Risen

After a while of traveling down stream, Yore stopped.

“What’s the matter Yore?”

“There is a bear in the river,” Yore said in a hushed voice.

The bear hadn’t noticed them. It was fishing and they must have been downwind of it.

“Is this where you try something stupid and die again?” Morrow asked in a lowered voice.

“Yep!”

“I don’t mean it, please don’t die again Yore,” Morrow pleaded as he merged into Yore’s shoulder once again.

“Thanks, I’ll try not to.”

Yore crouched behind a nearby bush in case this didn’t go according to plan.

Yore envisioned blood seeping out of the bear. Nothing happened. He envisioned the bear’s blood forming a warhammer, heavy, dense mass, smooth double sided head, with a long shaft that ended in a hooked grip. Still nothing.

“Huh. Maybe it needs my blood as a catalyst or something.”

Yore looked down at the kunai that he had been playing with after discovering that he had kinetic control over it. In his off hand he envisioned a sturdy blood knife.

“I may need this if this doesn’t work. Shoot, I may need it if it does.”

Once the blood knife finished forming, Yore envisioned the kunai hovering just off the palm of his hand and spinning. It did as he envisioned. He moved his hand around a little and it stayed hovering just off of his palm, moving with his hand. He then threw his arm out and envisioned the spinning kunai launching out of his hand and into the side of the bear below the shoulder. The kunai launched at the pinnacle of Yore’s throw with more speed than a professional baseball pitcher throwing a ball and found its target right beneath the bear’s shoulder. The bear stopped pawing for fish and roared out in pain.

Yore then envisioned the bear heavily bleeding from the wound just like he did with the Minotaur and the bear started squirting blood out of where the kunai was lodged into it. The bear however turned toward where Yore was hiding and was now rushing at him.

“Well shit!”

Yore prepared his knife. The bear leaped over the bush at Yore. Yore dodged to the side and the bear swiped after him with its claws catching him on the arm leaving deep gashes. Yore screamed out in pain and tried to back away. He focused on the bear’s wound and envisioned it becoming poison and spreading. Yore couldn’t see under the fur if it had any affect on the bear, but figured if it worked for the Minotaur, it should work on the bear.

The bear was furiously swiping at Yore as he backed up and dodged. The bear wasn’t giving him any good openings for him to counter with his knife. That was when Yore remembered the kinetic control he had over his kunai and he envisioned it ripping out of the bear and returning to him.

The bear roared in pain, but the kunai didn’t come loose. It must have been too implanted to really do what Yore wanted.

The bear did begin to limp on the arm closest to where the kunai was implanted. That means the blood poisoning must be working at least.

Then the bear stood up and swiped down at Yore. Yore dodged to the side, but the bear snapped at him and caught his scratched forearm in its mouth. It bit down hard on his arm. Bone crunched and Yore screamed out in pain once again.

Yore stabbed the bear in the neck with his blood knife and envisioned the knife piercing through its entire neck. Blood gushed out of the knife’s entry point and a mist burst out the other side of its neck as a red cloud. It roared in pain, but didn’t give up his arm, biting back down even harder as more bones cracked.

Yore then envisioned the bear’s blood mixing with his blood knife and becoming a shortsword. He could then feel the grip of the knife turning into a pommel and hilt. Shortly after, a blade emerged from the other side of its neck where the mist had burst out.

Yore tried yanking down on the sword to cut through the bear’s neck, but he had stabbed it in the center and the hide was too thick to just tear through. The bear in turn swiped at him, clawing down his face. Yore screamed in agony and lost vision in one eye.

“This isn’t good. I’m trapped within mauling distance of this beast,” Yore thought. “I need to either drain all of its blood or grow this blade big enough to slice through its neck.”

Yore envisioned the shortsword becoming a massive bladed sword, like one of those impossible video game swords that were bigger than the person wielding it. He envisioned it to be sharp and dense.

The shortsword began to grow. The pommel extended outward. The hilt grew wider. The blade began to widen and lengthen. The bear began to shrivel. Its jaws began to slacken its grip on Yore’s arm and started to slump to the ground. The sword became heavy and slowly was lowered to the ground as it overtook what Yore’s one arm could carry. It continued to grow until it grew out of the bear’s throat. The bear’s eyes rolled back as it died and continued to shrivel into a husk.

He did it! It worked! Yore killed the bear and actually lived!

Morrow’s voice echoed in his head. “That was a close one. You look pretty rough, but you survived. I’m proud of you. Now, would you like me to heal you up or would you like to do it yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that, like when you re-absorbed your sword earlier, you can absorb the blood you’ve claimed from the bear to heal you now. You should be able to feel it. I certainly can.”

