《Author's Nightmare [LitRPG + Grimdark + Progression Fantasy]》 Prologue Kenny¡¯s POV: Day 0 We were all gathered up the day it happened. C¨¢do had some sparring match scheduled with a regional fencing champion, and he¡¯d wanted us to make a day of it. We watched him trounce the guy during the afternoon, and went back to his place for drinks in the evening. That was the plan at least. But plans are fickle things, always more dynamic than you¡¯d expect, always vulnerable. Always carrying that particular, nasty tendency to change depending on circumstance. Not least when that circumstance is happening to be dragged through some portal between worlds. Bernard and I were sitting in the stands, talking during the match itself. There was hardly anything to actually pay attention to with the contest, given how one-sided it was. Few people could make C¨¢do break a sweat, and his opponent was definitely not amongst them that day. So we chatted away. For a pair from walks of life as different as us, we had an odd amount in common. We all did I suppose. People tend to when they decide to write a book together. I was the rich boy of the group, from older money than either of the others could trace their families back to, and uniquely humble despite the fact. Incredibly humble, in fact. Bernard often said I was snooty, arrogant, and only about half as smart as I thought he was. Which I reckoned made me three times smarter than most everyone else. By contrast, Bernard¡¯s upbringing was slightly weird. Not weird in the funny way, though. More in the ¡°raised by a paranoid schizophrenic in an apocalypse cult¡± sort of way. His family had been poor for generations, and working class spirit ran through their veins almost as thickly as chromium dust. And he was a genius. Never forgot anything he put his mind to remembering, thought seemingly four times faster than most, ran through multi-line equations just in his head even while distracted. It probably wasn¡¯t the cause, but this intelligence definitely gave him a lot of excuses to mouth off and vent his massive ego everywhere. God himself could¡¯ve descended to tell Bernard he wasn¡¯t important, and the only answer he¡¯d have gotten would have been sneering laughter. Probably followed by an accusation of Fascism. ¡°Has C¨¢do gotten faster?¡± Bernard asked, eying the contest rather absently, thoughts a mile away somewhere else. I was hardly focusing any more intently, but frowned at the question. ¡°Maybe, he¡¯s training all the time.¡± C¨¢do was, at that. He¡¯d been an olympic champion before sixteen, and five years later he kept on swinging away. It was as if he were worried about being ambushed someday. Whatever the exhaustive habit said about his obsession, it said much more about his actual abilities. As of a half minute ago, the man had switched hands to his left- his weaker one. If he noticed how much the fact pissed off his opponent, C¨¢do gave no indication. ¡°We¡¯d be millionaires if he put that much focus into writing. Well, me and him would be, you¡¯ve already got that covered¡± Bernard grumbled, leaning his head back, sighing. ¡°God, he¡¯s taking ages. Can you give him a shout? Tell him to hurry it up? Maybe throw something at his opponent to distract them?¡± I grinned at his irritation. Bernard never could sit still for long, always fidgeting or switching tabs or building something the government didn¡¯t want him to. If patience was a virtue, then he was about as saintly as Emperor Nero. ¡°Hey, C¨¢do, hurry it up, would you?¡± C¨¢do glanced over at my call, parrying one swing without even looking and stepping back from the rest. He let his annoyance show, but turned back to the fight with a new vigour as he switched hands again. It wasn¡¯t long before the match was over. Two touches to him in barely twice as many seconds. ¡°You two never let me have my fun.¡± He complained, marching over to the stands as he unclasped the protective headgear covering him. His hair spilled out, tousled and curled by the exercise, but not sweat-coated. It hadn¡¯t been even so much effort as it looked, apparently. ¡°We let you have plenty.¡± I shot back. ¡°You just never have enough to be satisfied.¡± The headgear came down onto a bench, and C¨¢do sprawled along it an instant later. Bernard piped up, then, eying the discarded gear. ¡°It¡¯s a lot more bearable when you¡¯re just doing martial arts, at least there¡¯s something to watch there.¡± C¨¢do shrugged. ¡°What can I say? I was cursed with skill.¡± ¡°Oh, no I was talking about getting to watch you be hurt without all the pads and stuff. But yeah, sure, I suppose the struggle is something too.¡± Bernard and C¨¢do shared a grin as the conversation stretched on. It was a while before we finally took our leave, everything was all slow for us back then, lazy. We had as much time as there were waking hours in a day. More or less. Close to one of those hours passed before we all finally came back to C¨¢do¡¯s home.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. All of us were fairly well off, by that stage of our lives. Our book, Chronicles of Destiny and Bone, had sold better than expected, and we were all sitting on a sequel deal. C¨¢do¡¯s home was his home, not simply his family¡¯s, and he¡¯d made sure to buy a fairly big one. Possibly just because he¡¯d gotten used to just that sort of living area, but also because he needed the room to hold all his damned trophies. We were in the living room when conversation moved onto politics. Unfortunately, Bernard was there, so politics then quickly moved onto a debate about whether or not the government was harvesting circumcised babies¡¯ foreskins to de-age their elderly elite when the Change happened. It was subtle at first, hardly noticeable at all really. One could only have expected to catch it if one had paid attention to the tiniest of details, such as the sudden taste of ozone in the air, or the building violently imploding in on us. Then we were falling. What we fell through, really, can¡¯t be described. It could barely be felt. To force it into words the entire experience was like sailing through an ocean made out of liquefied rainbows, only to be caught in a giant whirlpool and suddenly dragged to the depths, then for God himself to tell you about half the universe¡¯s great secrets, while lying about the other. All while the magic mushrooms you dropped twenty minutes ago finally kicked in. If that¡¯s a bit abstract, then unfortunately there¡¯s no way you¡¯ll grasp what happened to us, because it¡¯s as grounded as I can make the explanation. What matters isn¡¯t the particulars of sensation or sight, though, only what happened next. We landed. There was a fairly gradual deceleration before all three of us belly flopped onto the hilltop, which was lucky because whatever terminal velocity might be in the netherworld, it¡¯s probably not survivable. A few moments passed with our ears ringing and brains shivering, bearings completely stripped away by the trip and senses trying- failing- to adjust to our surroundings. It all dawned on us eventually. We were outside. It was day, not evening, and the terrain was vaguely European. The air was frigid, the wind sharp, and the city we¡¯d all been in just minutes ago seemed gone. In its place were rolling hills and bowing trees, from the base of our hilly perch to the horizon. Similarities or no, we are all different people, and our disparate reactions probably conveyed that better than any words could. C¨¢do was amazed, all awe and grinning astonishment as he let himself ponder the sight, staring at everything around us. I was pure, distilled nerves. My hand was moving for my phone in an instant, but I realised the moment after that I¡¯d left it on the kitchen counter. Half a second after that I was screaming, calling out for my father, for friends, for help. For anything at all that might drag me out of the nightmare. Bernard was not a dazzled optimist, and he wasn¡¯t a panicker¡¯ like me. He was something much worse. The moment he realised what had happened, he already started working the information over in his mind, making deductions, then drawing conclusions. All of them were wrong, and they led him to one rather particular response. Thinking back to his mother¡¯s teachings, Bernard turned on his heel and took off at a sprint to locate something he could use as a weapon for when ¡°they¡± inevitably made the second move of their nefarious scheme. And so it was that our first few minutes spent in our first alternate world were dedicated to chasing down a screaming psychotic before he could harm himself or, much more likely, someone else. I noticed Bernard¡¯s sprint first, but was much slower. C¨¢do, of course, was the fastest of us, but by the time he started running we were already fifty feet ahead. It took a while before Bernard finally stopped, and we pulled in to approach just a few yards short. He was hunched down beside a tree, muttering to himself as he picked out the pointiest of several nearby rocks to use as a makeshift shiv. ¡°Bernard, calm down.¡± C¨¢do tried, saying the exact wrong thing to say to any paranoid who was calmed up. Bernard snarled at him, actually snarled, like some sort of animal. I barely cut in before things could worsen. ¡°We¡¯re with you.¡± I tried, voice low and soothing. ¡°You know we are, but we don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on, what have you noticed?¡± Bernard stared at me, as if I was an idiot. ¡°We got suddenly transported to god knows where?¡± He practically shrieked. ¡°Why am I the only one behaving rationally about this?¡± Apparently settling on a rock, Bernard tore it from the ground. It looked like the sort one might use to kill a man whose only weakness was meat tenderizers. My real name wasn¡¯t Kenny, my friends just called me that. I¡¯d been born Keyinde Johnathan Adebayo, in Nigeria. And I¡¯d dealt with a lot of very irrational, stubborn old men in my time spent shadowing my father and studying the running of his company. It meant I was absolutely lightning at defusing Bernard when the situation called for it, and few situations ever had as much as this one. I took a careful step forward. ¡°If we need protection, then you can offer it better by sharing what you know, yes?¡± That, at last, got through to Bernard, who nodded and stood. C¨¢do let out a sigh of relief. Apparently he really hadn¡¯t been in the mood to choke out his friend, today. I couldn¡¯t blame him, Bernard was a biter. ¡°Follow me.¡± Bernard breathed, taking off at a jog once more. We followed him, reaching our destination a minute later. It was the exact spot we¡¯d started. Bernard gestured out to the landscape before the inevitable questions could come, eying the rest of us. ¡°See what I mean?¡± We didn¡¯t, and he sighed. ¡°God, apes, fine then. Look at that river, yes? And those trees? Now focus on-¡± He described the relevant features, one by one, and it was I who finally got his meaning. C¨¢do, bless him, needed it spelled out. He¡¯d never been as good with the more concrete aspects of our work. ¡°That¡¯s impossible.¡± I snapped, glaring at Bernard. I shouldn¡¯t have, it wasn¡¯t his fault. He didn¡¯t control the truth. ¡°We¡¯re probably all hallucinating in some facility.¡± Bernard agreed. C¨¢do ignored both of us , growling out his question. ¡°Will someone explain it to me with small words, please?¡± I gave him the answer, with about as much tact as I felt capable of. ¡°This seem familiar, C¨¢do? Does it match any descriptions you¡¯ve heard¡­Anywhere?¡± Of course it did. The landscape around us was exactly as it had been when we¡¯d all first read it mentioned. In a passage from Chronicles of Destiny. Our own fucking book. Chapter 1 Kenny¡¯s POV: Day 1 I¡¯ll skip the freakout. It went on for ages, and we didn¡¯t really get much done during it. A lot of screaming, I suppose, a bit of flailing around and running about. Other than that, though, it was fairly uneventful. I certainly wouldn¡¯t describe the ordeal as particularly productive or useful, and frankly it lasted an embarrassing amount of time. What came next was possibly more embarrassing, but it¡¯s also too important for me to just skirt over. Yay. Around the ten, maybe fifteen minute mark for our freakout, there was this big light. Now ordinarily, you understand, we were fairly normal guys, not prone to screaming over something as minor as a sudden glow. But as of the last half hour we¡¯d all gotten a fairly particular experience with mysterious, incandescent energies, and as a result we¡¯d all developed a fairly unified response. I screamed and turned around to run away, C¨¢do squatted in some martial arts stance, and Bernard chucked one of his several newly-acquired self-defence-rocks at the source. Not one of us actually achieved anything with the actions, but if nothing else they gave us something to focus on besides panic. Except for mine, seeing as my response was to just panic. The source of the light turned out to be some tall, veiled lady standing just a few metres from us. We couldn¡¯t see her face, though her eyes were glowing in the shadow of the hood, and she seemed to be looking at all of us at once. She didn¡¯t need to ask for silence, it just sort of happened, and then she spoke through it. ¡°Welcome, dreamers. You are, I take it, confused as to the current situation.¡± Bernard opened his mouth to answer, and I hit him before he could pollute the conversation with his latest conspiracy theory. ¡°We are.¡± I cut in. ¡°Are you here to educate us?¡± Bernard was at least my equal when it came to planning and strategy, and he had plenty of his own experience in negotiating, but for now he¡¯d be no use to any of us. Given a few hours his mind would calm down and he¡¯d be lucid again, I¡¯d seen enough episodes of his to be confident in that much, but until then it seemed I¡¯d be in charge of the talking. ¡°In certain areas.¡± The woman replied, paying no heed to our little scuffle. ¡°In others, I am afraid, you will need to be your own mentors. Tell me, Emperor, have you yet discovered your innate gifts?¡± So, she spoke like someone who¡¯d gotten lost on her way to the renaissance fair, too, rather than just dressing as such. Brilliant. Hold on, innate gifts? I frowned. ¡°Well, I am aware that I have a remarkably big-¡± ¡°Gifts new to this world,¡± She clarified, before I could go on to describe any of my several abnormally large organs. ¡°They will have existed only upon your arrival, but will never abandon you now that you are here. Yours, I suspect, will be the only one accessible for the time being.¡± I frowned again. I didn¡¯t like being left in the dark, and this lady was dumping me into challenger deep. If she hadn¡¯t spoken like a chronically depressed computer I¡¯d have suspected she was getting off on it. ¡°How do I discover these gifts?¡± She turned at that, starting down the hill. Every step she took, the woman grew more and more translucent, then transparent. Fading away like misty breath dissipating on a cold day. ¡°Look at your companions, the way you¡¯ve learned to look at everyone. But moreso.¡± With that, she was gone. A rock cut through the air where she¡¯d just been standing, and I turned to glare at Bernard. ¡°Had to make sure she wasn¡¯t just invisible.¡± He shrugged. ¡°She¡¯s not. Unless¡­She can simply phase through things and turn invisible at once¡­¡± I ignored him,focusing instead on my vision, thinking back through my memories to try and discover what the hell that lady had meant. ¡°She called me The Emperor.¡± I said, thinking aloud. ¡°So what if she means I need to look at people¡­As if I¡¯m weighing them up for some manipulation?¡± It wasn¡¯t nice to give voice to, but I couldn¡¯t doubt it held weight. Years shadowing my dad had taught me just that sort of thinking, and decades of practising it had made him a billionaire. Bernard, though, shook his head. ¡°Can¡¯t be that, I¡¯m at least as big a bastard as you are in that area. Though¡­She did say Emperor. We don¡¯t really have those in our civilization anymore, right? So what¡¯s our equivalent.¡± I nodded, catching his train of thought, then running alongside it. ¡°Well, my dad and his class, obviously. But I already tried¡­Hm.¡± That was when it dawned on me. I didn¡¯t get taught to manipulate as much as I got taught to weigh, to¡­Appraise. Everything has its value, as dear old dad used to say, and figuring it out will make you rich. Hesitantly, I eyed Bernard. Tall, wiry. Like some big, stretched-out rat. His hair was unkempt, eyes big and blue, face edgy and scruffed. The face was most notable, really. Looking used, in the same way that a bare knuckle boxer¡¯s fists did. In the same way most everything about him did. I¡¯d never known whether he did that on purpose, looking like he¡¯d just crawled out of a fight and through a sewer by choice. It certainly seemed in-line with him, he was actually proud of being born in a-This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Everything flashed before my eyes at once, so rapidly, so deeply, that it almost floored me for the shock of seeing it. ¡°Are you alright!?¡± It was C¨¢do asking, concern warping his voice. I struggled to give him an answer beside just grunting acknowledgement. ¡°Yes.¡± I hissed. ¡°Yes, but shut up and let me focus.¡± I stared at Bernard, studied him. Studied him like I¡¯d spent a lifetime studying people, but moreso. I picked up his demeanour, his mood, his likely goals and all the classic hits, but so much else was joining it now. [Appraisal] Good God, it was like a game. I¡¯d never played that many, but I knew a character sheet when I saw one. This wasn¡¯t pen and paper, though, more¡­Yes, RPG. RPG mechanics, squeezed into a real world. We¡¯d been shunted into a fucking LitRPG. Bernard and C¨¢do were confused by my swearing, but they soon joined in once I explained the situation. It took us a while longer to gather our wits after that. ¡°Alright.¡± Bernard hissed. ¡°Well whatever we end up doing, we need shelter soon. It¡¯ll be colder at night than it is now, and I¡¯m already losing feeling in my toes. We can talk while we travel.¡± It was a good idea, so we followed it. Heading downhill in a direction Bernard assured us held some small villages and a town. His memory rarely ever failed us, and unless god had decided to be even crueller than he already had been today then I saw no reason to assume an exception was incoming. ¡°We¡¯re next to the River Grazgry, a few hundred miles south of Shadervhor.¡± He explained, confidently, breath visible in the cold air. ¡°You added them in yourself when we were making the maps, remember?¡± I didn¡¯t, but I took his word for it. Grazgry and Shadervhor were two of the most important places in our book¡¯s setting, featuring heavily in its earlier arcs. If Bernard said we were near them, he was probably right. C¨¢do broke our contemplative silence first, always the hardest of us to faze. That particular trait would do a lot of life-saving in the coming months, but I didn¡¯t know that at the time. ¡°What are my stats?¡± I eyed him. ¡°Seriously?¡± ¡°Yes, seriously, it¡¯s important we know.¡± ¡°He just wants to get a dopamine hit from seeing his big number.¡± Bernard snickered. I figured he was probably right, but all of us could use the distraction, and I in particular would benefit from practising this weird power a bit more. So I looked. Tightening my eyes, concentrating as I did before. It still took a while, but if I wasn¡¯t imagining things the display came quicker this time. I was more cognizant of it, too, able to examine how it appeared to my eyes. A stream of numbers and letters, running through my mind. Not quite visual, and not quite entirely imaginary, it felt like remembering a sheet I¡¯d read before with perfect clarity. Interesting. [Appraisal] C¨¢do was a simple man. He heard that he belonged to a class called the fucking Dragonknights, and he squeed. It took a while for me to calm him down enough to convey the more particular points of his reading. ¡°Eight Strength then.¡± He grinned. ¡°So I could body Bernard.¡± Bernard made a deliberately exaggerated show of shock. ¡°What?!¡± He cried. ¡°No way! Y-You mean I¡¯d lose to an olympic athlete? C¨¢do, mate, that¡¯s just impossible to believe!¡± He shared a bickering laugh with C¨¢do while I frowned to myself. Suddenly curious about something else, now. Holding a hand out, I stared at it. Studying the creases of my skin, scrutinising the dark sheet while I tried as hard as I could to examine myself as if I was just some random person, and muster all the cold distance that let me bring up my friends¡¯ information. It was blessedly quick. [Appraisal] I was a bit miffed, after my second read of the information. Somehow ¡°appraisal¡± sounded rather mundane compared to whatever the fuck C¨¢do¡¯s ¡°Beloved¡± did. Then again, we¡¯d gotten more use out of my power than either of the others so far. Names could be unassuming. We were halfway down the hill by the time we started to make sense of the information, and the sky was darkening. ¡°So we know that bigger numbers are better.¡± Bernard noted. ¡°Unless we¡¯re just horribly wrong about how our respective strengths line up. It seems like a stat of five is about average?¡± I could agree with that, I was tall but fairly wiry, average strength seemed about right. ¡°Makes sense that I¡¯m the only one with double-digit intelligence, considering how dumb both of you are.¡± Bernard continued, doing a remarkably close impression of someone who was three words away from being shoved down a fucking hill. ¡°Other than that¡­I don¡¯t think we can use the rest of this data until we have more information. There wasn¡¯t exactly a hint about how we might use our class abilities.¡± I nodded, having come to more or less the same conclusion. Although¡­ ¡°We can level up, most likely.¡± I pointed out. That was how these things tended to go, at least, and it seemed pointless to have a listed level if it couldn¡¯t increase. Bernard nodded. ¡°Probably, unless we¡¯re just stuck at whatever level we start with. That would be just typical. I wonder how we level, assuming we can.¡± C¨¢do gave us the answer to that, oddly enough. ¡°I hope it isn¡¯t the traditional way we strengthen ourselves in real life.¡± He grinned. ¡°If I¡¯m still level one after all these years, you two¡¯ll be stuck at it forever.¡± Bernard nodded, thoughtful. ¡°Good point.¡± C¨¢do frowned. ¡°It was?¡± Ignoring him, Bernard continued. ¡°If you of all people are still stuck at level 1, then either we won¡¯t be growing at all, or the growth will come through means other than just¡­Exercise. That, or it is exercise, but we couldn¡¯t benefit from it before coming here.¡± He studied us both, and it was me who caught on first. ¡°Are you thinking of killing one of us and seeing if you get experience points?¡± I asked, pointedly. Bernard snorted. ¡°God no, of course not. No, I¡¯m just wondering what would happen if I did. Anyway, it¡¯s getting dark.¡± It was, at that. Dark enough to move conversation on from that particular ravine by force. ¡°I say we make camp for the night.¡± C¨¢do declared, and neither of us were in a state to argue. If we¡¯d known what sort of evening was awaiting us, we¡¯d probably have started preparing to sleep hours earlier. Chapter 2 C¨¢do¡¯s POV: Day 1 Bernard had been lying when he said it would get cold. It¡¯d been cold before, when he first said that, but once the sun was fully down, things became nightmarish. I¡¯d spent my fair share of time in the woods, hunting, tracking, camping and hiking. I knew my way around a fire, and I¡¯d spent the last decade building as much strength and endurance as I could without pissing blood in training. But I¡¯d never tried to settle myself into a forest without tools before. Building any sort of campfire was a harder prospect unequipped. I was strong, but cutting fallen logs with my bare hands was beyond even me, and Bernard¡¯s picked rocks weren¡¯t faring very well even in my hands. In the end we got maybe two sizable chunks of wood, the rest of our fuel would essentially just be kindling. So we gathered as much of it as we could manage. Fortunately, the terrain around us was far more thick woodland than farther up in the hill. Within ten minutes all three of us had an armful of twigs and sticks, and we didn¡¯t stop searching there. Spreading out, scrying farther and wider all while Bernard picked a decent spot to make fire. He ended up settling on the base of a particularly big tree, probably figuring its yard-wide belly would make a serviceable windbreak. Probably, he was right. I¡¯d never been as involved in the writing process as either of my coworkers, to be clear. Bernard had quite literally written to live, and Kenny had spent all of his own rich boy free time practicing the craft. Between training and contests, I¡¯d been much more distant and hands-off. Still, I knew enough about my own setting to be sure that getting caught in its woodlands after dark was¡­Not ideal. I was hesitant to wander too far from the group, and as things got darker that hesitation only deepened. The moment we had a pile as big as any of our torsos, all three of us huddled up with our eyes on one another¡¯s backs, barely even resisting the urge to try and stand all night for fear of an attack. We were already cold then, frozen almost to the bone through our thin shirts and kept functional only by the waste heat of worked muscles. We wouldn¡¯t be going anywhere till morning. The woods seemed to enjoy taunting us, rustling leaves overhead and snapping unseen twigs from every direction. That Bernard didn¡¯t explode was one of the few mercies we enjoyed, but he sure got goddamn close. ¡°How did you get the fire started?¡± I asked, more to break the silence than because I actually had any investment in what the answer might be. Bernard must¡¯ve been as desperate to hear our voices as I was, because he replied near-instantly. ¡°Flint.¡± He whispered. ¡°I had a flick knife in my pocket already, and¡­Oh.¡± ¡°What?¡± Kenny pressed, leaning in, eying him. Bernard shook his head. ¡°Nothing, I just figured something out, anyway I made sure to snatch a flint while I was arming myself. Flint, plus steel. Might fuck up the edge of my knife if we do it too much, but we can generate sparks at least, and carve wood into shavings so they have something to ignite.¡± I might¡¯ve admired his foresight, had he not given both me and Kenny something more important to focus on. Bernard sighed before we even needed to ask. He always had a way of sniffing out what other people were thinking. ¡°Fine, I just realized that whatever interface Kenny sees telling him things, it bases the name of objects on what either he or its wielder identifies them as.¡± He held up his knife, the blade grinning orange with firelight. ¡°Both of you would call this a switchblade, yes?¡± We both nodded, but from the corner of my eye I saw Kenny¡¯s face stiffening with understanding. ¡°I call it a flick knife.¡± Bernard continued. ¡°And so did Kenny¡¯s¡­Ugh, menu, So, either he subconsciously thinks of it the way I would because of my owning it, or the menu assigns names based on the way an object¡¯s owner perceives it.¡± It really wasn¡¯t that useful at all, thinking about it, but Bernard had realized as much when he figured it out himself. It was why he¡¯d not wanted to share it, he always hated wasting breath. Still, the revelation did something more important than illuminate us. It distracted us. For those few luxurious minutes, we all had something to focus on that wasn¡¯t the horrible ice clotting every gust of wind to roll across our camp. The world got colder, and we started piling more kindling onto the fire, desperately hoping that the pile lasted longer. Then the world got colder again, and we were closing in around one another, guy-code forgotten as we pressed our shoulders in and shivered, conserving what warmth we could manage. It was after maybe an hour that the snow started falling, and that was when we truly knew we were fucked. A lot¡¯s happened to me since I first dropped into this world. People have kicked me, punched me, bitten, slashed and shot me. I¡¯ve been set on fire, half-drowned, almost eaten by a bear and spent an afternoon picking bits of metal out of my ribs. None of it, not one scrap, has been half as bad as the cold was that night. My fingers went first, all the sensation in them just halting dead in the tracks. My toes must have been a lot closer to the flame, because they lasted a good few minutes longer. Then the chill was running up my limbs, reaching the ankles and wrists, and I found myself crying. The tears froze against my cheeks, and still things got colder.The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I thought of home, trembling with the effort of not weeping outright. And things cooled ever more cruelly down into the sub-zero range. My thoughts of home became dreams of a damned blanket, or anything at all to put between myself and the sky. At some point I know I fell asleep, because I woke up to a slightly warmer world. Slightly. Everything was white, and viciously cold. I groaned, moved, felt everything in my body scream at me and fell still. I lay there for a couple of moments more before a hand came down on me. ¡°C¨¢do.¡± Kenny whispered. ¡°You need to get up, dude come on, we¡¯re moving.¡± Part of me wanted to just lie there, and I might have. If Bernard hadn¡¯t spoken first. ¡°You need circulation, it¡¯s dangerous to lie there any longer.¡± That brought my mind to the thought of blackened, shriveling toes. Amputations, hobbling footfalls and a lifetime of knowing I¡¯d never compete with the best again. I got up. Somehow standing made everything real again, and I shivered even before the cold bit through my clothes. My thin fucking clothes. It¡¯s hard to remember things after you¡¯ve almost died, and I¡¯d definitely been flirting with death the night before, but enough of my pondering had stuck. The emotions of it all, at least. Suddenly my mouth tasted sour. ¡°We¡¯re never going to get home, are we?¡± I breathed, more to myself than anything. When I looked up, I met Kenny¡¯s eyes and realized in an instant that he¡¯d been having just the same thoughts. He shook his head, though. ¡°We have no way of knowing, and about a thousand things that demand our focus before that. Now let¡¯s go, Bernard¡¯s certain the town is just a few more days at most.¡± My vision was blurry, eyes almost held shut by the frozen fluid they¡¯d been leaking during my sleep, but after a few moments of blinking and rubbing I could just about make out Bernard packing what was left of our stuff up. Well, packing up is a poor choice of words. He was just stuffing the best of our remaining kindling into his arms. There wasn¡¯t much unburned, maybe a quarter-hour¡¯s worth of scavenging, but if that meant a quarter hour less time in the cold it was worth it as far as I was concerned. He paused before we continued, then picked a few sticks out from the pile. ¡°What are you doing?¡± Kenny asked, eying him. Bernard didn¡¯t answer with words, instead moving towards the dying remnants of our campfire and holding the sticks over it. Their ends ignited soon enough, and he drew them back with care. ¡°Hold them upside-down every so often.¡± He advised, handing us both a torch. ¡°The flames will rise and eat the full length of the wood that way, should last a while. We need to stay warm even on the move.¡± We didn¡¯t stay warm, not even close, but we stayed alive at the very least. There was no conversation on our way down the hill that day. Whatever words any of us had for each other had dried up in the night. I was thinking about home again, and thinking about how I¡¯d never see it again. My family, my friends. My damned home. I had a rug, a real nice one I¡¯d stumbled onto completely by surprise in some tiny little store near where I lived. I¡¯d miss that, and for some bizarre reason that was the loss that stung deepest. Little things like that rug would be hard to come by, in our world. You might have expected a walk like ours, trudging through ankle-deep snow and getting chewed on by the elements with every step, to feel sluggish, endless, slow. It didn¡¯t. I barely even noticed the stretch it took to finish, because I was too busy dreading what would happen when it did. Twelve hours passed, maybe. It was hard to tell. The air warmed a little, then cooled all the way back down to the vicious, frigid depths that had almost killed us the night before. By then we were more ready than we had been. Bernard had been thinking during our march, and just a few minutes into it he¡¯d picked some big log up off the ground, half-buried in snow. I¡¯d been too preoccupied with my misery to see what he was doing with it, but I¡¯d seen him fiddling away with a rock from the corner of my eye. When we stopped for camp, I got it. At one end of the log, he¡¯d carved bark and wood away to leave an opening, sort of a half-crater clinging to its ass. It wasn¡¯t all that deep, or wide, but I could recognise the makeshift shovel in an instant, and Bernard was fast in handing it to me. ¡°Kenny and I will get the wood this time.¡± He told me. ¡°You¡¯re on plowing duty, we want a big patch of snow cleared beside a tree, then piled up on each side of it as high as you can manage.¡± I frowned, thought about it, then everything clicked into place. Igloos. We didn¡¯t have the time or gear for great big bricks of ice, but this would surely work well enough, right? Well, if it didn¡¯t, we¡¯d never know. I didn¡¯t think any of us had the reserves of life to keep kicking through another night of frozen hell. I got to digging. There was a certain technique to shoveling snow that I won¡¯t share here, because it¡¯s about as mentally stimulating as being on the receiving end of a lobotomy. In any case, I was done fast enough. If anything, I was glad for the chance to actually use my arms. But it brought my awareness to another issue, too. My body heated up, cold dissipating somewhat, and in doing so allowed room for another sensation to slip in. The fucking hunger. How long since I¡¯d eaten? Well over a day now, surely and I was certainly feeling it. Everything inside my body was slowing down, blunting, I was getting stupid, tired. One day without food wouldn¡¯t kill someone, but it felt like it would. And I didn¡¯t want to imagine another twelve-hour walk if I woke up like this. Kenny and Bernard came back for the final time with great bundles of wood, and we set up inside our shelter. It wasn¡¯t very good, not really. I¡¯d hammered the interior to keep the snow hard and compact, hoping that it¡¯d stop the fire from melting it, but other than that it really was just a white blob. Still, a white blob was better than a white horizon as far as not killing us went. We didn¡¯t chat at all this time, all just laid back, rested, and agonized over our empty stomachs and homesick minds. The sky got darker, the air cooler, and the forest creepier. Sounds growing so common and spine-chilling that we hardly even noticed when the snapping of nearby twigs became a bit too regular. ¡°What was that?¡± Bernard whispered, a full minute before either of the sane people present became worried enough to echo him. Kenny made the first suggestion. ¡°A wild boar?¡± He asked. ¡°Or¡­Something?¡± Even he didn¡¯t sound convinced. ¡°One of us needs to check.¡± Bernard breathed. ¡°Our little shelter is open to the elements, if whatever¡¯s out there goes for us we¡¯ll be cornered in here.¡± All eyes turned to me, of course, but I¡¯d already steeled myself for that. Fear always shocked me in how it stunted other people, it had only ever made me sharper. I stood, stretched, readied myself and made for the exit on a stomach that suddenly felt much, much fuller. Nerves of steel or no, even I was taken back by the great snarling bear waiting outside for us. Chapter 3 C¨¢do¡¯s POV: Day 2 It wasn¡¯t a big bear, maybe five hundred pounds at most, but it felt like one. Felt like a really, really big fucking bear. Brown furred, not black, and coming at me about as fast as something you¡¯d compare a really fucking fast and pissed off bear to. It had claws, teeth, probably rabies and definitely a searing hatred for me and my entire bloodline. I, on the other hand, had a big stick I¡¯d taken from the firewood pile. Two feet long, maybe three or four inches wide. My choices were clear. I dived to one side and desperately tried to scramble away. The move must¡¯ve been well timed, because the bear stumbled past me for a few feet while I clawed my way back to a standing position. It turned, and I moved on instinct at the sight, bringing the log down hard against the horrible thing¡¯s face. The skull wasn¡¯t where I¡¯d guessed it¡¯d be, though, and the angle was shoddy. It all but bounced off, then the bear was on me. Back home, back on earth, I¡¯d seen a few documentaries and survival tips on how to handle a bear attack. What were they? Ah, yes. Play dead, they said. Too late for that now, its jaws were closing in on my face. I had nothing to stab it with, fuck I didn¡¯t have the space to even hit it very hard with my stick, and half a second of pushing against it told me exactly what my odds of physically holding the thing back were, none. I had just barely enough time to go calm and realise, really realise, that I was about to die. Then Bernard was slithering up behind behind it. By now the bear¡¯s head was halfway to my neck, jaws wide to clamp down and end me. Bernard might have tried stabbing away with his little pocket knife if he¡¯d been a normal person, might¡¯ve even pissed it off into switching targets, but he wasn¡¯t and had never been normal. Instead Bernard, with utmost care, took one of the bear¡¯s ears in one hand, calmly moved the edge of his switchblade to just under its base, then leaned into it with all of his weight. Edged, modern steel carved through skin and gristle like it wasn¡¯t even there, and the bear¡¯s ear dropped down to the ground so easily that the knife¡¯s trajectory wasn¡¯t even slowed, blood soaking into the cloud white snow beneath. The bear screamed, rounding on Bernard just as he took off at a sprint, already having started it the moment he saw blood drawn. As the creature tore off me to hammer after him, I took an instant to thank whatever god might be watching for making my friend so weird. And then I was standing up, stick back in hand, muscles tightening with anticipation. Because I wasn¡¯t going to leave Bernard to the fate he¡¯d saved me from. Problem was, he was being chased by a bear, and it was closing fast. I sprinted after, Kenny falling into step alongside me, both of us calling out to the shrieking paranoid. ¡°Veer right!¡± Kenny yelled, already panting from the exertion. Bernard must have heard, because he made a sharp turn when the animal was only feet behind him, just barely avoiding a mauling. The bear dug its heels in, slowing, turning, rounding on him just in time to catch my stick hard across its snout. This swing was better than the first, and I couldn¡¯t suppress a grin as I saw the animal stumbling back. When you¡¯re lucky enough to land a good hit, land another one before the other bastard can get his senses back. I acted on Bernad¡¯s old brawling advice before it even registered, bringing the log down again with a sharp thwack. The bear snorted, groaning, and I hit again, again. Every blow sending blood to fleck out of its face, adding, in some tiny part, to the crimson streak that already ran down its head and neck where Bernard had taken the ear. Bernard and Kenny did their parts, too. The former with his knife, the latter with the largest rock he could manage. Stabbing quickly and sharply, Bernard put his steel in and out of the bear, holding the blade to protrude directly out ahead of his closed fist and punching it into the animal like a boxer working a bag. It barely seemed to do anything at all, but it was a distraction. Kenny¡¯s approach was clearly less practised, but I was no less grateful for it. He just brought a big rock the size of Andre the Giant¡¯s fist down into the thing¡¯s back while it focused on me, snarling with a mix of fear and fury all the while.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. We kept it stunlocked for a while, just wailing away, killing it one irritation at a time. The problem with death by a thousand cuts, though, is that there aren¡¯t many weapons that can survive being used a thousand times when their wielder is an olympian and their target a bear. I brought the log down one last time on the snout, catching it right between the eyes, and this time a great snap ran out, sickening me to my stomach for all of a second before I realised what it was. The log broke, and the bear was stumbling back, recovering fast. I swung again, using the remaining foot of wood I still held, then swearing as it bounced off with its length and torque suddenly halved. I wasn¡¯t able to move before the bear did, this time. A paw the size of a coffee table caught me in the side, and the entire world toppled over. There was wind, and snow breaking against my face, then I was upside down somehow. Around that time, the ground decided to punch me in the back. I¡¯d flown easily half my body length before even hitting the snow, and I slid and rolled another half a C¨¢do before stopping. Everything was a maze, concussion and fatigue drowning the world out for me. The bear might¡¯ve started chewing off my hands and I wouldn¡¯t have noticed until a few more seconds of mewling let me regather my wits. I could only hope it wasn¡¯t. Fortunately, I didn¡¯t wake up to find myself the starter in a three-course meal. I had Bernard and Kenny to thank for that. They¡¯d worked quickly while I was seeing stars, Kenny distracting the bear with Bernard¡¯s knife, and Bernard doing what God had made him to do. Improvising a weapon. The bear made a single, critical mistake in focusing on Kenny for one moment too long, then Bernard was on it. He¡¯d taken a pair of sticks from the fire, small ones. Kindling. Perfectly sized to be clutched in a snow-covered hand, and thus kept from burning him, while Bernard inserted them up the poor animal¡¯s nostrils. The effect was instant, and considerable. I almost felt sorry for it, watching the bear snarl and scream and thrash around. Bernard was dislodged instantly, rolling away, scrambling back as the animal went mad. It almost convulsed, coiling and rolling about, scraping the snow away to reveal hard dirt beneath, so violently was it moving. Smoke drifted from its face all the while, burning wood still hot and searing despite the huge paws impotently smashing at the snout around. In moments the bear was up again, turning and sprinting off into the woods, bouncing off trees and rolling ever more, fleeing in blind horror at a pain it likely wasn¡¯t even equipped to understand the source of. It was all we could do to convince Bernard he shouldn¡¯t sprint after the fucking thing and finish it. For a few minutes we grinned to each other, celebrating our victory as we stumbled back to the fire, Bernard spasming and twitching himself, now that the fight was done. Then it happened. A sudden weakness overcame me, and a sickness too. My legs folded, my head spun, and before I knew it I was on the ground, convulsing as my ribs screamed in agony. Adrenaline subsiding to let all the pain I¡¯d not noticed before come flooding in. What happened next came in flitting, broken-up images and memories. I remember being dragged and carried along to our camp, placed down by the fire, resting in agony. I remember hearing Kenny and Bernard talk, worried. The words just barely settled in my mind. With me hurt, we¡¯d be travelling slower and carrying less wood. I tried to stand, to tell them I was fine, but every move I tried to make- every breath I tried to take- just had my ribs aching all over. Finally I lay still. The night passed, and I barely remembered the morning. I was leaned against someone¡¯s shoulder, half-pulled down the hill as we continued our trek, groaning in pain with every step before we finally made camp again. That night wasn¡¯t as cold as I¡¯d feared. Kenny and Bernard had spent longer gathering firewood, which meant we¡¯d spent less time travelling and sentenced ourselves to another day on the hillside. The hunger worsened as time stretched on. We packed up, stood, and moved again. Cold, exhaustion, pain, hunger. And fear. We never knew when another bear might come, and it ended up being Bernard of all people who talked us down, explained how to process our fears, and calmed us. God, was this how he felt all the time? My heart broke at the thought. Night by night we got weaker, more scared. Every shadow was hungry, every snapping twig was a moment¡¯s warning before some new monster lunged for us, and every step we took towards the town left us less certain it even existed. I was lucky to have been drifting in and out of consciousness, if I¡¯d been awake for the full trip I think it might have¡­Changed me. I¡¯m not sure it didn¡¯t change Bernard and Kenny. But one day it ended. A gasp, a careful shake to wake me up, and then a pointing finger for my bleary eyes to follow as it indicated a dot on the landscape ahead. I grinned at the sight. Buildings. Houses, halls, thatch roofs and ploughed roads. Human habitation, with smoke and civilization breathing out into the air. We hurried, and suddenly everything nature threw at us was less substantial. Just having the town in sight made us braver, and our hope kept the cold back. The energy of desperation seemed almost completely balanced with our growing hunger and fatigue, and the next days of travel practically flitted by. I tried to hide my condition¡¯s worsening, to keep from ruining the second wind my friends had gained, but they¡¯d always been smart. I don¡¯t think either of them failed to realise how much weaker I was getting. It seemed to only speed them up. Then it happened. We closed in on the town, marching towards it as a limping, gasping wreck, battered, beaten, worn and ragged. Each one of us smelling like shit, and somehow looking shittier. The last thing I saw before sleep took me was the snowy ground giving way to trodden dirt paths. And the last thought I had was a strange mix. Half relief, half fear. Chapter 4 Bernard¡¯s POV: Day 5 We¡¯d all been fucking idiots to think anything would come of actually reaching the town, we weren¡¯t on earth any more. Our world was called Redacle, and it was one of those ¡°grimdark fantasy¡± settings for edgy arseholes who thought they were clever. Like us. All dark people doing dark things for dark reasons, rape and murder, starving orphans and big horrible monsters pulling people¡¯s arms off. You know, the classics. All well and good to write. Except settings like those are known for their egalitarianism in the same way that Adolf Hitler was known for his racial tolerance and compassion, so almost the moment we were within town bounds, a pair of bastards in big gambesons with big sticks marched over and started barking demands. Vagrants. We were vagrants, now. That was fine by me, I¡¯d been a vagrant before, but Kenny looked like he might well be sick. ¡°Names and intentions?!¡± One of the men asked. My brain was slowing down with the cold, and slowing more with my hunger, but I got there in the end. Eying his uniform, remembering where we were. A town guard. A Redacle town guard, which meant there was a very particular set of non-disastrous responses possible here. ¡°Solitaire and Shango.¡± I answered, resisting the urge to spit on him and forcibly defying my natural instincts to clamp up and demand a lawyer in the presence of cops. ¡°Our friend here is hurt, we need a healer for him.¡± The guard eyed C¨¢do flatly, apparently unmoved by such trivialities as a man fucking dying right in front of him. I wondered whether he¡¯d be equally unmoved if he took C¨¢do¡¯s place. ¡°You¡¯ll be here for Magus Corvan, then. Big hut on the far end of town, one road down from this one. He takes payment up-front.¡± I caught his implication just fine, and eyed Kenny, waiting for him to reply. He¡¯d be better in this situation, Kenny always got along with humans more than me. ¡°Much obliged, sir.¡± Kenny breathed, forcing a friendly smile that went unanswered. We were past the guard a moment later, and he shot a look at me. ¡°Solitaire?¡± He asked, incredulous. We¡¯d agreed beforehand on using false names while we were here, for one major reason. We didn¡¯t know for sure we were the only ones who¡¯d been Isekai¡¯d into the fucking place, and if someone else here recognised the setting, they¡¯d almost definitely recognise its writers. Neither of us wanted to get jumped by a bunch of idiots who¡¯d decided that it must have been the authors¡¯ fault when they ran into them in some mysterious fantasy land. All discussed, all agreed on, all concluded. But we hadn¡¯t shared our choice of name with each other yet, apparently mine had surprised him. