a monster! An unholy creature of the fog! It’s... it’s probably overflowing with foul toxins! Sir Richard, tell him it’s poisonous!"

"If it kills me, at least I won’t have to listen to you screeching anymore," I muttered, hacking off a second thick slab with the heavy blade.

"You’re a barbarian," Aurelia whispered, though her stomach immediately betrayed her by letting out a long, desperate rumble that echoed loudly off the rock face.

Her cheeks flushed bright crimson, and she hastily crossed her arms over her ruined silk dress.

"You haven’t eaten in three days," I said, wiping the cleaver’s flat edge on my pants before hooking it back to my belt. "You can either starve to death like a noble or eat swamp bug. I don’t care either way."

I gathered a pile of dry ironwood bark tucked underneath the cliff ledge, arranged it on the flat stone, and struck my flint against Mercy’s crossguard.

The sparks caught, blooming into a low, blue-tinged flame that gave off a sharp, resinous smoke—perfect for masking the smell of fresh meat from nearby predators.

I sharpened two long ironwood branches with my cleaver, impaled the chunks of mystery bug meat, and propped them directly over the flames.

Within minutes, the grey flesh began to sizzle, turning a rich golden-brown and releasing a surprisingly mouth-watering aroma, like seared crab mixed with salted pork.

Sir Richard and the two injured guards stopped their groaning, their noses twitching in unison as they stared at the fire with the hollow eyes of starving wolves.

Aurelia swallowed hard, her eyes glued to the bubbling grease dripping into the embers.

"Is... is it actually safe?" she asked softly, her voice dropping all of its regal pride.

"I have no fucking idea," I said honestly.

I pulled one stake from the fire, blew on the steaming edge, and took a massive, reckless bite.

It was chewy, slightly metallic, and burned the roof of my mouth, but it was hot calories. My Mature body practically begged for the sustenance, soaking up the protein and easing the lingering fatigue from my rank drop.

I chewed, swallowed, and waited five seconds. My stomach didn’t rupture, and I wasn’t vomiting blood, so I counted it as a win.

Without another word, I tossed the second wooden stake toward Sir Richard. The guard caught it clumsily, looked at Aurelia, and took a hesitant bite.

His eyes went wide.

"My lady..." Sir Richard mumbled through a mouthful of meat, his eyes practically tearing up. "It... it hasn’t killed us yet. And it’s actually incredible."

Aurelia didn’t wait another second. She practically dropped to her knees beside the fire, snatched the stake, and tore into the meat with zero decorum left, grease smudging across her dirt-streaked chin.

I leaned back against the stone wall, resting Mercy across my lap, and watched the purple fog drift past our small circle of firelight.

"So," I said, breaking the quiet sizzle of the fire. "House of Astoria. What’s a noble princess doing on the Eastern border right when the place is going downhill?"

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