The Dark Warlock's Game

Chapter 7: The Hunter's Trap

"Stop me here," said Sly from the comfortably cushioned backseat of a commercial hover car. 

He was the only passenger in a car that had enough seating space to fit six people, and he abused the space by putting his feet on the seat and sprawling out like he was in his own bed. He had ordered a black tier express ride from Carrier, the best and most reliable taxi and rideshare service on the market, and he was damn well going to make the most of his purchase, especially now that he was getting jitters from coming off the high of X.

"Are you sure, sir? This is still quite a ways from the compound, and there may be Vagrants out and about," said the driver from the front seat. An opaque black plexiglass sheet separated passengers from the driver, but Sly could still see the silhouette of the driver's head cocked in confusion.

"Did you not hear me?" said Sly, annoyed. "I want out here."

"As you wish, sir," said the driver. He halted the sleek black, expensive hover car to a smooth stop. Sly's passenger side door slid open, and he hobbled out, backpack slung over his shoulder.

"Next time, if there is one," said Sly to the driver, "you don't question me, got it? Two hundred credits a ride, and you lecture me, a top tier White Oak recruit, on safety? Screw off."

"Have a nice day, sir," said the driver, obviously used to this kind of treatment.

"Yeah, whatever," said Sly as he stumbled away on the paved road. He heard the hover car door click shut behind him and the car zoomed away. He waited until the car was completely gone before he went off the road and into the dirt of the forest.

Sly grimaced. In class ranking, he was 20th - the very last of the A-class, and he was in dire danger of slipping into B-class. No, in the first place, he was B-class material. 

The only reason he was in the A-class was because Dean was his friend and could pull strings for him. But even that had limits.

By training hard, Sly could barely hold his own in the A-class, but these drugs, these drugs screwed him up. 

They made him slow when he needed to be fast. They made his head go blank when he needed it to be sharp. Sly dug his fingers into his forearm and grit his teeth. But he could not quit. Screw that White Oak technician for introducing him to X. It was all his fault that he was in this downward spiral.

Regardless, Sly needed to get rid of the syringes he had used. 

X was illegal enough that getting rid of them in Haven city was a risk because of cops finding them and tracing them with chemical dating. 

Granted, it was not a high risk, but any risk was too much for Sly to handle.

White Oak's zero drug tolerance policy meant that if Sly was caught with, no, even just associated with drugs, especially one like X, he was truly screwed. The best way he thought of getting rid of contraband was dumping them in the forest because nobody ever went there due to the danger of Vagrants.

Now, as a pretty strong Altana himself, Sly could easily deal with low-rank Vagrants like Essentrias. 

But there was always the off chance that some stronger Vagrant was there. Even in that case, though, he could just use his ability and run away.

Sly took the ten minute or so trek to his usual dumping spot. 

Meanwhile, he checked his Eye-Phone's photo gallery, a smile forming at the ends of his lips as he went through his normal de-stressing routine.

He looked through pictures of bare-naked women he had snapped while they were passed out senseless from drugs; he slipped them in a private room in the After-Dark, the biggest nightclub in Haven.

One of them was a complete smoke show, too. A solid nine out of ten who had just graduated from Haven High school, and her, he had gotten passed out and used all the way. He licked his lips, watching snippets of the videos he had taken of her.

Sly reached the clearing where his dumping spot was and put down his bag. He unzipped it, taking out a small bundle of syringes and a few small empty plastic boxes that once had pills in them. He laid the contraband by his side and withdrew a hand shovel.

With a shovel in hand, he started to dig away at the little pit that held his secrets. Until he hit something that cracked.

"What the heck?" he whispered as he uncovered some dirt. He had hit a small, golden…seed? Its outer shell was lined with cracks from his shovel. No, not just one seed, there were two others too laying beside it.

Sly registered confusion for a split second before he started to grow wary, and this single split second cost him.

All three seeds burst apart, releasing a concentrated gas of yellow dotted with glowing speckles of pollen. Sly coughed violently before covering his mouth, his eyes watering, and he immediately activated Phase on his upper body, making his lungs and mouth intangible.

Too late, though. One breath of that concentrated gas had buckled Sly to his knees, his entire body growing numb and still, and he fell face first into the pile of seeds. He felt stabs of pain as used up needles in the dirt pile pierced his face.

Sly made his lungs, mouth, throat, and nose intangible as long as he could, but he still needed to breathe. The gas stayed there for longer than he could hold his breath, and he was forced to gulp in another breath of it.

Sly blinked and grimaced, his body frozen like a statue. His head, though, was not paralyzed, keeping him conscious. Paralysis from the head down was a common trait of Moss Beast pollen poisoning. This, he knew from his training.

As he grimaced, staring down at the dirt, struggling not to have needles puncture too deeply into his cheeks, his mind raced.

How?

Why?

Moss Beasts released their gas through tubes, not through seeds like this. And why had a Moss Beast planted these seeds in this specific hole of all things?

Nothing made sense.

Sly felt his body kicked over, flipping him over face up. His pale red eyes widened near impossibly as he stared up at a pair of glowing green eyes looking down at him. Then, he recognized the face.

It was a face he thought he would never see again.

"W-what the heck? You-you're that Dud!?" whispered Sly, finding it incredibly hard for his numbed lungs to draw breath.

"Vardy".