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with Solitaire?¡± I frowned, and Kenny- Shango- only snorted. ¡°What isn¡¯t wrong with it? It¡¯s like something out of a young adult novel.¡± I couldn¡¯t fight my chuckle. Having your testicles turned into icicles tended to squeeze the humour out, but finding the town and, more importantly, hearing it had a healer had reinstalled a bit of my old boyish whimsy. . ¡°At least I didn¡¯t name myself after one of my people¡¯s gods.¡± I shot back. ¡°Isn¡¯t Shango a damned dictator, anyway?¡± Kenny- Shango, now, always while we were here- shrugged. ¡°Ancient king. It tends to happen.¡± Any other time I might¡¯ve thrown in a few choice words about modern kings, too, and modern governments for that matter, but we had more important things to worry about. Perhaps surprisingly, the guard¡¯s directions proved reliable. We were soon standing outside a squat, oddly well-maintained looking house distanced quite a bit farther from its neighbours than they were from each other. We¡¯d gotten a good look at the place on our walk over, though we hardly needed it. Redacle as a whole, and in particular our current location in the continent of Vorhazh, was a vaguely late-mediaeval setting. The buildings showed that that much hadn¡¯t changed. All wood for the most part, with the occasional stretch of cobbled walls. They were small and numerous, and even with however many hundred dotted around the town there were probably no more than one or two thousand people living here.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Magi were rare, and magical healers were rarer still. The former was just a blanket term for people properly trained in the most common form of magic, and the latter, magically speaking, was almost always a magus who¡¯d specialised in repairing the body. It was lucky to find even one of either in a town like this, usually they stuck to cities. Cities had more people, and wealthier people. Cities had more things that called for a person capable of blasting down trees and cutting through plate armour. One foot inside and everything already smelled like smoke and salt. It was almost nostalgic, my mother¡¯s homes always had that same scent whenever she was making explosives. It was a dingy interior, lit by candles dotting the various walls, and every surface seemed covered with shelving units holding twice their weight in containers. Jars, vials, pots and bowls. Herbs hung in big racks, and an open flame crackled at one far corner of the room. There was a cauldron dangling over it. A fucking cauldron. Christ. We were able to get maybe two paces in before the place¡¯s owner appeared, stepping out in front of us and staring at me and Shango both as if we¡¯d just kicked his mother and fucked his dog. ¡°I don¡¯t do charity.¡± He said. ¡°You¡¯ll be looking for the temple.¡± He had a modern accent, one I¡¯d expect from Yorkshire, maybe. Made sense, I usually wrote with modern accents in mind. Shango answered, as we¡¯d agreed, speaking with a calm I wasn¡¯t sure I could¡¯ve mustered myself with our friend leaning unconscious against me. ¡°Our friend is dying.¡± He explained. ¡°He needs treatment.¡± The healer glanced at C¨¢do, unmoved. ¡°Ten silvers for conventional treatment, three gold for arcane healing.¡± It was an absurd price, even for Redacle, and he was asking it to make us go away. Shango must have known, because he changed tactics instantly. ¡°We can work the price off.¡± He began. ¡°Look at our friend, he¡¯s strong, really strong, and he can fight.¡± I cut in at that to reinforce his point. ¡°And so are we, how often does the chance come along to get three workers of our size? We could guard your shop as well as any five normal men, hunt for you, even¡­Enforce.¡± The more I spoke, the harder it seemed to find ways in which we could leverage our stature to actually benefit a healer of all people, but I was desperate not to let the advantage go unused. We¡¯d noticed almost immediately how significant it was. Childhood and adolescence on earth, in modern nations and wealthy families, had seen all of us fed on a protein-rich diet filled with vital nutrients that the people in this world were denied. Just as our own ancestors had been hundreds of years ago on earth. At six foot two, I was pretty tall back in England. In Redacle, though, I was a giant. That had to mean something, it just had to. ¡°I don¡¯t need assistants, definitely not a pair of meatheaded thugs.¡± The man didn¡¯t sound like he could be moved, but Shango was never one to give up on something he wanted. ¡°There must be something you need.¡± He tried, desperate now. ¡°Anything, what do you lose by naming a price and keeping him alive until we fail to pay it?¡± The healer paused, thought, then spoke slowly. Carefully. ¡°There¡­Might be something.¡± He began. ¡°Jungua sap. You¡¯ve heard of it?¡± Neither of us had. Shango¡¯s confusion was genuine, and mine was too. Mine, though, was eerie. I remembered everything, which meant this wasn¡¯t something we¡¯d added to the world. Were we not in Redacle after all? ¡°We haven¡¯t.¡± Shango replied, hurriedly, ¡°What is it?¡± The healer¡¯s scoff almost earned him a headbutt before I remembered our circumstance, and his magic, fortunately he was quick in answering. ¡°It¡¯s a remedy for infection, and a damned good one. Cleans wounds out like nothing else, but I¡¯m out of it, and the idiot merchant from Wolney didn¡¯t bring my last shipment. If you can fetch some more for me, I¡¯ll take the price out of your friend¡¯s healing fee. That¡¯d leave him alive, and the three of you in a mere two gold and fifteen silvers¡¯ debt.¡± Wolney, I committed the name to memory. Most likely it was a city, but there was no time to be checking that now. I turned to Shango as he replied. ¡°Deal.¡± He declared. ¡°Where do we find it nearby?¡± The healer gave us our directions, speaking about three times slower than I would¡¯ve needed to carve them all into my mind. By the time he was finished, I¡¯d started to feel the familiar twitches of adrenaline oozing back into my muscles. He was hiding something, I could tell, and whatever it was, I knew enough about this shithole of a world to be certain it might get us killed. No surprise there, I was working class. Getting me killed was what people did. We left C¨¢do with the bastard, not having much of a choice in the matter. Moments after setting foot outside the exhaustion hit us both. It¡¯d been days since we¡¯d rested. Properly, actually rested. Since we got here it had all been marches, starvation and ice. And it looked like we had more ahead of us. I felt worn thin, enough that it was almost tempting to just leave my friend for dead. Almost. Shango would have kept that from being an option, if it even had been in the first place. ¡°Right.¡± He breathed, speaking with a voice that told everything I needed to hear about his exhaustion. ¡°Three things we need, yeah?¡± I thought about it, and agreed. Food was the first, I was already weaker than I¡¯d ever felt before, struggling just to move around. C¨¢do was a big guy, maybe a hundred and ninety pounds of lean muscle and springy fencer, but hauling his weight shouldn¡¯t have been half as hard when split between me and Shango at once. If something half as dangerous as that bear attacked us now, we¡¯d die. Which meant a meal was highest on our list of priorities. I poked my ribs, felt them poking back from beneath the skin. Maybe two meals. After that I could waste all the time I wanted wondering what the fuck a bear was doing awake and attacking me in winter anyway. Second came weaponry, of course, and the third priority was one that defied instinct to consider. But there was no doubting its use. The last few days had been too hectic for us to spare any time for introspection or experimentation, but we had room to breathe now, and we¡¯d fought off a bear less than one week ago. It was time to have Shango take a peek at our stats and see whether we really could level in this world. Chapter 5 Shango¡¯s POV: Day 5 [Appraisal] I swore, Bernard¡¯s statline hadn¡¯t improved at all. His level was the same, his abilities were no different, in fact, assuming the numbers in brackets showed figures after modifiers, his statistics had actually fucking dropped. I guessed it was the hunger responsible for the last fact. This wasn¡¯t good at all. ¡°That bad?¡± Bernard- no, Solitaire- asked me. He¡¯d always been good with faces, if anything it was relieving to be seen through so easily now. Meant his edge wasn¡¯t entirely worn away by the emptiness in his stomach and the ruin his body had become. ¡°That bad.¡± I concurred, swearing as I turned my focus inwards. My own statline came up soon enough, and it was just as disheartening as Solitaire¡¯s. [Appraisal] My guts almost dropped out, seeing my Intelligence. Cleverness had never been a resource I was short of, having one ninth of it drained away somehow scared me more than the starvation ever had. I swore again. ¡°We need a baseline.¡± Solitaire began. ¡°To see how we compare here, try eying the other people across this street.¡± I nodded, seeing his sense as I turned the ability outward, scrutinizing passerby¡¯s numbers. Fours. Largely. Almost exclusively in fact. Maybe one person in three had even a single stat above or below it, and the vast majority who did were off by only a single point. One particularly big man was sitting at a Strength and Toughness of six, with an easily six foot frame and arms that showed it, and I saw some utterly gorgeous woman waltzing on with a Charisma of seven. It was all I could do not to march over and try my luck with her. But no, there was a time and a place for distracting myself with luxury. Food first, then a weapon. Rolling in the hay could be my nice little reward if I somehow managed the rest. Assuming the primitive women here didn¡¯t panic at the sight of probably the first black person they¡¯d ever seen or even heard about. ¡°Threes, fours and fives.¡± I told Solitaire, forcing my mind from the idle fancying. ¡°Overwhelmingly more common is the fours though, occasionally there¡¯s some higher figures. That giant who went by a few minutes ago was at Strength six. Oh, but most of the women are sitting at two for Strength and physical things.¡± He nodded, as if some suspicion had been confirmed. ¡°Sounds like we¡¯re dealing vaguely with a bell-curve distribution, though I¡¯d need more data to be sure. fours¡­So at the moment we¡¯re about as strong as the average man here.¡± He eyed some of the pedestrians, clearly taking in just how tiny their bodies really were. Not just short, withered and scrawny, almost like children. Modern lifestyles tended towards a fairly flabby physique with how sedentary they were, but this was something else. I felt a stab of worry, too. I was weaker than most of these men? Fuck, I needed a sandwich. ¡°Food.¡± Solitaire declared. ¡°That¡¯s our first priority, then. Weapon or no we won¡¯t be surviving anything in some shitting fantasy land with our current conditions what they are. You get food, I¡¯ll see if I can scrounge us up something pointy or heavy.¡±A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Though I nodded, the words felt oddly distant to me. As if the prospect of searching the town for some meal were removed. It was hard to process all this, hard to keep treating everything as real as it was. Hard to believe, even, that Solitaire hadn¡¯t just been right when he said we were all hallucinating somewhere. But those uncertainties were useless, they¡¯d change nothing if they were right, and kill us all if they were wrong. So I dismissed them, shoving them to one side in my mind to make room for more productive thoughts. ¡°That healer said something about a church.¡± I pointed out. Solitaire nodded. ¡°Yeah, he did, about charity, right? That sounds like a good place to start for filling us up, you see if you can find it, I¡¯ll go and arm us.¡± He was marching off before I could say anything, forcing me into an agonising half-jog to catch up. ¡°Shouldn¡¯t we stay together?¡± I asked. Solitaire thought about it, then eyed me. ¡°We¡¯re half a foot taller than most of the men here and look desperate, anyone who gives either of us trouble deserves a Darwin award. At least for a while.¡± His confidence was infectious, and we went our separate ways. Infectious, but not virulent. I brought one of our rocks with me, a nice jagged one, and kept it tight and palmed in my pocket while walking. It occurred to me that this was the first time in days I¡¯d actually been on my own, and the extra space gave my mind plenty of time to work and process things. Mostly, I just stared at the people bustling around me, but I got some thinking done, too. In particular I eyeballed my rock. RPGs gave weapons stats, too, right? It felt weird that this one wouldn¡¯t¡­Unless I just needed to examine it closer in my inventory. Curiously, I eyed the rock in my hand, bringing the menu up within a single second now, then staring harder, more intently. Scrolling through my inventory until I reached the object, turning my full focus onto that. After a full minute without results, I was forced to give up. But something still snagged at my wits. My Class Ability was called Appraisal I, not simply Appraisal. So¡­There were stronger versions. If I could unlock one of them, would they give me more in-depth information? It was hard to imagine any other way a fucking Appraisal ability might power up, but at the same time it wasn¡¯t exactly reassuring. We still had no idea whether levelling up was even on our horizon. Whether it was or it wasn¡¯t meant entirely different things for our future prospects in this world. More information. We always needed more information. More importantly, though, we needed to pay that healer and have him reassemble the gory jigsaw puzzle Cado¡¯s ribcage had turned into. My worries kept me company while I explored the town of Jhigral, taking in the sights and committing them to memory. I wasn¡¯t Bernard- Solitaire, dammit- and I couldn¡¯t just make maps in my brain at a whim, but I reckoned a few repetitions would let me keep track of the whole place. In the meantime, it gave me a nice distraction while I tried to find the church. It wasn¡¯t that hard, in the end, churches tended to be pretty recogniseable. England had been sure to plant plenty in my own country, and we¡¯d based most of our setting¡¯s lore on generic pop-culture mediaeval Europe. The big, rectangular box surrounded by six-pointed holy symbols and windowed with stained glass would¡¯ve been easily noticed even if I was drunk. I didn¡¯t waste any time marching to it, guts squirming and chest tightening. Redacle charity. I was here for Redacle charity. It wasn¡¯t much, just some bread, maybe a bowl of stew, but knowing what I knew about this world¡­ Fuck, that much might mean draining all the charity they had. On the inside, the place was just as grandiose, but I was used to much bigger buildings from earth. And the priest wasn¡¯t half as hostile as anyone else had been. There was a place made, inside, for me to sit, and it was warmer than anywhere I¡¯d yet set foot in. Within Redacle, at least. There were a few other people there for me to share the charity with, and all looked like they damned well needed it. That I hadn¡¯t been turned away at the door, that I¡¯d been ushered through to join these wretches without even a moment¡¯s pause, was, if anything, a telltale sign of how ragged I probably looked. And my spending no more than two seconds dwelling on the fact was an indicator of how much my hunger had grown to eat everything else in my head. I left with a full belly, having been fed with broth and some dried-out wafers. The stuff tasted like nothing at all, except a slight reduction in my hunger, and right now that was the best thing I could hope for. Solitaire and I met up soon enough, and he presented arms to me. I decided not to ask where he¡¯d gotten the big fucking lump hammer, we had more pressing matters. In the end the two of us spent another day and a half in Jhigral. We ate, we recovered, and we rested by bunking in the crook between two buildings and huddling. By the end of it our bodies were still achy and pained, but the weariness felt much more like a feeling than an ailment. I checked Solitaire¡¯s stats, just to be sure. [Appraisal] Yep. Back to normal, more or less, which was a damned relief. The Stamina and Dexterity drops were concerning, though, but if nothing else I¡¯d expected a lot worse. Five days hadn¡¯t been long as far as hunger spells went, but it¡¯d been enough for Solitaire to visibly thin down. His face looked like it was pulled taut, cheekbones pressing into the skin, and his eyes had almost sunk into the sockets. I couldn¡¯t have looked much better. It was lucky, I decided, that we¡¯d been careful to hurry our way down that mountain. What would another day of this have done? Another two? A shiver ran down my spine as we stood up. ¡°So,¡± I croaked, ¡°Jungua sap. Know the name?¡± Solitaire shook his head, frowning. ¡°It sounds like something I¡¯d come up with, though. I¡­Hm, I think maybe this world is filling in the blanks for our own setting, basically using our book as a template and then adding in things that we might have included had we decided to focus on a particular region.¡± I nodded. It made sense to me, and it was absolutely fucking horrifying to hear. Our world-building was definitely not very friendly to the poor idiots who happened to be living inside said world. Still, nothing we could do about it now. I buried the stab of weird guilt that reared its head up at the thought of how many people were starving on our account, and we set off. Chapter 6 Solitaire¡¯s POV: Day 7 Shango had insisted about twice now that we really were back to full strength, and I still wasn¡¯t convinced. He¡¯d always been better at the biological side of science, studied it, practised it, even enjoyed it. But he was still a human, humans lied, constantly, for a thousand different reasons or for no reason at all. It was just what they did, that and plan to kill me and vehemently lie about it. And I couldn¡¯t see the stats that he told me about. It could be that we were still weak, and Shango just wanted me to think otherwise. To use the placebo effect to artificially push me up into better functionality. It was fair enough, really, I¡¯d probably have tried the same thing myself. Problem with clever-cloggs like me, though, was that too much thinking left convenient little tricks like that a lot less reliable. I felt worn, still, no matter what. And I knew that something was deeply wrong with my body. Shango had lost about five pounds already and it¡¯d be naive to assume I¡¯d somehow escaped in better condition. Even if we were back up to full strength, one meal a day wouldn¡¯t keep us there for long. At best, we were feeling a second wind. At worst we weren¡¯t even gifted with that. This mission had to succeed. Which brought me onto the next point of concern. I¡¯d done some thinking, once my head was a bit clearer, and come to some very obvious conclusions. One was more dangerous than the others. ¡°We shouldn¡¯t be getting this much preferential treatment for an errand like this.¡± I noted to Shango. ¡°We¡¯re heading, what, a half day away and back again? Any idiot could do this, why wouldn¡¯t he just pay us a few coppers and get it over with.¡± We¡¯d used a classic Dungeons and Dragons style coinage for Redacle, fifty coppers to a silver, fifty silvers to a gold. That this man was offering us to keep our friend alive for one days¡¯ work was¡­Suspect to say the least. Treatment like that was worth easily five times what our work would get. So we were being played, but how? ¡°Maybe he¡¯s desperate.¡± Shango suggested, not sounding hopeful even to me. ¡°Maybe he¡¯s a prick even around here, and can¡¯t find anyone to help him.¡± No. No for two reasons, for one thing that bastard was very much normal here, and I¡¯d thought bloody modern humans were bad. But for another, there was no reason he¡¯d make the pay jump for us¡­Unless he really did desperately need the sap, to the point of wanting to have us running after it before we could hear about the situation fully. I swore. We should¡¯ve been gathering information during our stay, not lounging around watching ourselves recover. The hunger had made me worse than weak, I¡¯d been stupid, and soon I might be dead. This time, at least, our journey was a lot easier. We¡¯d planned to make it down the mountain in three days last time, and we would have if C¨¢do hadn¡¯t decided to go into a coma. We didn¡¯t have thirteen stone of dipshit to carry now, though, so we made much better progress. Both of us had eaten right before setting off, figuring we¡¯d time our daily charity meal to have another one waiting for us once we returned, and so we weren¡¯t in too much trouble camping out again with our typical snowdrift strategy. We didn¡¯t make a fire though. Whatever was waiting ahead, fire might attract it. We just spent extra long setting up our little shelter, watching the darkening woods from a peeking hole, and waiting. Fortunately, I¡¯d nicked a few strips of cloth to wrap ourselves in and keep anything from dropping off this time. We weren¡¯t waiting that long, dark was still new when we caught the smoke rising high. It was barely visible, only registering because it caught a few beams of the setting sun¡¯s light, but it was there for sure. Humans, right where we needed to be going, right in the middle of a danger zone. Camping. It was bandits. I knew it was bandits, Shango fucking knew it was bandits, but it was still a challenge actually convincing my friend of the fact. I never quite understood why, but for some reason most people had a much harder time killing homosapiens than they did animals. What was more annoying was the fact that it was usually the ones who needed killing that didn¡¯t hesitate. Life was full of those little inconveniences, I supposed. Despite the shocking revelation, it occurred to us that nothing had really changed in our plan. Mainly because we didn¡¯t really have the luxury of changing anything. We¡¯d still have to go over, get the sap and get past anything trying to stop us, all that had happened now was we¡¯d gotten a glimpse of what might try. So we left our shelter and hurried over to the smoke. Whoever was guarding the sap, they were probably watching for people coming towards it. No doubt their entire scheme was just jumping enterprising merchants, healers or alchemists who wanted to gather it and tried to close in past them. In which case, if we were lucky, they¡¯d not be nearly as prepared for people moving over towards their camp rather than away from it. If we weren¡¯t lucky we¡¯d die, but there wasn¡¯t anything we could do about that, so we ignored it. Shango took the lead for one very important reason: it was his power we were banking on. Slowly, step by step, we closed in on our targets and soon enough we caught physical sight of them. They were standing around a bonfire, numbering only three, one seated a bit farther away from the others with his eyes away from the fire rather than towards it.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Lucky, then. If they¡¯d thought of our snow-sheltering strategy then they might¡¯ve been able to have a sentry farther from their camp, and we might¡¯ve stumbled into their sight without knowing. Good thing pre-industrial humanity was so fucking dumb. From his vantage point, Shango was able to study the bastards good and proper. He whispered the findings to me. All were armed, obviously, but not well. Two had knives, one more had a spear, and their clothes were just the ragged scraps they looked like. Their physical stats were about average for the world, though one was sitting at an impressive Intelligence stat of six. He might sense something was up. It was fairly easy to come up with a suitable strategy, rudimentary though it was. Shango backed off into the woods, moving as silently as could be expected with all the snow crunching underfoot. I went in another direction, circling the bandits, keeping a tight grip on my hammer. I¡¯d stolen it, obviously, but it was well worth the risk. The thing was some big stone-smasher, with about a yard of handle ending in a head bigger than my fist and made from solid iron. At a guess it probably weighed about six, maybe seven pounds. At a calculation it weighed six point eight. A bit on the heavy side for fighting humans, but I hadn¡¯t been sure we wouldn¡¯t get attacked by another fucking bear. Soon I was around the bonfire, perched behind a tree in the snowy shadows, waiting for Shango to give me my opportunity. It came fast. The first rock went wide, sailing past the sentry¡¯s head. He stepped back, surprised at the sudden movement, shifting his footing and turning his head to gaze out across the darkness. Then Shango¡¯s second throw came, casting a larger stone this time. I didn¡¯t see exactly how or where it hit, but the bandit was stumbling back as the rock bounced from his body, crying out and clutching his face. Both the others were on their feet in an instant, scrambling for their weapons and hurrying to his side. I already had mine, though, and I was already moving before they¡¯d even gotten up. The hammer came down just as one of them turned to face me, catching him hard in the shoulder. I heard bones break like twigs, and he went down screaming. His friend was quick, turning and lunging with their knife in a swing I barely leapt back from in time. I tried to bring my own weapon to bear, but he closed in faster than I could out-wrestle its unwieldy weight. He¡¯d be on me before my swing was on him, so I abandoned the bludgeon and reached out to catch his knife-arm by the wrist. He had all the momentum, sending me lurching back, struggling in the snow just to keep my footing. Right before I could bring my size to bear, a foot slipped out beneath me and I went down, knife lunging closer for me and missing my neck by an inch where it hit the ground. The bastard fell down on top. I leaned in, switched my grip to wrap it around the bandit¡¯s torso, then roared with exertion as I hauled him up and over, slamming his back down into the snow to my left, then finishing the motion to roll on top. I had the mount, now, and I didn¡¯t hesitate to use it. Swinging an elbow down for his head, aiming to catch a temple and knock my enemy¡¯s thoughts from his skull. He blocked it, the fucker, folding up and covering himself with forearms. I switched tactics quickly, leaned over him, pushed his head down with one hand to keep him stunned in place, and reached for the knife. Apparently I¡¯d gotten the smart one, because he clearly realised what was happening and chose the perfect moment to shift his weight under me and send me toppling off of him. I rolled to my feet quick enough, missed my grab for the knife and then stumbled back as a punch barely slipped by my head. When my vision came into focus, there were two bandits circling me. Shango hadn¡¯t managed to distract the sentry for as long as we¡¯d planned, then. The smart one closed in first, and I backed off just as his friend moved to one side- trying to get behind me. I switched tactics again, lunging forwards and slamming my shoulder against the first, sending the bastard down. I turned in time to catch a punch across my head, staggering from the shock of it, then grunting as more blows started peppering my ribs. I folded over, coughed, grabbing the tiny little cunt hammering away at me and dragged his face into my forehead. The headbutt smashed his nose to bits, painting my scalp in foamy blood and knocking him flat, letting me stomp down on his neck to finish things just as the smart one was back on his feet. I heard scraping as I turned, wondered why he wasn¡¯t already on me, and figured out he¡¯d gone for the knife just in time to throw myself back from his slash and fall flat in the snow. He was over me in an instant, blade held high, coming down for my guts too fast and too centred to dodge. So I didn¡¯t, bringing a leg in and lashing out a kick for his groin in the moment before the drop. I grinned at the sight of him doubling over and the wheezing sound that escaped his lips, then moved out from under him and threw an uppercut into his face on my way back to my feet. This time, I was on the fucker before he could rise. Grabbing his knife-hand and bending it back, teeth gritted, snarling with my face inches from his as the metal came closer to his neck. He strained against me with every ounce of strength in his body, but there was no contest between us. He was some fucking cave-dweller, somehow less civilised than King fucking Henry the Eighth and with a body to show it. The wrestling match was over in moments, and ended with gurgles and blood fountaining out from around the new metal ornament jutting out of his jugular. It takes ages for someone to die properly, we humans are just built like that. Other animals? No problem at all, they have a heart attack if you fart on them too hard, but our adrenal system is insane. People have lived for hours after being cut in half, gotten holes poked in them without even noticing until well after the fact. The bandit was no different. He kept on twitching, wheezing and trying to move for the better part of a minute. Long after Shango sprinted back up to my side and started retching at the sight. Both of us eyed him in silence while he finished finally going still, and I glanced at my friend. Disgust was written on his face. Horror, regret, guilt. I didn¡¯t feel any of that. Odd. Well, maybe the stupid bastard shouldn¡¯t have planned to ambush me. Shame it was so cold, if it were warmer I could¡¯ve gotten my cock out to piss on his corpse. A noise drew both of our eyes back to the side, where we found the first bandit- the one I¡¯d sledgehammered- lying down and trying to crawl away. Shango started muttering at the sight, weighing what we ought to do, how to handle him. I didn¡¯t feel the need to consider my own options out loud. He was a killer, that much I was fairly sure of, either directly or indirectly by camping a life-saving medicine. More importantly, we needed money, and I knew a good way he could get me some. It¡¯d be a lot easier if he was dead, too. Shango might disagree, or else take an age in deciding that he didn¡¯t. If he said to spare the guy then I¡¯d be forced to either argue, or disregard his thoughts entirely by acting on my own. That wasn¡¯t ideal. So I moved fast, lurching towards the crawling man, plucking the hammer back off the ground and swinging it down all within a few seconds. It landed on his head with a meaty crunch that even I felt a little bit queasy hearing. His legs kept kicking for a few more seconds, weirdly enough. Eyes drifting to face in different directions, sickly gurgles escaping his throat as the convulsions spread. Brain injuries tended to be funny like that. He died faster than his friend, though. Chapter 7 Shango¡¯s POV: Day 7 My focus lapsed. Not for long, a moment at most, an instant at least. Just the span of a few thoughts. Hardly any time at all, really. It was, if anything, impressive that the tiny stretch of time was long enough for Solitaire to waltz over and fucking kill a man right in front of me. I spent a while staring at the ruined mess he¡¯d made of his head, then a while longer staring at him. Solitaire finally snapped me out of my stupor. He didn¡¯t say anything, didn¡¯t even flash an expression at the killing. Just knelt down beside the dead man, pulled out the other bandit¡¯s knife, and started pressing the blade into his mouth. That, at last, was too much. ¡°You fucking killed him.¡± I snapped, earning a glance from Solitaire. He looked irritated. ¡°Yeah.¡± He said, turning back to whatever the fuck he was doing. That gave me something else to focus on, distracting me even while my thoughts were already churning around like some damned whirlpool. ¡°You executed him!¡± He didn¡¯t even look up this time, only shrugged. ¡°I needed him dead, do you know how much human teeth sell for in time periods like this? I don¡¯t actually, but I know for a fact there was a market for them. No prosthetics, you know?¡± It was sickening, how casual he was about everything. Literally sickening, I dropped down to my knees, hurling up a streak of acrid vomit as my throat convulsed and nostrils burned. There wasn¡¯t much left in my guts, after the hunger and last spew, but it was enough to twist them, The snow¡¯s frigid touch barely even registered to me, I just kept kneeling there as steam from my own spilled insides wafted upwards. When I looked up, Solitaire was still poking away with his knife, still focused entirely on the work. ¡°You should get over this quickly,¡± He sighed, ¡°I need help. We¡¯re looking at close to a hundred teeth between these three and so far I¡¯m averaging less than one per minute, I want to be here for as few hours as possible.¡± ¡°YOU FUCKING EXECUTED SOMEONE!¡± I couldn¡¯t keep myself from screaming any longer, everything about this was wrong. I might have whispered for all Solitaire¡¯s reaction. ¡°I did.¡± He replied, calm as ever. ¡°And I¡¯d execute another if it improved our chances of survival, these bastards were camping out and killing people who tried to gather medicine in a world with barely any at all. You want to mourn them? Do it quietly, now stop distracting me, this molar¡¯s really deep.¡± I stared at him as he worked, and Solitaire didn¡¯t even glance back. In the end there was nothing more I could think to say. So I just watched and waited, not able to bring myself to start hacking away at the men¡¯s mouths, but not willing to stop him either. We did need the money, with the debt we¡¯d accrue by having C¨¢do healed we¡¯d need all the money we could get. And there were certainly worse people to get it from than this one. Worse corpses, really. I couldn¡¯t argue at all with taking the teeth, but the way he¡¯d brought that hammer down¡­The way he¡¯d looked at me afterwards. I cursed, grabbed a knife and knelt down beside one of the corpses, getting to work. It was a relief when we finally finished, pockets filled with bloody, gummy teeth and hands covered in red crusts. An hour had passed. Not as long as it could¡¯ve been. Not as long as it would have been without me. Luckily we¡¯d had the fire nearby while we worked. ¡°Let¡¯s get the sap.¡± I grunted, feeling drained already. More than that. Hollowed out. Somehow tearing the teeth out had been harder than fighting, or what little fighting I¡¯d done. The kills had been quick, near-instant even, just one action and then a display to feel bad about. This had been an age of prolonged, sustained decision-making. And my reward was a bloody, sticky, revolting cluster of dubiously valued enamel tucked away into my clothing. We moved on for our prize, trudging along through the snow, and while we walked it occurred to me that we¡¯d just won a damned three on two. Something about that had to have progressed us, surely. [Appraisal] What the fuck. Nothing. No mention of experience, no skill points, no stat changes, no level increase. We¡¯d gotten fuck all from that. The bottom dropped out of my chest as I walked, suddenly overcome with the urge to find whoever dropped us into this hellhole and show them all the neat tooth extracting techniques I¡¯d spent an hour mastering. We¡¯d never seen jungua sap before, never even world-built it, but both of us recognised it when we finally found the right spot. I¡¯d imagined the stuff as runny and sort of amber-coloured, almost like olive oil. Solitaire, apparently, had envisioned it as purple and gluey. When we found it, it was a green, frictionless sludge. There was something to be inferred, there. I could understand one of our two conflicting mental images taking precedence, we were the writers after all, but neither one had stuck in this case. Why was that? Hold on, back up. How did we tend to settle disagreements in the writing room? Well, we¡¯d argue our points, try to convince the other. Often there was a fair bit of shouting involved. Then¡­Someone would compromise, or more frequently everyone would, and we¡¯d end up with something completely different than any of us originally suggested. A synthesis. So that was what we could expect from all the blank spots in our world-building, some new congealment of our different ideas that we could only predict by having some big argument in the exact right headspace and coinciding onto the same conclusion. In other words, we couldn¡¯t bloody predict it. Splendid. Solitaire wasn¡¯t exactly happy when I mentioned by observation, and worse, he could find no fault in its logic. We got started on our way back to Jhigral, sap in hand. We must¡¯ve been getting used to the cold, because the next twelve hours passed by like a breeze. A hundred mile per hour breeze, mind, carrying gravel in its winds, but we¡¯d still take that over the journeys from before. Before we knew it we were back in town, marching in past the wall, and looking at everyone with a bit less¡­Fear. Seeing the place again, it felt transformed. Took me a moment to realise that the change was all us. We¡¯d killed men, Solitaire directly, me by helping as best I could. After something like that it was hard to be scared of the dark alleys and mean looks from before. Hard to be scared, and so much easier to focus on the other details. I felt my heart throb as I saw people lying about without homes, trying in vain to find some shelter from the snow between buildings or under debris. Just like we had. The homeless had never been an uncommon sight where I was from, of course, but seeing this many¡­Seeing them this withered and starved, I was almost tempted to march over to the nearest guard and stick one of the knives we¡¯d taken from the bandits in him. I decided against it, something told me that would lead to an undesirable outcome. Mercifully, we got to Corvan¡¯s shop before I could see much more of the eternal class struggle, and entered the place¡¯s warmth with no small amount of relief. It took a minute more before the old bastard came out to see us, again, but when he did it was almost worth the trip just seeing his face. We might¡¯ve walked over and started pissing on him to less surprise than that, and when Solitaire pulled out the sap, that surprise quickly turned into a deeper, more considering look. He snatched the stuff up, nodding crisply. ¡°Alright then.¡± He snapped, as if affronted to have been shocked at all, ¡°I don¡¯t know how you did it, but a deal¡¯s a deal, I¡¯ll put the worth of this towards healing your friend, and you can all work off the rest.¡± Both of us nodded. I could physically feel Solitaire fighting the instinct of every cell in his body to behead and eat the magus while screaming about socialised healthcare, but mercifully my friend kept himself restrained. This time. A tremble as I remembered what he¡¯d done to the bandit, and then the magus was turning back to C¨¢do, eyes locked on him, mumbling words to himself as if we weren¡¯t there at all. Neither of us could resist watching. Magic, at least this world¡¯s magic, was nothing new to us. We¡¯d designed it for fuck¡¯s sake. We knew how sorcerers could instinctively command something they saw as an element, we knew how wizards could learn the ¡°nouns¡± and ¡°verbs¡± that made up reality to twist it in particular directions. We¡¯d never seen it, though. This wasn¡¯t some exposition-dump on paper, it was tangible, real, authentic magic. The arcane happening right before our eyes. There wasn¡¯t a thing in the world that would¡¯ve prepared us for it, certainly not removed the wonder, and so yeah, you can be damned well sure we stayed and watched while Corvan¡¯s hands started to glow and the air around him smelled of ozone. Healing incantations, that much we recognised, reknitting flesh back together, purging bacteria from places it didn¡¯t belong. Even the magus probably didn¡¯t understand half of what he was actually doing. The room trembled slightly while it all happened, the power at work being enough to bleed out into other, more tangible forms of energy. And C¨¢do convulsed. Now, in hindsight, had we known that we¡¯d be accidentally creating or influencing a world filled with actual people, we probably wouldn¡¯t have made magical healing so agonisingly painful. But we hadn¡¯t known. How could we?! Do you ever catch your idle imaginings to stop yourself from accidentally manifesting an asteroid in some world you don¡¯t even know exists? No, of course not, because that would be stupid. So we maintain that what happened next was completely not our fault, and just a horrible accident. It still screwed us to watch, though. C¨¢do was the strongest man either of us knew, and here he was thrashing around, moaning like some tortured rat. Corvan snarled at the sight, glancing at the two of us irritably. ¡°He¡¯s freakishly strong.¡± The magus snapped. ¡°Hold him down.¡± We hesitated, almost argued, then did. It was for C¨¢do¡¯s own good. Mind you, holding down an olympic athlete is actually quite difficult. Solitaire did it easily enough, big bastard that he was, he''d also inherited some wiry, rat-like musculature from his family that made him bizarrely strong for his build. I¡¯d inherited wiry muscles, but no uncommon pound-for-pound strength. Even one-armed, even with his ribs broken, C¨¢do nearly sent me flying more than once. As the healing went on, we tired, and C¨¢do seemed inexhaustible. The strain was getting worse, his adrenaline-fuelled convulsions building stronger, before, at last, they started to die down. The magus sighed. ¡°Not reforming bone anymore.¡± He breathed. ¡°Now I¡¯m just repairing the flesh around it. We¡¯re almost done.¡± Sure enough, it was all over a minute later. We were panting, gasping, aching across half our bodies and standing with hair plastered to our scalp in sweat. But C¨¢do had a new colour to his cheeks- apparently an indicator that white people were no longer dying- and his inhalations were finally coming strong and unbroken. We¡¯d expected that, what took us by surprise, though, was when this glorious bull of a bastard actually opened his eyes, looked around and sat up not ten seconds later. Even the magus was stunned. ¡°So.¡± C¨¢do began, throat croaking and scraping from days of disuse. ¡°Did I miss anything important?¡± Chapter 8 C¨¢do¡¯s POV: Day 8 We were poor, in debt, and I think that wizard had missed a spot in my spine, because it hurt everytime I tried to sit down. All in all, it could be worse. In fact it had been, several days earlier. Kenny and Bernard- Shango and Solitaire as I¡¯d spent several hours practising- were both looking more than a little ragged, but at least they¡¯d eaten recently. I only got that luxury when they took me to the church for our charity meal. It was there that we discussed what had happened, and what we¡¯d do next. I¡¯d known, dimly, that something was wrong with me, even delirious and suffering from an IKEA home-assembly ribcage it had been obvious. The moment I¡¯d woken up with a fresh brain I¡¯d figured out I was unconscious before, I was moved during it, and more or less all the other big strokes. That and the memory of fighting a bear with no more than rocks and a can-do attitude meant that it wasn¡¯t hard to figure out what had happened. Solitaire and Shango¡¯s story, though, was new to me. I hadn¡¯t even been there for it of course. I had to keep myself from crying when they shared it. We were friends, best friends even. We¡¯d been there for each other during some of the worst of our old world, but clearly the worst of earth was a different test altogether than what this new land had thrown at us so far. Hearing what they¡¯d done, hearing how they¡¯d killed¡­It was the steel my spine needed. ¡°So, we¡¯re hobos now.¡± Bernard- Solitaire- concluded. I nodded, grunted, continued eating my stale bread and soup. He and Shango stared at me. ¡°You¡­Seem to be taking this fairly well.¡± Shango noted, and it occurred to me that perhaps I should¡¯ve been more expressive. I shrugged. ¡°I just had my rib cage turned into a jigsaw puzzle by a bear, then assembled by a wizard. And I think a piece is still lodged in my asshole. Give me some time and I¡¯ll see if I can muster a nice, big scream of horror for you. For now¡­I don¡¯t know, man, work in the morning isn¡¯t even the second worst piece of news I¡¯ve had this week.¡± That earned a considering look from Shango, and a grin from Solitaire, who slapped me on the shoulder. ¡°Right you are!¡± The Scouser laughed. ¡°That¡¯s just the kind of spirit that¡¯ll keep us from starving to death!¡± He seemed oddly pleased. Not just about me, either. As if he were growing happier, rather than more fearful, as our situation worsened. There was something deeply consistent about that reaction that I was too hungry and miserable to bother articulating. Shango didn¡¯t join his laughter, frown lines deepened to trenches across his face. ¡°That¡¯s not a small ask, though.¡± He noted. ¡°How do we even do that? We almost got killed by some random wildlife.¡± I cut in, then, sensing that my friends were about to start another of their classic bickering sessions. ¡°You guys do have a spear, yeah?¡± They eyed me, nodded, and I smiled. ¡°Well then we¡¯ll be fine, I can kill a bear with a spear.¡± Now, being truthful, I actually wasn¡¯t sure I could at all. But I figured we needed confidence right now, and from what I¡¯d been told Solitaire and Shango had just watched me almost out-wrestle them both at once while unconscious. True to my guess, they seemed a bit lifted up by the knowledge. ¡°Alright.¡± Solitaire continued. ¡°Let¡¯s see if we can¡¯t find some work.¡± Redacle had been a gaming setting before a novel one, made for tabletop RPGs we¡¯d used to play together, and as an inheritance of that beginning it was absurdly, ridiculously filled with things that needed killing. Most towns had a missive board, and Jhigral was no exception, and most missive boards were packed with potential work. Bandits, like the ones my friends had run into, but also magical creatures.You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Goblins multiplying in the shadows and stealing crops, magical contaminants driving animals mad- which, thinking about it, might have been what caused that bear attack- and however many other potential sources of danger. Or, if you were in need of it, sources of money. One needed only to look and read. We couldn¡¯t read. Fuck. It took us a few moments of staring to find that much out, but there was no denying it. Whatever force translated every word we heard, it wasn¡¯t doing it for the written passages. In this world we were illiterate. Most adventurers hired a clerk to follow them around and resolve that issue, but we couldn¡¯t afford to hire shit. Nobody would give the weird, foreign giants the time of day, and we had no money to provide any real incentive for them to change their minds. And we were getting hungrier by the hour, which meant a delay wasn¡¯t on the table. Swallowing our annoyance, we all set off to go into the issue blind. Well, not quite just yet, Solitaire and Shango insisted on taking a stop at a weird little shop- a dentist¡¯s from what I could tell. They spent a while inside, and when they came out they had a few coins to their name. Six silver and twenty-one coppers, enough for another spear. Or a bow and some arrows. It was a no-brainer, we picked the ranged weapon. Apparently that had been the one thing the others hadn¡¯t looted from the bandits, having accidentally broken it in the fighting. With me no longer dying horribly from bear combat, we were able to take our time in scanning out the land as we left. Jhigral seemed to be a northern town, surrounded in snow as far as the eye could see- apparently we¡¯d arrived just in time for winter. The majority of its neighbouring landscape was woodland, but it was also a coastal town quite close to the ocean on the interior of a great bay. Cave systems were known to run through the ground beneath it, but that was no surprise. Cave systems ran underground everywhere in Redacle. Tabletop game setting, remember? Can¡¯t go dungeon crawling without crawlable dungeons. Particularly not dark ones, that magnetically attract suitably horrible creatures to dwell within. Now here was our dilemma: Roleplaying games had a particular logic to them. You kill something big, you get an expensive, valuable reward. Cool. But we weren¡¯t sure how much of this version of Redacle had been ¡°randomly generated¡± around us. Our world-building was fairly in-depth, but it was more than likely that any given creature we encountered was something none of us had coined. Solitaire and Shango had already filled me in about their theory regarding that fact. If true, it meant we¡¯d be dealing with unknowns, and they might not necessarily give us much reward. Even if they did, they might be as tough as that bear, or as tough as ten of that bear. There were creatures in our original worldbuilding capable of smashing houses to splinters and throwing men hard enough for them to burst on impact, durable enough to have entire squads of modern soldiers unloading into them and barely even notice. We had no guarantee that any given fight we picked would end in our favour. So it was a tough decision, picking where to head next, and we made it slowly and agonisingly. We¡¯d asked around for the more dangerous spots to avoid, of course, and while we were already thinking we figured we¡¯d keep on asking. Around twenty minutes of this led to us getting the information that, finally, settled us into a particular course. For better or for worse. Trolls were horrible, evil bastard things. They were about eight feet tall on the lower end, but hunched enough to appear closer to six, and muscled like a chimpanzee on bull testosterone. Their fingers ended in talons, not nails, and they were omnivorous in the same way bears were. Except unlike bears, their favourite food was fucking bear. If we¡¯d encountered a troll on our second night, I had no doubt that we¡¯d all be dead men, and probably without doing much to even bother it first. And they were a semi-common sight in the region, with one in particular causing trouble for some local traders by attacking the road to Wolney. We could¡¯ve ignored it. Being honest we even should have ignored it, but we didn¡¯t ignore it, because we were still two full gold in debt, and troll bone marrow sold to apothecaries for about double its weight in silver. Which made the matter just tempting enough that we were actually considering fighting the thing. It was the worst kind of decision, our hands pressed into a fight we were sorely outclassed and underprepared for, with no choice at all due to the currents of circumstance. And we might¡¯ve suffered a disaster for it if Shango hadn¡¯t thought to bring up his Menu again. ¡°We¡¯ve levelled up!