“You’re right, I can. Give me a shot at it.”

As Yore pulled the bear’s mouth off of his arm, he focused on the blood in front of him. There was the blood kunai still lodged in the bear under its shoulder and the monstrosity of the sword that lay on the ground. There was also the bear’s blood and Yore’s blood that had spilled on the ground. Other than that, the bear was empty. Yore must have converted all of its blood in the process of making this greatsword.

Yore envisioned the blood on the ground, the kunai, and greatsword melting back into blood and re-absorbing into his body. They did as he pictured and seeped across his body to the open wounds on his arm and face. Bones reset and reformed. Torn muscle re-knitted itself. Skin closed up like two zippers coming together. Yore could even feel his eyeball reforming itself inside its socket. His vision came back to his eye and he felt great, like he was at 100% after a great night’s sleep. He also wasn’t feeling thirsty or hungry, which he had started to feel after walking downstream for half a day after his last resurrection.

He could feel that all of the blood on the ground and the kunai had been completely reclaimed, but there was still much of the greatsword that remained. He wasn’t sure if his body could absorb all of the excess that was here or if it would even be healthy too. He might blow up like a tick if he tried.

“Hey Morrow. Do you have any ideas what I should do with the rest here? I don’t think my body could contain that much excess blood, but I really don’t want to waste it, especially if I’m going to make myself pass out by creating weapons mid-fight. I would like to use the excess instead, but I don’t have a good way to lug around all of that weight in blood or blood iron.”

“I could absorb it. I am famished after bringing you back so many times.”

“Of course you can,” Yore said, his voice steeped in sarcasm. “What more should I expect from a half leech, half bat hybrid?!”

“So I can take what’s here? You can use what I have at any time. I won’t need to consume all of this for myself, but can maintain the rest.”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

Morrow flew down and latched onto the pummel of the greatsword and started to make a sucking sound.

“Really? Are the noises necessary?”

The sword began to melt down into blood and seep up the handle and into Morrow’s maw.

“That is disgusting. I can’t watch or listen to this.”

Yore walked away until Morrow was finished and fluttered back to him.

“All done?”

“Yep! And now we have quite the reserve to draw from so you won’t need to throw your corpse at your enemies anymore.”

“Great. Now I need a knife to salvage what I can from this hide to replace my clothes.”

Yore could feel the blood contained within Morrow. He drew on it and envisioned a good sized fileting knife, sturdy and sharp. Blood mist began to seemingly appear from nowhere around Yore’s hand and condensed into a knife as he imagined it.

“So you were the problem all along?” Yore jabbed at Morrow.

“Well if you fed me more often, maybe I wouldn’t be.”

They both laughed as they really started to enjoy one another’s banter.

Yore took most of the afternoon trying to skin the bear without damaging the hide. He did a pretty good job. To his surprise, the knife never really dulled. Yore believed that it was a result of his power forming and maintaining the forms of the objects he created. Sadly, he couldn’t salvage any of the meat from the bear. Apparently sucking all of the blood out of an animal dried it out pretty badly. At this point it wouldn’t have even made a decent jerky. Something Yore will need to consider in the future if he doesn't want to rely on draining blood from creatures. People typically frowned on that sort of thing and called you a vampire.

“Am I actually a vampire?” Yore thought to himself. “No, I don’t rely on it. I was hungry earlier, but I wasn’t craving blood. I think it can just be a more direct supplement. But maybe that is how vampires actually operate. Who knows.”

The bear was massive. Way more than what he needed for just clothes. Yore cut strips off from what he didn’t need for clothes and fashioned a satchel and waterskin that he sewed together with strands of blood that he then turned to solid iron. This worked as a nice substitute for string since he could control the blood so discreetly. It was also excellent practice in control and would be a great unexpected reserve if he ever needed to draw on them and reform them. No one would see it coming.

Yore filled the waterskin with water from the river and tossed it in the satchel. Before heading out though, Yore formed a spear with some of the reserves in Morrow.

Yore didn’t want to perform his blood magic in front of anyone in a dangerous situation if he didn’t have to. He figured it would be best to already have a weapon in hand rather than having to form something on the fly. That and there were always stories from where he came from about people looking down on blood magic. Pretty much in all of the stories involving it, blood magic was on par with necromancy, witchcraft, vampires, werewolves, and other dark arts. The last thing Yore needed was to be eternally hunted as a heretic wherever he was now. Enough things have already succeeded in killing him. He didn’t need whatever civilization was out there trying to do the same.