Boltanis's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Boltanis crouched at the edge of the mudflat shelf and studied two creatures that could kill him. He was an Eater. He could take an animal's power into his own body, but only once, and only by draining it dry. The draining left him weak for minutes afterward. If he spent that opening on a beast with nothing worth taking, whatever killed it next would kill him too. So the whole trick was knowing which one carried a gift. He still didn't. The sealed canister on his back hummed against his spine. Through its round window, green coils of mutable flesh shifted and churned. The device held his raw material, the body he reshaped with each ability he stole. It had never once told him where to aim. Twenty paces off, a tortoise plodded across the dry ground. Layered plates covered its shell, dull and gray like bolted armor. Farther out, something larger moved in the heat. Black rock skin. Orange cracks glowing between the plates like a banked fire. Its jaws threw light when it breathed. Boltanis almost went for the burning one. It looked strong. But strong and useful were different things, and he had been fooled before. He made himself watch instead. The ember beast swung its head and roared. Loud. Hot. Nothing more. It walked past a fallen branch and the branch caught fire, but the fire was just fire. A weapon he already understood. Taking it would make him a torch, no more. The tortoise did something stranger. A loose metal scrap lay near its foot. As the tortoise stepped, the scrap jumped and clung to its shell. Then a second scrap. Then a nail, pulled clean out of the dry mud. The plates weren't armor. They were a pull, dragging metal to the creature across open air. That was the gift. A force he could carry inside him, invisible until he needed it. Boltanis breathed out slow. He had almost wasted his one shot on the obvious monster. He moved while the ember beast fed on its own small fire. He came up behind the tortoise and clamped both hands on its neck, below the plates. The pull grabbed at the buckles on his coat and locked tight. The tortoise thrashed. Boltanis held on and drew. The ability poured up his arms. His bones learned a new weight. When the tortoise went limp, he felt the mud's buried metal tug at his skin, a map he could suddenly read. Then the weakness hit, exactly as he feared. His knees folded. His hands shook on the dead shell. Across the shelf, the ember beast lifted its head from the dying flames. Its glowing jaws turned toward the noise. Toward him. It took one heavy step, then another, building speed. Boltanis had the power he wanted. He just couldn't stand up to use it yet.