¡± He yelled, practically screamed really. It made me jump and almost had Solitaire put a knife through him as we stared at our friend, then his words clicked and we were drilling him for details. Chapter 9 Shango¡¯s POV: Day 8 [Appraisal] Solitaire¡¯s stat spread was a familiar sight by now, I¡¯d started using him as my go-to for comparison almost on instinct. What caught my eye this time, though, was the latest addition near the top of the screen in my mind¡¯s eye. A single line, small enough that I nearly missed it. And vital enough that it changed everything. Level two. My heart raced, and I started scrutinising the screen more, looking for any other differences. I found one quickly. I steadied myself before the excitement could grow too much, turning to Solitaire and barking the information out at him so quickly that I wasn¡¯t sure anyone but he could have followed. He nodded, eyes hard, grinning in anticipation. ¡°So we can level.¡± He said, giving voice to the fact left him laughing almost as hard as I was, and soon C¨¢do was joining in. I was a bit more focused than either of them. Looking inwards now, I brought up my own stats. [Appraisal] I squinted, looking longer, and sure enough; The same unspent experience as Solitaire. Interesting, I was fairly sure I hadn¡¯t contributed as much as he did to our bandit killing, so did that mean we were levelling through some other means? Well, yeah, we must¡¯ve been, I checked right after that and we got no experience at all. But what? Getting the sap and having C¨¢do healed was the only other thing that struck me as a possible source. I decided to check C¨¢do to verify. [Appraisal] That more or less confirmed it, we received experience by completing¡­Fuck, I suppose they¡¯d be called ¡°Quests¡±. C¨¢do had been too busy bleeding to death to help with the last, so he hadn¡¯t gotten any experience from it. It was annoying, he was by far the deadliest among us, seeing him level up and become even more so would¡¯ve been a lot of reassurance. But we still had something to show for it.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. ¡°Unspent Skillpoints.¡± I called out. ¡°Any idea what that might be?¡± We didn¡¯t take long to draw the obvious conclusion, but what could I spend them on? More particularly, how exactly could they be spent? I decided to try mine first, my Appraisal would just make it easier to see the effects. It took a lot of fucking around before I finally stumbled onto the solution. There was something in me, a weight of experience and knowledge, a big bundle of¡­Change. The result of our trek for the sap. Every decision alters a person, every event leaves them a tiny bit different from before, and I meditated on that difference right now, comparing who I was to how I¡¯d been before venturing out to save C¨¢do. It was like doing cocaine, if the cocaine was on cocaine There¡¯s no way to put what I felt next into words. I¡¯m sorry, there just isn¡¯t. You¡¯d need to feel it. To try, at least, it was like¡­Like being aware of the tissues in your bones, the fibres in your muscles. Can you imagine that? Feeling all of them at once, on the cellular level. And being able to control them, choosing which ones to¡­To multiply, to grow. My own body was mine to command, more or less. Flooded with an ethereal power I couldn¡¯t even name, all I had to do was decide where I wanted to put it. Admittedly, the process might have been just a shade less intuitive, were it not for the fact that the words [Skillpoint Expenditure in progress, select Stat to increase] kept flashing in front of my mind¡¯s eye. Still, I¡¯m sure my humongous, nine Intelligence brain would¡¯ve figured it all out regardless. The only question now was what to actually spend it on. That question lasted about half a second before I chose Intelligence. ¡­And found no result. Weird, I tried again, nothing. So I experimented, thought of what my next choice would be. Toughness. I didn¡¯t want to die, I didn¡¯t want to end up like C¨¢do had, and I didn¡¯t want to find myself crippled for life. So Toughness, for survivability. For fortune. The thought was only idle in my head for an instant before I felt the energy coalescing, infusing me¡­Changing me. Then it was gone. No, not gone, used up. Spent. I moved a bit, testing my body, and finding no difference. Pulling up my character sheet again, I examined it. [Appraisal] So, my Toughness had increased. Just to be sure I checked the secondary section, and sure enough my unspent Skillpoints were at zero. But I didn¡¯t feel any different. I winced, this demanded experimentation. ¡°Solitaire, can you punch me-¡± He did, instantly, flooring me and making me see stars as blood ran down my almost-flattened nose. I got up swearing, seeing his stupid face grinning through the curtain of tears. ¡°I didn¡¯t break it.¡± He informed me, as if the fact would disarm all my criticism. I spat the blood out, and stood. Then the humour died. Solitaire had always done stuff like this, always been¡­An asshole. And all of that felt different, now that I¡¯d seen what he did in saving C¨¢do. Impishness came across differently, in a man from hell. Nose still bleeding, I felt it for damage. It wasn¡¯t broken, at least, Solitaire had been right about that much, but I still glared up at him. ¡°Put a point into Toughness?¡± He asked. Fuck him for punching me, and fuck him for being this quick even dealing with concepts only I could see. ¡°I did, but I didn¡¯t really notice much difference there, did you?¡± Solitaire shrugged. ¡°Your nose didn¡¯t feel particularly hard, but I didn¡¯t hit it that hard either, so.¡± Stupid fucking idea, he should¡¯ve hit me just for thinking of it. I considered the change. If I¡¯d wasted a Skillpoint I¡¯d be very annoyed, and quite possibly dead, but I didn¡¯t know for sure it had been wasted. What was my Strength stat? Five, normally. What was C¨¢do¡¯s? Eight. A three point difference, and C¨¢do couldn¡¯t exactly toss people around, however strong he was. So individual Skillpoints probably wouldn¡¯t be pushing us up entire rungs on the combative ladder. I cursed. Shame I couldn¡¯t have spent it on some decent armour, instead. The three of us discussed matters a while longer, bouncing around ideas before we finally found ourselves satisfied that we probably weren¡¯t wrong about what we thought we knew. Probably. That meant it was Solitaire¡¯s turn to spend his Skillpoint. Oddly enough, he chose Toughness as well, despite what he saw from me doing so. I suppose it was understandable, if two more meant the difference between my Strength and C¨¢do¡¯s, it¡¯d leave us a lot hardier. Eventually at least. And then we were done. No more errands, no more delays. No more excuses. There wasn¡¯t a thing holding us back except our own cowardice, and none of us could find justification to indulge that any longer. Reluctantly, just about shitting ourselves all the while, we started our march out into the great beyond. We must¡¯ve been adjusting, because the frost barely even registered anymore. Might be that having C¨¢do back was spoiling us, with all the extra timber and torches. Our target- Ghrizun Wood- was just a few miles from town, not even an hour¡¯s walk. That still left a lengthy journey for us, though. We were modern, used to luxuries like cars and planes, and we didn¡¯t cross countries often enough to be content just tolerating a stretch of boredom like that. So of course we chatted. Truth be told, there was surprisingly little to actually chat about. None of us were very well caught up with any of the shows we¡¯d been watching, nor did we have any funny highlights from some gaming sessions. Really, the wifi in Redacle would¡¯ve made such hobbies untenable, let alone the giant hairy monsters trying to chew our heads off. One thing did demand conversation, though. C¨¢do¡¯s name. He¡¯d been unconscious when Solitaire and I picked our new ones- thinking about it, we were lucky he hadn¡¯t called either of us by them and given the game away before he knew, it was bad enough we¡¯d gone this long without bringing it up to him, uncharacteristically sloppy really. We were sure to catch him up quickly once the topic occurred to us, but he took his time in finally choosing one. ¡°Beam¡±, he decided. It was absolutely perfect- Solitaire and I both had stupid ones as well. Something was changing about us, now. We¡¯d picked new names, set a goal, we had a direction and an aim, and we¡¯d actually gotten our feet beneath us. An idiot could¡¯ve told how weak we still were, and yet for the first time in a long time I felt like we had some sort of chance. Perhaps no more than five hobos, instead of three, but that was still up from where we¡¯d started. I eyed Solitaire as I thought about it. New names, new goals. And things I¡¯d never seen in my friends rearing their ugly heads. Maybe we would survive what was awaiting for us further on in the woods, but something told me this world would leave its mark one way or another. I could only hope it wasn¡¯t as deep a brand as I feared. There¡¯d already been enough drawn out of my friends, and I wasn¡¯t sure what it¡¯d do to me seeing more. Chapter 10 Solitaire¡¯s POV: Day 9 Shango was mad at me. No, no he wasn¡¯t. He¡¯d been mad at me when I hit him, what he was now, though, had come after that. Evolved from mere rage and crystalised into something far more permanent. Disgust. The smug bastard probably thought he was hiding it, as if I couldn¡¯t smell the revulsion on him. All those furtive little glances, the long, silent ponderings. The guilt and flashed glances at my weapon- glancing for what, exactly? Did he think I¡¯d hurt him? He was a fucking idiot if he did, however often we gave each other licks, but what other reason could he have? Well, obviously he was scared I¡¯d hurt someone else. Which I would, if they threatened me or my friends. Action is no less inherently forgivable than inaction, intention is nothing compared to results. Killing people by sticking up the road to life-saving medicine left them just as dead as smashing their head in with a hammer. So what I did to that bandit was fine, it was moral. It was the diffusing of a landmine. I¡¯d done a humanitarian act and was owed thanks, not derision, for the results. But Shango had never seen things that way, nobody had, except me apparently. And I¡¯d known that when I did the guy. I probably would¡¯ve kept him alive, if I hadn¡¯t needed those teeth. Ifs, woulds, coulds. He was dead now, and my pocket held a nice chunk of silver we¡¯d gotten for selling all his and his friends¡¯ pearly whites- or cheesy yellows as it were- and if the bow slung over my shoulder gave us odds even one percent better, it was worth killing fifty of that bastard. But Shango had never seen things that way. I resisted the urge to swear as I glanced at him. This wasn¡¯t a rift that would close soon. But C¨¢do¡¯s wound hadn¡¯t been one that would heal ever. The choice was clear, and I didn¡¯t regret it. Which was, of course, why I had to tell myself as much a dozen times. Thank you brain, cunt. The trees were properly white, now, snow having thickened even more in the week or so since winter started. If we¡¯d put our minds to it, igloo construction would¡¯ve been either a lot easier or a lot harder. I supposed we¡¯d find out which the next time we had cause to stray away from town for a night or more. It meant something else, too. Tracks were visible as anything in the world, but brief as well. It took maybe half a day for snowfall to cover even a deep footprint, and less for something small and light like a rabbit. Fortunately we were after a troll, which gave us a bit more wiggle room. What we did not have, though, was a tangible idea of what we were looking for. Oh, we all had a vivid picture of trolls themselves, our publishers had even gotten official art drawn up of the things. We hadn¡¯t spent long describing their feet though, and even I couldn''t recall any art depicting them. So we couldn¡¯t guess what their tracks might look like. It¡¯d be just our luck to follow what we thought was a sure trail, only to wander into some dragon¡¯s den. We trudged on all the same, determined- or, rather, opposed to getting our legs broken by a wizard- enough that the bite of the air didn¡¯t do much at all to slow our progress through the woods. With six eyes peeled, it didn¡¯t take as long as it might have for us to stumble onto something worth following. Big, dinnerplate-wide gouges in the snow left by what looked like big hands. I¡¯d always pictured and written giant chimps, when it came to troll body types, which made that a fairly promising sign. A giant chimp knuckling the ground as it moved might leave gouges like that, in snow at least. We went after it. Hm, a very promising sign. More evidence that the blanks in our worldbuilding would be filled in by the agreements we¡¯d reach if we had discussed the missing elements. I had to keep myself from entertaining the thought longer, speculation was a luxury enjoyed by people who weren¡¯t about to fight Prince Kong with less weaponry than the average biker gang. Another half hour came and went before much of anything at all happened. We almost missed the noise at first, that¡¯s how loud the wind was, but it just barely reached us. A low, snarling grunt cutting over the sound of air bouncing off tree trunks. Instantly we were on edge, ducking low, readying weapons, talking in careful, whispered tones. Something big was ahead, possibly hungry, and definitely not the sort of enemy we¡¯d enjoy fighting. But we¡¯d heard it, and it very likely hadn¡¯t heard us. Which meant a fight was optional. That was good, that was very fucking good. Our preparation was quickly decided and more quickly still executed. I took the bow, a big long thing almost as tall as this world¡¯s men, and climbed a tree. We had five arrows, all close to a yard from arse to nose, and I could only hope they¡¯d be enough. Because my friends were still on the ground twenty feet below me. Beam took the front, spear ready, trembling either with the shivers or the fear of fighting a monster. Shango was in back, knives out and stomach about one ¡°boo¡± away from emptying itself down his leg, and now all that was left for us to let everything kick off. It did so, with a great big howl. Olympians are insane, really. Beam had the lung capacity of a whale, and he used all of it in shouting over the wind, screaming hoarse and jagged like a bull being fisted.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. A few moments of silence followed, then the sound of something big and angry charging our way. The only warning we¡¯d get. The troll wasn¡¯t that big, really. It was only a head taller than a world-class powerlifter, it was only as muscular as a chimpanzee, and it was only coming at us at a leisurely pace of thirty fucking miles per hour. Beam was ready, but I was in range before him, letting an arrow go and resisting the urge to shout a swear after it. Mum always did like archery, and bow making. In her words it was safer than guns- in that the government would have less grounds to label her a terrorist if she was proven to have created them. I wasn¡¯t gonna win any awards, but I was a decent shot. And the one advantage of big enemies was big targets. The arrow hit its chest, just above the nipple, and went bouncing off. I swore, carefully fished out another, fired by the time the troll had managed another forty feet. Closer now, much closer, which meant a sharper angle and a faster arrow. This one stuck in, earning a roar of pain and slowing the monster somewhat. It was within a few paces of Beam when the third arrow caught its shoulder. He might¡¯ve died if not for that, the enemy smashing into him like a battering ram, finishing what the bear started. Instead the troll¡¯s sprint turned into a stagger, and his spear found a nice new home in its ribcage. We all laughed at the sight, grinning while eight inches of steel disappeared into the fucker. Then it backhanded him clean off his feet, and we started swearing again. I can¡¯t imagine what Shango was thinking. A big, grey-skinned animal hunched over on two legs, with mangy flesh covered in scars, four eyes and a jaw shaped halfway between an ape and a dog, slapping an olympian feet back right in front of him, leaving him the only enemy within killing range. Most people would¡¯ve freaked, but not him. He just went calm and rational. The troll came in like a blur and Shango shifted his grip on one knife, turning it to hold blade-first, cocking an arm back and throwing. His technique was dogshit, luck was absurd, and the tip caught his target right in the stomach. The troll screamed, turning away in shock, giving him just enough time to dive out of the way while it cleared the last ten feet. That was around the time arrow number four caught its back, and I was dropping down while I readied the last of my ammunition. Falling twenty feet without injury isn¡¯t easy, but it¡¯s doable. Depending on the circumstances. Helps if you¡¯re athletic, helps more if you¡¯re used to it, helps a lot more if you¡¯re tall and lithe- because big people have thick bones, and thin ones have less mass. What really helps is falling through eighteen inches of soft snow before you hit the ground, though. That was what let me keep my balance and shrug the drop off with nothing more than bent knees, and that¡¯s why the final arrow found its mark barely seconds after the one before it. The troll was spinning at me, shrieking, and Shango did the exact right thing as he closed in to slash his remaining blade along its arm. Again, the troll was turning. Too fucking stupid to realise that every time it did just gave us another opening by slowing its killing momentum. I started sprinting, closed in, flick-knife drawn, teeth grit, panic high as I realised I¡¯d be too slow. Then Beam smashed into it from the side. It did come as a surprise, even to me. To clarify, I do know I¡¯m mental, I¡¯d have to be catatonic not to, but there¡¯s different grades of crazy. Mine is good for self preservation, for caution, for contingencies. The blend of insanity I experience, however you want to describe it, is most fucking certainly not the kind that would have me charging dick-first at something ten times stronger than a human. Well, it was probably only five times stronger than Beam, and he was lucky enough to have been born with that exact mania. He hit it like a cavalry charge, shoulder first and with all his momentum braced perfectly into a last-second jump. It succeeded in sending the troll stumbling, at the cost of knocking him flat again, but this time he was ready. Rolling as he landed, jumping back up to his feet and turning into a fucking round-house kick before any of us could even realize what he was doing. Shinbone met skull with a fairly satisfying crunch, and the troll looked rather confused as it dropped to one knee. More confused than hurt, sadly, but that was where I came in. I circled it instead of charging head on, despite the sight of it rising to tear my friend apart. I¡¯m not the charging into danger sort, like I said. I always prefer to think things through, take my time, prepare, consider, then act. Being honest, it didn¡¯t actually take much considering to decide what I¡¯d do next. I closed in, then jumped just as Beam had, timing my leap to bring my heels against the troll¡¯s back, knees bending to fall into it with the last of my forward momentum, taking the instant between stopping and falling to grab both the arrows still jutting into its back, then kicking off like a springboard. Arrow removal is difficult, done properly. Lots of careful cutting around the barb, slow easing, gently guiding it out to avoid it ripping anything free on the exit. I didn¡¯t do that as I launched myself away, one shaft gripped in each hand. Probably took about a pound of meat with them, between the two barbed points on each end, and I was halfway through a nice giggle at the sound coming out of Mister Troll when my back hit the snow. This was the part of my plan I hated most; faith. I wasn¡¯t Beam, I couldn¡¯t dance to my feet and run before the thing was on me. Which left me hanging out to dry, making a really big wish that he did something stupid in time to save me. And he did. I heard snarling, screaming, then gagging. Hurried to my feet just in time to witness Beam dragging the troll back into a fucking choke-hold. I took one look at its talons, figured out all on my own the single-digit-seconds that manoeuvre would keep working for, then sprinted forwards. Shango was beside me, suddenly, and we split up again to approach the troll from different angles. It was bleeding, crimson drizzling from the stomach, oozing from its other three arrow wounds and gushing from the new spots on its back where I¡¯d yanked a pair of meatballs out. The snow around it was sticky and red with what looked like two, even three litres of blood. But the flow was slowing down, now, and a creature this size probably had a dozen still left in it. What was a category two haemorrhage again? Twenty percent blood loss if I recalled correctly- if, god, I¡¯m so humble- which meant that it would be slowing and weakening. But not as much as I¡¯d like. So, best to dry it out a bit more then. I went for the neck. Beam lunged back from a swipe and I leapt in under it, Shango distracted the fucker by hacking at its elbow from one side, and the moment he took its attention was enough for me to close in and go to skewer its carotid. Except this was a troll, not a human. Its skin was centimetre-thick armour, its flesh made tougher by the same magic that was partially responsible for its inhuman strength. I would¡¯ve opened all the big veins up nice and proper if I¡¯d poked a human, but against this thing they held. Which turned my killing blow into a pissing off blow. I tried to get out of arm¡¯s reach an instant later, but I was too slow. The talons came around, and this time they tore deep into my arm as I was launched. Chapter 11 Beam¡¯s POV: Day 9 Solitaire was lying still, blood fountaining from his arm, body twitching with pain, strength leaving him. He was hurt, and it was my fault. It was my fault because I¡¯d gotten myself hurt in the first place, and left us trapped in debt. It was my fault because I¡¯d been too slow, too weak and too fragile to fight a stupid animal on my own. It was my fault because, for all my years of training, I¡¯d never learned how to kill something, only to win matches. The animal was recovering, but everything seemed to be moving in slow motion now. Snowflakes dropping as if they were falling through syrup, wind howling long and drawn out like a wolf¡¯s cry, pain blossoming across every inch of me like cold fire. I stood there, staring, regretting, silently apologising. And then the troll took its first step towards my friend. There was no thought left to be done after that, only action. My sprint took me to it in moments, and my eyes caught it swinging around for a slash at my chest long before the motion was complete. I dug my heels in, using the thick snow to halt myself by digging a pair of trenches in the pale carpet, coming just short of the jagged talons that swept out at me. The troll was off-balance now, all its weight had been behind that swing and it hadn¡¯t a human¡¯s motor control or knowledge of momentum to mitigate the torque. I¡¯d judged the spacing and time perfectly. This was my chance. My last kick had worked nicely, so I threw another one, this time aiming low. Aiming perfectly. My shin caught the creature right in its belly, crashing into the back of Shango¡¯s still-jutting knife, driving it inches deeper inside. A roar of pain and a stream of crimson told me it was a success. I struck before the fucker could recover, jumping and landing a drop-kick into its chest while it was already stumbling away. I¡¯d never have tried the move against a human, for one very vital reason. I didn¡¯t want to kill a person, and punting someone backwards wasn¡¯t the sort of move that let you avoid such risks. Redacle had educated me on what a mistake that mindset was. The troll fell, on its back now, and Shango was right beside me while we stomped and kicked at its skull. Blood still gushed from it, slowing its moves by the moment, but it managed to climb even in spite of us. Like an adult being wailed on by little kids. Well that was fine; as Solitaire was fond of saying even kids could kill an adult, they just needed a bit of guts and something pointy. ¡°The knife!¡± I screamed at Shango, sensing that he¡¯d not do much to help me physically. ¡°Snatch the knife up.¡± Bless him, he was smarter than me. I might¡¯ve been left confused about which one, panicking, adrenaline shattering my thoughts. He realised instantly that Solitaire had landed a stab before going down and dropped his weapon. Without a word Shango lunged for the fallen blade while I kept kicking away. It was up, then it was pouncing at me, slowed by its weakness and easily sidestepped. My elbow came down on that magic spot in the back of its neck, the one everyone¡¯s taught never to go for in sparring, the one that¡¯ll get you kicked out of an MMA circuit for the danger in hitting it. I felt the connection with a satisfied snarl, and watched the troll fall again. Then Shango hit it. He wasn¡¯t a strong man, nor a heavy one, but he was moving at a full sprint, and he did the smart thing of bracing his knife outstretched with the handle against his own body. All of his momentum was behind that knife, and it stuck the full length of its blade into the troll before he bounced off on impact. Another roar, another distraction as it thrashed in the snow, trying to stand and stave off this unseen attacker at once. I was about to hit it again when I saw how much more blood was bubbling out, and then thought better of it.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. The troll took a long time to die, but it managed it eventually. Veins emptying themselves out into the ground, body weakening, slowing, then stopping. Shango and I took a moment longer to examine its corpse before we were confident about not being jumped again. Then our focus turned immediately to Solitaire. He wasn¡¯t as hurt as I¡¯d been, at least judging by his continued consciousness. The arm he¡¯d been hit at had been shredded, talons carving deep into him like meat cleavers, but the wounds, although viciously severe, had already been bound by some scraps of cloth he¡¯d pocketed from the bandits. That might¡¯ve been the only reason he was able to even look clearly at us while we approached. ¡°How are you holding up?¡± I asked, kneeling down beside him. Solitaire gave me my answer by swearing, slurring, and spitting into the snow. We took that as an indicator of urgency. Initially, the plan had been to head back to Jhigral with the troll¡¯s corpse behind us, me dragging it all the while, the other two taking turns to pull alongside me so they could rest in-between sessions. We estimated it would¡¯ve perhaps tripled our travel time to do so. With Solitaire out of commission, though, he was more than just unable to help. He added an extra quarter onto the weight we needed to move. We¡¯d left early enough in the day, but it was already closer to evening than noon by the time we caught sight of the first houses again. That time left room for a lot to happen, and Solitaire didn¡¯t handle it well. His condition worsened as we went, restlessness increasing, strength fading. Early on he¡¯d been walking alongside us, then behind. Around the halfway mark we¡¯d forced him to lie on the troll and let us drag him. It slowed us less to pull him as weight than it did to match his shambling pace with just a troll pulled at our backs, that¡¯s how weak he¡¯d gotten. Things hadn¡¯t improved by the time we arrived. He was conscious, and that¡¯s about all that could be said for him. Every few dozen steps I tortured myself with another glance back at him, and the trail of flecked blood clinging to the snow behind us. Arrival couldn¡¯t come soon enough, and we made a beeline for the magus. Corvan received us reluctantly, but his eyes nearly bulged at the sight of the creature we had with us, face sheet-pale and awed. ¡°A¡­Troll.¡± He noted, dully. ¡°You¡­Killed it? The three of you?¡± Shango and I had agreed to let him do the talking, and yet even he had a note of smugness in his voice as he did. ¡°It caught us by surprise,¡± He lied, ¡°Took some quick thinking on our part to take it down, but we managed it in the end. How much are they worth exactly?¡± Corvan eyed the creature, then turned back with a sorry smile. ¡°Alas, despite their ferocity, troll corpses are not worth much as a rule. I could take it off your hands for¡­Perhaps a few silver off your debt Being generous, they are of some alchemical value.¡± ¡°This corpse is worth fifty silver, easily.¡± Shango contradicted, evenly. It was only then I realised that he¡¯d known the entire time, but the reason for his lie still escaped me. Corvan¡¯s face was beet red at having been caught out. ¡°Forty.¡± He snapped. ¡°I¡¯m the only magus who¡¯ll have use for it in this town, and we both know it.¡± Shango took a moment to weigh that, and in the end nodded in agreement. ¡°Forty it is.¡± He sighed, gesturing to the corpse, then stiffening and carrying on. ¡°...We need treatment for Solitaire, too.¡± The magus snorted at that, smugness suddenly returning to his face with a vengeance. ¡°I can heal him.¡± He noted. ¡°Of course arcane healing is hard, and expensive. It¡¯d be another¡­Seventy silver for a wound like that.¡± Shango seemed like he was about to accept, face contorted in bitterness, then Solitaire spoke up. He¡¯d been awake the entire time, not nearly as hurt as me, simply lying against the troll, too wounded to move around or even spare enough energy for speech. He spoke now, though, biting tongue cutting out with all the vigour it usually did. His carved-up arm might¡¯ve been a paper cut. ¡°We don¡¯t need magical healing.¡± He declared, wincing even at the strain it took him to do that much. Both me and Shango eyed our friend as if he were insane, because he fucking was, but Solitaire only eyed us back defiantly. ¡°Your arm-¡± Shango tried, then halted as Solitaire¡¯s voice bludgeoned his own to one side and crushed it underfoot. ¡°-My arm is badly hurt, but most of the issue is blood loss which has already been stemmed. I¡¯m not getting much worse now anyway, all we need is disinfectant, proper stitching to make sure my condition doesn¡¯t plummet farther and I¡¯ll be fine in a few weeks.¡± Shango shot back quickly, affronted by our friend¡¯s suicidal stupidity. ¡°A few weeks with you out of commission might get us killed.¡± He growled, but Solitaire had a thoughtful look in his eye at that, soon glancing to the magus. ¡°Can you give us a moment to speak?¡± He asked. Corvan grinned, apparently already sure we¡¯d be forking over the money for a magical healing session. ¡°Be quick about it.¡± The magus ordered, moving into the back room. The moment he was gone, Solitaire turned back to Shango. ¡°Quickly, pull that menu of yours up again. I have a sneaking suspicion there¡¯s going to be another change.¡± Chapter 12 Shango¡¯s POV: Day 9 Current Wealth: 5 silver Current Debt: 6 gold 15 silver [Appraisal] It strained my eyes, and my mind, but apparently I could look at unspent Skillpoints and experience at the same time. That was useful. Well, probably not actually, but it was just convenient enough to be worth the headache. And it confirmed that we¡¯d benefitted from the troll-slaying. Probably? I shared my findings with the others. Solitaire was the first to answer, battered though he still was. ¡°Do me,¡± He demanded, eager enough that his voice actually drew a pained snarl from him. I hurried up, if only to keep the idiot from oozing everywhere in his excitement. [Appraisal] ¡°You¡¯ve gained experience too.¡± I grinned, then eyed Beam. [Appraisal] ¡°And so have you.¡± So we¡¯d all gotten stronger, but why? The troll was worth a hundred points, were the bandits just worth none? Did specifically humans not give experience? What was going on? Solitaire, annoyingly, was the one to pose the most likely theory. ¡°It¡¯s Vampire: the Masquerade style experience.¡± He explained, awfully smug for a man outputting enough blood to fingerpaint. I, not being a nerd, and even having sex with women on occasion, was a bit confused. ¡°Explain.¡± I demanded. He did. ¡°We get experience for accomplishing our tasks, not for killing enemies. Surviving, saving Beam, dragging that troll back, etc. So we can only expect to receive power-ups as a reward for actually getting things done.¡± He grinned. ¡°It seems that what constitutes a task is a bit arbitrary, since we didn¡¯t get anything for making it to town, but this is still very good news.¡± I didn¡¯t need him to explain why. If we had a system like that, it could be damned flexible. For all we knew we could gain experience and grow stronger by just making money, becoming landlords or something. We might not even need to risk our necks at all. Then again, if we weren¡¯t marching out into the wild, we wouldn¡¯t get much benefit from becoming arrow proof in the first place. Either way, a matter for later. At the moment we were still very, very killable. And sitting on unused Skillpoints. I focused, drawing on my experiences over the last mission- fuck, of course, it really was based on accomplished goals- and feeling it congeal in my mind. For the second time I tried to move it into Intelligence, focusing more intently on how this time. Neurons, I decided. They were the best predictor of intelligence in animals. Humans had sixteen billion in our cerebral cortex, chimpanzees around six. Dogs, a mere five hundred million. How many extras could I manage with my level-up?Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Apparently none. The power simply refused to move in that direction, and I was left growling my annoyance out again. ¡°I can¡¯t make myself smarter.¡± I spat, glancing at my friends. ¡°Anybody have any ideas why?¡± Solitaire had a look that told me he¡¯d tried exactly the same thing, and met the same result. ¡°...Maybe it just doesn¡¯t work for anyone?¡± He suggested, thinking now. ¡°It makes sense. If one level-up is noticeable, what would we do with a dozen? A hundred?¡± I considered that. How big was the difference between eight Strength and five? Very. So what about eight Intelligence vs eighteen? It was hard to imagine, considering the annoyingly noticeable gap already separating me and Solitaire, that a man with Intelligence even approaching twenty would have much difficulty achieving anything. I wasn¡¯t sure whether we were talking steam or nuclear, but he¡¯d definitely be changing this world¡¯s technology in less than a single lifespan even with no more starting knowledge than everyone else. Doing all the things to it that a human would to sticks, stones and twine when dropped into a society of apes. Perhaps a society of dogs. Reluctantly, I turned my focus back to the other stats. Alright, so I couldn¡¯t figure out how to travel through time, talk people into suicide with a two minute conversation and deduce people¡¯s life stories at a glance. There were other means of survival, ones that might actually be more immediately helpful than just having a bigger brain. I put my point into Toughness again. The familiar sensation returned, skin tightening, muscles grinding, bones quivering as energy suffused every inch of me. By the time it was done, I¡¯d been so overwhelmed that the sensation of change barely even registered. But I did notice it. I felt hardier, more solid. And I checked my screen eagerly. [Appraisal] I snatched a glance at my friends, suddenly curious what they¡¯d gone for. [Appraisal] Solitaire had chosen Speed? Well I could hardly blame him, actually, the option of sprinting away from that troll- or a few extra feet per second to our side steps- might¡¯ve saved a certain someone half his arm. Beam was next, though, and if anything I was more curious about his menu than Solitaire¡¯s. He¡¯d not even spent a point before now. [Appraisal] Strength? Well, actually, perhaps it made sense. Toughness might not be possible to increase high enough to make much difference in troll-hunts for a while, and our ability to stab through their tough hides and musculature had been horribly ineffective with the last. I actually almost caught myself regretting my own choice for a moment. Then I noticed something very interesting. ¡°Ca- Beam,¡± I began, ¡°We have the same Toughness stat.¡± He eyed me, sceptical. ¡°You¡­Sure?¡± Was his answer. He was trying to be polite, obviously, but he might¡¯ve saved himself the bother. I¡¯ve been reliably informed I have the build of a ten year-old girl, while he, as established with exhaustive detail, is a literal olympian. And yet the numbers didn¡¯t lie. Apparently my sixty kilogram ass- well, probably more like fifty-five now- had just as much damage-soaking ability as his eighty kilo length of muscle and sinew. Solitaire let out a laugh. ¡°Good!¡± He declared. ¡°That¡¯s a helluva difference to be seeing already, I look forward to not dying when something farts on us one day.¡± We shared a grin, which lasted about a second, then evaporated as a certain fucker stepped back into the front of the shop. ¡°Time¡¯s up.¡± Magus Corvan snapped, affixing all three of us with a sneering glare. ¡°What¡¯ll it be, you getting healed or not?¡± All eyes turned to me, and I resisted the sudden urge to start hitting my friends for leaving this decision squarely in my lap. I weighed the matter. If we healed Solitaire magically, we¡¯d only worsen our debt with this trip. On the other hand it would leave us where we¡¯d started- except with spent experience, slightly better stats and more knowledge of troll hunting for our next outing. Withholding our money, though, would leave us with an alleviated debt. Forty silver, out of six gold. Which would leave five gold and ten silver still unpaid. It wasn¡¯t a huge chunk, no matter how you sliced it. Barely even a chip in the great financial wall looming before us. So, did I value a head start in reducing that, or did I value a chance for a do-over with better odds than before? Either one could screw us in both the short and long run. For all I thought about it, the matter really didn¡¯t take that long to be decided. Solitaire¡¯s bowmanship had been a big part of what let us take the last troll down, we needed that, as well as whatever other skills he might save us with. In the end, we¡¯d have to take another step into debt before we had enough space for a running start on our jump free. Yeah, that sounded logical. Hopefully it¡¯d only take a few dozen repetitions before I had myself actually believing it. ¡°We¡¯ll take the healing.¡± I said at last, hating every word that came out of my mouth. Solitaire eyed me, but he didn¡¯t glare. That was something at least. The healing process was amazing, obviously. It was fucking magic. But the wonderful nature of the arcane was a bit less impressive when it was just serving to add another weight around your ankle. I found myself looking away halfway through, partially from bitterness, partially from apathy. Solitaire was healthy and fine by the end of it, that was all that mattered. We said our goodbyes to Corvan- which consisted largely of a set of ¡°fuck you¡±s, and took our leave from his shop, stepping outside just in time for the dark. And the cold. A few more silver jingled away in our bag, and we spent them on a night in one of the town¡¯s cheaper, shittier inns. The walls were thin, windows wood and open to the air. Every time a breeze hit the building¡¯s exterior, at least a tenth of it rolled in to torture us inside, and we spent our entire night shivering, coughing and groaning in a corner, wrapped in our wafer-thin blankets and cursing the world. People knew we were in pain. They knew we were suffering, that we needed help- help they had full power to give. And yet nobody lifted a damned finger, they all just¡­Ignored us. More than once, I glanced at Solitiare, and found him staring out into nothing at all. Thinking, always thinking. I did some thinking of my own, back to when he¡¯d stoved that bandit¡¯s head in. The hammer we¡¯d long since abandoned, it would be far too risky carrying stolen goods through town, but I could still picture it vividly as anything. Almost as vividly as the look on his face when he swung it. Not cold, like the ice around us. Hot. Molten, like the blood and brains he was spilling out into the snow. Why had Solitaire killed him? For his teeth, and pragmatism, and our friend? I wasn¡¯t so sure. He¡¯d always been angry, always been furious, even, at the world itself. At the humans- always humans, never people, in his words- who ignored all the evils he saw around us at every hour of the day. Redacle was worse than our world had been in centuries, and its people were no less than you¡¯d expect. If he got the chance, if he had the power, would he kill more of them? I genuinely had no clue at all, and somehow I felt cold as we pressed our shoulders together for warmth, even despite the heat his body radiated. We were what we experienced, I knew that better than anyone. And for the rest of that night, I was left wondering what the fuck this new world was doing to my friend. Chapter 13 Beam¡¯s POV: Day 10 Current Wealth: 4 silver 20 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver A full thirty copper pieces for one room over one night felt like a rip-off, to me, but apparently we didn¡¯t have had many options. Had I known the sort of night we were into I might¡¯ve been more insistent on sleeping elsewhere. The room was better than our little snow mounds and fires, but only just. We emerged from it like butterflies from a cocoon, if the butterflies in question had mistakenly cocooned themselves inside one of those C.I.A sensory deprivation tanks Solitaire kept insisting Osama Binladen was being stored in. Stiff, achy, still cold and fatigued. We had enough leftover coins for a meal, at least. A dozen copper bought us some bread, soup, etc. The church turned us away though, apparently they¡¯d heard word that we could afford to be sleeping in inns, and didn¡¯t take kindly to freeloaders. Which was fair enough, honestly. We¡¯d all been in the place of full-on poverty already, and it felt wrong to ask for charity reserved for people still trapped there. But it still screwed us a bit. Looked like keeping ourselves decently fed would be costing more than expecting. I looked down, feeling my body, frowning at the withering that¡¯d started to take it over. I¡¯d kept up my exercises ever since waking up, or at least as close as I could manage, but there was a lot more to being a modern-day olympian than just putting in the hours of training. I needed protein, and a dozen other things I couldn¡¯t even remember the names of. We were barely even getting meat, let alone modern supplements. My muscles were fading away, fast. I hadn¡¯t lost a point of Strength yet, but I had a feeling that that was still coming. If I¡¯d been conscious and exerting myself for the five days of starvation, maybe I¡¯d already be dropping down the stat scale. ¡°What¡¯s our next move?¡± I asked the other two, speaking through a mouthful of stew. It had been expensive to get a bowl with actual meat in it, but I¡¯d insisted. I needed to maintain as much of the head start modernity had given me as was possible. Solitaire answered with certainty, Shango with doubt. ¡°Another troll.¡± The former declared. ¡°I don¡¯t know.¡± Sighed the latter. They eyed one another, with Solitaire making his case first. ¡°We¡¯re better equipped to take one on now, stronger, more experienced. Our one disadvantage is we have three arrows instead of five, but that¡¯s easily fixed.¡± I saw him wince at the mention of our arrows, he was the one who¡¯d broken two, yanking them out of the creature¡¯s back. Probably saved our lives in the process, mind, but still not great long term. ¡°We could buy more arrows.¡± I suggested, and Solitaire chewed on it. ¡°What do you think, Shango?¡± He asked at last. Shango hesitated. He¡¯d been doing that a lot today, ever since we¡¯d finally kicked back in our room. I could imagine why. The frantic scramble for food, warmth, and water of the last few days had kept me from really registering anything that¡¯d happened to us, but settling down in our shitty inn had brought a few hours with nothing to do. So I¡¯d finally had the luxury of thought. My experience in Redacle so far had been fairly limited. I missed home, missed my family and friends, but all of that was somehow dull and distant even with long stretches of downtime. I¡¯d still not asked about any particulars from when Solitaire and Shango had headed out to save me, but even I¡¯d figured out they¡¯d done something that Shango at least regretted in the process. Maybe I¡¯m just a coward, because I was too scared to ask about what it was. All I did was watch and wait for him to swallow it all again before giving his answer. ¡°We go troll hunting.¡± He sighed, throat tight with worry. We all shared a solemn nod at that, taking a moment to let the shock of finally deciding on a target wear off. Then we were walking. Our first destination now was a fletcher, because we needed arrows. Ideally we¡¯d have just stocked up on fifty of the things and pelted all the trolls we encountered from afar until they were pincushions, but there were limits to strategies like that. The first was that, apparently, mediaeval longbow arrows are actually surprisingly heavy. Each one was close to two ounces- sixty grams in non freedom units- so even just the ten we ended up with weighed over a pound put together. It wouldn¡¯t have been an unmanageable weight if he hadn¡¯t also had the issue of actually carrying them. All of us had pockets, but we didn¡¯t have bags, and those cost extra. A decent sack of burlap would¡¯ve set us back the better part of a silver coin, and even that would only let us transport them to the fighting. A quiver, fitted for our freakishly tall frames? Well those were going for more than we had. The woods greeted us as they usually did: by trying to kill us. We were used to it by now, though, and wrapped up nice and snug. One thing we¡¯d decided had been worth our dwindling coins were some thick furs to cover ourselves with, and they were magic for keeping the heat in. Made me wonder why our modern clothes had been so shit. Made me glad that we hadn¡¯t indulged in a bath, even as the reek of my friends slowly progressed along the spectrum of chemical warfare. As it turned out, troll hunting was actually quite easy. Well, troll finding was at least. Bloody big noses, trolls, capable of finding you first from miles away. But brains smaller than a person¡¯s fist, so they made quite a bit of noise while they charged their way on over.