Potentia, Blanc thought as he ran.
Or ‘Power’, as it was known in the common tongue.
That was what he thought he was lacking. What kind of power? Nobody could say, not even him. Yet he knew he needed it.
Neither the purpose for it nor the destination. Neither the weapon nor the victim would he use it on. Yet he knew he needed it.
Marks of Raw Vita? True Vita? No, he was not ready for that.
Influence maybe? Economic prowess? The fucking Sedes Sanguinis itself? He didn’t know. But he knew he might have let his thoughts drift too far.
So, he kept on running until the forest entrance was before him. There, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath and to look behind him, for the first time since he left his room.
The sun shone brightly as it stood over his head. The fields in the distance, even in such times, were worked by the common folk, and the mansion, even now, barely visible, looked beautiful to his gray eyes, but that didn’t turn him back. He kept on pressing.
He knew he needed to calm down. After all, even if he were able to help with anything, being in such a condition made it almost impossible to do so.
And with a last glance over everything on the horizon that he knew his whole life, he turned around and entered the now unprotected forest.
He will be back before his absence is noticed.
The forest was always the same, this time of the year. Beautiful is the only word one could use to describe it.
The trees grew large, tens of feet in the air. Like the sentinels of old, these trees were ancient, not one of the bigger ones less than two centuries old.
Yet they held the vitality of the earth itself, as no tree showed signs of decay.
And their leaves, by the Vita, were beautiful.
A golden yellow that made this forest feel like it was another world. Full of endless mysteries and possibilities. The air, Vita, the air was… was. Air?
Then Blanc realized, the air felt whole again. Making him stop in his tracks to take a few deep breaths.
And so he did, with each one of his breaths, his head raising itself towards the patches of sky that made themselves visible between the golden leaves.
And his lungs were full, then empty, then full again. Blanc could’ve sworn the air never tasted this sweet before.
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So there he stood for minutes before even making a step or remembering what made him run away in the first place.
But now, with his head clear, he departed once more with no destination in mind.
He just chose a direction he knew he had not been in many times before and started heading north.
Thirty minutes passed. An hour. The scenery changed many times around Blanc.
He passed a river he recognized from his childhood, from when Valar took him on his second hunt ever. He drank water from it before continuing.
Then he passed a lake; he knew that lake as well. It was the lake in which Lune fell in a few winters ago.
He laughed at the memory and how scared he was that day.
But he was glad he helped her, and that nothing bad happened to either Lune or Kael.
But now, four hours after entering, he arrived at a point in the forest he had never been in.
The mountain that was covered by the forest and that was visible from afar drew closer, so close in fact that he knew it would take him less than an hour to get to it.
Yet, that was not all Blanc thought about, as this part of the forest carried something strange with it.
He couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but he enjoyed it. That rush of the unknown. He always loved that.
Those adventure stories where the end was unknown were his favorite books to read when he was a child.
And now, a man, in both age and body, he felt like he represented the stories of old to his younger self. A childish act, he knew. But he didn’t care.
As he walked around a small hill, a sudden smell hit his nostrils. It wasn’t an old smell, so rot was out of the question.
No, this smell was too fresh. A sharp metallic tang. Blood.
He continued walking in the direction it came from, and once he got close enough, he saw it. First, its legs, as the rest of the body was hidden behind a bush.
A carcass. The carcass of a deer. A fawn, as it is too small, Blanc analyzed.
And just as he realized, it was fresh, the body barely getting cold enough. The blood was still warm, steam rising faintly from the wound in its neck.
The neck, Blanc thought as he crouched next to the body to study it closer, but still paying close attention to his surroundings and every sound close to him.
The wound on it. It was precise, not messy like the workings of the wolves. There were also no bugs on the body yet; the eyes on the poor fawn were still glossy and filled with terror.
This was just a deliberate kill made by a predator experienced in the art form of survival.
There was a hesitation in Blanc, as something primal stirred behind his sternum.
A realization that he was no longer the apex in this part of the forest.
As he realized that, the silence deepened. No birds, no wind, nothing, as if the forest held its breath.
Blanc lifted his head, looking all around him, trying to find the source of his unease.
And there it was. Just thirty feet away from him, hidden low behind the branches of another bush, lay a pair of eyes.
Splendid golden eyes just like the forest above them both. They were unmoving, unblinking.
Steadily watching Blanc. Studying him.