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Just like last time, we had as much time to prepare as we could¡¯ve asked for. Except this time we¡¯d rearranged our strategy a bit, and gotten a few advantages we hadn¡¯t before. Shango went up the tree, now. We¡¯d spent the better part of our journey practising his marksmanship. Tossing logs into the air for him to shoot, trying to hit particular branches, that sort of thing. It probably tripled, even quadrupled the length of our walk, but we¡¯d set off barely after dawn anyway, which gave us plenty of daylight to burn. And the result was that, after hours of practice, his marksmanship was almost not shit. Well, okay, that¡¯s unfair. Sure he didn¡¯t have my coordination, but he had a particular way of judging things that I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d have ever matched without my exhaustive training. It felt much more like the way Solitaire gauged things, almost mathematical. He wasn¡¯t going to be shooting any apples out of people¡¯s mouths, but he was absolute tits when it came to hitting a moving target. Actually out-performed me when Solitaire was tossing the bigger logs up. More importantly, his accuracy improved a lot faster than his general combat ability could have. And even though his frame was fairly unimpressive by earth standards, he easily had the strength required to draw this world¡¯s standard longbows on account of not having sixteen ounces of lead dust in his blood where the protein should¡¯ve been. So long as he didn¡¯t have to fire for more than a few minutes straight, he¡¯d do fine. Solitaire and I had a much less safe and cosy position. I was right where I¡¯d been before, bringing up the front and tasked with not dying for as long as I could manage. Solitaire was helping me, and the hope was that between his bigger frame and natural meanness, he¡¯d do a much better job of leaking the troll¡¯s strength away while I kept it distracted. In truth there were about a hundred things we¡¯d rather have accounted for that none of us had, but the closest we came to actually doing anything about that was spending an extra few minutes hauling a thirty pound rock up into the tree with Shango. According to Solitaire, we were looking at around five to eight hundred joules of kinetic energy if it was dropped on our enemy from that height. Neither of us knew what that meant, and we didn¡¯t need to to figure out that having a brick the size of a toddler smacking the top of your skull would hurt. We called him a nerd and prepared for the fight. The roar of a troll, the sound of something heavy smashing through thickets, snow being scraped and barged aside, then a big, grey streak closed in on us from far ahead. I readied myself for it to attack, spear high, feet planted, breathing steadied. It came on just like the last one had, a hairy ball of screaming, vicious asshole zeroing in on me like a meteor. Much like the last one, it started getting pelted with arrows before it closed in. The first missed, the second caught its chest, the third its shoulder. Then it was within spearing range. Shango wasn¡¯t the only one who¡¯d gotten tips from Solitaire on our way here, and I put mine to use with earnest. Aiming low now, letting the spearpoint bite deep into the inner-thigh of the troll and lunging to one side, dropping my weapon instantly and rolling to avoid a collision. It slowed to a stop, rounding on me just in time to leave its back exposed for Solitaire¡¯s own attack. Both knives came down hard into the rear of one knee. Another arrow hit its side near-simultaneously. With one flexed arm, Solitaire was sent flying away, and it was my turn to engage again. I closed, knife out, teeth gritted and thrusting with a stab that broke the skin, but not much else. It flailed at me, the way I was learning trolls tended to do, and I ducked again. Solitaire was still getting to his feet, absolutely fucked by the impact he¡¯d taken even without the sharp bits to worsen it, which meant I was on my own for a few moments. Excellent. No chance of anyone else getting hurt again. A claw swiped high, and I went low. The troll¡¯s giant body closed in only for me to do likewise, pinning my knife outstretched between us and letting our combined momentum drive six inches of metal deep between a pair of ribs. I was knocked clean off my feet, thrown back to land badly and roll awkwardly. I came up quick enough. The troll was still reeling as I did- the only thing that saved me, I guessed- with the knife stuck clean in its chest. I turned and sprinted in the other direction, opening enough distance for Shango¡¯s shot to be clean. It was, another arrow, landed deep into the troll¡¯s leg. It roared in a way that had me cringing, like nails on a chalkboard, and I looked back to assess the damage. Blood fountained from its thigh, arterial in volume and steaming in the cold air. I¡¯d seen the other troll bleed more before it went down, but not by a lot. We were close to finishing this one. This was no time for a retreat. I stopped just in time for it to start, squared my feet and waited for its approach. Another arrow caught it in the chest metres from me, and I was jumping an instant before impact. Drop kicks are never a good idea. There¡¯s precious few exceptions to this general rule, and all are situational. For one thing you need to be close to olympian in your physique to do them properly. I was an olympian, normally, and I could only hope that I¡¯d not lost that much through starvation. The second requirement is that you need an enemy you know for a fact is slower, dumber and clumsier than you. One apeman; check. The final requirement is more just the sort of situation where, if the above two conditions are met, it might actually be worth doing. You need an enemy too tough to realistically hurt with any of your much fucking easier and safer kicks. Check. The troll probably wouldn¡¯t have blinked at a haymaker from Mike Tyson, but my drop-kick was hard enough that it actually springboarded my own body about a yard backwards off the creature¡¯s sternum. Even that monster stumbled, as might a smaller tree, and it was given just enough pause for two things to happen. Shango shot it again, and Solitaire knifed it clean in the neck from a dead sprint. The arrow left a nice big opening, and the blade hit cleanly. Driven through skin, muscle and fat by all the force of a grown man crossing twenty feet every second. Truth be told, I¡¯d never actually seen an artery get cut open before then. Solitaire had, going by his reaction, or lack thereof. It took about a second for any blood at all to be visible, and less than three for it to be soaking the troll¡¯s entire neck and shoulder. Within another ten the creature seemed half painted, legs weakening beneath it as it dropped down to lie face-down, slackening, weakening. Maybe the last one had died to a nicked artery, actually. This one looked almost identical in how it moved before passing on. I felt just as queasy at the sight. Shango came down from his tree with a lot more grace than Solitaire apparently had last time, climbing slow and steady, not simply jumping and hoping the snow let him live. We all circled the creature¡¯s body, but only after he¡¯d put the rest of his arrows into it. Dead, alright. Dead as a doornail. According to Solitaire it was small, as had the last one been, but as far as I was concerned the thing couldn¡¯t have been small enough. Better an easier fight than a bigger reward. We¡¯d get plenty of silver either way. Just moments after we took its arms and started pulling, though, everything went wrong. The sound reached us, snapping undergrowth, pounding feet, and the flit of movement far ahead reached our eyes. But it was faster than before. Another troll, hurtling towards us far more quickly than the last two. Too quickly for us to take our familiar positions before it burst out through the needle trees, revealing a body three feet higher and probably a ton heavier than the one lying dead at our feet. ¡°Fuck.¡± Solitaire breathed, just an instant before it charged. Chapter 14 Shango¡¯s POV: Day 10 Current Wealth: 2 silver 11 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper In my admittedly limited experience of fighting trolls, I had to say that, so far, I certainly preferred to do it from quite high up in a tree. Unfortunately, I was faced with a pair of issues in my current situation. The first, of course, was that there wasn¡¯t really much time to get into one. And the second was that even if I did¡­I wasn¡¯t entirely sure that the giant fucking animal staring me down at the moment couldn¡¯t have just jumped up and snatched me off the branch. My mind raced, and I thought about a million thoughts in a second. They led me to perhaps the only conclusion they could have, and I raised the bow to start putting arrows in the thing. The troll was here, it had seen us, it was going to kill us. With a bit of luck I¡¯d hurt it enough that the stupid fucking animal bled or rotted to death after the fact. I tightened my eyes even as I tightened the bowstring, staring at the creature, seeing what I could glean about it. The menu came up quickly enough. [Appraisal] That marked the first time I¡¯d managed to bring my Menu up in the heat of battle, shame I was too busy worrying about having my head chewed off to feel any pride about the fact. Thirty strength, thirty toughness. So we¡¯re fucked then? I loosed an arrow anyway, almost as much out of curiosity for what it¡¯d do than any actual hope of hurting the thing. True to expectations, the barb- hastily torn from the dead troll¡¯s flesh- simply bounced off the larger one and went spinning out through the air with barely a drop of blood drawn. And got its attention. Beady eyes turned on me, and the creature hunched low to sprint forwards. I gave myself two, maybe three seconds before impact. Nothing I could do about it, except hope I died quicker instead of slower. The sound of a heavy, metallic thud caught my ear perhaps a tenth of a second before the grey streak flitted by in my vision. Not troll sized, nor troll speed, this moved more like my arrows. And it hit the creature about as hard as those arrows might have, if they¡¯d been fired from a cannon instead of a bow. It stuck in deep, displacing a jet of blood and sending the creature sidelong with a confused, dazed backstep. My eyes were already on the shooter, finding two newcomers on the scene. One was tall, the other short and broad, both wore armour made of full steel plates. Given the cold that was almost a superhuman feat in and of itself. Only one had the crossbow, the other was coming in with some big meaty blade made of a metal too light in colouration to be iron or steel. Both had visors down, and their faces were hidden completely, but I recognised them in an instant. I had, after all, worked with the man who¡¯d written them first into the world of Redacle. Witchfinder Elites, the holy soldiers in our setting¡¯s ongoing war against the forces of evil. They were assholes, most of them, but in this particular situation, against this particular enemy, I couldn¡¯t think of a group I¡¯d rather be seeing make a sudden appearance than them. The two of them moved without any sort of communication passing between them, or at least any sort that I could see, and yet despite the fact, both of them seemed perfectly in unison. The one with the crossbow reloaded, forcibly turning some huge wheel geared up to the weapon and dragging its string back along limbs of thick steel. His ally was already sprinting ahead to cover him while he did, broadsword held ready and thirsting for blood. I¡¯d like to proudly say that I charged in right behind him, gripping my bow by one end to heroically bludgeon the troll with it in place of a better weapon. I¡¯d like to say that, but I didn¡¯t of course, because I actually have a functioning cerebral cortex. Instead I stood where I was and watched the steelshod lunatic rush in himself and start hacking at the creature¡¯s leg. Almost before I could even react myself, it reached down and swiped for him, body moving far more quickly than anything of half its mass should¡¯ve been able to manage. The Witchfinder rolled out of the way like he was a Dark Souls character, rising faster than thought and slashing again at the still-outstretched fingers. Steel hit flesh, and came out the victor. Two taloned digits dropped into the snow, blood raining down around them. The troll didn¡¯t like that one bit, and definitely didn¡¯t like the arrow that whistled neatly into its eye an instant after. More blood, this time joined by sticky, syrupy jelly dribbling down one swollen cheek, and now there was a sharp cry running out through the forest while the monster flailed and thrashed, stamping around, kicking several times my own bodyweight of snow into the air as it spasmed.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Obviously, the man fighting it was an expert, because he did a perfect job of weaving around its frantic stomps and slashing again and again, opening up long, deep gashes in the creature¡¯s leathery body, any one of which would¡¯ve been a mortal wound if he¡¯d been chopping at something human-sized. They did enough to leak the monster, in any case, causing pain and weakness both as it slowly lost speed, legs becoming shaky under it. Perhaps he noticed, too. Perhaps that was why he got cocky and went for a headshot. Maybe he was just stupid, I really couldn¡¯t say. But I do know the effort didn¡¯t work out. One moment his sword was carving some neat calligraphy into the monster¡¯s forehead, the next its giant fist came out of nowhere and caught the side of the Witchfinder¡¯s head. His feet left the ground, then his back found a tree growing some dozen feet back. He bounced off it, landing in the snow and sinking easily a foot under the weight of his armour. The Witchfinder was quicker in standing than any of us would¡¯ve been, even with all the metal on him, but the troll was quicker still. Another impact smashed his body against the wood, then another, then another. Crossbow bolts thudded into the animal¡¯s giant back, but they barely seemed to annoy it all of a sudden, even as steam and smoke started coiling out from the places they were stuck. I considered helping, I really did. And that¡¯s not me being a stand-up guy either. I could hear metal plates grinding apart and bones breaking even from where I was standing ten metres back, I don¡¯t think anyone could¡¯ve just ignored the sound. But I just stayed where I was. We all did, staring and watching until the Witchfinder fell down as a mangled, ruined smear of pulped meat and spilled ichor. Then the troll turned, beady eyes falling on the remaining crossbowman. Sweeping across us. Beam was insane too. I¡¯d forgotten that little tidbit, until he started moving and instantly attracted the thing¡¯s attention. Well, alright, he probably wasn¡¯t just acting on impulse. In all likelihood he¡¯d realised the thing was about to attack the other Witchfinder, and that this time it wouldn¡¯t have to fight a melee specialist powerful enough to hold their own. He¡¯d probably gauged how fast it¡¯d catch up to any human, and accounted for that fact when he decided to buy our new ally some more time to stick it with arrows. I imagine his show of quick thinking and tactics was as praiseworthy as some of the best in history, and might even have won him some award in a righteous world. Still, fuck him, because he was stood right next to me when he took off, and the troll made a direct beeline for all of us at once. I¡¯d guess that hadn¡¯t been in his little calculations. Fortunately I was already running before his lack of a warning could cause any issues, my instincts for blatant cowardice proving just as fast as his instincts for battle. Ten yards separated us from the monster, and we¡¯d started running first. With that in mind it was fucking incredible how little time it took to be breathing down our necks. We ran like our lives depended on it, because they did, Solitaire right beside us, death looming somewhere between our lower intestines and assholes. Not one of us even glanced at the pursuer, because not one of us had the speed to spare. Our aim was instantly chosen and quickly approached, a row of close-growing trees some thirty feet ahead. It was as far from us as the troll was, which, as Solitaire would later tell me, meant that our success came down to one crucial factor. Was the monster more than twice our speed? It was, as it happened. Closing, closing, closing. By the time we were five metres from the trees, it was four from us. By the time we were just three strides short of freedom we were within its reach. And then the crossbow bolt hit it in the face. We didn¡¯t see the impact, but this close, and with that much sheer power, we actually heard the sound of flesh giving way and teeth getting torn out of gums by the metal point¡¯s path into the monster¡¯s mouth. It bought us a precious second by sending it rearing up and snarling, then we were all in-between the trees, feeling their branches snag our clothes and taking solace in knowing they were close enough together that the monster couldn¡¯t have even fit between them. Granted, our newfound joy died a bit as we saw it rip one of the fucking things out of the ground. They weren¡¯t big trees, barely twenty feet high each. Maybe they were even saplings. Still, however much strength it took to do that, it wasn¡¯t a force we¡¯d be fighting. We couldn¡¯t leave the outcropping, this fifteen-foot stretch of huddling wood was our only safety, which meant we¡¯d be stuck waiting for the troll to tear its way in and start killing. Another crossbow bolt hit it, and it ripped out another tree. One more tree came free just as the third bolt caught an elbow, and the troll seemed to get a bit distracted. Two bolts both managed to hit an ear and a kidney one after the other, finally drawing its attention to the shooter. That was when Beam stabbed it in the balls. I for one have never received a spear to the testicles, but going by the reaction it got, the experience probably isn¡¯t great. Granted Beam didn¡¯t manage to get much penetration, and the troll wasn¡¯t exactly losing a lot of blood, but the thirty or so seconds it spent thrashing and screaming made all the difference in the world. Solitaire, being the massive nerd he is, counted the wounds while it died. Later on he told me there¡¯d been twenty nine. Each one lost a litre or more of blood, on average, and that seemed to be the magic amount. Just like the two weaker ones before it, the giga-troll collapsed into the snow. Body twitching one final time, the way dead bodies apparently did, wounds still smouldering where the crossbow bolts jutted out of them. My nostrils burned with the smell of charcoal as I stared at it, silver reacting with the creature¡¯s magical flesh. I spent a few minutes soaking the sight up. Then Solitaire snapped me out of it, elbowing me sharply. ¡°Stats, now,¡± He breathed. ¡°Before Sir Wanksalot comes over.¡± I glanced up, saw the Witchfinder was going to check on what was left of his comrade, and recognised the small window we had to examine ourselves. Hastily, I pulled my menu up. [Appraisal] It was a Herculean feat of will that I didn¡¯t audibly squee on the spot. Chapter 15 Shango¡¯s POV: Day 10 Current Wealth: 2 silver 11 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper Three Skillpoints, three. That was more than I¡¯d have dared hope for from this trip. But of course it was. We¡¯d killed one troll, and that had been the plan. The second was utterly spontaneous, and given the sheer size of it I was half convinced we¡¯d been cheated with even this reward- But no, there was no time for thoughts like that, I had some fucking powers to improve. I turned to my friends while the Witchfinder did whatever to his new partner-shaped smear, bringing up their menus just like I had my own and fighting back the urge to literally vibrate with glee as I almost dared to imagine myself one day winning a fight easily. [Appraisal] [Appraisal] I grinned, telling both Solitaire and Beam about their new powers even as I saw the two of them figuring it all out on their own. None of us said much, after that, all having something far more important to focus on. The only exchange between us was some idle questioning about the big troll¡¯s stats, and some widening eyes upon hearing them. Toughness again. I saw no other choice, it hadn¡¯t saved me this time, but it could have. There was a nugget of doubt in my mind at the selection now, after seeing what that troll could do one-armed I was dubious I¡¯d ever be resilient enough to withstand this world¡¯s biggest threats, but if nothing else I could widen my odds against the smaller beasts. Or humans. I funnelled all of my Skillpoints with a practice that was deepening every time I gained a new one, letting the glorious sensation wash over me. [Appraisal] I did feel different, now. Warmer. It was like the winds had died down around me, the snow half-thawed mid air. All the heat that the woodland had been drawing from my flesh was resisting eviction, now clinging to me far more fiercely than before, and I felt feeling slowly bleed back into the tips of my fingers and toes . There¡¯s a lot I¡¯ve experienced since coming to Redacle, things that continued for years after these first few weeks, but even to this day, not many measured up to the experience of seeing, feeling, that I was gaining tangible progress from my rising numbers. Growing stronger, safer, more secure in my place. I caught the growing feeling of invincibility and throttled it to nothing. I was level fucking six, and I had no delusions that a solid hit from that giant troll would¡¯ve been the end for me even now. The very beginning was no time to be getting cocky at all. Not in a world where the levels went to fifty or higher. [Appraisal] Solitaire had chosen Speed again. I was almost tempted to question him, but it would have been an instinctive, gut reaction and unproductive. I¡¯d specialised just as much, myself, and was hardly in a position to argue. Besides, if anything our most recent altercation was proof that running ability would be saving our skins a lot more reliably than mere durability or killing power. [Appraisal] Odd that Beam was the only one among us dispersing his Skillpoints, but then, he was the one among us who already excelled in areas of physicality at all. Even good looks, lucky bastard. Probably he figured he was best off just widening the gap that already separated his individual abilities from other people. Probably, he was right. ¡°Does¡­Anyone feel any different?¡± I asked, eagerly. Beam shrugged. ¡°Lighter maybe?¡± He seemed to question his own answer, which didn¡¯t inspire a lot of confidence. Solitaire didn¡¯t say anything at all, to begin with. Just sidestepped. Sidestepped faster than Beam could have, and grinned. ¡°Apparently I do.¡± His laughter was the same sort I¡¯d heard a thousand times before, but tinged with a relief, and a desperation, that¡­Warped it. It was the laugh of a starving man who¡¯d finally found himself a meal, strained and wild and just a little bit touched by madness. ¡°He¡¯s coming.¡± Beam hissed, and Solitaire reacted whip-fast, instantly snapping himself still and becoming as rigid as a damned cage bar just in time for the Witchfinder to trudge on over. Would he have noticed any difference, if he¡¯d seen him suddenly moving around as if he¡¯d spent ten years training between minutes? Probably not, given the circumstances, but better to be overly cautious than under. We were fairly sure our rapid levelling up wasn¡¯t a feature of this world, as it hadn¡¯t been in our books. Which meant that keeping it to ourselves was probably the best move, if only to unbalance the people who thought they¡¯d already gotten our measure. Forward thinking, and useless in the time being, because if the bastard in shining armour marching over right now put his mind to it, I suspected he could have killed all of us at once either way. [Appraisal] Interesting, it seemed stronger people gave more comprehensive information when I Appraised them. And it seemed that, as suspected, we were more than a little bit fucked if this guy came flying at us. It was interesting how high his stat increases were, given his level, but not enough to bear thinking about right now. Part of me wanted Solitaire to try and speak first, but I knew that I was the best suited for the job. I always kept my cool better, and what we probably needed here was a negotiation in any case. If it came down to intimidation, we were fucked. ¡°Thank you for your help.¡± I called out to the man, speaking with about ten times as much confidence as I felt. In fact, I even sounded slightly fucking confident. If he noticed, it had no effect on him, save to turn his visored face toward me and leave me seizing up beneath a glare that felt oddly similar to that of a sniper. ¡°I wasn¡¯t here to help you.¡± The Witchfinder¡¯s voice was completely beyond my expectations. Not some brutish, hulking grunt, not the velvety drawl of some refined man of thought and nobility. He just sounded like a guy. An echoey guy, speaking from behind a few millimetres of steel, and a royally pissed off guy, but still nobody I couldn¡¯t have run into at a bar. It was a miracle, considering that, that he managed to send such a palpable chill dancing down my spine. My heart skipped a beat before I answered, and barely burped out its normal rhythm while I did. ¡°Well,¡± I forced a smile, ¡°You still did-¡± I didn¡¯t see the punch, and I barely even felt it. One moment Sir Droolsalot was standing a few feet from me, the next he was a big silvery streak in the air, disappearing from one place then replacing himself with a wall of black and a storm of dancing stars in my vision. My feet left the ground, my thoughts left the stratosphere, and when I finally came to I was lying on my back at least six feet from where I¡¯d been when the blow came. The Witchfinder was standing over me a moment later, visored face turned down, body blocking the sun that was only just creeping past noon. ¡°My partner and I had been tracking that troll for weeks.¡± He snarled, so savage in his anger that a few flecks of spit actually cleared the coverage of his helmet and fell down around me. ¡°We had our hunt all lined up and ready to finish. Then you and your idiot friends started hunting its children for money, and drew it out of its hiding place.¡± My idiot friends were already moving in around him, Beam marching up front, Solitaire circling from behind. Both had knives, and in an instant the Witchfinder¡¯s hand was filled by a shortsword I hadn¡¯t seen scabarded before. All of us froze, except for him. His voice suddenly more calm, not less, for the blades drawn. ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill any of you.¡± He snarled. ¡°Even though each one of you deserves it, that is not the Witchfinder¡¯s way. I serve God, and do His bidding in cleansing this world of monsters, daemons and practitioners of dark sorcery. You are¡­Not among them. But see to it that you never cross my path again, for I will never forgive any of you for killing my friend in your stupidity.¡± Not one of us moved. We didn¡¯t twitch, we didn¡¯t speak, we barely even breathed. It was only when the Witchfinder had turned himself around and stalked off into the woods that any of us broke the silence. And, of course, it was Solitaire who did, voice edged and hushed. ¡°Let¡¯s hurry up and grab the trolls.¡± He urged. ¡°I want to be out of here before that crazy bastard can come back with his mates.¡± I spent a moment staring at him, completely stunned by the lunatic¡¯s suggestion. It was so absurd, so reckless, that it took me the better part of ten seconds to actually formulate a coherent answer, and even then it was riddled with gasps. ¡°Are you insane?!¡± I demanded, feeling my temper flare up and body burn with adrenaline- compounding my newfound resistance to the cold, it almost left me sweating. ¡°Are you?¡± Solitaire snapped back, never one to enjoy being questioned on matters he took seriously. ¡°How much did we get for the last one? Forty silver? That big fucker¡¯s got to weigh two, even three times as much! I wouldn¡¯t even give up the little one, let alone that.¡± I glanced towards the corpse, and even I had to admit it was a tempting prospect. If not for one tiny little issue. ¡°It weighs two or three times as much.¡± I noted, trusting Solitaire¡¯s estimate almost as much as I would the result of dropping it down onto some scales. ¡°How exactly do we drag that back? Let alone with the smaller one too.¡± His smile didn¡¯t waver. ¡°I can help now.¡± Solitaire said, flatly. ¡°And we have about twice as long to do it. Plus, Beam is about twenty five percent stronger. I¡¯m around twenty five percent stronger than you, too, and you¡¯re around two fifths as strong as he was before. So in total we can apply around fifty percent more pulling power.¡± That earned a frown from me. Was he just pulling numbers from his ass? No, he wasn''t. But he knew that I¡¯d be confused too, the bastard always grinned like he was grinning now, when he knew someone would be baffled by him. ¡°I kept a very careful power scale when writing stories set in Redacle.¡± He explained, smugly. ¡°Magical creatures overcome the square-cube law by gaining extra pound for pound strength that lets them lift their own weight, no matter how big they get. It¡¯s why size is such a pure advantage for our monsters, and it¡¯s how I know that each one point increase to a stat is around a twenty to thirty percent buff from the previous level. It¡¯s consistent with basically all the numerical differences we¡¯ve seen, and we can test this hypothesis more if you want.¡± If you want, implying the only reason we¡¯d have to test it was to satisfy me. As if his guess were as good as law. It might well have been, too. I grinned even as I swore at him, sometimes it was rather useful to know someone with more brains than sense. Then I was frowning again. I couldn¡¯t work numbers like Solitaire could, but I wasn¡¯t a moron either. ¡°One and a half times the pulling power, but three or four times the weight?¡± He shrugged. ¡°It definitely is going to be harder.¡± Solitaire conceded. ¡°But much more lucrative, too, and as I said, we have more time. At worst we can leave one of them to finish our trip with the other if it¡¯s harder than expected.¡± I considered his words, turning them over in my head, trying to find a fault. Then swore when I couldn¡¯t. Solitaire grinned away while the three of us started moving, grunting with the effort as we all started dragging our prizes to stack one onto the other. It¡¯d make them easier to move at once. Chapter 16 Solitaire POV: Day 10 Current Wealth: 2 silver 11 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper One day I was going to get tired of being right, and a few hours of hauling a fucking tonne of feral asshole behind me was almost enough to make it that day. It wasn¡¯t, of course, my ego is an eldritch thing, more than a match for any weight the universe could possibly assemble, but holy shit did my back hurt after that particular exercise. It hurt an hour into it, it hurt two hours into it, and by the halfway mark to Jighral- ten thousand or so seconds if my counting was right- it hurt even more. There were, I was learning, many more factors to hauling a fucking troll carcass than I had been made aware of. The first was grip. Skin is hard to grab, particularly when you¡¯re sweating. The skin of an eleven foot death blender made out of hatred and hunger was, apparently, harder still. The hairs growing along its fingers and hands were too short to grip, and just long enough to reduce traction. The thing¡¯s arm was big enough that it had noticeable mass on its own, and just holding it over my shoulder was physically tiring. I¡¯d found that closing my fingers around its own was the easiest way, so long as I curled the taloned digits and was careful not to nick myself on the damned nails. Finally, there was the smell. God, the smell. I¡¯ve cleaned public toilets out, I¡¯ve even made explosives out of my own shit, and the sheer reek of that creature still wakes me up in a cold sweat even years later. Presumably the Witchfinders had meant ¡°giant, gaping arsehole in the ground¡± when they said it¡¯d been cornered in a cave, because Jesus Christ this thing was trying to kill me from the nostrils out. It was a nice distraction from the pain at least. But an inherently temporary one. Humans adjust, it¡¯s just how we¡¯re wired. A lottery winner and recent amputee will, obviously, be on opposite ends of the happiness spectrum, but overwhelmingly converge to roughly within the norm when interviewed again after a year. And I was apparently no different, because with every step my senses became less acute, and my mind less clouded. Smell and touch both faded into the backdrop, and everything became the walk, and the destination. And something else. Something so minor I barely even caught it, and almost combat-rolled away from the fucking troll in a reflexive panic even when I did. Hydrogen, Oxygen. ¡°Fucking fuck!¡± The exclamation left me before sense could enter me, and by the time my synapses had stopped disembowelling each other I could already feel the adrenaline rush I¡¯d spent three hours walking off rearing its ugly head up all over again. Brilliant, now I¡¯d be knifing shadows for the rest of the day. I had more pressing concerns than something as minor as long-term, untreated psychosis, though, because the moment I relaxed even a shade, I saw the words jump out at me again. No, not out at me, not into me either. Just¡­There, exactly like picturing sentences even as I said them. Abstract and non-physical, some sort of representative entity existing only within my understanding of the concept it referred to. Hydrogen, Oxygen. Well, that was fucking useful, wasn¡¯t it? Two words, two words with an obvious connection, I considered what they might mean. I was an idiot, obviously, to need to consider it at all. I was standing surrounded by snow. The ground was snow, the sky was snow, and even the air immediately next to me was clotted with more bits of snow. Frozen water. Hydrogen two, Oxygen one. Moron. The more interesting detail, though, was that I was being shown the water¡¯s chemical components at all. Why was that, exactly? I thought back to what Shango had told me of my sheet, and drew the obvious conclusion. ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡± He asked, then scowled when I gestured for him to shut up. I¡¯d apologise later, there was thinking to be done at the moment. The first of it came as I eyed Shango himself, staring, glaring even with my concentration. He was always quick, it was what I liked most about him. I saw that quickness in how immediately Shango¡¯s face lit up with understanding. ¡°What are you looking for?¡± He asked, eager. Detect Element. I¡¯d not given the name of my own power much thought, we¡¯d been told outright by the Veiled Lady that it, and Beam¡¯s, wouldn¡¯t come into play as quickly as Shango¡¯s had, and we¡¯d always been faced with more pressing issues. But now I saw a hint that it might just be the latest tool on our belt. Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Calcium, Phosphorus.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. I almost jumped again, despite being half-ready this time, but I just about kept my shit packed together while I watched the words jumping out into my consciousness. They were half in my head, half in my gut, and I knew each one more instantaneously and cleanly than I could ever have hoped to understand a written word at all. It was like having thoughts emptied into the broth of my mind. Horrifying, on a principal level, but plenty useful for now at least. I compartmentalised my worries and piped up. ¡°Detect Element.¡± I breathed, still half in awe. ¡°It lets me¡­Well, it meant actual elements, as we understood them.¡± Shango¡¯s gaze was intense, and immediate. ¡°By we, you mean-¡± ¡°Our homeland.¡± I nodded. It was Beam¡¯s turn to stare now, but his own reaction gave way to excitement far more quickly than Shango¡¯s. ¡°So what can you do with this?¡± By the tone of his voice, I knew he was expecting something spectacular. My only answer was a shrug. ¡°Find chemicals in trace amounts, maybe?¡± I answered, unsure even myself. Shango¡¯s body had, according to my ability, been made up of around six elements. But that was wrong. I probably didn¡¯t know everything that was found in a person, but I knew for a fact our bodies had traces of potassium, magnesium, even copper if I remembered right. None of that had showed up. Which made sense, because if everything that was in everything got displayed for me, my vision would perpetually be filled with long, winding lists of several dozen substances lurking in the quantities of nanograms within whatever I happened to be staring at. There was probably more than zero uranium in either of my friends, but if I picked up on something that scarce there¡¯d be no point in picking up on anything else. So could I not get any idea of how much of something there was in a sample? What was the minimum threshold to detect an element? Would it tell me about distribution? I would have to experiment with this. The worst thing about answers, was that nothing in all the world is half as good at creating questions. And I didn¡¯t have the means of experimenting myself into resolving them. Not in this moment, and certainly not in this shitting woodland. I looked up, seeing that both my friends were practically vibrating with impatience now, and sighed. Their disappointment was palpable, even halfway through the explanation, but the energy of having discovered a new power didn¡¯t quite evaporate completely. If nothing else the minute of rest was appreciated when we got back to hauling the fucking troll behind us. Beam did most of the work, as always, but that didn¡¯t mean there was any time for resting on my or Shango¡¯s part. Combined, the two trolls were just barely too heavy for any pair of us to budge, and just light enough that we could all manage together. Maybe if we had a better source of food and better rested bodies the issue would be simpler. Maybe. Jhigral made itself known by looming far ahead, and I had to actively stop myself from crying in relief. For two reasons. The first was that my mother didn¡¯t raise a bitch, but the more pressing one was that it had gotten colder since we set off, darkening sky turning to a sharper climate. I didn¡¯t want to find out whether my tears would freeze against my fucking face. I must say, it was bloody satisfying to see the looks on people¡¯s faces as we dragged our haul through the town¡¯s outskirts. We¡¯d just barely gotten it between a pair of buildings, eager for the windbreak to give us a nice resting spot, when Shango nudged me and spoke in a carefully lowered voice. ¡°We need to talk.¡± I knew what it would be about, instantly. Of course I did. The gravity of his tone didn¡¯t leave much room for doubt, and I, having a working memory at least slightly in advance of your average chimpanzee, could still vividly recall how upset he¡¯d been when I turned that guy¡¯s brains into an improvised layer of shoe dye. Steeling myself, I nodded. ¡°Go ahead.¡± Shango didn¡¯t pretend to hesitate, didn¡¯t try to make me think he hadn¡¯t planned everything he was going to say already. I appreciated that. He was smart enough to know better than insulting me with obvious bullshit, and he was smart enough that this wouldn¡¯t take long. Hopefully. ¡°You killed someone who couldn¡¯t fight back.¡± He said. I eyed him, waited to see if there¡¯d be more. There wasn¡¯t, so I replied. ¡°He killed others first.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t know that.¡± Shango answered, hotly. ¡°He was blockading an antiseptic in a pre-industrial continent.¡± I replied, forcing myself to keep calm, cursing how much better he¡¯d always been at doing so. ¡°Even if he never personally killed a single person, he murdered god knows how many by denying them vital medicine.¡± Shango was uncomfortable with the train of thought, I could tell. He¡¯d never liked where I drew ethical lines in the past, or how little I cared about the fine moral gradations between action and inaction, deliberation and indirection. To me, a killing was a killing. If the dead cared about how many layers of separation there were between them and their murderers, they were in no state to tell us. It had always been a philosophical disagreement, but as of a few days ago it¡¯d become practical. We weren¡¯t going to be able to just keep sitting on this or agreeing to disagree. ¡°Then I disagree with you just deciding to be judge, jury and executioner.¡± He was done thinking it through, and his voice was confident again. I sighed. ¡°We needed the-¡± ¡°I know we needed the teeth.¡± Shango snapped. ¡°I¡¯m saying that if we need more, we¡­Discuss it first, at least, right?¡± That surprised me, and I eyed him. He was unyielding as he stared back, brown eyes hardened, not softened, by the doubt I saw in them. This wasn¡¯t just a matter of principle to Shango, I realised, it was about trust. He needed to know he could rely on me. And that was¡­Fair enough. I nodded. ¡°Deal.¡± I agreed, turning, now, to Beam. ¡°You hear all that?¡± He hadn¡¯t been hiding the fact that he¡¯d stared, watching the whole thing unfold. Beam¡¯s own nod wasn¡¯t nearly as hesitant as either of ours. ¡°Far as I¡¯m concerned, our first priority is living. Anything after that is a luxury.¡± Shango blanched at the declaration, and I just filed it away. It was surprising to hear Beam be so brutally practical, and more than a little bit reassuring. We might just survive yet. Shango was speaking again before I could suggest we move on though. ¡°That Witchfinder died because of us.¡± He said, abruptly. I studied him sidelong. ¡°He died because of an unfortunate accident.¡± Was all I could say. What else was there? We had no way of knowing he was in the area, no way of knowing that killing more trolls would somehow threaten him, and no choice of doing anything else even if we had. We needed experience, power, and money. Now we had it. Something tugged at my gut, but I put the feeling to one side and forced my face into a shape of certainty. ¡°We can have the luxury of ethics when we¡¯re wealthy enough to live.¡± I pressed. ¡°Until then, it¡¯s us or them.¡± Shango agreed on that much, at least, and he nodded. The three of us moved back to hauling our load from the alley just in time to see the men crowd its far end ahead. Chapter 17 Beam POV: Day 10 Current Wealth: 2 silver 11 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper Solitaire had a tendency to overreact, it was impossible to be friends with the guy and not realise as much. I¡¯d watched plenty of freak-outs on his part, from the time I found him wiring explosives into Shango¡¯s walls in case someone tried to sneak in through them, to that unfortunate occasion where some idiot had woken him up from a nap and almost been perforated with an illegal firearm. Still, the fearful spasm he gave off at first sight of the newcomers struck me as unusually rational. I couldn¡¯t think of many good, innocuous reasons they might¡¯ve had to be pulling up in front of our alley¡¯s exit. Shango spoke first, of course, always quick and eager to smoothe over a situation when he smelled danger coiling around it. His voice rang out across the walls of our passage like oil on the surface of water. ¡°Can we help you?¡± His smile was forced, his friendliness more so, and both were loud enough that I almost missed the sharp sound of hard-heeled boots tapping cobbled streets behind us. I turned, and cursed. There were more men coming up through the alley behind us, all short and wiry the way Redaclans were, but numbering roughly a dozen in total. They wore dark fabrics, baggy and padded, and moved the way I was used to seeing in men who were approaching a fight. It was Solitaire who¡¯d grown up being taught how to spot people that wanted to kill him, but I had enough sense to read the writing on the wall here. ¡°Good evening gentlemen.¡± One of the men spoke, talking with some accent I¡¯d never heard, and pronouncing every word with about as much zest as a water cutter filled with orange juice. ¡°I can¡¯t help but notice that rather impressive carcass you¡¯re dragging behind you, I don¡¯t suppose you¡¯d mind giving us a look at it, would you?¡± All of us were on edge, instantly. We¡¯d fought for it, almost died for it and spent hours suffering in the snow for it. We did, in fact, fucking mind. Shango gave our answer without any need at all for communication, even while Solitaire and I tensed up beside and behind him. ¡°I appreciate your interest.¡± He replied. ¡°But I¡¯m afraid we¡¯ll have to¡­Decline.¡± He trailed off as the men continued closing in, four ahead, seven or more behind. We all started moving in, covering one another. I was staring down the bigger number at the alley¡¯s back, while Solitaire and Shango turned their focus to the ones blocking our destination. Could we fight them, if it came down to it? ¡°All stats of threes, fours and fives.¡± Shango breathed, into our ears, ¡°They¡¯re not particularly special.¡± Not special, but they were still four times our number. I wasn¡¯t sure what difference our newfound level ups would make against that. The alley was tight, maybe five feet wide, but two men could still come at us at once if they moved right. I could hold two off, at least two Redaclans, given my new stats, but I wasn¡¯t sure at all how long that would last. One knife might change that, or a lucky hit with any other weapon hidden in those baggy clothes. The men closed in, and my heart raced as I raised my spear, fists tightening around its handle so strongly that I worried it might break. ¡°Come on gentlemen.¡± The man called out again, sounding almost sympathetic, ridiculously. ¡°Be reasonable, what do you expect to gain here? A pathetic death in some dirty alley? Look, I¡¯ll even hand the three of you a few silvers for your trouble.¡± His words trailed into silence, voice hardening like fired clay. ¡°Take them, and give us the fucking trolls before we give these walls a new coat of red paint.¡±If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Several things happened, all practically at once. The first was that Shango actually considered his offer. I heard about this later on, apparently he¡¯d been more worried by the sight of the men than I had, because he was already halfway into his first response when Solitaire¡¯s own reaction began. His was quite a bit more¡­Explosive. And messy. Solitaire often said that he who hit first would generally hit last, particularly when they also hit second, third and fourth. Particularly when they hit with something big and heavy. He still had the rocks on him, and he put one to good use with a sudden, over-handed throw that had about as much speed and motion behind it as a haymaker. It was a good one, too, and at as close to point blank range as he probably dared risk. A pound of rock left Solitaire¡¯s hand, then joined the closest thug¡¯s face less than the blink of an eye later. Shango insists he could hear the nose popping, even to this day, and I definitely heard the thud of someone¡¯s body dropping down an instant later. My own movement came before the sound even registered. I lunged, just before the man closest to me did, and put my spear through his shoulder. It was too dark to see the full colour of his blood, but it foamed out thickly enough that I was sure he¡¯d be out of the fight. His friends, though, were closing in fast to replace him. There was no time to drag the weapon free and bring it back around, so I didn¡¯t. Letting the spear go and darting back from a slash, I saw a dirty knife carve inches ahead of my face as the first bastard missed me. He kept on coming, momentum dragging him forwards even as he tried to bring the blade back around, and I closed in with an elbow aimed clean for his face. It caught him between the eyes, and he dropped like a sack of bricks. The second was on me by then, though, pouncing and snarling as his fist flew out, brass knuckles glinting where they clung to his skin. He scored a lucky hit, my foot catching on one of the trolls while I sidestepped and letting the metal thud dully into my own skull. My legs were weak, head numb, thoughts scattered. By the time I realised what was happening another punch caught my face. Teeth came loose, blood spattered a wall, and I was falling. Wake up, fool. Wake up and kill them. They¡¯re here for our treasure, show them how steep the blood price is. The words fuzzed deliriously around in my head, alien enough that I barely even believed I¡¯d thought them, but enough to galvanise my senses just in time. I focused as the man raised one foot to bring down on me. Drawing my own leg back, I lashed out a faster kick than his, and winced as it connected with his knee. The joint didn¡¯t crumple, but it certainly gave, and he limped rather than walked back from me. Again, though, more were coming. Two at once now. Fuck. I might¡¯ve been a sitting duck, if I hadn¡¯t sped myself up a bit. I might¡¯ve been drooling out the last moments of my life with a fractured skull if I hadn¡¯t become tougher. And if I hadn¡¯t put those Skillpoints into Strength, the haymaker I threw after surprising them both with my rise might¡¯ve only knocked its victim down. But I¡¯d changed since arriving here, and so had my body. I felt a sickening shift beneath the gangster¡¯s skin where my knuckles split open his jawbone, then he was continuing past me to roll and spasm with pain in the dirt. An elbow folded the next, then I whipped my head away as a knife stabbed over his shoulder for me. Two more, again, always two more, and two more behind them. An alley wide enough for just that many. I punched another, felt a knee in my ribs and resisted the urge to fold. Elbowed, cried out as something sharp bit into my back, then turned with another strike that launched one of the tiny bastards into a wall. It was almost like fighting children, but they were too numerous for it to bring me any solace, and even a child could kill, given a knife. One of those knives clipped me, drawing a dash of blood just before I smashed its wielder¡¯s face in. Another struck more deeply, burying inches of itself beneath my ribs, and my body just stopped. That was the first time I¡¯ve ever been stabbed, and it was a pain I¡¯d not felt since the cold on that first night. A pain to drag all the air from my lungs, all the sense from my mind, all the joy from my heart. Panic took me instantly, then terror as I felt myself weakening, and by the time I¡¯d even realised my limbs weren¡¯t obeying me anymore, another pair of brass-coated knuckles cracked against my head. Like fighting children, and it was a lucky thing too. I lost consciousness from that punch, but I lived. Just about. And I kept my cognizance long enough to see Solitaire and Shango wrestled to the ground, pinned against the hard dirt road by a flurry of stomping feet and lashing fists. Then the dark came. Chapter 18 Shango POV: Day 11 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper We woke up hours later, and frankly we were lucky enough to be waking up at all. I¡¯d been conscious, still, when they started beating us. When the fight stopped being a fight, and descended into mindless cruelty. I¡¯d heard the kicks and punches bouncing off my own body, felt the sting of my own innards sloshing around inside. Known the visceral, indescribable fear of being certain that I would¡¯ve died already without my choice of Skillpoints, and the horror of lying there, immobile, wondering whether that fate had befallen my friends. None of my bones were broken. That was the first saving grace I noticed, testing it with utmost care as I gently pressed down on them to see. Ribs first, some pain but nothing sharp, then knees, elbows. Collar and jaw. It took me more than a few minutes to be certain, and only after I¡¯d triple checked did I finally allow the relief to permeate me. Broken bones, now, might have killed me anyway. I could feel the coin pouch absent from my side, and I¡¯d already noticed the trolls were gone. If we were left with weeks of healing to do, we¡¯d be dead before it was finished. We. Not me, we. My friends hadn¡¯t been checked yet, and even if their beatings had been less extensive, they hadn¡¯t put half as many points into Toughness. Solitaire was closest, having been beaten down right beside me, and I barely even needed to move to reach him. I still moved though, and my body pretested harshly in response. Aches, dull, deep and burning like hot coals from an hours-dead fire. They¡¯d be with me for a long time, I knew. I could only hope they didn¡¯t affect movement as much as they were gnawing at my mood. With a careful hand I felt first for Solitaire¡¯s neck, and almost wept when I felt the familiar pressure of blood circulating beneath. He was breathing, his heart beating, and that meant he was living. Or his body was at least. Until he woke up I couldn¡¯t be sure what might be wrong with him beneath the surface, couldn¡¯t know whether those vicious fucking thugs had turned the smartest man I¡¯d ever met into some drooling vegetable, but for the time being I¡¯d found a beating heart and pumping lungs. A rush of rage went through me, displacing the relief and driving my fist down hard on his chest. It did exactly what I might have hoped, dragging Solitaire awake with a gasp and a slurred curse, eyes wide, face tight with pain. Thoughts visible in his expression, and filling me with a delight I¡¯d never known I could feel. He sat bolt upright, then moaned in pain, convulsing back halfway to the ground as he felt all the same agonies I had. No broken ribs, at least, or else he¡¯d still be thrashing around. It¡¯d been a stupid thing to hit him like that without checking first, but I had no time to dwell on that. Beam was still asleep. I examined him more gently, and was joined in doing so by Solitaire after a few moments for him to check himself. Again, it seemed we¡¯d been lucky. No massive, crippling injuries. His bones, at least, seemed intact, his body wasn¡¯t swelling enough to be suffering from internally pooling blood, and his breathing was stable, if strained. The one point of concern was a stab wound beneath the ribs, which Solitaire assured me would be more painful than dangerous. Sitting back, I considered the merits of waking him up. God knows how we¡¯d survived the night, with all the freezing cold, but we had. I could feel the chill now, though. Were we all fit to move? If not, waking Beam up would only be a torment, exposing him to cruel weather that he couldn¡¯t escape. And that was assuming he wasn¡¯t in some recovery coma. Hang on, I was an idiot, I didn¡¯t need to trust my own judgement on this at all. I looked at Solitaire. [Appraisal] Well, that didn¡¯t tell me much. ¡°Haggard¡±, what the fuck did that mean? No, hold on, it did. I¡¯d seen that condition before, it was how we¡¯d been shortly after arrival. Worse than the day before, and better than near-comatose. So¡­Not a disaster, hopefully. I turned my gaze to Beam now. Condition: Haggard. Not as awful as it could¡¯ve been, though the fact that we were all low in stats again didn¡¯t do much to inspire my confidence. We could move. We had to move. And we would move, or else we¡¯d freeze to nothing where we lay. Reluctantly, I leaned over to shake my friend awake. With no money, our next direction was a bit¡­Uncertain. For all of a few minutes, then the familiar pangs of hunger took us, and we made a beeline for the church. I worried at first that they might reject us again, but instead they took one look at our faces and bodies before bringing out steaming bowls of porridge. We all sat down together, eating and talking, and only when we¡¯d finished our meals did we start asking some questions. ¡°Excuse me?¡± I asked one of the nuns, a middle-aged woman with kind features that seemed to have been worn just a little bit towards apathy in her hard years. She turned warm eyes on me, regardless. ¡°Yes my boy?¡± She replied, moving over. I steeled myself, and explained what had happened to us, the ambush, the number of men, the result. She didn¡¯t seem remotely surprised, for all of it, and only nodded in understanding. ¡°Hengrard.¡± She said, darkly, once I was finished, spitting at her feet. ¡°He¡¯s the ringleader for most of the local toughs. As dark a man as I¡¯ve ever met, if there¡¯s anything unlawful going down in Jhigral, you can bet he¡¯ll be responsible.¡± I swallowed, having known, of course, that we¡¯d been mugged by a genuine gang, but nothing about the extent of their influence. ¡°Aren¡¯t there proctors to help?¡± I frowned. ¡°From the King?¡± Proctors were one of the few saving graces we¡¯d given Vorhazh, elites who, in the tabletop, had averaged levels comparable to a Witchfinder and wielded the power to butcher normal men by the dozen. They were authoritarian, and harsh, but never corrupt. The means required to ensure that last fact were grim enough in and of themselves. She laughed at their mention, just a shade too scornful for my liking. ¡°Proctors? Out here? My boy, we get maybe one in the entire region of Jelric every year or so, and they¡¯re almost always headed straight for Wolney. There¡¯s less than five thousand people living in this town, as far as the censures can count, why in the world would anyone bother sending a Proctor here?¡± My face burned with fury, even as I nodded in understanding. Of course. It made sense, rulers in worlds like this didn¡¯t bother with the little people. That was just how we¡¯d written Redacle to be. The nun moved on shortly, leaving us with a solemn warning that we¡¯d need to clear out after a few minutes more, whatever the weather. We barely even registered her words, all of us back to intense thought, and vicious fury. ¡°Animals.¡± Solitaire said, flatly. ¡°We¡¯ve moved to a world of animals.¡± I eyed him, and realised I wasn¡¯t quite able to tell how serious he was. Solitaire saying things like that about people- generally people as a concept- had been common enough back home. But I¡¯d never seen him execute one of them in cold blood there. And I¡¯d never found myself feeling so close to convinced that a person might have done something good in the process. ¡°Well our first priority now is food.¡± I cut in, deciding I¡¯d rather not deal with whatever he was getting at. ¡°If we only eat what the church gives us, we¡¯ll starve. We¡¯ve all seen that much already. The weaker we get, the less we can do.¡± ¡°We¡¯re already weak.¡± Beam cut in, wincing. ¡°You said we all had massive stat penalties, right? What more can we do?¡± I swore. ¡°Fight something big and risk dying to it, I suppose.¡± Solitaire sighed, he seemed worn thin, suddenly. ¡°We got experience for that giant troll, so I think we can safely conclude that magical creatures still level us up, initial goal or no. Now¡¯s the strongest we¡¯re likely to be until we can afford more food, and since bastards number three through twelve nicked all our money, that means we need to go out and get some more to replace it. The longer we wait, the harder that will be. There¡¯s no choice at all.¡± I nodded, and swore again. They were both right, damn it, we just didn¡¯t have any choice. I missed my home, I missed my bed, home-cooked meals, and the internet. I missed my family. I just wanted to leave. There was no time for me to deal with thoughts like that. I had to live, first, then I could mope around as much as I wanted. ¡°What¡¯s our first move?¡± I asked. ¡°Another troll?¡± Beam was nodding instantly, but Solitaire¡¯s answer came slower, more thoughtfully. ¡°I think we should spend a few hours on¡­Experimentation.¡± He said at last. ¡°You remember what happened with my, uh, element-spotting power?¡± I nodded. ¡°Well, you told us that our Class Abilities had a two behind them, instead of a one, right? Maybe that¡¯s why it just suddenly emerged like that¡­And maybe, that means there¡¯s more for the rest of us to get. Maybe your Appraisal has more tricks available.¡± He turned to Beam. ¡°And maybe we can find out what your Beloved does.¡± ¡°Alright.¡± Came a new voice, turning us all towards the sight of another nun, this one rather less warm than the last. ¡°You¡¯ve had your five minutes, clear off now.¡± We did so without much complaint, all knowing better than to piss off the literal hands that fed us. Once we were outside, the cold was as present as ever, but somehow made a bit more ephemeral than it was an hour earlier. Now we had a goal, now we had a priority. Now we had, if we were incredibly lucky, just a pinch of hope. Chapter 19 Solitaire POV: Day 18 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper We¡¯d been hungry for a week, dying one day at a time, withering and shutting down. It was the straw that broke the camel¡¯s back when Corvan called on us, ordering another payment of the debt. As it turned out, there hadn¡¯t been more than three trolls in the forest. We found that out by spending days of our lives nearly freezing in the search, finally giving in only when we realised it was taking longer and longer for the feeling to rush back into our fingers. Town was warmer, but still colder by the day, and we couldn¡¯t even afford a shitting room anymore. We killed most of our daylight hours experimenting, trying to find the boundaries of our Class Abilities. The rest was used on hopelessness, and the desperate, pointless search for some opportunity to avoid starving. My Detect Element, apparently, had been with me from level one. We¡¯d known that already of course, but it was only after a few days that I discovered it worked via taste, and deduced that the second level was when it had allowed me to just look at things for information. Taste still gave me more though, it was how I¡¯d gain insight to chemical percentages in a material, and without that there¡¯d be all sorts of issues with trying to reliably create anything at all. Of course we didn¡¯t actually have the facilities to make something new yet, which meant it was, still, fucking useless. Just our luck. What was worse however was that Beam still hadn¡¯t managed to find out what his Class Ability did by the week¡¯s end. Well, we didn¡¯t give up easily on eating. We tried to find work, and there wasn¡¯t any. Tried to hunt animals, and almost got arrested for poaching. Tried to simply beg in the streets. Got spat on. I¡¯d never liked people, always found them cruel, simple, irrational. Had I gone back to earth after my time here, it might actually have softened me up for them. Because modern humans were nothing compared to the savages I was living around now. Yeah, savages. There¡¯s no other word for them. Immoral, stupid animal-men. Their brains were shrivelled and undernourished, their ideology about as complex and moral as that of a rabid dog, and they still had the audacity to look at me with scorn for dying in front of them. Oh it wasn¡¯t anything new, not really, I was used to people trying to murder me via starvation already. But these ones were taking long leaps in doing it hard enough to demand separate categorisation. The rage in me grew with every day, so intense that it almost kept me warm against the snow and wind. Almost. But I didn¡¯t have any real defence against the elements, and no defence against the hunger. All I could do was sit around and watch myself shrivel. We had to move every night, because the guards would beat anyone sleeping in the same place too often as vagrants. After a while we were recognised- all over six feet, it wasn¡¯t unexpected- and had to start sheltering away from sight altogether. There were gathering spots for such things, some even had fires burning, and we took a measure of solace in the company of other people in similarly fucked situations. When we¡¯d left for our troll hunts, the sight of the beaten-down impoverished had elicited sympathy. Now we were among them. It had been a steep fall, but nowhere near as steep as our drop from earth to this stinking shithole in the first place. That thought kept me company more, even, than my friends did. I didn¡¯t belong here. It wasn¡¯t my place. My place was at the top of this world. I was better than its people, and I would make them better by ruling it. Such a shame that justice wasn¡¯t a universal force alongside gravity or friction. Such a shame that cruelty, apparently, was. It was the eighteenth day, and I woke up stiff, achy, groaning. Beam and Shango were already up beside me, looking about as bad as I felt, and the three of us took our customary few minutes of miserable silence before standing to do anything. Not that there was much to do. Go to the temple for food, try, again, to find work. Kill the day until we were back somewhere warm and unknown enough to sleep safely without being killed by either the cold or the guards. Another day, another torment. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Beam spoke first, stretching, popping his joints and wincing. We¡¯d all found that trying to move any fraction of our bodies only made the hunger more noticeable, somehow. ¡°I¡¯m scared.¡± I heard him, but I didn¡¯t understand him. Not at first. I just refused to. Beam had fought trolls without blinking, not even hesitated before charging a bear. He¡¯d roundhoused something four times his weight. And he was scared. The knowledge made me scared, but I hid it. Because I knew that my own fear would have very much the same effect on the others. ¡°We¡¯ll find something to do.¡± I lied. ¡°There must be work somewhere, and if not it¡¯ll emerge eventually.¡± Beam didn¡¯t answer me, neither did Shango. They both just looked ahead. Apparently even I could only tell the same lie so many times before being seen through. ¡°Any ideas, either of you?¡± I was actually more annoyed to have them not believe me than I was uncomfortable at the lack of hope. I thought a silent thanks to dear old mother, for that particular neurosis, and then pressed my friends when no answer came. But Shango interrupted me. ¡°I want to kill myself.¡± I froze, Beam stared, and Shango only continued staring ahead, as if he were completely oblivious to the effect his words had had on us. ¡°Don¡¯t be stupid.¡± I snarled, and he carried on his aimless stare right up until I grabbed his shoulder. ¡°Shango!¡± The look in his eyes stopped me. Complete calm, complete lucidity. ¡°I¡¯m miserable, dying anyway and hopeless.¡± He told me, as if each fact was just the item on a shopping list. ¡°If I¡¯m going to end up some rotting corpse here, I¡¯d rather die quickly than slowly.¡± Finally his lip curled, the only expression of note he¡¯d made today. ¡°I haven¡¯t found a tall enough building yet.¡± Since I was old enough to think about thinking, I¡¯ve prided myself on how quickly I did it. A lot of emotions flitted through my mind at that, but the one I ended up settling on was resignation. Everything Shango had said made sense, every part of it was rational. It made me angry- furious- and miserable too, but none of that was his fault. The root issue here was where we¡¯d ended up, and it¡¯d be pathetically childish of me to forget that just because he¡¯d decided not to lie about his intentions. However mature and cerebral I might have reacted, my heart still broke all the same. I hid the fact with a practiced care. It wasn¡¯t much longer that we stayed there, come daytime the town warmed quicker than you might expect, and we¡¯d learned its guards were practically cold-blooded in how their activity grew with the temperature. They¡¯d leave the hideouts unchecked, by night, but the moment puddles stopped freezing their patrols would continue as normal. Within the hour we were walking our usual circuit around the place, asking around for jobs, mechanical and routine. Do the same thing enough times and it becomes a reflex, something your body is occupied by while your mind wanders. That wasn¡¯t a good thing anymore, it hadn¡¯t been ever since Shango¡¯s mind started wandering to his grave. The lumberjacks had as many hands as they needed, as did the basic labourers. Nobody believed that we could help to even assist with the chemists- or as these morons called them, alchemists- and apparently signing on as a guard took a surprising amount of training. Presumably in learning how to get a sufficiently hard erection while bludgeoning poor people. One failure, then another. Each one, now, feeling like another nail in our coffins. Each one making my blood warm a degree closer to boiling. Interesting, that was new. I was close to actually losing it. My plan to poach anyway started forming, thoughts flitting around to calculate what our odds were of being caught, how best to hide or explain the meat, what shape the woods¡¯ patrols were most likely to take. It was important to get everything right, because if I were stopped outright one last time¡­It¡¯d push me over the edge. I wondered what I¡¯d do when that finally happened. As it turned out, fate had plans other than my finding out. Our trek around the town was interrupted by several very unwanted faces, making themselves known by encircling the three of us while we moved down an alley. We all had a very particular memory associated with situations like this, and I specifically have a very particular reaction to encirclement period. The rock was already bursting one of the men¡¯s lips when another gave his message. ¡°GOD! Fuck! Stop, wait, we¡¯re here to talk!¡± I was halfway through tossing another chunk of stone when Beam caught my hand, his strength still clear in the grip, even after another week of hunger and cold. Even after the beating these bastards had given us last time. ¡°What do you want?¡± Shango demanded, his voice harsh and eyes combative. Was he intending to turn this into a fight? To die that way? Bloody selfish prick if he was, I had no intention to get stabbed in an alley. The speaker answered him quickly, apparently fearful of another rock, by the way his eyes flitted to and from me every moment. ¡°We¡¯re here with a request for a meeting, I¡¯ll guess you already know who it¡¯s from.¡± Shango paused, frowning in confusion. ¡°Hengrard?¡± He asked, then continued after receiving a nod. ¡°What, does he want to beat us again?¡± ¡°Will you be accepting?¡± I caught the flash of sunlight on brass knuckles, and heard the sound of a frozen puddle cracking behind us. From what I remembered, it had been a fairly deep one, and frozen almost fully through. A big bastard, then, to have enough weight for that. We wouldn¡¯t be winning this fight any more than the last. Shango glanced at me questioningly, and I conveyed the fact as well as I could manage with nothing but a few spasming facial expressions. He seemed to get the gist, somehow, anyway. ¡°We accept.¡± He managed, tightly eyes still understandably untrusting. ¡°Lead the way.¡± He said, and they did. Chapter 20 Shango POV: Day 18 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper There¡¯d been a few factors at play when I agreed to attend the meeting, and only one had been the fear of being beaten into another coma. Most pressing was the desire- the need- for something to do with my time. I wouldn¡¯t continue living the way I had been, and had yet to figure out a suitably painless way of dying. Until that happened, a break in the monotony was much needed. Besides, I actually had no idea why Hengrard even wanted to speak with us anyway. If it was to offer work¡­No, it couldn¡¯t be. Could it? Yeah, it could. Of course it could. But was it? I didn¡¯t want to accept the possibility, to even weigh the odds, because of one simple fact. As I was, I¡¯d almost reached some semblance of peace. There was a reassurance in rock bottom, a certainty in knowing there was nothing worse coming your way than what you already had. Hope would destroy that reassurance, shatter my certainty and leave me falling again. I could feel it doing that, already, and was desperate to cling on to my facsimile of relief. The second factor was that I quite liked the idea of either blinding, crippling or killing the man who¡¯d stolen our fortune before I died. That was a very Solitaire thing to think, I knew, but in my defence a lot of his worldview and habits were a lot less insane when you lived in Redacle as opposed to earth. I¡¯d just have to make sure I kept telling myself that. We were led into some old building that had clearly been important once, but had long since been left to decay and die. It was at least three stories, a rare example of all-stone architecture, and had windows boarded and barred with wooden shutters on every side. A fortress, then, or as close as the king of some regional town¡¯s criminal underclass could get. If anything it was impressive that the place was as big as it was. I started moving through the figures in my head, then gave up. Maths was never my forte, instead I whispered the question to Solitaire. His estimates came back frustratingly fast. Three, maybe four thousand people in Jhigral. Call that three or four hundred starving and unemployed, and a quarter of them turned to consistent, violent crime. So we were looking at maybe a hundred men under Hengrard¡¯s control. Seventy five on the lower end. Well, sixty seven to ninety five, actually. I felt a rare smile widen itself across my face. Beam had put at least four in the hospital, or would have if this world had anything worth comparing to one. I¡¯d hit one in the chest hard enough that I felt bones break, and Solitaire had bitten another¡¯s throat out and squeezed one more¡¯s groin so hard there¡¯d been blood washing his fingers right up until he went down. All things considered, I was quite happy to have made a dent in the bastard¡¯s operation, however small. Hengrard himself was located in the centre of the building, probably for reasons of safety. We were led through more than a couple of winding corridors on our way to him, and a single glance at Solitaire told me he was memorising every turn we made on our way in. There were more than a few. We soon came to the man¡¯s office, finding him sitting behind some big wooden desk, parchment and quills scattered across it like something out of¡­Well, a fantasy novel. He didn¡¯t look pleased to see us. Good, the feeling was mutual. ¡°Gentlemen.¡± He called out, not even bothering to force a smile to contradict his voice. ¡°I will be frank, I was hoping we would never meet again.¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t know you were that sensible.¡± Beam cut in, with his usual tact. Solitaire just eyed a metal letter-opener on the desk, staring at it as if it were some big, juicy steak. I could practically see him counting guards, considering the likelihood of managing to put it through the leader¡¯s neck in time. I decided to speak before he could get any of us riddled with shanks or cudgelled to death. ¡°We weren¡¯t expecting to see you, either.¡± I answered. ¡°After you tried to kill us and all.¡± The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. He scoffed, as if I¡¯d just said snow was blue. ¡°Oh, you call that trying to kill you? No, we left you alive and uncrippled on purpose. Your debt to Corvan is well known and I¡¯d rather not draw the ire of a magus.¡± So he might be too hesitant to fight back properly if another battle started? Interesting. Not that one could start, as we were now. If all three of us jumped our past selves from that alley, I doubted we¡¯d even bring down a single one before getting left unconscious in a gutter. Starvation was a bastard of a thing. ¡°After you beat us into unconsciousness and robbed us, then.¡± I snapped, glaring openly at him, well past the point of caring enough about diplomacy not to. He smiled thinly. ¡°You resisted my offer,¡± he shrugged. ¡°And I have mouths to feed as well, you know. A lot more. Regardless, I¡¯m not interested in hurting you again. If I was you¡¯d both have come here with arrows through your knees first. I would like to make you an offer.¡± I frowned, eying my friends with a silent question. Beam looked just as confused as me, but Solitaire had a thoughtful expression. I decided to see where this might go. ¡°What sort of offer?¡± I asked, watching his face carefully as it shifted and moved. ¡°The sort that gets you food, warm beds to sleep in and, if you¡¯re very very useful, perhaps enough coin to pay off most, maybe all, of your debt to old Corvan.¡± He said it all so simply that I almost didn¡¯t register the magnitude of his offer. Of course, to him it was all small stuff. Matters of no import. Food? Not a problem, warmth? Who cares? Only the coin will have registered. But to us, he was bargaining with life itself. I had to stifle my knee jerk reaction to start begging and scraping. ¡°You¡¯re in trouble.¡± Solitaire observed, eying the man like he were some hyena. ¡°Someone¡¯s moving in on your territory, right? Someone you¡¯re not certain you can out fight. Maybe a Witchfinder, but I¡¯d bet it¡¯s just another gang boss, someone from Wolney perhaps? You¡¯re scrambling to get as many fighting men as you can before it all kicks off in the hopes that you¡¯ll still be in charge when the dust settles.¡± I must say, it was bloody satisfying to see someone else glare at Solitaire when he did that. Diplomacy was my area, but you should never underestimate a paranoid¡¯s ability to unravel ulterior motives. Even, on occasion, ones that actually existed. By the expression on Hengrard¡¯s face, Solitaire had hit the nail on the head. The gang leader didn¡¯t look pleased, in fact he looked like he just had shit smeared across his face. I spoke to consolidate his victory before the enemy could adjust. ¡°And you remember how well we performed against your boys.¡± I cut in. ¡°Even half-starved, already beaten and chilled to the bone from miles of walking through snow. Even while we were exhausted from dragging the weight of two war horses behind us. Which makes us dangerous to fuck with, and useful now, right?¡± Hengrard glared, clearly taking his time before speaking next. I was quick, and I made a point of being surrounded by quick people, but I knew better than to take this as a mark of his unintelligence. If anything, taking the caution to think every sentence through was a point in his favour, and against mine. ¡°...You have the broad strokes right.¡± He conceded at last, with all the eagerness of a dehydrated man giving up water. ¡°Eliza Wodal, is the name of the woman who runs the gang threatening to move in. See, a while ago they had a few men posted in an ambush point in the woods, guarding the road from Jhigral to some fancy tree with medicinal sap. Those men went missing, and now she¡¯s using it as an excuse to declare war, blaming it on us. I don¡¯t know if she killed them herself just for the excuse, honestly, or if she¡¯s just a moron, but either way the result is the same. She has a hundred men to my seventy, which means the fight isn¡¯t gonna be in our favour. Unless you join in.¡± I almost shat my entire fucking self, and to this day I have no idea how all of us kept a straight face through that. Solitaire, I suppose, just had a naturally evil face that always looked like it was sneering, Beam might not have even been paying attention, and I was just about tearing every muscle in my head trying to keep the surprise from showing. It almost kept me from thinking through everything else Hengrard said. One hundred on seventy, that was bad. Terrible actually- long fucking odds that I really didn¡¯t want to be on the wrong side of. On the other hand, long odds meant high pay. I¡¯d seen the desperation in this one, felt it palpably. He didn¡¯t want to lose whatever he¡¯d built here, and he didn¡¯t want to lose his life, which meant that he could be wrangled for a damn sight more than an affordable fee. Was it worth it? I didn¡¯t know. We were hardly in fighting condition now, I could feel my stomach aching still, even feel my own body¡¯s weight just pressing down on my legs from above. At the last check, even Beam was sitting at Strength seven now, new Skillpoint expenditure included. If Hengrard thought he¡¯d be getting the wrecking crew equal to double its number from before, he had another thing coming. No, but he wouldn¡¯t be expecting that, surely. I could see the sunken cheeks and weakness in my friends even now, he must¡¯ve been just as aware. Which meant he had other help available, or some other reason to think we could make up the difference. So which was it? I thought it through long and hard, like Hengrard himself. And then gave the only answer I could. ¡°You have a deal.¡± I forced myself to say, burying the bitterness that came with working for the bastard who¡¯d mugged me. ¡°Now what in the hell makes you think we have a chance?¡± Chapter 21 Beam POV: Day 41 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper I wasn¡¯t sure, exactly, how Shango managed to wrangle us a few weeks of free food and housing, but he did. I wasn¡¯t sure how he managed to convince that deal to hold, after Hengrard saw that we were each eating about double the usual amount, but he did. The situation was dire- a fight against three for every two on your own side usually was- but it was a hell of a lot better than starving had been, and it was something we could actually influence. None of us were planning on simply idling while it approached. The road from Jhigral to Wolney was long, winding and, according to Hengrard¡¯s report, predicted by Elementalists- magi specialised in influencing and weighing the weather- to be made impassable with snow for at least a fortnight. So we¡¯d had a bit of wiggle room to prepare, recover and steady ourselves. We used it well. Bread and porridge was easily acquired, but I insisted on bargaining for a ration of meat, too. Some mutton and goat flesh from Hengrard¡¯s stores, just a few ounces each per day, but it had enough protein to make at least some difference when combined with our other measures. As we saw it, our main priority was physical power. We were haggard and worn thinner than ever before, so getting to a fighting condition would be hard. But I¡¯d trained harder in the past. Compared to the pain of seeing my body wither away in this world, the effort of pushing it back up to ¡°merely¡± exceptional barely even registered. Push ups, squats, sit ups and lots of running. I did them by the hundreds, by the mile. Jumping and sidestepping, improvising support beams for pull-up bars, callisthenics until the cows came home. It was oddly comforting. Even as I felt aghast at how difficult the simple exercises had become, I realised I was essentially back to my roots, working just as hard and just as slow as I had when I¡¯d first started seriously trying for the Olympics all those years ago. That, and it was amazingly fun to watch Solitaire and Shango fail alongside me. My friends swore, begged, bargained and bitched, and I didn¡¯t let them get out of a single exercise. Pushing them right alongside myself, taking motivation from the knowledge that they¡¯d use my stopping as an excuse to quit themselves. All the while we prepared, we were practically inhaling eggs and meat, porridge and bread, guzzling water to hydrate our tortured bodies and resting only as a reluctant concession to the logistics of muscle-building. By the end of the second week, we¡¯d gained most of our mass back. Not all as muscle, though. Our bodies, apparently, had adjusted to starvation and started piling a bit more fat on. That was fine- if anything fat would help, Solitaire politely let us know that it was better than any other soft tissue for stopping a blade- but it was disheartening. So we worked even harder for the third week. It ended quickly, time compressing amid our focus, and soon enough we heard word that a large number of men had been sighted moving to Jhigral from the numerous roads connecting it to Wolney. Time was up, and the fight was on us. All we had left was to see how well we¡¯d prepared. For his part, Hengrard was more than competent at outfitting us. We all got thick woollen clothes, warm, but more importantly coiled and tough enough that they might stop a knife. Our own weapons were ones we¡¯d already practised with, and of comparable quality to what most of Hengrard¡¯s boys would be using anyway, but we had the chance for a few choice surprises, too. Solitaire, back on the very first day after our deal, had asked for a giant pile of horse shit. Literally. I hadn¡¯t known why, hadn¡¯t asked, and he¡¯d just giggled when Shango had. I figured we¡¯d find out soon enough. Sooner than I liked, actually, because it was on the afternoon of the twenty-third day since our deal, and the forty-first day since our arrival, that we were called on to ready ourselves for it. As modern humans, it was nothing new for us to see the assembly of people. They were countable in the dozens, on our side, and that was nothing at all back home. Solitaire would¡¯ve seen two, even three times as many every time his year assembled in highschool- Shango probably saw even more just occupying individual market streets in Nigeria. Me? Fuck, I¡¯m fairly sure your average football or baseball game in the U.S filled its stadium with easily a thousand times as many. It was a different thing entirely, though, to know that they were all on our side, all armed, and all ready for a fight. And that was what let it all sink in. This wasn¡¯t some bar brawl, it was a fucking war. And we were on the outnumbered side.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Solitaire spoke first, among the three of us. He wasn¡¯t as good with people as Shango, definitely wasn¡¯t half the businessman, but he was king when it came to matters of killing or being killed. ¡°They¡¯ll be attacking, right?¡± He asked. Then continued before anyone could answer. ¡°Advantage us, if you had enough spies to hear what Wolney¡¯s Elementalists were saying then I¡¯ll guess they have enough to know what¡¯s happening here and where we¡¯re hiding out. So they¡¯ll be cutting in through the Ratpass to reach us as quickly as possible with all their forces concentrated.¡± Hengrard hesitated, thought, then nodded. ¡°...Makes sense.¡± It did, at that. The Ratpass was a long stretch of trench about fifteen feet wide that cut right through the city¡¯s centre. Apparently it had once held a redirected river, but long since fallen out of use. Dried out and left to a neglected state of disrepair. These days it was just a good shortcut. And a relatively tight one. Solitaire grinned. ¡°Then let¡¯s go and meet them there.¡± He announced, setting off at a walk. ¡°Their numbers won¡¯t be as good in there, they won¡¯t have as easy a time surrounding us, and I have a little surprise stashed away just in case.¡± That got him a lot of sceptical looks. ¡°The base is¡­Fortified.¡± One man brought up. Solitaire shrugged. ¡°It can¡¯t hold all of us, who¡¯s waiting outside?¡± Hengrard was quick in speaking then. I realised that Solitaire had been pretty damned sneaky in engineering a way of forcing him to. ¡°Reserves.¡± He snapped, ¡°Ready to ambush them when they try to break in.¡± Solitaire grinned. ¡°Then lend ¡®em to us, and we¡¯ll ambush them when they¡¯re trying to approach, instead.¡± It took some convincing, but apparently Hengrard wasn¡¯t particularly attached to his men in the first place. He probably didn¡¯t think any of the ones not inside could do much good, probably hoped that the lack of encirclement would do a lot of heavy lifting. Maybe he was just stupid. I really wasn¡¯t sure how Solitaire and Shango managed it, but we were soon moving in to fight a hundred men with barely twelve on our own side. We hurried, moving almost at a jog, and shotyl we were on the Ratpass. Then, we saw the enemy moving down it further ahead. There were a lot, and they were moving with a purpose. Whether it was a hundred or not, I really couldn¡¯t say, but the crowd seemed at least a bit bigger than ours had been in full, and a lot bigger than the group we had now. It was like comparing an elephant to a person, almost, and every bit as demoralising as you¡¯d expect. They were almost to the end of the Ratway, now, just fifty yards from scaling the big slope at its head. When they did that, they¡¯d be on us. Solitaire stepped forwards as if those half hundred paces were a hundred miles, moving to a large pile of planks and rubbish, shifting it aside to pull something out. A barrel. He grinned. ¡°What¡­Is that?¡± Shango asked him, concern palpable in the question. Concern palpable in me, too, as it would have been in anyone who knew Solitaire and had seen him pull something out from a hiding place. Our friend didn¡¯t answer, just pulled out a tinderbox- probably loaned from the gangsters- and lit a big fuse protruding from the top. It was that, at last, that made me realise the obvious. ¡°You didn¡¯t!¡± I gasped, and he looked over his shoulder, laughing. ¡°Why do you think I needed the SHIT?!¡± He sneered. ¡°God, do you know how long I¡¯ve waited to do something like this?¡± He turned his eyes to the group at large. ¡°ALRIGHT BOYS AND GIRLS, EVERYBODY STEP BACK, THIS IS GONNA BE A SPLASH ZONE.¡± Our enemies must¡¯ve seen us, because they were running faster now. Barely fifty feet away, and closing by the second. Solitaire tipped the big barrel down the ramp into the Ratpath, watching as the wooden keg- maybe half his height and two feet wide- rolled and bounced and thudded hard into the stone floor down below. The fuse kept burning, flame now an inch from the base. By the time it disappeared into the wood, men had already surrounded it all. Explosions were common in modern earth, but, oddly enough, being near them- let alone near them regularly- was not. The first thing that hit me was the sheer dirtiness of it, smoke and soot blowing out in all directions at once, like a mushroom cloud. The second thing was the pressure. My teeth rattled, ears ached, eyes watered as heat and force battered me at once, sending me back a step and looking away while the screams rang out below. I heard Solitaire laughing, barely, over the din. Then the air was clearing, and I risked a look back to watch the result of his work. Limbs, everywhere. Most were within twenty feet of the epicentre, some scattered far enough that they¡¯d landed past the scorch marks. The atmosphere was full of churning smog, all white and grey, a smokescreen I could barely even look past. Behind it bodies were strewn about, ten, a dozen, twenty. I could only estimate it as a significant portion of the enemy. More were wounded, lying and screaming, clutching ruined faces and gushing ears. There was a terrified tremble running through our team, and then Solitaire was roaring out another cackle. ¡°COME ON, WHILE THEY¡¯RE REELING, OR ARE YOU BOYS TOO SCARED TO FIGHT EVEN WITH A WIZARD ON YOUR SIDE!?¡± There was something different about him, and it was infectious. A sudden animalism to his voice, a savagery to his eyes, an eagerness to the way he started running down the slope, knife clutched hard in one hand, length of wood tighter still in the other. Solitaire barely took two paces before I was after him, and not even three before the rest of the men were charging down, roaring and laughing. Our enemies were still reeling when we reached them, else we¡¯d probably have been cut to pieces, and I felt all the old reflexes start taking over as we closed in. My spear went through one of their necks before he even knew I was there, and this time I had the chance to rip it free before stabbing another, gutting this one with a twist of the shaft and letting entrails spill out like worms in a corpse as he fell. An instant later, the rest of our men crashed into theirs, and everything became chaos. Chapter 22 Solitaire POV: Day 41 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper I had a man¡¯s cock in my mouth, and not in the fun way. He screamed while I chewed away at it, biting through fabric, skin, then veins and gristle, tearing what was left of the mangled organs free with a sharp wrench of my neck. The man spasmed beneath me, and I was an instant away from smashing his brains out with my rock when I caught movement in my periphery. A quick roll took me from the axe swing¡¯s path and left the blade stuck in the first man¡¯s belly, worsening his already sub-average day. In the time its wielder took to free it, I was already up and throwing. My rock bounced from his cheek, sending him a stunned step back and leaving a chance for me to bowl him over in a tackle. He struggled, I strangled. A fist caught my face, I answered with a headbutt that knocked the fight out of him, and before it could come back I was turning the limp gangster over and gripping his skull and jaw as tightly as I could. One swift wrench was enough to snap the spine, then I was standing again, moving onto the next one. He was ready for me, and wielding a big, horrible meat cleaver already stained with someone¡¯s blood. I glanced around, saw that half our boys were dead, and the enemy starting to galvanise, and decided that not getting gutted was the better part of valour. There were always better ways to fight a nasty, dangerous man than face to face, even if you couldn¡¯t wait for him to take a nap. I turned and sprinted for the slope, arsehole in hot pursuit. He was almost on me, deliberately slow as my pace was, when I dropped to the ground and lashed a kick for his knee. It struck, with all of my force meeting all of his momentum, challenged by bones left shrivelled and thin by a lifetime of pre-industrial nutrition. The joint broke, the gangster fell, and my boot was coming down on his neck before he could even scream. I felt the snap run through my leg, oddly satisfying. With that finished, it didn¡¯t take long to spot my friends in the melee- even though it had long since shifted to resemble a remarkably pointy mosh pit. Beam was running around and kicking the fuck out of everybody, using his spear half like an actual spear and half like a bloody big club, and seemingly equally deadly with either. Shango was a bit more restrained, circling the fights, staying defensive and clinging close to the olympian. Both, however, were dangerously near to being encircled. Bollocks, I¡¯d been hoping to save my last surprise for later. I wasn¡¯t actually a wizard, by the way, that was what we in the gaming community refer to as ¡®a lie¡¯. What I was, was very, very clever. And well supplied with horseshit, charcoal and elemental sulphur. All the ingredients for black powder. I¡¯d used most of it in the big bomb, which by my count had either killed or de-limbed seventeen of the enemy. The rest had been split between two things, one a surprise waiting back near the ¡°fort¡±, and the other¡­ Well, the other was in my pocket. I withdrew the pipe bomb- fashioned from a chair leg, makeshift fuse and the rest of my explosives- and knelt down with the tinder, keeping an eye out for attackers while I lit it. I was a safe distance away from the actual fighting, though, and got it done soon enough. Standing, I steadied my aim and chucked it at the greatest concentration of enemy. Now, I¡¯m aware you probably think it was extremely dangerous and unwise to throw a deadly bomb into a fight my friends were actively engaged in. To answer your inevitable criticism, however, let me just say that you¡¯re a massive pussy, probably boring to be around at parties, and likely will be useless when the government tries to kill everybody. My aim was perfect, the bomb arced just as I¡¯d hoped, and it went off at around chest-height. I didn¡¯t quite see how many it killed, but it had everybody nice and panicked again. Beam and Shango were given time for pause, and I was on them an instant later, sprint taking only a few seconds without anything in my way. ¡°We¡¯re leaving.¡± I told them, and they both nodded and listened, turning to sprint along with me as we tore away from the fight. It wasn¡¯t as smooth as I¡¯d have hoped. The other gangsters, apparently, saw the way the wind was blowing and started running too- scattering in all directions, and leaving the enemy free to pursue. We had a head start, and we were plenty faster, but the difference wasn¡¯t as big as I¡¯d have hoped. We tore down one alley, making a really big wish that we lost pursuit.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. We didn¡¯t. Footsteps raced after us from behind, echoing along the cobbles, bouncing off the walls. It was one of the scariest sounds I¡¯ve ever heard. Scary enough to risk a glance over my shoulder, and confirm the numbers. Three. Well, it could be worse. One was a bit big, massive really, but besides that it seemed we were ahead of the curve. I heard Shango swear beside me, and glanced to see he was looking too. ¡°The big guy¡¯s fucking level thirteen.¡± He swore again. I joined in this time, and started running all the faster. We were faster than two of them, but the big one tore ahead of his compatriots, closing in with a terrible certainty. I realised, then, that he¡¯d catch Shango and Beam without a doubt. But not me. I¡¯d put all my Skillpoints into Speed, and I was a decent sprinter even before that. By now I was the fastest, and I had the feeling I could pull ahead of this one even in the worst circumstances. Now, though, when he¡¯d be catching two others first? As the saying went, I didn¡¯t even need to be faster than him. Just faster than the slowest one in our group. Faster than Shango. I felt a chill run down my spine, as I realised what needed to be done. I turned, rock already in my hand, wrist flicking at the end of my throw to send it hurtling at the bastard as fast as I could manage. ¡°Fight them here!¡± I roared, just an instant after the stone hit a chest. A useless throw, really, such a light projectile would never do anything unless I caught the face, but it stunned the bastard and galvanised my friends. All of us halted at once, then charged the big fucker. I reached him first, much to my regret. He surprised me by lashing out with an open palm, stopping me instantly from my sprint and punting me onto my back. All the air left my lungs at once, and I lay there gasping while he closed in- only to be driven back as Beam smashed into him. Shango seized my shoulder, dragging me to my feet with a concerned stare, and I forced a grin to calm him. Both of us moved to help Beam at once when we realised the Big One¡¯s friends were already arriving. ¡°One each.¡± I barked, picking a gangster at random and lunging for him. It was a mistake, I was still winded, and the sudden stab of pain in my torso slowed me to a stumble, just about letting him crack a haymaker against my jaw that drove me back again. I caught Shango fighting the other from the corner of my eyes, then I found my footing and closed up to block another punch. The enemy seemed unarmed, which was likely the only reason I hadn¡¯t died already, but he was damned good at using those fists even with nothing in them. By the time I¡¯d recovered enough to move quickly, he¡¯d already landed a dozen more hits. Bruising forearms and biceps, catching my head once. He was fast, skilled, and clearly experienced. Probably he¡¯d been in more fights than me, and he definitely seemed better trained. All that, and I¡¯d lost my knife in the melee before. It was a shame he was half a foot shorter than me, or he¡¯d probably have won. Another haymaker came, and I lowered my guard for it, ducking down into the punch to catch fist with forehead. I felt the knuckles breaking against me, heard his cry of pain confirm it, then I was lunging to grab him. He backed away, desperately scrambling to break my hold as I snagged clothes with my curling fingers. Something tripped him and he went down, almost dragging me with him before I solidified my footing, corrected my hold and hauled. One hundred and ten pounds of gangster lifted high into the air, flailing and yelping in surprise, not stopping until it was already raised fully over my head. I held him there for a moment, even looking into his eyes as our heads rested conveniently facing one another. Then I reversed the motion, and all the muscles that had been fighting gravity now gave it a hand. He hit the ground shoulder-first, and probably broke every bone within inches of the impact point. Actually bounced a few centimetres into the air before coming to a rest, and lay there gasping while I cocked my leg back and threw a kick into his ribs. They broke, he rolled, then stopped at a wall. Blood was leaking from his lips, and his eyes were dazed and cloudy. Not a problem, for now. Probably not a problem ever again. I turned to see Shango¡¯s opponent was just as fast, and winning. Landing punches everywhere my friend¡¯s guard wasn¡¯t, kicking at legs to trip him, sticking his fists in all the nasty spots dear old mum had taught me to aim for. He didn¡¯t notice me closing in until I was already on him- the poor bastard, turning just in time for his face to catch the headbutt I¡¯d thrown with all my velocity at once. His skull cracked beneath mine, and he started falling instantly. I caught him, hoisted him up, then headbutted him again in the same spot. Then again, and the cracks became fractures. Another two and the fractures widened. By the time I finished- by the time my skull was pounding with the pain of being used as a bludgeon- the gangster¡¯s head didn¡¯t really resemble a head anymore. That was just about dead enough for my taste, and I let him fall. Turning, I flashed a grin at Shango only to see him staring ahead in horror, and slowly followed his gaze. Beam hit the ground, rolled four yards to a stop at our feet, and coughed where he lay. The Big Fucker stalked after him, taller than any of us, muscled like a boar and pale as a Klansman¡¯s uniform. He looked pissed, eyes flicking between his dead and dying friends, and all I could was manage to do was raise my hands before he was on me. Chapter 23 Shango POV: Day 41 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper Solitaire was already lunging for the big guy while Beam groaned at our feet, and I was following after him, only hesitating for an instant. A giant fist came around for my friend¡¯s head, and he caught it with his brow. I expected to see the knuckles break, like so many others had meeting his favourite trick. They didn¡¯t. Solitaire stumbled back, shocked and dazed, while another blow came in for his guts. This one was barely blocked, tossing him flat against the floor. It wasn¡¯t like watching a brawl, I thought. Like watching a man with hammers fight one without. For a moment the enemy¡¯s focus was entirely on Solitaire, and I took that opportunity to throw a punch of my own. Swinging my whole body around, using it to lever my arm, keeping the thumb out of my fist. Everything I¡¯d been taught. It bounced off the man¡¯s cheek like he was some giant boulder, actually making my wrist sting, and the sight of his eyes coming to rest on me had me just about shitting myself. Then a heel shot up from the ground to catch him between the legs, and he folded over, stumbling back amid a string of curses as Solitaire rolled and stood, staggering back into the fight like a drunkard and chasing the enemy further back with a haymaker. For one wonderful, precious moment the man just kept out of arms¡¯ reach and carried on reeling. Then his pain subsided, and he was back at us with all the speed of a pouncing lion. Solitaire seemed to be the focus, backstepping while the big man chased, and I followed. My punches thudded into his back one after the other, but it felt more like a wall of stone than flesh, and I suspected my knuckles were hurting more than his body. Solitaire was faring little better, covered up to weather the bombardment of punches smashing into his guard from every side there was, balance shaking by the step, face twisted up in effort and pain. His back was soon at the wall, retreat forcibly stopped, and I felt a stab of panic as I saw the giant rear up for his widest strike yet. It never landed, because Beam was on him first. Slamming into his ribs shoulder-first with all the speed of a sprinter, driving him back with all the pneumatic force of a wrestler, circling around the moment his momentum was stopped and lancing the man¡¯s lower back with elbows that wouldn¡¯t have been entirely out of place in some professional MMA ring. Solitaire was big, broadened now by Beam¡¯s training, and he¡¯d hit hard, but Beam actually smashed the man down onto his knees. He wasn¡¯t that low for so long as a second before Solitaire moved in, swinging a hip-height kick around that cracked perfectly against the giant¡¯s vulnerable temple. He dropped like a sack of rocks. I realised, then, that I was just staring while my friends fought and bled. The anger that filled me with had me by their side a single instant later, all three of us stomping away at the bastard while he tried to rise. We were stronger than we¡¯d been on arrival, now. Including Beam thanks to his Skillpoint. And there were three of us to his one, all of our focus on the beating, all of our minds locked in, calling on our days training together, hunting together and surviving together. So it was incredible how little it did. My heel clipped his chin, and he barely flinched. Solitaire¡¯s knee found an eye socket, and he only growled. Beam landed some bloody overhead kick right into the back of his neck, and all it did was send him forwards a step. A step, I saw, that he now took with both feet flat on the ground, having managed to fully stand up. A fist came, Solitaire dodged, and I went low for the guy¡¯s groin. He must¡¯ve seen it coming because a knee hit my chest, and next thing I knew the sky was looking down at me, laughing. Eyes watery, vision fuzzy, head ringing like someone was smashing away at a bell inside. Why was it grey? Snow was white, wasn¡¯t it? And it¡¯d been snowing, all the snow that hadn¡¯t fallen yet- that would fall, probably, in the night- was still up there. So why was it grey instead of white? I pondered the matter for about as long as it took my brain to finish getting the high score in cranial pinball, then my consciousness stabilised, my thoughts stopped being runny around the edges, and I remembered that my friends were still fighting Kratos. I sat bolt upright, cursing as I saw the display ahead.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Beam was down again, rising slowly, and Solitaire was clinging to the giant¡¯s back like some feral beast, snarling and spitting, fingers digging into all the painful spots. His face was pressed against the side of the man¡¯s head, and a scream was cutting the air. I took a moment to realise it was coming from the giant, and then I saw why. Solitaire yanked his face back, and a spray of blood jumped after it. Clinging to his hair, cheeks, scalp, raining down to stain the dirt. In the side of the man¡¯s head, where he¡¯d just been pressing his mouth, I saw a mess of mangled flesh and oozing veins. It looked like fucking hamburger meat, not least of all the ear- which seemed to have been fully chewed off. Just before I could wonder where it was, Solitaire spat the mangled organ out at the giant¡¯s feet, then shifted his place on the man¡¯s back to start biting at the other. Fucking hell. Almost fortunately, he never managed to complete it. The giant slammed himself back-first into an alley wall, with Solitaire pinned between the bricks and his shoulder blades. Coughing something agonising, my friend dropped from him just in time to catch another punch across the face, which just about flattened him. I was on the giant now, kicking at a knee this time and actually connecting quite well. The man cursed, turned with a slight limp and swore after me as I turned to sprint away before he even rounded. He was pursuing fast when Beam came flying at him. He ducked, wove, punched and elbowed, lasting all of a few more seconds, then falling back down. I came in with another kick, this time to the ribs, and almost fell over with the force of it. The giant, though, barely took a step back. Then he was coming back for me. This wasn¡¯t like fighting the troll, this was an opponent that could think and there was something fiercely terrifying about that. I punched him in the nose, and to my surprise he actually blinked. After that, he punched me. When I woke up, Solitaire was being strangled, suspended fully off the air in a two-handed grip, legs kicking out feebly beneath him. Beam was groaning, lying face-down and not moving nearly enough for my liking, and everyone else was still gone. I groaned, stood, shuddered and charged. Punching back, belly, ribs. All to no avail. Panic started building when Solitaire turned red , and I jumped up to start chewing at the giant¡¯s other ear. Either my friend had the bite force of a pitbull, or there was some technique to dismemberment via jaw that I¡¯d not learned, because I found the remaining side of the man¡¯s head putting up a lot more resistance than I¡¯d expected. I abandoned the effort after Solitaire went from red to purple, and cursed. Time for my last hail mary. I dug a thumb into what was left of his missing ear, pressing the digit into yielding flesh, watching with disgust as more blood welled from the mess. A scream told me the giant was feeling it, his head turning to deny me access, arms folding on instinct to make his body more compact. Arms folding, with Solitaire still held in them. Bringing him closer to the bastard¡¯s face. It didn¡¯t even take an instant before two more thumbs were stuck in him, this time each one pressing down on an eye. He screamed, let go instantly and reached up to pry Solitaire off. Solitaire didn¡¯t let him, letting go before he could, dropping down and swinging an uppercut up directly into the giant¡¯s groin. The kick that followed sent Solitaire almost as far back as the troll had, and he wasn¡¯t moving much when he landed. I actually blocked the backhand the giant threw next, but I might as well have blocked a sledgehammer swing. I still ended up groaning in a heap. And that was it, I was fucked. I tried to move, but my body had other ideas. It was all I could do to crane my neck and see the giant approaching me, face tattooed, bald head scarred, neck and shoulder completely red where the unending ear-blood had soaked through. It looked like I was going to die. That was¡­Fine. A curious thought, but I could hardly deny it. I''d already been planning to off myself a few weeks ago, at least now I¡¯d go out having fought with a bit of hope first. I closed my eyes, waiting for the stomp that would surely snap something important enough to kill me. And it never came. I looked up, surprised to find a dense light spewing out across the alley, eyes watering at its intensity. Skin itching with the touch of something else, that I recognised only from Corvan¡¯s healing magics. We hadn¡¯t asked about why Beam picked his name to be what it was, but he¡¯d told us. Beam, like a streak of light. Beam like a sunray. Beam because that¡¯s what he always got told his smile was like. Beam, to remind him not to let that smile slip while we were here. Yeah, a bit of a drama queen, our friend, but one tends to be when one competes on a global scale. Anyway, he was getting the last laugh now, because fuck me was that light bright. Bright, grey, somehow, and coming from between his hands. I just about made a shape out, long, sort of cylindrical, humming and ephemeral in its form. It looked almost like some energy sword from Halo, like light given mass, and I had about a half second to admire the fact before he lunged with it. The air screamed as he moved, as if even it was scared of his new weapon. And I could feel the magic off of it from across the alley. Chapter 24 Beam POV: Day 41 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper I was fairly certain that, generally speaking, corpses didn¡¯t actually have visible stink lines coming off of them, let alone dully glowing flies mere minutes after death. The one I was looking at did, though. At first I thought maybe I¡¯d just been hit harder than I initially suspected, but they got clearer, not more faded, as my vision focused and my headache subsided. They were all tinged grey and just barely luminous, like some deepwater animal dragged up to the surface and allowed to glow in the air. And yet they jumped out to my vision. Something about them demanded my attention, registering as clear to me as my own heartbeat. Groaning, I rolled onto my side and glanced up. Kratos was making his way to Shango, at best I had about five seconds before my friend was dead. I moved faster, kneeling up, shuffling towards the corpse, ignoring my body swearing at me with every inch cleared. I was beside it soon, forcing a foot underneath me, then standing with an exertive roar. Something brushed against my hand, and I didn¡¯t need to look to know what it was. The grey¡­Mystery. Whatever was emanating out of that corpse. I ran my fingers through it, then closed them into a fist, binding it into my grip and feeling it solidify. It felt like death, decay. Like the corpse was resting in my hand, touching my mind, whispering at my thoughts. My fatigue started to bleed away, and in its place I felt something new. An emotion that wasn¡¯t mine, an instinct that wasn¡¯t human, an urge that wasn¡¯t natural. Yes, yes! Now tear him apart! Sunder him! That voice, echoing around in my head, was definitely not my own. It wasn¡¯t that of anyone I knew, and far more coherent than any of the fuzzy hallucinations that sometimes accompanied a blow to the noggin. I knew all that, but I didn¡¯t have the time or luxury of giving it any more serious thought. I tightened my fist, finally glancing at what it held. Grey, swirling energies. I might have guessed as much, but now they¡¯d congealed into something solid. A long bar, cylindrical and thick, heavy like a chunk of wrought iron. I could feel the strength in it, and something more. An icy feeling leaking out of the material and up through my arm. It made me want to move, to kill. I obliged it. A roar escaped me, running out of my mouth on instinct alone, and it snapped the pale giant¡¯s head around just in time for him to see me come flying across the alley at a sprint. He raised a guard, and I swung my new weapon for his head, missed, then twisted around to bring it back for his ribs. It was a motion I¡¯d practised a thousand times- ten thousand- and it was all the easier for how light this weapon was compared to the swords I¡¯d trained with. Light, and viciously deadly. As if it weighed ten times more on the moment of impact. I felt ribs crack as it bounced off the bald man¡¯s side, and the weapon fizzled out of existence before I could repeat the motion. My enemy was still stunned, hunched down and clutching his wounded torso, precious seconds bought for me to adjust to being without a weapon once more. So I did, lashing out a kick for his head. That same exact technique had staggered a troll, within our earliest days in Redacle. I was stronger, now, and this fucker was definitely no troll. He went down instantly, and I followed him, taking the mount position on sheer muscle memory as hours of grappling came back to me. I was slamming elbows and hammerfists down onto his head for what felt like a minute before he finally made his move. It was a simple one, but effective. He just grabbed me, then hauled me off him like I was a little kid, sent me rolling and scraping along the jagged alley floor while he stumbled to his feet. I hurried up after, managing to stand just in time to leap back from a haymaker which might¡¯ve cracked my skull open otherwise. Then my back hit the wall.Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. He didn¡¯t hesitate even an instant, another punch flying for me, this time forcing me to block. Easier to guard against a fucking baseball bat, the sheer size of his arm almost bowled me over, and an instant later his giant hands were closing around my throat, squeezing. I tried to pry the fingers off, to no avail. Tried to break his grip with all the techniques I¡¯d learned, and none worked. It was like getting throttled by a fucking powerlifter, by a bear. Raw strength being applied in enough volume that skill and experience went entirely out the window. And then I remembered his ribs. I kicked them, hard, right in the injured spot, and he released me. Took a step back, even while I darted to one side, ignoring the urge to let myself recover and forcing my body to throw another strike. This one was far better in form, and the power it injected into his side was enough that I could feel the bones shifting place where my knuckles touched them. Kratos was kneeling again, this time coughing up blood, and I allowed myself a single instant to ready the finishing blow. It was another kick, carefully aimed and perfectly thrown, heel catching his neck right at the base of it. That magic spot where the spine transitioned from torso to skull. Something cracked, and the man started spasming. I watched while he kicked and gibbered beneath me. Solitaire was right, it really does take fucking ages for someone to die properly. But he did. I let a few stomps come down on his neck and skull, once he was finally still. Just to be sure. And then I was turning to my friends. Shango was absolutely fucked, but still conscious. He eyed me with a mix of confusion and awe as I helped him stand, turning sharply to where Solitaire had fallen. Even that motion made him wince- he was in bad, bad condition. We all were, I supposed, not least of all me. Whatever had come over me to let my body move the way it had, it was wearing off, I could feel all the aches and pains return. Worse, now, probably agitated by my adrenaline rush. I could only hope I had enough left in the tank to make it back to our side¡¯s hideout. Solitaire was groaning, but conscious, when we came to him. He¡¯d gotten off the worst, apparently, having fought the giant about as much as me, without years of olympic training to help out. He mumbled something about the one percent and lizards while we slung him over our shoulders. Sounded like himself, at least. That left the two of us confident enough in his recovery to spend a few minutes searching the alley for discarded weapons, retrieving a few knives, pocketing them posthaste and making our way out. Shango didn¡¯t wait long to speak, once we¡¯d started our limp back to homebase. His questions came rapidly, and pointedly. ¡°What the shit was that light you conjured?¡± He demanded, eying me like I was some specimen in front of a microscope. It was disconcerting, but I wasn¡¯t in any mood to be particularly bothered by such things. I answered him. ¡°I have no idea.¡± I said, honestly. ¡°I just¡­I wanted a weapon, and then I saw this weird grey stuff floating around the corpse¡­So I grabbed it, and it became a club.¡± Shango didn¡¯t look mollified by the information. I pressed on anyway. ¡°There was this voice egging me on as I used it, too, telling me to kill the guy.¡± He blanched, and I winced, sighing. ¡°You think I¡¯ve snapped.¡± Shango snorted. ¡°Of course not. Hearing voices, alone? Yeah, sure, odds are you¡¯re crazy. Going nuts exactly as you start using some weird magic, though, is one coincidence more than I care to count. I¡¯d guess there¡¯s more to this than either of us know.¡± And that was all we said on the topic. It wasn¡¯t a long conversation, and I was grateful for the fact. More grateful, though, to have had it at all. It hadn¡¯t registered to me how worried I was about the idea that I¡¯d cracked, until I said it aloud. And Shango¡¯s dismissing the notion was exactly what I needed. A bit convenient, that. Was he just saying what he said to keep me functional while weapons were still drawn? Maybe. I didn¡¯t imagine I had any way of knowing if he was. When someone like Shango wanted to trick you, you¡¯d be tricked. And yet he was my friend. I¡¯m not Solitaire, not even remotely. Trust always came easy to me. I took comfort in it while we shuffled our way back. As my body became heavier, more pained and slower with seemingly every step, that comfort grew ever more important. But not as important as it was when we actually arrived. The big, robust building the rest of our side was camped out in still held strong, we could see, but the enemy had clearly gotten to it before us. They were crowded around it, surrounding the place in some big ring, all however many dozen were left. They held cudgels, knives, all the same weapons as the bastards in the alleys. Swapping arrows with defenders propped behind windows. All of them seemed either lightly injured or in perfect condition, and the panic Solitaire¡¯s bomb had spread through their numbers was nowhere to be seen. We were cut off, outnumbered twenty or more to one. And we were a lot more beaten up now than before. Chapter 25 Solitaire POV: Day 41 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper So, we were fucked. Not the nicest realisation to be greeting me upon waking up, but I was always a practical fellow. Better to accept reality for what it is than whinge and bitch about what it ought to be. Even if there¡¯s a lot to whinge about. Fifty feral, malnourished apeman bastards between us and salvation. Some among them, according to Shango, packing levels almost comparable to Kratos. We¡¯d been operating on the assumption that there wouldn¡¯t be many humans over level one in this conflict, and that had been mistaken. Tragically so. We sat around planning for a while, while the enemy readied themselves for their attack on the building. It was annoyingly far from any other structures, so jumping onto its roof was out of the question. The floor around here was actually paved, too, which ruled out digging- though I reckon we¡¯d have needed wooden beams and a few weeks for that to be practical either way. If calling the guards would have done anything, they¡¯d have already been swarming the place too, so it appeared we¡¯d be on our own. Fighting through them was technically an option, but then, so was stabbing ourselves in the balls, and I didn¡¯t fancy our chances with either. Now, all of us are fairly clever guys. Even Beam, weirdly enough, when he¡¯s not busy swinging a sword like the juice button ape. It took us some thinking to get a workable plan, but we did. Eventually. Mind you, that plan was not exactly perfect. Or complex. It might actually have been a matter for debate whether it even constituted a plan at all, come to think of it, but it was the best we had. Better to accept reality for what it is than whinge and bitch about what it ought to be. We waited until night fell, checking our bodies for wounds- which were more painful than damaging- while killing time as Beam practiced trying to replicate the fucking magic sword powers he apparently had and Shango and I tried to figure out if we had anything similar. No luck on either account. We finally found the skies dark enough for us to make our move, which was honestly more worrisome than relieving. Our move was a crude, risky, terrifying thing. And now we¡¯d used up our last excuse to delay doing it. I came out first, despite my wounds. Movements sluggish, body aching, but alert enough for what needed doing. I had a knife held tight in one hand and was wrapped in the darkest fabrics we could scrounge up, Now or never. The enemy were still encircling the building, and I approached one from behind. He was a few yards from either of his friends at best, but light was expensive in primitive worlds like this, and so were decent nutrients. His vision wouldn¡¯t be nearly as good at picking up shapes in darkness than us modern humans. Was that right? I swore I¡¯d remembered it correctly, from some article about pre-industrial society and sleep patterns. Well, time to bet my life on remembering correctly. I closed in behind him. Dear old mother had been a careful teacher. Clever, focused, and with a genuine passion for ensuring her lessons stuck. The jagged old bitch had made nice and sure to keep me quiet when I moved, picking me up on every creaking floorboard and hard footstep, teaching me how to glide through obstacles. I couldn¡¯t fight like Beam, probably never would, but that was fine by me. The best way to start a fight was by instantly killing the fucker you were fighting, before he knew there was a fight starting. My knife found the neck easily enough, always a good place to cut if you want something dead quickly. I pressed it hard against the skin, then rolled it along the outside, cleaving through the carotid, moving to nick the jugular in one motion. Nick, not sever completely. That was annoying, I let the pressure eb too early, probably bought the bastard a few extra seconds of life. I¡¯d have to correct for that next time. Next time, but not now. Now I focused on leaning in, grabbing him, wrapping an arm tight around his chest and squeezing down on the man¡¯s voice box. Keeping him from making any noise. I held him still, hoisted him back so he couldn¡¯t kick the ground and alert his friends, felt his heartbeat slowing against me as his struggles weakened. Then he was still. I held him a few moments more, to be sure his veins were nice and empty. Looking around, I could just dimly make out the two men closest to us. Both had their eyes ahead, watching the building, both were upwards of twelve feet away. They would¡¯ve probably still seen me if the moon was out, or the world lit by a modern city¡¯s artificial glow, but for once the world was doing me a favour. Everything was dark enough that even a lifetime of easy carrot access didn¡¯t let my baby blues catch them clearly in the gloom.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. I smiled in relief, let out a breath I¡¯d been holding a bit too long, and advanced on the second. He died quicker. By the time the night was too light to continue, I¡¯d killed eight people, and counted the rest. Forty six left in total, not a bad haul at all. But we wouldn¡¯t get another chance at this. I knew that much the moment the first alarmed cry made its way out across the town of Jhigral. Ugh, people were always so whiny when they got scared. Did it cost so much to shut up? To bite your tongue? To just accept reality for what it was, rather than whinge and bitch about what it ought to be? I wish I could kill more of the simpering, spineless animals. ¡°Fucking lethal, man!¡± Beam grinned, slapping me on the back about as hard as a normal person might have, if their fist were a sledgehammer head. It was good to receive, in any case, not least because it meant I was back within arms¡¯ reach of my allies. We kept an eye on the enemy even while grinning about our victory, and it was Shango who first noticed the change when it came. ¡°They¡¯re moving.¡± He whispered, urgently. ¡°Reorganising.¡± They were, we saw. Their circle became tighter, men moving closer together. Structured like that they covered much less ground, and yet they were all a good few metres tighter packed. I wouldn¡¯t be trying another killing with them sitting like that anymore. Well, that was fine. We had all day to think of something new anyway. After having Shango check to ensure we didn¡¯t have more Skillpoints at our disposal, apparently we¡¯d not yet done something constituting a completed ¡°quest¡±, we had nothing more to do than wait. The sky continued to lighten as sleep took us, and Beam volunteered for the first watch while we got some shut-eye. He shook Shango and me awake not an hour later. We rose to follow his gaze, and saw the enemy were moving again, standing and readying weapons, now. It was fully light out- or as light as it ever got in this shithole- and we could see the weapons clutched tight in all of their arms as they marched on the fortress. ¡°Fuck.¡± I noted, dully. It was about the most accurate assessment I could¡¯ve made. Things were about to kick off. There wasn¡¯t a lot we could do, being honest. Our sole advantage was that the enemy likely wouldn¡¯t expect three people to attack them without backup. Because they¡¯d be slaughtered. Not wanting to bank on achieving a sixtee to one kill/death ratio with that edge alone, we sat and waited for them to finish storming the fort. Shutters, obviously, were the first priority. Great big lump hammers were drawn out from the crowd to smash them in, cracking the wooden panels nailed across them, then splintering them. The frames broke next, and soon enough men were scrambling inside by walking over tarpins thrown down over the jagged openings. We heard fighting and dying ring out, and still we just watched and waited. Because an idea was forming, now. The enemy was hurrying inside, storming corridors and fighting. They outnumbered our side, but not that much. Maybe four on three, at best, after the losses both took during the skirmish in the Ratpath. So if something delayed a portion of their forces from attacking the interior¡­ Fuck, it was worth a try, probably. They didn¡¯t seem to have many ranged weapons- perhaps bows were too expensive to trust hired toughs with- so it¡¯d be melee only. We could try to cut and run if things got bad. ¡®Probably¡¯, ¡®seem¡¯, ¡®could¡¯. All uncertainties, all far from a sure bet. And all of them were the closest things we had to a guarantee of winning. I swore, and shared the plan with my friends. They swore too. More and more men poured into the building, and though the walls were too thick for us to actually hear anything, we could easily imagine the viciousness panning out inside. We¡¯d been wrapped up in quite a similar fight just yesterday, ourselves. The enemy grew less densely packed around it, as they emptied their ranks through smashed windows, and our moment came closer with every heartbeat. Then it arrived. The three of us took a second to curse our bad luck, the Veiled Lady, the universe itself and possibly the Roman Empire too. Then we were rushing on ahead, knives in hand and veins clogged with adrenaline. I took the lead, of course, getting my money¡¯s worth for those Skillpoints spent on Speed. Beam was shortly behind me, and Shango right on his tail. We aimed for the centre of the enemy¡¯s ranks, and the back. Smashing into the spine of the crowd, intending to wrench it in half with sheer killing momentum. Well, we had that in spades. A man turned towards me when I was within a few feet of him, but all he got for it was a dagger blade whipping across his neck. I smashed into the one closest to him and bowled the tiny bastard over, swearing I felt fragile ribs break under the impact as I ploughed into the ranks, then I was slashing and punching in every direction around me. Beam and Shango reached the melee barely seconds later, helping me beat back an opening. By the time we turned to start our retreat, we¡¯d already killed two men and wounded god knows how many more. By now, the enemy had figured out we were there. That was unfortunate, as I¡¯m far better at stabbing backs than I am faces, but apparently they weren¡¯t eager to rush us. Our size probably helped with that, and doubtless our kill count was leaving them nice and intimidated, too. I reckon it probably bought us a few more moments of backing off before another big bastard pulled up from the crowd. He wasn¡¯t as large as Kratos, but he was still about Beam¡¯s height, and slabbed in muscle. He had a big lump hammer held tight, and a look in his eyes that reminded me both of a praying mantis and someone with late stage rabies. I drew a lot of conclusions very quickly, after that, and landed on a fairly obvious one. If we got swarmed, we¡¯d die. If we ran, they might not chase us, and our employer could still get finished off. We had to keep them tied up. We had to play for time. I forced myself to take a step forward, held my knife outstretched and snarled with as much courage as I could muster. The savagery? That just came naturally. ¡°Come on then, just you and me you big fucker, let¡¯s settle this like men!¡± Chapter 26 Solitaire POV: Day 42 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 14 silver 20 copper Beam couldn¡¯t have fought this one, and I couldn¡¯t have explained why in the time we had. The giant was stronger, tougher and angrier than me without a doubt, but that hammer looked nasty enough to cleave right through whatever resilience my friends had gotten by spending Skillpoints. Well, in fairness, given the throb of my fucking ribs, I¡¯d need to spend some of my own. But for now I was still the fast guy, which made me the best pick for this fight. There were just different things to consider when weapons came in. Strength mattered less when it was pitted behind an edge. And neither of my friends knew their way around a knife fight like I did. Around me, men were jeering. They didn¡¯t like my odds against Gonads the Barbarian, and a quick glance showed that neither Beam nor Shango disagreed. That was fine, it¡¯d just surprise them all the more when I gutted him. Or I¡¯d be instantly killed, and get to die all smug and knowing without ever knowing I was proven wrong. ¡°I accept.¡± He growled, speaking with a voice that sounded like his lungs were cast in iron. He came on so quickly that the crowd barely had time to start roaring in excitement, hammer whipping around for my head. I didn¡¯t duck it, and I didn¡¯t jump back. I lunged inwards, anticipating the swing and letting the handle catch my shoulder a full foot below the metal head. The fucker was so strong that I still felt the impact, but it wasn¡¯t damaging, and it left me nice and close. My knife was better at that distance, biting deep into one giant pec in the instant he took to stagger back from the stab. Fast reflexes, then. Very fast. Annoying. If I¡¯d known about those, I¡¯d have left him to Beam. Well, too late to pussy out now. As my mother always used to say, when the shit hits the fan you either start running, or get splattered. I started running. It probably surprised him, the sprint was near-superhuman, and ended with a flying knee to the chest that sent him down flat on his back¡­But didn¡¯t kill him. Odd. Did my force not increase alongside my stat-enhanced velocity? A thought for later. I interrupted it by bringing the knife down hard into his face, snarled as the man turned his head just in time to take it through the cheek instead of an eye. Teeth came free where the blade smashed deep into gums, and his agony was loud enough to almost burst my eardrums. Then he grabbed me. Bollocks, I thought, just an instant before he pivoted, turning as much of his strength and weight as was possible into the motion, despite the awkward angle, it sent me rolling away. He came up, and I came up faster, kneed his face again and rolled away as the hammer came back around. I realised, then, that I¡¯d dropped my knife, and could only swear as the giant closed in. He went at it like I was some big fucking tree he wanted to chop down, swinging left, right, always carefully ready to backstep, now, eyes watching me like a hawk. He didn¡¯t look so confident anymore. There was blood running down his cheek, staining his collar, and he still winced every few moments. I could catch glimpses of his mouth¡¯s inside now that the knife was removed, flashes of white teeth being covered in red, and I didn¡¯t think he¡¯d ever be eating steak again. Progress, then. Now I just had to stop him from eating anything else. Easier said than done, because apparently those bulging muscles could swing quite quickly. My foot slipped, the hammer clipped me, and I stumbled. Halted, saw it coming up to fall down on me and realised there was nothing left but the hail-mary. So I tackled him again. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. He didn¡¯t go down, obviously, but his balance was broken and his swing was stopped. We grappled for an instant while he tried to figure out what to do, which gave me all the time in the world to reach down. My fist closed tight around his balls. There¡¯s a technique for crushing testicles. They¡¯re surprisingly tough, and if you want it done right, you can¡¯t just grab on and squeeze away. You need to take a second to measure your grip, add a twist to it, and try to press them against one another. Like cracking walnuts in your hand. I hadn¡¯t done it in quite a while. Fortunately, I wasn¡¯t that out of practice. I felt the soft organs give with a sickening squelch, and heard their owner scream as he spasmed, hammer dropping to the floor with a clatter. I was on it almost before it had finished rattling, snatching it up by the handle and taking a step back, opening some distance, now, rather than shrinking it. I needed the extra room for my swing. The hammer found its home in the man¡¯s torso, catching the lowest ribs on his left side just over his belly. They caved in like twigs under a combat boot, and he folded over, falling to his knees and convulsing. His body was experiencing more pain than it knew what to do with, his mind pulled in too many directions to respond properly. He was still reeling by the time I adjusted my grip and brought the hammer down. Right onto the top of his skull. Bone was hardly an obstacle at all, even in a volume as big as this bastard¡¯s body. It shattered, caved in, gave way and let the metal sink deep into squishy brains beneath. He started spasming, properly spasming now, some bizarre seizure taking his whole body. He rolled around, gurgling, eyes aimless and limbs kicking. I hit him again. The second blow left him still as a stone, still as a statue. Still as a corpse, really, because that¡¯s what he was. I eyed his ruined pulp of a head one last time to make sure, then let the weapon fall by my side. All eyes were on me, and all mouths were silent. Weird, I hadn¡¯t even noticed when the cheering stopped. Its absence hit me like the hammer almost had, left me stunned, slow. It might¡¯ve gotten me killed if the adrenaline hadn¡¯t kept my thoughts nimble and slick. Right now, there were about thirty very confused, disbelieving enemies staring at me and my friends. I¡¯d just won an impossible duel. And there wouldn¡¯t be another. I turned to Beam and Shango, already sprinting as I called out my warning for them to do the same. They answered quickly enough that we probably had a full two or three seconds¡¯ head start on the crowd at our backs. Around my third stride, I felt something shift in my torso. Pain blossomed, slowing me, and I had to fight back the urge to stop running entirely. From my perspective I was barely even jogging. Still, that was enough to keep me neck-and-neck with Shango at least. Any other time, that might¡¯ve been a nice, satisfying reminder of how far I¡¯d come. Now it was an irrelevance, and I ignored it. Something hit the ground beside me, rolling and bouncing ahead. A brick? Fuck, of course, I wasn¡¯t the only one who could throw rocks. If I remembered correctly, even my idiot species had figured that out about a million years ago. Something thudded against my shoulder, another chunk of rock, and I snarled at the impact. But didn¡¯t fall. It hadn¡¯t been thrown very hard, things rarely were by the malnourished manlets inhabiting this world. The subsequent impacts that followed, though, were threatening to compensate for their weakness with volume. There was an alleyway up ahead, and a nice, sharp corner. Turning that might buy us some distance, if we reached it. Distance might- probably would- let our pursuers lose interest. I risked a glance over my shoulder, saw their numbers had already dwindled to a mere nine. That was more than I¡¯d like to fight, new Skills and muscles or no, but it was a decent chunk out of the battle going on. We might actually win. A rock hit my nose, and I swore, turning back around and forcing my sprint to hasten even as my side burned in protest. We reached the alley a few moments later, footsteps and thudding stone ringing along the walls, echoing like an orchestra. We hit the far wall without slowing down, bouncing off it to keep our momentum and hurtling on ahead. A few moments later, the sounds of stumbling and swearing reached us. I glanced again, saw seven men now, and kept running. Another corner, then another, and now the enemy was down to five. That gave me an idea. My legs were burning, my side was splitting, and I was close to collapsing from the fatigue. My injuries had caught up to me while I moved, and I needed a rest. We¡¯d put easily hundreds of metres between us and the pursuers. Enough to get clever. So I roared out a challenge, turned on my heel and started moving for them. Shango and Beam were right behind me. And the bastards ran. Of course they did, even if they hadn¡¯t seen the result of my challenge, they were five shrimps facing down three bastards who probably had a combined weight comparable to their own. The alley, soon enough, only held us. Then, and only then, did I finally let myself collapse against a wall, close my eyes, and let out a nice, long string of swearing. Chapter 27 Shango POV: Day 42 Current Wealth: 0 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper We sat around for quite some time, pondering the best time to stalk our way back to the site of combat and check which side had won before either claiming our reward or disappearing into the wilderness. I know, I know, we¡¯re so heroic I can hardly even believe it myself sometimes. Fortunately, it didn¡¯t take us long to stumble onto the obvious. We had a perfectly effective way of checking whether we¡¯d secured a victory for our allies or not, and it was built into my head. [Appraisal] My heart lurched in excitement at the sight of Solitaire¡¯s level progression, and I quickly turned my gaze on Beam to verify. [Appraisal] I told my friends about the result, and after some quick mental maths from Solitaire, we¡¯d established a few more facts. Namely, each level required ten more experience to progress than the one before, and we¡¯d managed to secure ourselves a haul of fucking hundreds from this fiasco. It almost made the days spent shitting ourselves worth it. And it wasn¡¯t all we¡¯d be getting. ¡°So, money.¡± Solitaire began, reading my mind as usual. ¡°What are the odds we¡¯re going to have some big, horrible man come up behind us and cut our throats when we go over to collect it?¡± It was a rhetorical question, of course, Solitaire always thought people were trying to kill him. But this time he had a fair point. We¡¯d tipped the scales a lot in our side¡¯s favour, used the enemy¡¯s disorganisation against them, fought hard- and, of course, the giant fucking bomb hadn¡¯t hurt either. But that would be working against us, now. The more men Hengrard had left, the more emboldened he¡¯d feel to just kill us. After all, he had a lot of rebuilding to do, and we intended to demand quite a lot of money. That was also to say nothing of the beating we still owed him. So how to play it? ¡°I could sneak up on him.¡± Beam suggested. ¡°Negotiate at knife point.¡± So help me, I actually considered the suggestion. But no. The last thing we needed was to make this more volatile than it already was. Oddly enough, Solitaire was the one who came up with the ideal solution. I had to say, it was quite in-character. And it was a good one. Good enough that we all agreed on it quickly, and moved to encircle the base. Outside it was a¡­Well, a warzone. Bodies piled around, blood spattered everywhere, discarded weapons being collected by those who remained on Hengrard¡¯s staff. We waited, watching from afar, picking out a suitable mark. Then Beam came up behind the poor sod, clobbered him and dragged him into an alley with us. Beam was the strongest, but Solitaire was by far scarier, so we had him speak to the poor guy. He was about our age, bless him, and trembling like it was a blizzard as the world¡¯s angriest paranoid stared into his eyes. ¡°Make a sound and I¡¯ll cut your balls off and stitch them onto your chin.¡± He snarled. ¡°You¡¯ll spend the rest of your life looking like Peter Griffin, not that you even know what that is, lucky bastard.¡± The man seemed to believe him, not to mention think him mad, and we waited a few moments to take the hand off his mouth. ¡°You know who we are?¡± I asked. He nodded without speaking, apparently taking the threat to heart. Good. ¡°That¡¯ll make this faster, then. We have a message for you to deliver to Hengrard.¡± It didn¡¯t take long to convey, the bastard was terrified enough that I could see him committing every word to memory even as I said them. He scurried away quickly, after that, leaving us to our own devices. I took the time to activate my Appraisal again.This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. [Appraisal] It was almost surprising to see my own figures raised as a match for Solitaire and Beam, but I was far from complaining. We needed the power. I needed it even more than they did. I could see the familiar looks of concentration on my friends¡¯ faces, and no doubt the same one plastered itself across mine as I started pouring the Skillpoint into myself. It was easy, now, barely even a conscious decision. Within moments I had my choice allocated. Strength, this time. I could still remember the sight of that bald giant barely blinking at my punches and kicks. I didn¡¯t want to see that again, not when whatever I struck was killing my friend. [Strength increased to 7] I blinked. That was new, and convenient. Was it my Appraisal¡¯s improvement? I¡¯d be pretty disappointed if all my upgrade got me was a few skipped lines of text. I made a mental note to experiment later, eying Beam and Solitaire, in that order. [Strength increased to 10, Toughness increased to 10] [Alertness increased to 10] ¡°Alertness?¡± I questioned Solitaire. He shrugged. ¡°I wasn¡¯t faster, reactions-wise, even with all the extra Speed. There must be some stat that improves that, there¡¯s plenty of people with inhuman reflexes in Redacle, so I¡¯m betting on Alertness.¡± My thoughts about spending two entire Skillpoints on some experiment were¡­Mixed, but before I could even say anything, I felt a sudden lurch of surprise as text flashed once more before my vision. [Alertness, primary Characteristic. Governs reaction time, nerve conduction speed and awareness] It took a second for the knowledge to sink in, and I grinned when it did. Experimentation was important, compiling information was vital, using what you knew to build even more knowledge was life-saving. But damn, did it feel good to just be handed free intel sometimes. ¡°What are you smiling at?¡± Solitaire asked, with his characteristic uncertainty. Beam looked curious too, and both of their faces lit up at my explanation. ¡°What did I do?¡± Beam demanded. ¡°With the weird, glowy sword thing, can you tell me that?¡± I frowned, eyed him, and got nothing. Fuck. ¡°Apparently not.¡± He deflated, but didn¡¯t look too surprised. Solitaire still had enough enthusiasm for all of us. ¡°Whatever that was, and I¡¯m actually pretty sure it wasn¡¯t in Redacle originally, it was definitely magical.¡± We both stared at him, waiting to see where he was going with the observation, and he sighed. ¡°God, apes. Both of you. Beam can use fucking magic, geniuses. Maybe we can all use more magic, eh?¡± That gave me pause. I was well familiar with all the kinds of magic our world had to offer- well, except for a certain olympian¡¯s brand- but I¡¯d never even given it any thought until now. Always assumed that it was beyond us. We weren¡¯t born here, were we? ¡­But we¡¯d gained other abilities in the transit. My Appraisal, Solitaire¡¯s Detect Element, and whatever it was Beam had done, I¡¯d bet it was called Beloved. If we could get abilities like that, why not the native magic of our world? It was a dangerous thought, because it flirted with the most terrible emotion a person could feel in times like these. Hope. But damn, if it wasn¡¯t tempting to just indulge for a moment. ¡°We¡¯ll need to test it.¡± I said at last, and Solitaire nodded. ¡°It will cost money.¡± I added, and he nodded again. ¡°We¡¯re about to get money.¡± He noted. ¡°Or die, at which point I imagine we¡¯ll be past caring.¡± Horrible sense of humour, as always. I wouldn¡¯t have laughed at all if it weren¡¯t for the adrenaline still churning away in my veins. We stood there together, killing more minutes with conversation and planning until we caught movement from the building. It was Hengrard, walking carefully out, and with only a single man following him. He seemed nervous. Good, that meant he was taking us seriously. I moved out to meet him, marching on alone, and bidding my friends goodbye. For now. It was a damned scary thing to be doing, but there was no helping it, this negotiation wouldn¡¯t work if we all showed up together. We¡¯d arranged a meeting spot some miles from the base, and both Hengrard and I reached it around the same time. Standing in an alleyway, face to face, shivering from the cold and panting from the brisk walks. It was the very same place his men had beaten us near to death. Perhaps a bit overdramatic, as far as meeting spots went, but I reckoned I¡¯d earned a bit of melodrama. ¡°You saved my skin.¡± Hengrard noted, eying me impassively. I eyed him back. Said nothing. ¡°You and your brothers are dangerous men.¡± He continued. ¡°Powerful, and getting more powerful, hm? If you wrangled five gold from me in a few weeks, I¡¯ve no doubt you¡¯ll be sitting on a lot more before long. And you all seem to have a knack for killing.¡± That, at last, was blatantly untrue. I was known for my fighting ability in the same way fire was for its water resistance. I let him talk, though, already fairly sure where this was going. ¡°Unfortunately, you¡¯re too dangerous to leave alive. I can¡¯t pay you, not with my operation the way it is, and I can¡¯t afford to leave a group like you with no less than two grudges against me. Where are your friends?¡± His man came up around him, then, moving with the telltale grace I¡¯d come to expect from those with levels in excess of one, and Skillpoints spent on raising physical Characteristics. I Appraised him silently. [Level 6, Strength 8, Speed 7, Toughness 8, Alertness 7] There was a meat cleaver in his hand, a big one. If we fought he¡¯d probably kill me, and if I ran, in my condition, he might well chase me. So I did the only thing I could do. I spoke. ¡°They¡¯re behind you.¡± He didn¡¯t believe me at first, but his man did. Glancing back to see that Solitaire and Beam really were walking up at the pair¡¯s back. Solitaire had one man slung over his shoulder, blood dripping from an opened-up neck. Beam held two. They¡¯d been the men Hengrard had sent to follow him from a few hundred paces back, and close in to ambush us after he lured us in for the deal. Predictable, as far as betrayals went. The gangster got a single word out of his lips before Solitaire spoke with all the niceties of a drill sergeant. ¡°Fuck off, or you¡¯ll die with your moron boss.¡± He didn¡¯t take long to respond, turning and sprinting away without another word. Hengrard eyed us all, thought for an instant, then turned to run. Something flashed in the air, a knife. Solitaire¡¯s. He wasn¡¯t a bad shot, landing it neatly beneath the man¡¯s rib cage and sending him scraping to his knees. We were all on him before he could rise, kicking, punching, stomping. Something happened to the three of us that I can¡¯t quite explain. I guess it¡¯s similar to the feeling that overcomes gangs when they egg each other on into lynching someone. A sort of group fury, fuelled by our memory of what he¡¯d done to us- our discovery of what he¡¯d tried to do again- something that grabbed all our collective savagery, and dragged it up to ever higher levels. By the time we were finished, his corpse wasn¡¯t recogniseable as having ever been his. Head smashed open, brains splattered out, bits of bone jutting from the wreck. We all took a seat by the mess we¡¯d made, and talked. We talked about our new home, because somewhere between arrival and stomping people to death it had actually sunk in that we wouldn¡¯t be leaving for a while. We talked about our financial position, everything we¡¯d lost, gained, and might still steal back from Hengrard¡¯s gang while they were disorganised without him. We talked about shelter, and how we were all sick of living exposed, rubbing elbows with the savage morons who made this land their home. And in the process, we decided on our next move. Because something the smarmy bastard had said before we killed him had stuck with me. We had gained a lot in these last few weeks. And our biggest payoff by far had come by killing humans, not monsters. Which more or less made our decision for us. After all, Redacle was a very mercenary world. Might as well be mercenaries ourselves. Chapter 28 Beam POV: Day 44 Current Wealth: 10 silver 0 copper Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper It hadn¡¯t been that long ago that we stomped Herngrard¡¯s skull into a puree, but things already felt different. It was like we¡¯d stepped into a new age. We¡¯d gotten a good haul, rifling through his fortress in the chaos, and left with well over three gold. Things had been looking up. They hadn¡¯t stayed that way, of course. You couldn¡¯t have silver lining without a cloud, and ours was a dark, grey one indeed. Not an hour after putting our affairs in order, while we were all sitting and enjoying a rare, hot and filling meal in a tavern that didn¡¯t smell like piss, a certain someone approached us. Tall, robed, thin and old by this world¡¯s standards. Corvan, miserable as ever. ¡°I¡¯ve been looking for you three.¡± He snarled, flitting his eyes between me, Shango and Solitaire as if he¡¯d just scraped us off the bottom of his shoe. I remained neutral, not particularly caring what the old prick thought of me, Shango forced his usual, friendly smile, and Solitaire hissed and stabbed a knife into the table in front of him, tongue running along his exposed teeth and legs twitching under him as he readied himself to lunge. This did not seem to leave the magus any more annoyed than usual. ¡°How can we help you?¡± Shango asked, moving into his diplomatic role as usual. The robed elder scoffed. ¡°Please, like you don¡¯t know. It¡¯s been weeks since you fools have paid me back a single coin, and your time¡¯s run out. Fork over whatever you have.¡± Shango remained straight-faced, even while my blood boiled and Solitaire¡¯s hands disappeared under the table to wrap around something horribly deadly. ¡°We don¡¯t have much-¡± Shango began, then shut up as the magus spoke over him. ¡°You looted Hengrard¡¯s base without anyone to stop you, and spent close to half an hour doing it. I don¡¯t think any of even your group are stupid enough to not have gotten more than a few coins from that, so hand them over now.¡± ¡°We didn¡¯t.¡± Shango pressed, keeping to the story, meeting the man¡¯s eye unblinking. Corvan sighed, and a dark look overcame his face. ¡°Perhaps you need to be motivated.¡± He began, quieter now, and somehow more dangerous. ¡°You¡¯ve seen me work magic, but not the killing kind, eh? Hand over half the debt you owe, this instant, or you¡¯ll all see first hand what a magus can do when someone is stupid enough to draw his ire.¡± Magi were overrated, in an objective sense. They were all taught, and taught their apprentices, to retain an illusion of power that was greater than the reality. It was the best way for them to wring more money out of a primitive, uneducated people after all. Less powerful than believed, though, was not the same thing as lacking in power. Ididn¡¯t see much choice but to do as he said, and after a few moments it became clear that Shango didn¡¯t either. We spent a second dividing the coins, and realised that paying half the debt would cost almost everything we had. Corvan¡¯s eyes gleamed as he accepted the gold and silver, practically drooling over the handful of currency. ¡°Is that all?¡± Solitaire demanded. His voice was hard with the same hatred that always flared up in him whenever someone crossed him. Corvan eyed my friend, as if he were some babbling child. ¡°For now.¡± The magus told him, coolly. ¡°From now on you all pay me back a minimum of ten silvers each week.¡± It was a big sum to be demanded, and Shango was quick in arguing. Quick, and fruitless. Apparently we¡¯d burned our grace period with the few weeks taken to secure even this much of a foothold, and the man couldn¡¯t be moved. ¡°I don¡¯t care how you get it.¡± The magus snapped, finally readying to turn after the second minute of arguing. ¡°Just get it, or suffer the consequences.¡± He soon left out through the door, disappearing from sight. Leaving us all to ponder, contemplate and talk amongst ourselves. I was the first to speak up.This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. There was an idea bouncing around in my head, and I wanted to see what my friends made of it. ¡°What if we learn magic from him?¡± I was sure to keep my voice low, not particularly eager with the idea of giving away any plans we might have to the room. It might¡¯ve been a scream for the reactions it got, thought from Shango, and a knee jerk contradiction from Solitaire. ¡°The bastard would bleed our wallets dry as a fee for being tested.¡± He countered. ¡°And even dryer for tutelage, plus, letting him know we have magical abilities- if we have them at all- would only incentivise him to keep a tighter hold on us before letting us out of debt.¡± Shango thought about that, then sighed and nodded. ¡°He¡¯s probably right.¡± He conceded. ¡°It¡¯s not worth the risk, not yet at least.¡± There was a unique frustration to knowing that my friends were making sense, and knowing that the sense only served to remove a potential lifeline. Without magic, I hadn¡¯t the foggiest idea how we¡¯d keep ourselves afloat. Work had been scarce before the gang war, and that wasn¡¯t looking like it¡¯d change. We were barely halfway through winter. Obviously they were thinking very much the same thing, because Shango sighed, running a hand along his forehead in consternation. ¡°We might¡­.We might be fucked. Unless anyone can think of something¡­We could steal?¡± Solitaire spoke next, and his voice was even lower than mine had been. And harsher than Corvan¡¯s. ¡°I think I have an idea.¡± We listened, and swallowed, and felt the frigid chill of danger run down our spines. But in the end we agreed. Like so many of Solitaire¡¯s plans, this one was dangerous, dark and twisted all at once. And it was our best hope. That night, we headed to Corvan¡¯s shop. It wasn¡¯t a big building, by modern standards, but it was large for Jhigral. That was good, it¡¯d make the noise less likely to travel all the way through it. The howling winds were another factor in our favour. Even still, I was nervous watching Solitaire pick the lock on the door, carefully step inside and gesture the rest of us in. We moved carefully, on account of the slumbering wizard upstairs, and started rifling around. Of course, we found nothing of immediate value. No pure coinage, rather. We¡¯d suspected as much- someone as untrusting as Corvan would¡¯ve kept such wealth close to his own bedroom for security. Solitaire headed up for it alone. He was the stealthiest. Minutes passed downstairs, the sounds from outside making eerie music for the theft. Every creak made us jump, every second slipped by was another chance for the magus to wake up and obliterate our friend. Eventually, though, Solitaire came downstairs. Empty handed. ¡°A lockbox.¡± He sighed. ¡°Big, thick iron. Couldn¡¯t get in without waking the bastard, and it¡¯s bolted to the wall. Looks like we aren¡¯t getting our money back.¡± That was a blow, but one we could recover from. Shango spoke next, tentatively. ¡°Should we-¡± ¡°Yes.¡± Solitaire replied. ¡°You two go on, I¡¯ll do it.¡± We did, moving out of the shop. I glanced over my shoulder as Solitaire took the big barrel we had propped outside and rolled it in, lighting the fuse. In the end, the second bomb hadn¡¯t seen use in the gang war. That was lucky for us, because it meant we still had the few dozen pounds of black powder it held. And there was hardly anything better for faking a magus¡¯ accidental death than some giant, mysterious explosion. The blast before had, after all, been quite an easy thing to convince everyone was done with wizardry. Solitaire came out sprinting, and he reached us where we were sitting- some fifty yards from the building- just in time for it to go up. A big fireball, a big wave of pressure, then wood crumbled inwards and the whole thing collapsed. A magus wasn¡¯t tougher than a normal human, not unless they were already defending themselves with magic, and there wasn¡¯t much chance that a normal human could¡¯ve survived what we¡¯d just done. Corvan would probably have survived if he¡¯d shielded himself, black powder wasn¡¯t exactly an anti-armour weapon and even in large volumes its maximum pressure wouldn¡¯t be blowing apart any concrete bunkers. But Solitaire had been fairly sure he was asleep, and it¡¯d take a real paranoid freak to protect himself under these circumstances. The three of us watched the fires lick what was left of the building, anyway, keeping our eyes on it until the guards swarmed around and started panicking. Their bodies made tiny little silhouettes by the bonfire. ¡°What now?¡± I asked. Shango shrugged. ¡°We can¡¯t stay here.¡± He noted. ¡°Questions will be asked.¡± Solitaire agreed. Our debt was gone, but we¡¯d exhausted our opportunities in Jhigral. On the bright side, there was no mad old wizard to chase us down if we tried to leave, either. And we had enough spare coins to weather at least one days-long trip across a road. ¡°...That mercenary idea.¡± I began. ¡°How exactly would you both suggest we get started?¡± That was the question that seemed to stump them, but it was Solitaire who answered first. ¡°People always want each other dead.¡± He noted. ¡°So long as there¡¯s enough of them. And Wolney, as I hear it, has recently had one of their larger gangs crippled in some war. Seems like a good place to start looking for men, at least. And it¡¯s a decently sized city rather than a tiny town. There¡¯ll be nobles to get jobs from, jobs more lucrative than bloody gutter fighting, and proper armourers to get decent gear from¡­And we¡¯ll even be able to learn magic, if we have the coin and ability. Magi aren¡¯t that rare, and they tend to prefer cities.¡± The more he spoke, the more I and Shango found ourselves nodding along. It made sense, it was logical, and for once it was both in a way that actually gave us more hope, not less. I turned back to the fire, soaking in the sight one last time before I started climbing to my feet. ¡°To Wolney then.¡± Interlude 1 The fire burned for quite some time, and Corvan weathered it patiently. He was a strong magus. Not the most powerful, without doubt, but certainly a step above nine out of every ten others he met, rare as they already were. Even still, he¡¯d come close to death. Had the sound of thudding and rolling not caught his half-asleep ears, he would have remained unconscious through the blast. Had his magic not come with a haste uncommon even to him, he would have remained unshielded as it tore him apart, and had his breath not stayed calm, cool and controlled, his yards-wide protective field would have been a death trap. Its interior being choked of air as his lungs turned the stuff to poison, its user suffocated by his own breaths. But Corvan had been lucky, skilled and powerful all at once, that night. And so the fool¡¯s weapon- for surely no magus strong enough to replicate it could have hidden their power from Corvan¡¯s eye- had failed in its task. Failed, and told him who his enemy was. One did not live as a magus with so many enemies as Corvan, and fail to develop the reflexive shielding that had kept him defended mere moments after he woke. And one did not keep from drowning in enemies without the knowledge of how to identify and kill them for their hidden attacks and subtle slights. It had, he had to admit, surprised him to use such skills on mere vagrants, but it was often the man one did not expect who landed a killing blow. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. He waited, for quite some time, until the fire had finally died to the cold. And then he waited a while longer. Finally Corvan forced the debris from himself, crawled out from under the ruin that had once been his home and laboratory, and snarled at the wreckage of it all. Corvan was forced to use his mere arm strength alone like some common labourer by then, his magic already depleted by the extended use. He had not laid claim to large or impressive accommodations, he knew, but they had been his. His place of work, of rest. His home. His domain. To trespass within them was a crime that demanded punishment, to destroy them in such a way¡­Well, that demanded death. He watched their ruin progress at the touch of licking flames and coiling smoke, thinking. The fire had died, eventually. But even at its wildest it was ice compared to the flames of his rage. They burned hotter with every step he took from the ruin. And every step closer to finding the three imbeciles who¡¯d dared to cross a magus. Chapter 29 Beam POV: Day 44 Current Wealth: 10 silver 0 copper It would cost money to hire a carriage, a full silver for the trip. We weighed the prospect. A carriage could get us there in one day, rather than two. It would get us there warmer, drier, healthier. And that was to say nothing of the pure luxury that travelling on a vehicle would afford us. On the flip side, of course, we only had ten silvers to our name- all that Corvan had let us keep at the tavern. It was no small thing to hand over a tenth of our total funds. Particularly when they¡¯d already been depleted by another dozen copper on food, rest and drink the morning earlier. In the end, it was the fear of the cold that made our decision for us. We were halfway through winter, which apparently meant that we were also at its coldest point, and at the longest nights of the year. That was no small thing to be moving through for days on end. This one piece of silver might well save our lives, and it would definitely save our health. We knew that we¡¯d need all the strength we could spare in Wolney. That, and there was also the remote, distant, barely-considerable possibility that we¡¯d be attacked by another bear, or possibly even the same bear. In objective terms this was barely worth considering as a chance, but among our number was a paranoid, a coward and a fighter who, surprisingly even to himself, had apparently developed a phobia from the last one. For five more coppers we could get thin blankets of woollen weave, and we bought two to share between us. They kept us warm enough on the ride. It was funny, really. Two months ago I¡¯d have been shivering in agony at the temperatures we faced beneath that fabric, even with Solitaire and Shango contributing their body heat to combating them. But we¡¯d all adjusted since coming here. Walking through this snow was a regular occurrence for us, now, and we¡¯d never had blankets or constant spots to warm up around us while we did. Compared to our days of trekking in the past, our journey was a damned vacation. That we¡¯d all become supernaturally more durable against all kinds of harm- cold included- was surely of no consequence, clearly we had just become proper manly men with thick chest hair and bulging muscles. Enjoying the ease of travel was fun while it lasted, in any case. Of course, we didn¡¯t let ourselves relax. A day wasted was a day closer to the grave, and all of us had things to keep busy with. Shango kept scanning things with his Appraisal, looking to glean any more information. Testing the limits of his eyes, and seeing if he could extend them. I did something different. When I¡¯d used my power- Beloved, it was called- I¡¯d done so by feeling a weird sort of pull to a corpse. There weren¡¯t any corpses nearby, not animal, and definitely not human. Which meant my ability to experiment was limited. What there was, though, was my head. And so I thought, directing my focus inwards and seeing if I could catch the attention of whatever it was that had spoken to me. I¡¯d heard a voice when I used Beloved, I knew that for sure, and I was starting to suspect that some of the thoughts in my head during our mugging in the alley hadn¡¯t been my own either. Whatever the presence I¡¯d felt was, it was connected to my power. So I needed to see whether that connection went two ways, and would let me use my magic at will. Hours of sitting around and thinking wasn¡¯t my forte, I have to admit. Give me hours of boxing, squats, torturous weight lifting- hours of anything else at all, really, over that. I persevered, though. If I could forcibly rewire every strand of muscle in my body before sixteen, I could sit still and focus. Probably. There weren¡¯t any returns, which frustrated me. And there kept being no returns well into the day. The sun was already setting when I started considering giving up, my annoyance burning hot enough that I barely even felt the cold anymore, sweat actually beading on my skin. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Fucking hell, another waste of time after all. Well I¡¯d gotten used to that at least, it was no more difficult to deal with than the cold. Rare to find a human willing to focus on something with no reward for so long. The voice came just as I was an instant away from stopping entirely, and it froze me like a puddle in the night¡¯s chill. I had to resist the urge to answer it aloud, figuring that our driver might not understand- or worse, would- and took a moment to consider how best I could think out a response. Unfortunately, it seemed that the very thoughts about what to think were conveyed without my even meaning them to be. The voice rang out again, knowing now. Your mind becomes scattered so easily. I suppose a human is still a human, fickle, fleeting. The immediate reaction I felt to that, of course, was irritation. And the voice was ringing out before I could even congeal that into an actual answer. Don¡¯t be petulant, you wanted my audience, now you have it. You ought to be grateful for this much. It was fascinatingly tedious to speak with something in these circumstances. Having the voice react to my thoughts, with no distinction made between conscious ones and unconscious. It was like I was trying to shout over my own id just to be heard- and apparently I was losing the contest of volume. But I could adjust. I would adjust, had to, because there was no way I¡¯d be getting useful information like this. And there was no option at all not to learn from this¡­Thing, whatever it was. Not with what we had at stake. What are you? I asked, repeating the thought in my head until it drowned everything else out. Apparently that was the way to communicate, because I got an answer quite quickly. That question is an irrelevance, ask me a more intelligent one. A prick, then, was what it was. Well that was fine, I was friends with Solitaire of all people. I could deal with pricks. Are you the one responsible for that power I used? I tried again, almost feeling stupid as the question echoed in my head. It was still the only way I had of asking directly, though. No helping that, so I didn¡¯t. There came a fairly long pause before I received another answer, and this one somehow left me feeling on edge. Like some great guillotine was hanging over my head. I am, and I am not. Your power is more than even myself. Well that was about the sort of answer I¡¯d expect to get from some mysterious, ethereal presence. Which is to say, fucking useless. Frustrated, I buried my irritation and pressed on. Does that mean that you can teach me how to use it at will? A pause, a long one, and then the answer came. No, but I can¡­Help you. Quicken your progress in learning yourself. You must understand that yours is not a power over death, but a power over nature. The winds become your scythe, the snow your shield, the wood your arms. Know this, truly know it, and you will never be without a weapon. I tried to figure out whether that was useful or not. It was certainly poetic, and I¡¯d be annoyed if a description like that was all I had to go on for figuring out a power in an actual RPG. But¡­No, it was pretty clear, too. I¡¯d made a sort of phantom weapon from that corpse, and now I was being told that I could always have a weapon, wherever I was. So, my power was creating clubs? I could work with that, the one I¡¯d used in the alley had hit as hard as a sledgehammer and weighed almost nothing. If nothing else it¡¯d give me a safeguard for when I was disarmed. Thank you. I thought, and this time no answer came. I took a moment to compile everything I¡¯d learned, then I was turning to my friends with the information. They seemed delighted to have finally gotten a hint regarding our magic, and the emotion infected me. Not least because it was my magic. I¡¯d not imagined, two months earlier, that I¡¯d be as miserable, cold or scared as I¡¯d spent the last few weeks being. But I¡¯d never have guessed I¡¯d have actual magic to use, either. Knowing that I did was¡­ Magical. We still had a good quarter of our journey left, but that would be for the next day. It was already turning to night by then, and so we made camp by the side of the road. We began piling great logs up from storage in the carriage and creating what would best be described as a smaller bonfire. The driver wasn¡¯t a very talkative type, so we mostly kept to ourselves. Except to ask him about the occasional vital piece of intel regarding our destination. It was a learning experience, and not a particularly reassuring one. Wolney was an old city, run by an ageing Governor who refused to pass his leadership down to his heir. It was rumoured he was going mad with age. Each year seemed to increase the hostility of the place, crime running rampant in its streets, and some even thought that the guards were preparing to unilaterally dispose of undesirables from the gutter-rats to the mercenaries. That wouldn¡¯t be good for us, in any case. But it was also a damned big city. Easily half a million people lived there, almost as many as in a smaller modern city. That was good, it meant plenty of people to recruit for our unformed company. One benefit to travelling by carriage was not running out of wood. We kept our fire nice and big, blasting ourselves with heat all through the night. Come day, we continued our travels with a newfound tension. Awaiting us ahead was the next step of our journey. Or its end. Chapter 30 Shango POV: Day 45 Current Wealth: 8 silver 28 copper Wolney wasn¡¯t ever really a dot on our horizon, mainly because we couldn¡¯t see the horizon behind the big curtain of snow blocking it off. By the time it was within sight, we¡¯d already come to within maybe half a mile from it. The city was small by modern standards, as I might¡¯ve expected, but not nearly as much of a dwarf as was standard to mediaeval construction. Jhigral had rarely contained buildings over three stories, while Wolney held multiple that towered as high as ten or more. It was surrounded by a big wall that looked easily thirty feet from bottom to top, and built to resist cannons rather than trebuchets. The closest thing to a vulnerability I could see was a portcullis that looked thick and heavy enough to decapitate an elephant. All of that was functional, not aesthetic. Redacle wasn¡¯t as powerful as some settings out there- an army of dipshits with pointy sticks was still the major military construction after all- but there were enough magic users and weapons that certain innovations had been required past the real-world late mediaeval era¡¯s status quo. If you were content with a wall that would hold against catapults, you¡¯d have quite the nasty shock when you met one of those rare, one-in-a-thousand magi who could blast multi-litre chunks out of a stone target with every spell. And if you had wizards who could hasten crop growth and help moving refuse, then there really wasn¡¯t much reason not to expand your population a bit beyond the typical scope of your technology. Fortunately for us, it was raised and kept up as our carriage rattled on past. A pair of lazy guards watched us enter the city, apparently not caring enough to even record our names. We moved through the streets, seeing what we could glean from our perch on the cart. We¡¯d not have it for more than a few minutes longer, so there was hardly a better time than now. Wolney¡¯s roads were cobbled, not dirt, but still clearly ill-maintained and dirty. The buildings we passed were mostly no bigger than in Jhigral, but far more numerous. Impressive in numbers, but not in nature, despite the handful of giants peeking into the sky. That was mediaeval wealth inequality for you. The people were just as numerous, seeming to crowd every stretch of city we laid our eyes on, all dirty and bedraggled the way it appeared everyone in this world was. Solitaire muttered something, and I turned to see his eyes had grown dark as he looked at it all. ¡°Feudalism.¡± He spat. ¡°It¡¯s like if Capitalism said the quiet parts outloud. Everybody¡¯s just a cog, and everything is built around keeping the great machine running. No point in having workers if they don¡¯t work.¡± There weren¡¯t many times that his social theories were anything but grating to hear, but it was hard not to find myself agreeing with him, looking at the display around us. The withered, tiny bodies of the locals hit something primal inside me. Urging me to help¡­And to tear down whatever was responsible. I¡¯d always had some vague empathy for the impoverished, but this was far too close to heart for things to remain as removed as that. These people deserved kindness. This world deserved fixing. But there¡¯d be none of that for us. Not for a while, at least. First we¡¯d have to figure out how to keep ourselves alive. Still, the thought of actually changing this world for the better stuck with me. I¡¯d not considered it yet, but now that it¡¯d occurred to me, it seemed obvious. We were modern humans, with modern knowledge and a levelling rate that most of this place¡¯s inhabitants could only dream of. Maybe we could help people. Perhaps we¡¯d even been sent here to make the world better. I was interrupted in my considerations as a lurch struck the carriage, and I turned my gaze back outward to see we were rolling into a new part of town. This one far better maintained. Its streets were paved, rather than cobbled, and cleaner by far. Filled with ten times less people, all of whom were dressed noticeably better. Dressed better, and taller. It didn¡¯t take a genius to work out we¡¯d come to a richer area, the nasty looks we got was enough to give it away. The carriage started to slow, pulling in to stop at one side of the road as the driver turned back to us. ¡°There you are.¡± He grunted. ¡°Journey¡¯s done.¡± We nodded and gave our thanks, stepping down onto the road, feeling our legs quiver weakly beneath us from the long hours of disuse. The air didn¡¯t reek in this part of the city, that was something. ¡°Where to first?¡± Solitaire asked. I eyed him, then eyed the street. We still couldn¡¯t read, so all of the signs were indecipherable to us. That was annoying. I swore. ¡°Let¡¯s ask around, see if we can find a mercenary pub, or at least one big enough to get work from.¡± Well, we gave it our best go. Turns out people in the continent of Vorhazh, let alone the Eregar Kingdom, were rather unwilling to help kindly strangers with information. Most of them told us to fuck off, some threatened to call the guards, and none gave us so much as the time of day.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. Solitaire alone seemed unsurprised. ¡°They¡¯re rich.¡± He shrugged. ¡°And our clothes don¡¯t look expensive. Probably they¡¯ve decided we¡¯re vagrants.¡± It needled me, sent bubbles of anger running through my veins, but I just grit my teeth and bit the rage back. I was plenty rich myself, but this wasn¡¯t a foreign idea. Born with black skin, people the world over are quick to assume you¡¯re violent, stupid. Born with black skin and an African nationality, though, and they¡¯ll see a tribal savage to boot. Classism was new, but not novel. Beam was speaking next. ¡°We could try the lower class areas.¡± He suggested. I nodded. Had to try them, more like, because we¡¯d just run out of more affluent options. There was less open hostility there, at least, and we didn¡¯t take too long to have a suitable dwelling described to us. ¡®The Fucked Pig¡¯. A charming name, that. We hurried our way to it, eager for whatever help we could get. It was about as nice a place as the title would suggest. Dark wood, weathered. Glassless windows, reinforced. Lengths of what looked like iron running through the walls and a warmth emanating from it that would¡¯ve been pleasant, were it not tainted by the scent of cheap booze and odorous bodies. We stepped inside hesitantly, and froze as we beheld the several dozen men and women drinking and chatting within. All were grimey, toughened and hard-faced. They were armed, of course, and most sat in groups. I Appraised them quickly, tightening my eyes almost without thought. Level eight, Level three, Level nineteen, Level ten, Level five, Level six¡­ There was a lot of variation, I saw, but none were as high as level twenty. And all were above one. Apparently this was a place for people with a fair amount of experience under their belts. Well that suited us just fine, we¡¯d done two trolls and easily a score of people ourselves, even without counting Solitaire¡¯s pyrotechnics. We weren¡¯t green by any measure. Still, we froze. Several of the people were staring at us, and all were still terrifying enough despite our trial by fire in this world. Part of me was certain they¡¯d come flying at us with weapons drawn, and another feared that moving forward would just make a fool of our group, and ruin any chances we had of actually recruiting. Beam saved us. He took one step forwards, casual as if he were strolling down a beach, and broke Solitaire and I out of our stupor. We followed him eagerly, making our way to the bar. After that, with a man in front who needed negotiating with, all my old instincts took over and I leaned in to speak. ¡°Afternoon.¡± I greeted him, forcing a smile that presented confidence I wasn¡¯t feeling. ¡°I understand this is a mercenary spot, are you the one who hands out contracts?¡± Our time spent questioning the citizens of Wolney had confirmed this as the system at play. Contracts were put out, and picked up for copying by individuals specialised in such things. They¡¯d find their way to bars like this, where the owners would take a small commission to hand them out to the overwhelmingly illiterate crowds that usually handled such things. Thing with the fighters of Redacle was that, given the superhumanity needed to be a good one, money and influence tended to hold a bit less sway in the grand scheme of things. The systems of commerce and favour-hoarding that left guilds to work in their neat little pyramids fell apart when one tried to cage men capable of tearing off limbs in them. Mostly, this was a bad thing. It meant the powerful in such circles tended to be combatively deadly, and readily violent. ¡°I am.¡± The man grunted, confirming his place in the hierarchy. That was relieving at least. I¡¯d been half afraid he¡¯d laugh at some misunderstanding the people outside had imparted on us. ¡°Excellent.¡± I pressed. ¡°Well, my-¡± I hesitated, thought, then continued ¡°-my brothers and myself are looking for work. Can you point us to some? We¡¯re skilled enough fighters, though not excellently equipped. We¡¯ve managed to take down trolls before, and can easily bring down a group of over five men by ourselves.¡± Being honest, I¡¯d been hoping to see some surprised respect flit across the bartender¡¯s face at that. All I got, though, was acknowledgement. I suppose it made sense. Trolls were big and horrible, but humans could kill animals just as strong as them even back in our world. The mild superhumans of Redacle? I wasn¡¯t shocked to see that it wasn¡¯t as big of a deal as I¡¯d hoped. ¡°We have undead to deal with.¡± The barkeep suggested. ¡°Always a problem around Wolney. Rotters and such, you¡¯ll get yourself five copper for every rotter head you can bring back that belongs to them. Standing orders from the Governor.¡± I hesitated, glancing at Solitaire and Beam. Well, only Solitaire really. Beam was as unfazed at the thought of fighting undead as he was at everything else. ¡°Anything more¡­Immediately paying we can try?¡± I wasn''t sure how common undead might be at all, in the forests. Maybe we¡¯d be swimming in them- which brought its own set of problems to bear- but maybe we¡¯d waste most of our time just looking for the things. I didn¡¯t want to spend longer out in the snow than was necessary. The barkeep shrugged. ¡°Nothing I can hand to a group as untested as yours.¡± My jaw tightened, but I nodded. ¡°Alright then, thanks.¡± I replied, through gritted teeth. We were all heading back for the exit a few moments later, discussing the matter once we were outside. ¡°We¡¯re doing it then?¡± Solitaire asked. I hesitated. We needed the money, and this was just about the perfect sort of job for us. Consistent, simple, relatively low on risk. At worst we¡¯d just received news that we could feed ourselves by venturing out into the local forests. ¡°We¡¯re doing it.¡± I sighed, still far from happy. ¡°But not tonight, I feel¡­What¡¯s the carriage equivalent of jet lag? Carriage lag?¡± ¡°Being a pussy.¡± Solitaire suggested. We moved through the city, searching for a suitable tavern. None of us wanted one of the wafer-thin sort we¡¯d last slept in, that¡¯d leave us shivering in a huddle at one wall. A warmer place would cost extra, but in light of our good news I figured we could afford to spend the excess a bit. Still, we weren¡¯t exactly looking for a palace, and it didn¡¯t take us long to find a suitable place. Small, compact, but warm-looking enough and almost entirely cockroach free. We set up in the common room, intending to spend a peaceful evening basking in the atmosphere and unwinding with a hot meal. We¡¯d not been there for more than ten minutes when the red-headed giant stormed over to our table. Chapter 31 Shango POV: Day 45 Current Wealth: 8 silver 28 copper We¡¯d seen big men since coming to Redacle. The one whose balls Solitaire had burst was big, even by modern standards. Kratos had been given his nickname for a good reason, too, taller even than Solitaire himself and muscled like a fucking ox. The man who approached us now was big as well. And yet lumping him in with them seemed ridiculous. He was taller than any of us by well over a head, and if we¡¯d all happened to be NBA players I didn¡¯t doubt that he¡¯d still have a good few inches on us. The bastard must¡¯ve been seven feet if he was an inch, and though he was no bodybuilder, the jagged muscle pressing out at his shoulders was clear even through the wool shirt that covered them. Behind him stood maybe a half dozen other men of varying sizes, and upon the giant¡¯s face there was a broad grin that seemed very similar to the arch of some great doorway. His eyes caught lamplight as his face shifted, making them dance disconcertingly. ¡°Haven¡¯t seen you three around here before.¡± He grinned, moving his gaze between us. ¡°Don¡¯t take it you¡¯ve heard of the tradition we have in these parts?¡± ¡°We haven¡¯t.¡± Beam replied, before I could cut in. ¡°And I don¡¯t think we¡¯ll be staying long, passing through you see-¡± ¡°This block is mine.¡± The giant pressed, his voice crushing Beam¡¯s like some tiny little ship pulverised to splinters by a great wave. ¡°If you want to drink here, you need to-¡± Glass was a rare thing in most parts of Redacle, but not so rare that there wasn¡¯t the occasional bottle made from it, or that those bottles were more costly. That was a good thing in our case. Solitaire hit him before he finished speaking, the bottle held tight in his hand by its neck. It broke against the giant¡¯s face, shattered into bits as if it¡¯d been shot, throwing glass and beer in all directions and sending the man a full step back. But only a step back. He didn¡¯t fall, didn¡¯t even waver. A man the size of Terry Crews smashed him without warning, and he barely even seemed fazed. His eyes came back onto our group, and now his grin was wider. Wide enough that I saw the blood running down along his lips from where the jagged shards had cut his face. ¡°So, it¡¯s gonna be like that, eh?¡± He grunted, rolling his neck as if we¡¯d politely asked for a brawl, rather than sucker-punched him. I tightened my eyes, and studied the man. I nearly shit myself as I did. [Appraisal] Seeing his stats, I had just about enough time to realise that they probably out-stripped the bear we¡¯d been attacked by on our first night. Then he was lunging for Solitaire. We¡¯d all sung this song and dance before, though, and Solitaire in particular had his response lined up and ready. He didn¡¯t try to meet the giant head on, didn¡¯t try to weave aside and counter, didn¡¯t even try to beat him to the punch and abort his attack with one of his own. He just turned and ran. It was almost comical. The sight of my friend spinning on his heel and breaking out into a sprint across the tavern, the giant¡¯s moment of stunned surprise, then the fury that came across his face as he hurried to give chase. Watching it all, I almost missed the opportunity that came when the seven-foot redhead was rushing right past me to get to the Scouser. Fortunately, I had enough sense to hold out a foot and trip him. The impact felt like it might rip my leg off at the knee, but I was just strong enough to keep my balance while taking the other man¡¯s. His leg was caught beneath him, his body lurched forwards, and four hundred pounds of fatass smashed face-first into the wooden floor. His head was just a few inches raised back up when Solitaire¡¯s feet came down onto the back of it, his jump having taken him a full metre into the air before landing on the poor sod. I turned, then, to see that the man¡¯s friends were moving in. Five of them, at least. One was busy picking up teeth that Beam had smashed out. I paused, thought, then decided that the five-on-one was slightly more demanding of my attention. I lunged in to help the olympian.Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. Even now, I wasn¡¯t much of a fighter, but I had size, and I¡¯d seen enough to know how useful that was. I opened my help up by shoulder-slamming one of the men, catching him in the chest and sending him bouncing off me as I gifted him all my sprinting momentum. He bounced again upon landing, rolling half-over and groaning, then another was coming. Beam tossed one of the man¡¯s friends into him, sending them both down, and I turned my focus to helping my friend with the remaining two. One of them punched him hard across the jaw, stunning him, and I caught the next one¡¯s arm before they could follow up. A brief wrestling match proceeded between us, which ended when he kneed me in the balls. I groaned, folded and looked up just in time to see the offending thug get knocked fully off his feet by a haymaker that would¡¯ve given satan himself a nosebleed. Beam¡¯s haymaker. The other, apparently, was already down. My friend moved in next to me, putting himself between my body and the three men who were now getting back to their feet. ¡°Can you move?¡± He asked. I opened my mouth to speak, then felt a sudden, terrible hollowness in my groin. I vomited, and he sighed. ¡°Tell me when you can.¡± Beam threw himself at them without further ado. While he fought, I heard a great crashing across the room and turned to see Solitaire grappling the giant. Well, grappling was the wrong word. My friend was on his back, climbing his enormous frame, fingers digging in to use ears, nostrils and flabs of meat for grip. His face was just beside the enemy¡¯s, jaws closed tight around the man¡¯s cheek, chin and brow. It was like watching a human being mauled by some feral chimpanzee. A big human, mind. And one with leather for skin, because he wasn¡¯t actually being hurt all that much, and every moment Solitaire came closer to being caught. I turned back to Beam, saw him snatching one man into a headlock while hammering away at another one¡¯s guard, and tested myself. The third was coming up behind him. I could move, albeit at the cost of another wave of discomfort. It would have to do. The man closing on Beam was bigger than the others, and I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d be overpowering him as easily. So I didn¡¯t risk it. I snatched a wooden stool up from a nearby table, brought it around as I closed in and turned my approach into a swing. Beam saw it arcing for him, doubtless realised what was happening, and sidestepped from the path. His timing was perfect, and barely an eyeblink passed between his movement and the wooden edge finding home in the enemy¡¯s face. The man went down instantly, and I stumbled back with the stool. By the time I¡¯d hefted it again, Beam had choked one man into unconsciousness and kicked the last so hard that I actually worried he might¡¯ve died. We both moved our focus to Solitaire and the giant. Just in time to see our friend hauled from the man¡¯s back, hoisted fully over his head like some strong man¡¯s barbell, and physically thrown to soar a full ten feet and land viciously hard on his head. He bounced, rolled, then remained where he lay. Groaning and coughing. In an ideal world, we¡¯d have tended to him, but the big man was closing in too fast to allow that. Beam acted first, snatching the stool from my grip and handling its twenty pound weight as if it were made of polystyrene. He tossed it like a shot put, aim landing the edge perfectly against our enemy¡¯s face and¡­Barely making him flinch. He was on the olympian an instant later. Honestly, I¡¯d like to tell you that we proceeded to trounce the man. That we used makeshift weapons, skill, savagery and- most important of all- the power of friendship to finally put him down. Truth be told? We didn¡¯t. In fact I think we barely even hurt the fucker. By the time our brawl was done, there wasn¡¯t really a winner. Just an absence of a loser. The big man had thrown us all around like dog toys for the better part of a quarter hour before finally steaming out, taking a seat on one of the remaining unbroken stools, and threatening to snap it beneath his weight even then. We did much the same, panting and glaring at the stupid fucker, while he returned out looks in kind. In the time since our fight had started, the tavern had filled in with extra faces, mostly there to watch the local tough actually get a run for his money. That was fine by me, but I could see Solitaire getting more agitated by the second. He always had hated crowds. ¡°You¡¯re¡­.Alright.¡± The giant called out, from where he was sitting some dozen feet away. ¡°Didn¡¯t¡­Expect that hard of a fight.¡± Solitaire muttered something, possibly about setting him on fire, and I tried to think of a suitable response. Surprisingly, it was Beam who gave one. ¡°Not bad yourself.¡± He gasped, still out of breath, though recovering faster than us. ¡°Didn¡¯t expect I¡¯d meet someone who¡¯d still be standing after me and my brothers fought him three on one.¡± That cracked a broad smile across the man¡¯s face, and his eyes danced. ¡°Didn¡¯t expect to meet three someones who could fight me, even together.¡± He replied, apparently rather pleased. Of course he was pleased. I shouldn¡¯t have bothered thinking of anything to say at all, we already knew Beam could speak meathead. Whatever budding conversation might have continued between them, it was interrupted by a rather angry looking man storming over. I quickly recognised him as the barkeep, and figured where the conversation was going just an instant before he opened his mouth. ¡°You fucking wrecked the place!¡± He snapped, glaring, surprisingly, at the giant instead of us. ¡°This is the third time, Argar.¡± The giant, apparently named Argar, shrugged. He seemed apologetic in the same way someone returning a year-overdue library book might be right before borrowing another. ¡°Sorry, didn¡¯t expect them to be that hard.¡± It appeared to be the exactly wrong thing to say, because the barkeep¡¯s temper only shortened from there. What followed was a barrage of screamed accusations that even I could only make out around half of, and by the end the giant actually looked somewhat chastened. ¡°How do you expect to pay for this?¡± The barkeep snarled, apparently holding only Argar responsible, despite my friends and me having done our fair share of breaking too. And that was when the idea struck me. ¡°We can put some money up.¡± I cut in, studying the man- and the giant- as their eyes turned to me in surprise. ¡°We were involved, after all, and we have a fair amount of cash on hand.¡± The barkeep seemed mollified, but Argar cut in somewhat suspiciously. ¡°Why would you do that?¡± He demanded, glaring at me now. I resisted the urge to smile as I replied. ¡°Because you¡¯re going to work it off.¡± Chapter 32 Solitaire POV: Day 45 Current Wealth: 2 silver 12 copper All in all, it didn¡¯t take Shango that long to smooth things over, and once he was finished we were down a few- well, many- silver. And up one giant, glass-proof gorilla. I was leaning against the wall in our room, nursing my ribs after they played up again in the fight, desperately trying to decide whether it¡¯d been a good idea. ¡°You should see a physician.¡± Beam told me, sitting opposite and wearing his concern openly as he eyed me. I sighed, then resisted the urge to swear as the exhalation sent a painful stab into my side. ¡°I don¡¯t need a physician, none of them are broken- I can feel broken bones- and I¡¯ll heal on my own eventually. I¡¯d be healing already if Grognard the Barbarian hadn¡¯t decided to equip me as a weapon and attack a fucking table.¡± I coughed, and the coughing made me hurt more, which almost led to more coughing. Shango laughed from across the room, watching it with a grin on his face. Prick. ¡°How well do you think you can fight?¡± Beam asked, and I felt a flicker of irritation. ¡°I¡¯ll be better in the morning.¡± I told him. ¡°I just need to avoid getting punched in the ribs, I¡¯ll have to hit the next fucker with something heavier. Just leave me in the back as a support role and I¡¯ll recover slowly, we¡¯ll be fighting shitty undead for a while anyway, right?¡± They both nodded, and I sighed. Leaning back, closing my eyes. Waiting for Shango to voice whatever thought I¡¯d seen rattling around unspoken in his head. ¡°...What if we leave you behind in the city tomorrow? Just for the day.¡± He added, quickly. ¡°Let you go and try to find a teacher to learn magic from. Then you can get back to helping us, or even sit and pick up a few extra tricks while you heal, then come back better.¡± I weighed his words. It would¡¯ve been convenient- game changing, even, if they¡¯d been true. But we didn¡¯t have the money for serious magic tutelage just yet. I told him as much, and he shrugged. ¡°So spend the day working your way through the city¡¯s magi until you¡¯ve got one willing to test you, bargain hunt. You working class men do love that don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Eat a cock.¡± I replied, succinctly. He did have a point though, and I reluctantly swallowed it, nodding. ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll spend the day asking around for deals. I suppose¡­I guess you¡¯re not going after anything that tough anyway, and as I am right now¡­¡± As I was right then, I¡¯d not help that much. At worst I might even slow them- have my ribs play up unexpectedly, get a friend killed. I didn¡¯t want to say any of that outloud, didn¡¯t even want to think it, but I couldn¡¯t exactly ignore the fact either. Bollocks. ¡°We have Argar now, anyway.¡± Beam noted, clearly trying to cheer me up. ¡°He¡¯s tough enough to keep us safe at least for a day, and we¡¯re going after zombies of all things.¡± ¡°And you¡¯ll be essentially protecting us anyway by saving the money.¡± Shango added. ¡°Every five copper we don¡¯t spend is one fight we don¡¯t need to pick with a rotter, eh?¡± Somehow having them try to molify me just made things worse. Like I was being babied, comforted as you might a screaming child. But I didn¡¯t lash out. That would just be cruel, and even I wasn¡¯t a big enough prick to make that my answer to kindness from my friends. I forced a deceptive smile and nodded. ¡°Fine. And if I come back with the ability to blow up cities with my mind, all the better, right?¡± We shared a chuckle that each and every one of us was feigning for the others¡¯ sake, then got settled and ready for sleep. Morning came, and it was actually surprising to not wake up sticking to my makeshift bed on the floor or shivering like an addict being waterboarded in Antarctica. There were benefits to higher class dwellings, apparently. Still, I was quickly reminded of my fight the previous night when my ribs started trying to free themselves from the rest of me, protesting their position with thick waves of agony. Those lasted a while, and it was hard even for me to keep the pain to myself. Fortunately Shango and Beam were up soon enough, groaning and yawning, both of them wincing a bit too. We¡¯d all gotten our share of scrapes and bruises over the last week, apparently. ¡°When are we setting off?¡± Beam asked, eager as always to be doing something. Shango thought about it. ¡°Rotters are undead, and in our world they¡¯re slowed by daylight. The more intense, the worse they move. So ideally we¡¯d be setting off later, catching them at high noon for the easiest fight possible.¡± ¡°But that leaves us less time to be hunting them.¡± Beam countered. I was barely listening to the pair, focused instead on climbing to my feet without violently shitting down my leg at the pain. I grunted with relief, both for having successfully conquered my gravitic task, and because my friends were finally approaching something resembling a conclusion to their argument.Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. ¡°Early then.¡± Shango sighed. ¡°Hopefully the new guy makes up the difference.¡± My side throbbed again. Somehow I got the feeling he would, but that was none of my concern for the time being. Now I had my own task to attend. I said my goodbyes to the other two, stepping from the tavern and making my way through the street. It felt odd to be moving through it alone. Really odd, disconcerting and all sort of itchy at the back of my spine, like being watched. I figured out why by the time I¡¯d crossed my second road. Now was the first time since coming to Redacle that I¡¯d been genuinely alone, no friends to watch me, no allies to fight alongside me. If I got attacked, right now, by the sort of group I¡¯d come to regard as a nothing-threat, it would end badly. With no small amount of effort, I buried the concern. The one benefit to being a paranoid of course is that you get used to doing such things, and being realistic I wasn¡¯t exactly in any great danger of attack in such light hours. The knowledge did little to keep my edges blunt while I marched through the city, but it helped at least. The first magus I reached wouldn¡¯t even see me, the prick. The second, thankfully, was not that far. About half a mile away. I¡¯d expected as much, the magically gifted tended to congregate in larger cities with wealthier patrons available. Except that this fucker kicked me out the moment I asked to be tested. Apparently Corvan¡¯s personality was very much trade-standard. Well, that didn¡¯t exactly surprise me, my book hadn¡¯t given much in the way of depictions for average magi, but in my and Shango¡¯s head they¡¯d always been double-decker twats. Middle management, almost. Moderately influential and all the more obsessed with influence for it, made more petty, not less, for the small measures of magical power they had over others. Nothing to do but persevere. I made progress on the third attempt, finding a man who offered me a test for the low, low price of three silver. More than I had on me, of course, but easier to work around than being ordered out of the place on threat of incineration. I put a pin in that appointment and moved on for others Another kicked me out, one more offered four silver, then a third actually let me negotiate her down to two. That was still a bit high for my liking, but I kept her position in mind and moved on. I had to do a lot of walking , and a lot of talking. God, I hate people. I hate these people more than anything, but just in the general sense I hate people. Slow, plodding ape things, dragging me down with them. Dancing on the edge of a knife. You know that experiment where they gave rats access to water on one side of their cage and a button that makes them feel good on the other? Where the rats invariably died of thirst because they just kept pressing the button? That¡¯s humans. Still, there¡¯s always a time to cut cards with the devil, and I¡¯m not stupid enough that I can¡¯t grin and bear a bit of displeasure for the greater good. If we were going to impart any sort of change at all in this world we¡¯d need strength to do it, and that would likely come with magic. I kept trying. By the time noon was well past, and the sun coming precipitously close to painting a horizon orange, I¡¯d ended up back with the woman who offered two silver, and managed to negotiate her down to one silver and forty copper. It was still bloody highway robbery, but I¡¯d come to expect things like that. Beam¡¯s healthcare system had required more adjustment in any case. ¡°One silver and thirty.¡± I tried, patience wearing thin. Beam and Shango would be back soon, and if Shango found out I¡¯d not managed to find any price below a full silver he¡¯d never let me hear the end of it. The magus I was dealing with was younger than the others, and that might¡¯ve been why her asking price was so low. Nonetheless, she wasn¡¯t stupid. A tall woman, brown haired and eyed, with slight features and a mean look to her eye, she¡¯d surprised me with how fiercely she¡¯d caught on to every word I tried to blindside her with. At the risk of sounding slightly misogynistic, she wasn¡¯t nearly as air-headed as I¡¯d expected an attractive woman to be. Inconvenient. ¡°What you¡¯re asking is ridiculous.¡± She told me, her own impatience growing to match mine. ¡°It costs almost one silver just to administer the test, the materials involved are expensive and finite.¡± I took her words in, considered them with all due care, then nodded. And completely ignored them. ¡°And on the other hand, if you can¡¯t go that low, you¡¯ll not make a profit period because you won¡¯t be selling your services to me. One silver thirty is still getting you more than you had before.¡± She glared, but I could see she was considering it. That was the first step to changing a mind, leave a crack in their convictions, then drive the chisel in. ¡°Besides, what if the test comes back positive?¡± I noted. ¡°We both know I can¡¯t afford to get tutelage from any magus other than you, in this city. That¡¯s why I came back here, and that¡¯s why I¡¯m still haggling. If I am magic, that¡¯s money in the bank for you. You¡¯ve got a new apprentice to draw coin out of as payment for teaching him.¡± The suggestion worked wonders, and I saw her face creasing with thought, doubt. Then, finally, reluctant acquiescence. ¡°One silver thirty five.¡± She said at last. I forced myself to pause a moment before nodding, extending a hand for her to shake. ¡°Ah¡­You¡¯re not from around here?¡± She asked, eying the hand like it was a big, flaccid cock left dangling from the end of my wrist. I withdrew it. ¡°No, sorry about that.¡± I managed. It wasn¡¯t done for men to shake women¡¯s hands, in this part of Redacle. Stupid of me to forget, however excited I¡¯d been. The magus was quick in breezing past, in any case. ¡°Alright then.¡± She sighed, ¡°I¡¯ll administer the test, wait here, I need to get the mana crystals.¡± I waited, and she was back quickly, bringing a pair of cyan-coloured gemstones through that looked as if they were a mix between glass and plastic in texture. She held them out, opened her mouth to speak, then paused as I gripped each one without needing to be told. I grinned. ¡°I¡¯m aware of how the test is done, I just needed a magus to do it.¡± She nodded, quickly moving on and reaching into another drawer, withdrawing a length of copper wire now and wrapping it around both the crystals. She placed her hands on top of them, careful not to touch mine, and focused. After a few moments, it happened. A hum of light running into one crystal, then fading from it just as it looped into the other. Then a buzzing assailed my body. Not quite a sensation, more an¡­Urge. To run, to hide. The very sort you might feel upon suddenly hearing hornets buzzing around you. I resisted it, of course, and waited for the test to proceed. The lights returned, stronger, then moved from one crystal to another and sent another buzz through me. Then again, then again. Soon I was sweating with the irritation of it, but I held still for minutes more until the test was finally complete. The woman took the crystals from me, sighing as one of them split rather noticeably along its centre, and placed everything to one side. Then eyed me. ¡°Congratulations.¡± She said, ¡°You have the talent.¡± Chapter 33 Beam POV: Day 46 Current Wealth: 0 silver 27 copper Leaving Solitaire alone in the city left me feeling more than a little unnerved, I told myself it was for the best, however. He was hardly in any danger, and giving him an extra day to heal was the best way I could keep him safe. An eerily small number of our journeys had actually gone according to plan before now, and if we ended up getting a surprise half as nasty as the bear or giga-troll on this one, I doubted his condition would let him survive long enough for more treatment. Still, it didn¡¯t sit right with me. And I knew why. We were in this predicament because he¡¯d been hurt, and he¡¯d been hurt because I¡¯d failed in protecting him. Again. It seemed failed protection was the only kind I could ever offer. The guilt hung onto my shoulders like an anvil, keeping me company for our entire march into the woodlands. I kept it to myself, not wanting to bother Shango with such a triviality, and not knowing Argar enough to even discuss it with him to begin with. Argar, the giant. He¡¯d stuck to his word and come along with us, surprising me quite a bit in doing so. Somehow the man felt even bigger to walk alongside than he had to fight, towering over me by almost an entire foot, giant legs eating the road with great strides. He didn¡¯t seem to even feel the cold, despite not having furs nearly as thick as mine or Shango¡¯s, and he didn¡¯t complain one iota as we made our way into the woods. Perhaps we had something in common, then. Or perhaps he just didn¡¯t see much to complain about. The man hardly felt unhappy to be waddling into the jaws of death. ¡°What¡¯s the plan?¡± Shango asked, once we were a fair distance from the city. ¡°Rotters don¡¯t really bleed, so arrows won¡¯t do us much good this time. Nor will our daggers or the spear.¡± ¡°I can use my hands.¡± Argar shrugged, and the sheer size of each shoulder as it rolled upwards had me half believing him. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed. ¡°Let¡¯s make like Solitaire and start picking rocks up on our way.¡± I suggested, scoring a grin from Shango as I did. We both knew our friend would never shut up if he caught us mimicking his habits like that. We kept talking while picking our way across the woodlands, eyes peeled for particularly deadly looking stones. I got two, myself, both a bit bigger than my fists, nice and jagged, angled things that looked perfect to stave in a head. Shango only got one. When I turned to ask if Argar needed one of mine, I saw the big man had torn an entire branch off a tree and snapped it across his knee, fashioning himself a club that probably weighed as much as my leg. It would probably do just fine, I decided. Better than anything we¡¯d picked up from the gang war, for this job. The forest transformed as we went deeper, air getting an unpleasant edge that had nothing to do with the cold, but still sent shivers running down my spine. Everything became darker for seemingly no reason at all, and an unnaturally grey fog began to congeal at the ground around our feet. Shango was the first to recognise it. ¡°Necrotic mist.¡± He breathed. The term rang a bell in my memory. Death gas, essentially, also known as miasma. It was generated by undead, and generated more of them in turn. Seeing it now meant we were closing in on where the action would be. I noticed a couple of things as our walk continued. One was the smell, like an old folk¡¯s home, but more important was the silence. Save for the wind, and our own footsteps, I couldn¡¯t hear anything in this part of the wood. No birds, no rodents, not a damn thing. Even the insects were silent. It was like the whole world was holding its breath and waiting, waiting for something big.Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Well, I certainly was. I forced myself to exhale, performing the calming, rhythmic oscillation of lungs that I¡¯d learned to steel my nerves before a match years before. We¡¯d fought bears, we¡¯d fought trolls. Whatever was ahead, it didn¡¯t have anything on us. That¡¯s what I told myself, at least, but as we crept deeper in, the seeds of unease only grew. Undead had some particular essence about them that frightened the living on an instinctual level. Was that what I was feeling? Or did I just have better instincts than I thought? Solitaire, I knew, would make fun of me if he knew I was this concerned about a gut feeling. Shango wouldn¡¯t, but he¡¯d not take it seriously either. So I bit my tongue. Right up until the forest¡¯s silence was disintegrated by the shrillest, gnarliest screech I think I¡¯ve ever heard in my life. We all looked ahead at once for the source, and it wasn¡¯t hard to find. Five foot six, skinny as a ragdoll and lumbering towards us half at a sprint and half at a limp. It was maybe twenty yards away when we first caught sight of the fucking thing, and that gave us all the time in the world to get ready before it came. A walking corpse, blood-stained, withered and snarling like a rabid dog. The sight of an enemy at last gave my fear some direction, at least. I moved in to answer first, putting myself in front of Shango with a reflexive grace. Then blinked, as Argar put himself further in front of me. The rotter was barely within arms¡¯ reach of him when his giant log came swinging around like a battering ram, catching it fully in the chest and halting its sprint to a dead stop instantaneously. The undead fell onto its back, jerking around, and I saw ribs jutting from a ruined chest. Argar didn¡¯t give it a chance to shrug the wound off, closing in more than a metre in one great stride, then swinging his cudgel down a second time. It caught the lower torso, shattering hips and crushing the spine at its base. And the undead¡¯s legs stopped moving. So they could still be paralyzed if nerves and bones were damaged enough? That was useful to know, though not for now. For now, our enemy was a bit too mangled to do anything anyway. I watched as it writhed around, trying and failing to claw its way to us as Argar stepped back, his lip curled. ¡°Never actually seen one this close.¡± He grunted. I¡¯d never seen one period, but felt urged to keep silent about the fact. The man was big enough already, no need to further my inadequacies. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you kill it?¡± Shango asked him. Argar shrugged. ¡°Smash a ribcage in, usually, that does kill something. Didn¡¯t know the rumours about undead being¡­ like this were true.¡± I saw a slight quiver to his lip, as he said that, and it occurred to me that the big man actually was unnerved. Scared even, deeply so. It seemed odd, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. He hadn¡¯t grown up on anime and video games, to him zombies weren¡¯t just fodder to kill a few hours decapitating with virtual shotguns. God knew what kind of stories people as primitive as his told about them, but they probably bigged them up more than a bit. To be fair, even Shango and I were playing it safe with all our meta knowledge. There was a reason we weren¡¯t hunting during the night. ¡°You need to smash the head to put a rotter down.¡± Shango explained, then took a step forward to do just that, and hesitated. I could guess why, he probably wasn¡¯t certain he had the strength, rock or no. But I was. I closed in while the rotter hissed at him, brought the stone down and felt its skull change shape beneath the impact. Then I hit it a few more times to be safe. Brown blood was sticking to the rock like glue, by the end, and the reek was revolting, but the rotter died about the same as anything else would have. I straightened up. ¡°So, more hunting?¡± I asked the other two. Shango was quick in replying. ¡°More hunting.¡± The deeper we went, the more apparent it became that actually finding rotters wouldn¡¯t be too much of an issue. They weren¡¯t exactly commonplace, of course, but there were a lot more than just a few, and if you made a bit of noise you¡¯d attract plenty to throw themselves at you. We ended up bagging about half a dozen within the hour. Twenty three within four hours. But the sun was growing dangerously close to the horizon, by then, and it was that that finally put an end to our hunting trip. Reluctantly, we started trudging our way back to the city. It made sense, thinking about it, that you wouldn¡¯t find any undead close to the main seat of human habitation for the region. Guard patrols and whatnot probably kept their populations down like nothing else, and at worst all of the lazier, stronger mercenaries would be vacuuming them up by day. Regardless, though, it was still an issue. We couldn¡¯t afford to waste seven hours a day on transit if we were going to make progress from this, five coppers per pop meant that we¡¯d earned ourselves just over two silver with the day¡¯s work. Which wasn¡¯t much better than three men our size could¡¯ve managed with basic labouring. We needed to adjust our strategy. And we needed more fucking money. Chapter 34 Shango POV: Day 46 Current Wealth: 2 silver 42 copper [Appraisal] [Appraisal] Ten experience points, apparently, were our reward for trudging across miles of snow and killing ten times our number of undead. I¡¯d certainly done more annoying and difficult things for poorer rewards, but for the life of me I couldn¡¯t quite recall when. And it was no less disheartening for it. Well, truth be told I wasn¡¯t entirely surprised. We¡¯d clocked a while ago that difficulty, and particularly risk, exponentially increased the experience rewards for killing something, even if it was magical enough to give experience at all. With that in mind gang-initiating mindless zombies of roughly average human physicality was hardly going to benefit us much no matter what. Still, I¡¯d checked. If we¡¯d been levelling quickly from the hunts, it might¡¯ve been worth sustaining them for a while, seeing how strong we could get¡­Seeing if we could head over at night. Farming enemies did become a universal strategy among so many roleplaying games for a good reason, though people weren¡¯t taking their own life into their hands in those. In any case, it was an irrelevance. We weren¡¯t levelling up at any appreciable speed from killing them, so we had no reason to continue doing it save for the money. And the money was quite wanting, too. We were sitting together in the same tavern we¡¯d met Argar, eating- and not drinking- some roasted chickens with a few carrots and potatoes thrown in. Hot meals were still a luxury, it¡¯d been that recently that we¡¯d started regularly indulging them, but this one had set us back a further twelve coppers in total. So we were down to two silver and thirty copper. It was progress, still, no matter what. But after our night¡¯s sleep in the inn that progress would be reduced by a further nine copper from rent. And it was already small enough. Expensive to live, painful to die, miserable to go on. But we had no choice in the matter, and so I pushed the observation behind me like so many others. Solitaire leaned back, groaning with the motion. ¡°My ribs are on the mend.¡± He noted. ¡°I¡¯ll be fit as a fiddle tomorrow.¡± The lying bastard. I didn¡¯t have the energy to answer or argue, but he kept on talking regardless. ¡°Which brings us to our issue of funds. Seems to me, we need a way of overcoming two limiting factors on the undead hunts. Time required to get there, and actual weight of the¡­¡± His lip curled slightly. ¡°Loot.¡± Evidence. We¡¯d needed evidence, otherwise any idiot could just claim to have killed a hundred rotters and walk out of the merc tavern with ten silver in his pocket. Apparently, that evidence had been required in the form of severed heads.You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. So we¡¯d watched Argar haul back about two hundred pounds of stinking, decaying skull and brain matter for twenty miles. If nothing else, the weight didn¡¯t seem to bother him that much. ¡°We could get a cart.¡± Beam suggested. ¡°A hand-drawn one, at least.¡± Solitaire sighed. ¡°Carts cost money, if I¡¯m remembering our notes correctly a decent one would set us back about ten or fifteen silver.¡± I considered another way, then gave up. ¡°Either way, we still have the issue of travel time, I don¡¯t see that going away until we¡¯re rich enough to afford a horse. More than one, actually, to carry all of us.¡± Solitaire grinned that evil grin he had, the one that promised he was about to say something very very clever, that would make me extremely upset. ¡°I¡¯ve thought of a solution for that.¡± He declared, and without realising it Beam and I leaned in to hear. He continued, apparently enjoying the attention. ¡°We build a shelter next to the woods. A small one, mind, densely made with nice thick walls and boarded windows. That marks our base of operations, and while we hunt through the night, we can do so knowing we have a defensible position to retreat to.¡± Beam was thoughtful, but I was instantaneous in my answer. ¡°No.¡± I snapped. ¡°Absolutely not, it¡¯s ridiculous, we¡¯d be torn to shreds during construction.¡± ¡°We¡¯d only build during the day.¡± Solitaire countered. ¡°And, actually, I was thinking we could take out a loan to hire some workmen to do it.¡± It was incredible. Somehow my friend had taken a plan so awful it almost made my eyes water, and, with just a few extra words, managed to make it even worse. ¡°You want to put us in debt again now?¡± I snapped, disbelieving that he could be so stupid. Solitaire only shrugged. ¡°Either that or we risk a night attack without some defensive fortifications. Way I see it, we need to increase our power here- both politically and literally- as quickly as we can. I want security here, I want to know that I won¡¯t wake up hungry tomorrow, I want-¡± His voice became strangled, for a moment, by emotion. And I realised why. I¡¯d always known I¡¯d be okay, that I wouldn¡¯t starve. So had Beam. But not Solitaire. In our old world he¡¯d spent his life crawling up to a position as stable as the one we¡¯d occupied right before being dragged here. And then he¡¯d been dragged here. We¡¯d all lost everything, but everything he¡¯d lost, he¡¯d worked for, too. But even knowing how much he wanted it back, I couldn¡¯t just roll over for an idea like this. ¡°This could fuck us, permanently. If we keep going as we are¡­We¡¯ll get where we need to be eventually.¡± ¡°Unless something unlucky happens in the meantime.¡± Solitaire countered. We argued a while longer, both of us digging our heels in and refusing to back down. Eventually it was Beam who we turned to as a tie-breaker. And he refused to do so. ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡± He groaned. ¡°I just don¡¯t know, you¡­You both have points.¡± I scoffed, Solitaire snarled, and all of us were forced to agree we¡¯d come to a more final decision tomorrow. Sleep came like a rag of chloroform, harshly felt but quickly succumbed to, and then it was a new day. We were out of the inn within half an hour, having scoffed down a quick breakfast, and made our way down the streets quicker still. Our rendezvous point with Argar was the tavern we¡¯d met him at. None of us had exactly decided that verbally, it had just sort of happened around the second time we met him. On our way there, however, something very interesting caught our eye. Well, it caught our ear. It was some old man on the road, shouting about ten or fifteen things seemingly at once, his words barely intelligible. We closed in slightly, as we walked past, to make them out better. ¡°Please, anyone! Anyone?! There¡¯s a hundred children there, and women too, we can offer coin if that¡¯s what you demand, but we need aid! Please!¡± The panic in his voice would¡¯ve made it clear enough that the man was talking of death, even if it hadn¡¯t been patently obvious from his actual words. We listened a while longer, managing to unravel that he was talking about saving his village. I turned to my friends, and was halfway through asking what they thought about the prospect when Solitaire cut me off with a grin. ¡°Ask him how much he can pay.¡± He pressed, and I felt my skin crawl. Sometimes the bastard was too cold-hearted, even for my tastes. Regardless of that, though¡­We did need money. I cursed, and approached the man. He was short, even for a native of Redacle. Normally I looked down on short people, literally. But being tall back home made me a giant here, and my chin was almost touching my throat as I tilted my eyes down to meet his. The man was withered by age, hair white, skin wrinkled, body shaking and unsteady beneath its own weight. He looked like he¡¯d just crawled out of a famine, then staved off a case of bubonic plague and been locked in a sensory deprivation tank for half a century. ¡°Excuse me,¡± I began, then ground my teeth as the idiot kept on shouting over me. I had to raise my voice and almost contest his own volume just for him to hear me. ¡°EXCUSE ME,¡± I roared, then lowered my voice once he turned to me, ¡°My brothers and I are mercenaries, what exactly is it that you need help with? We may be able to assist.¡± The man might have had a heart attack then and there, with how shocked he looked. To his credit, though, he recovered quickly, and spoke more quickly still. ¡°I come from a small village to the west of here, Rinchester, it¡¯s perhaps ten leagues from the city.¡± My blood ran cold. If I was remembering how big a league was, that would put the place deep in undead country. ¡°It¡¯s being attacked by rotters?¡± I guessed, he confirmed it with a nod. ¡°Bloody hundreds of them, every night. They come like rats, swarming the streets, climbing over each other¡¯s bodies to get at us. We had guards, but most are already dead, and those that are left have started barricading themselves indoors to protect their own families. We lose someone else every night, there are more every time, I¡­¡± His voice turned into a quiet croak, and he choked on it for a second while we all stared and listened. ¡°I lost my daughter the week before, and I¡¯m not sure if her children have survived the days since I left for Wolney.¡± That explained why the old man was having so much trouble finding someone willing to help. Mercenaries were a practical bunch, if they¡¯d been told they¡¯d be facing down hundreds of undead, let alone hundreds every night, they¡¯d be more likely to run away with their tails between their legs than lift a finger and help. And if professionals who killed things for a living were smelling a lost cause, who were we to try and make it anything different? I turned to Solitaire and Beam, saw the looks on their faces, then braced myself and glanced at the old man. ¡°Give us a minute please.¡± I asked him. ¡°We need to make a decision.¡± Chapter 35 Solitaire POV: Day 46 Current Wealth: 2 silver 21 copper ¡°We¡¯re not actually considering this, are we?¡± I asked, careful to keep from speaking loud enough for the old man to hear- that would be awkward- but letting the urgency of my question convey itself all the same. Shango didn¡¯t look nearly as reassuring as I¡¯d hoped. In fact, he looked like he was about to argue. And he did, the bastard. I couldn¡¯t even rely on a coward¡¯s cowardice anymore. What was the world coming to? ¡°He said they¡¯d pay whatever they could manage.¡± Shango pressed. ¡°How much do you think that is, exactly? Gold, surely, and probably more than just a few pieces. This is an entire village¡¯s wealth- an entire village with many members who are recently deceased and thus no longer in possession of their own.¡± It was a valid point, really. We wanted money, they had a big pile of it and were willing to part ways with the stuff. Not to mention the other loot- or, more politely, salvage- that was almost doubtless lying around. I was hard pressed to counter him, but I did my best. ¡°Fuck you, you¡¯re trying to kill me.¡± As far as retorts went, it wasn¡¯t my finest, but in my defence I was under the effects of my amygdala attempting to tunnel its way out through my cerebrum. Measured against other paranoids, I like to think I¡¯d have gotten fairly high marks. ¡°The reason nobody else is coming to collect this pile of money is because everyone dumb enough to try is already part of a pile of corpses, and I''d very much not like to join that company.¡± That was better, and it almost moved Shango for a moment, but his face was resolute as ever after a second¡¯s thought. ¡°We have an advantage over them.¡± He noted. ¡°We can¡­You know.¡± Level up, grow faster, increase in power so rapidly that none of the people in this world would even believe it. Yes, I did know, and that wasn¡¯t something I wanted to bank on as an escape rope. It hadn¡¯t saved us before, and it wouldn¡¯t save us now. If we were killed at level eight, it didn¡¯t matter how quickly we could reach fifty. Dead was dead. I told Shango as much, and saw my words bounce off him like rain against a roof. ¡°If we manage to last a single night, like the people still there have done dozens of times over, how many undead do you think we¡¯ll manage to kill? How much experience will that net us?¡± That was the first thing he¡¯d said that actually gave me pause, and I considered it. Don¡¯t misunderstand me, I¡¯m a coward through and through. Thing is I¡¯m quite a conscientious coward, and my sense of self preservation tends to pick up problems when they¡¯re still far away on the horizon. We¡¯d not fought anything over level twenty so far, and we¡¯d scuffled with few enough things that we couldn¡¯t kill by simply jumping it as a group. But that didn¡¯t mean things would remain that way forever. If we got unlucky enough, we could run into a dragon, a demon, some other creature strong enough to kill us and the entire city we were standing around in to argue. Hell, we¡¯d already run into the giga-troll, and it¡¯d been pure chance that saved us then. Redacle was home to creatures, and people, who could turn that thing into a red smear in the dirt without using anything more than their wanking hand. There¡¯d be no defending against a scenario like that. One couldn¡¯t account for a natural disaster, after all. Some things were just bad luck. But odds could be improved. The faster we strengthened ourselves, the lower the chances of us encountering something we couldn¡¯t handle. How would our alley fight have gone if we were as strong as we were now? Better, no doubt. And how might our fight with the giant troll have gone, if we¡¯d had a few hundred dead zombies under our belt? I genuinely couldn¡¯t say. And that fact alone had me considering Shango¡¯s insane suggestion. ¡°There¡¯s the people to consider.¡± Beam said quietly, drawing my attention despite the low volume of his speech. I could see he looked pained. Torn, the way people were when one side of their brain argued with the other. I¡¯d have to figure out what had him so hesitant later, because I didn¡¯t think my friend was the sort to have a second thought about saving people, period. Or a first thought, for that matter.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°I¡¯m considering the people.¡± I said, regardless. ¡°And I¡¯m considering all the other people we could help if we avoid getting mauled to death by zombies.¡± ¡°And how high are our chances of biting off more than we can chew tomorrow? Or next week? Or in a month?¡± Shango pressed. ¡°It¡¯s going to happen eventually, there¡¯s no doubt about that. The only question is whether we¡¯ll be lucky enough to keep surviving when it does, and I don¡¯t think we will.¡± Part of me wanted to tell him that the giga-troll had been an isolated incident, but I knew I¡¯d not have a leg to stand on. We¡¯d not predicted or even suspected it would be there, and we¡¯d blundered right into its lap. He had a point, damn him. So I weighed the odds, considered the chances, and then, finally, decided based on my own preferences. If we didn¡¯t take this job, I¡¯d be left to spend every day worrying that it¡¯d be my last, and checking behind every tree for some fucking dragon. If we did take it, and lived, would I be strong enough to feel secure? I didn¡¯t know. But suddenly I wanted to, the thought of actually having something to abate my paranoid worries was more enticing than a city full of coin. I sighed, swore, and nodded. ¡°Fine.¡± We returned to the man presenting a far more united front than our conversation would have betrayed, all stony faces and grim readiness. Honestly, we did quite a good impression of dark, brooding heroes. It was probably still spoiled by the first question out of Shango¡¯s mouth, though. ¡°How much can you pay, exactly?¡± He demanded. The old man didn¡¯t seem surprised by the certified Yoruba moment occurring right before his eyes, and actually got enthusiastic as he answered. Presumably, the monetary cost was of no concern next to hitting his jackpot and actually discovering a group of morons willing to charge in and help his village. ¡°We can pay at least ten gold, plus whatever the dead residents have that isn¡¯t divided in their wills.¡± Ten gold was no small amount of money. Particularly now that we had the cost of magic tuition to front, I could see Shango practically drooling, and being frank I was probably not much more restrained. ¡°Take us to your home, then.¡± Shango declared. ¡°We¡¯ll help you out the moment we¡¯ve collected our companion.¡± Once the details were hammered out, we watched the old man scarper for the city gate, where he¡¯d await our heroic appearance. I swallowed my nerves, swallowed my bitching, and joined Shango and Beam in moving to Argar¡¯s tavern. The walk didn¡¯t feel very long. Things rarely did when you had possible death awaiting you after them. Argar was drinking in his corner, laughing with a few friends, and I could practically see the smile drop off his face as we approached. I almost felt bad, for a second, ruining the man¡¯s fun so instantly with our very presence. Then I remembered he¡¯d snapped a table in half against my ribs, and started wishing we could ruin it even harder. ¡°We¡¯re setting off for Rinchester.¡± Shango told him, abruptly. ¡°Heard of it?¡± The giant paled, and nodded. I suppressed a grin. ¡°Well off we go then.¡± My friend continued. ¡°No point in dilly-dallying.¡± The giant, to his credit, did actually accompany us. But he lost about fifty courage points for bitching the entire way. Talking about hordes of undead capable of filling an ocean, piles of them rising up to the clouds, strong, greater creatures like skeletal reavers or liches capable of exploding buildings and stopping rivers. Honestly, it was infuriating. There¡¯s only so many little nitpicks I can take. Fortunately, I was given a distraction soon enough. Shango leaned in beside me, whispering as we walked. ¡°Any chance you can make more gunpowder?¡± I resisted the urge to convulse and tell him I¡¯d made specifically black powder, instead channelling the energy to something more productive. ¡°No.¡± I replied, honestly. ¡°Even if we had enough shit, it¡¯d take me nearly a full day, and we don¡¯t have enough money to buy the sulphur and charcoal for more than¡­Maybe a kilogram.¡± ¡°A kilogram is a lot, right?¡± He pressed. I hesitated, then shook my head. ¡°Not for the time investment, and not against undead. If they had functioning organs to get liquefied by the overpressure then maybe it¡¯d be worth it, but as things stand we¡¯ll be facing enemies that would only really struggle against explosions that broke bone and tore muscle. That¡¯s not deadly enough for my taste. Even adding shrapnel wouldn¡¯t have as high a kill ratio as against normal humans.'''' He sighed. ¡°Why couldn¡¯t I have gotten a useful terrorist?¡± Shango grumbled, and I ignored him. Truth be told, I¡¯d been thinking something fairly similar since coming here. Had I known we¡¯d get Shanghaied to our own book, I¡¯d have prepared a bit better. Like with a nice combat knife instead of that shitty pocket blade, a small mountain of engineering, chemistry and physics references¡­And a shotgun. A really big one, one of those automatic types. I grinned imagining the giga-troll getting its guts opened up by a spray of supersonic lead. My idle fancying was cut off, however, when Beam spoke on the other side of me. His voice wasn¡¯t as low or cautious as Shango, just¡­Soft. All certainty, steel and promise. ¡°I¡¯m not going to let you get hurt again.¡± He told me, and something about the way he said it sent a chill running down my spine. I eyed him, studied his unflinching certainty, and tried to deflect. ¡°Thanks, but it¡¯s not a problem-¡± Beam, uncharacteristically, cut me off. ¡°We¡¯re going here because I want to save people.¡± He interrupted. ¡°And I¡¯m not going to let you or Shango get hurt. Definitely not on my account, understand?¡± He really hadn¡¯t left much room for anything but, so I nodded, and he nodded back. I swallowed, making a note to pursue the matter further when I¡¯d had time to consider what the fuck might be going on with him. And then we saw the old man up ahead, waiting for us, just like we¡¯d said, by the city gate. The exit to our next fight or perhaps our imminent demise. Chapter 36 Shango POV: Day 46 Current Wealth: 1 silver 47 copper If I¡¯d known the old man expected us to pay for our own meals on the road, I might¡¯ve actually thought twice before following him. Not just out of basic thrift, but out of the simple fact that his not having the food already on him was a dangerous sign that he¡¯d been lying about what his village could afford to pay. Well, maybe not. My motives for helping had been a lot more tied to compassion than I¡¯d made out to Solitaire. He probably knew as much, but still it was important to keep up pretences in polite conversation. So much of adult dialogue was built on convenient lies, after all. At the very least our new employer had been able to afford a wagon, and we sat in it for the duration of the journey, wrapping ourselves in the blankets we¡¯d bought to make the trip between Jhigral and Wolney, staving off the icy elements with conversation. And glaring, jealously, at the far thicker layers wrapped around the elder as he drove the vehicle on. It would be about four days before we arrived, double the length we¡¯d spent travelling last time, and yet somehow not feeling like anything much at all. We were adjusting, it seemed, to the slow, tedious way this world had of doing anything. And I wasn¡¯t entirely sure if I liked the fact. Our journey was kept busy, though, despite the volume of sitting and shivering we spent it on. We were, after all, riding our way to a combat zone, and not one of us was stupid enough to do so blind. So we spoke, asking the old man every question that flitted into our minds, and preparing one another for every eventuality we could think of. Thanks to Solitaire, that latter list was near inexhaustible. Rotters were one thing, we were confident enough of holding out against them even at night, provided we had a suitably defensive position. It was quite another, though, to face the other creatures that might be among them. I wasn¡¯t sure whether we¡¯d be dealing with dullahan, fomori or beladonnan puppeteers, but there¡¯d very possibly be some heavier hitters there with hundreds of zombies present. Oh, you don¡¯t know what any of those terms mean in Redacle? Haven¡¯t read our book? Well, putting aside that slight against me, they¡¯re bad, awful and fucking atrocious to fight respectively, the weakest of them might have been more than our entire group could handle together, the strongest could have slaughtered a hundred copies of us each. And the old man was more than likely lying about there not being any higher undead at all. He didn¡¯t want to scare us off. Smart. ¡°If one of the big ones attacks, we should use trenches.¡± Solitaire suggested, confidently. ¡°Square-cube law and all that.¡± ¡°What the bloody hell is that?¡± Argar asked, frowning in confusion, looking at him as if he were half mad. I knew what the term meant, even though everything I¡¯d ever learned about engineering had been against my will as part of the world-building process, and I understood what Solitaire was getting at. Elephants died to a fall easier than mice, after all. I explained as much to Argar, then paused as a new thought struck me. ¡°What if it¡¯s one of the¡­Uh, magical ones?¡± I asked, mind flitting to dark thoughts of liches vampires and everything in between. Solitaire smiled, chirpily. ¡°It¡¯ll kill the shit out of us, and there¡¯s nothing short of an Abrams squad we could use to do anything about it.¡± Ah. Well, he was honest at least, the fucker. I nodded, and tried to bury my concerns. Truth be told, for all our strategizing, there wasn¡¯t actually that much variation to any of the plans. The overwhelming majority of them would be dealing with more or less the same variables, and we¡¯d already done enough work writing about rotters to have figured out the ideal way of combating them. It was something Argar very much seemed to approve of, despite his reservations about the whole ordeal. Well, they were zombies. Pop culture had done most of the heavy lifting years before we even wrote a thing. Dumb, shambling morons with no more innate durability than humans. Set up traps, barricades, buy some time and you can kill them almost at your leisure. But they were fast zombies, at least by night, and numbers could overwhelm. And unlike a lot of other pop culture we tended to be realistic in our portrayal of how thick the human skull is and how hard getting at the brains beneath could be. Semi-realistic, at least. We wouldn¡¯t be exploding heads off with every swing.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. This wasn¡¯t going to be easy no matter what. Days drifted by in a lazy, chilly haze, and we took to sleeping while the sun was up. By nightfall, as far as we were into the woods, we knew the rotters would be active and plentiful, swarming the carriage and burying us in rotting flesh. The only way to avoid that was to save the horses'' stamina and strength to expend on outrunning them. Even so there were more than a few close calls, where the creatures got nearer than we¡¯d have banked on. Fortunately we were all diligent, and the night vision provided by lifetimes of nourishing, vitamin-rich diets in the modern world let us spot the creatures well before they were on our escort. Frankly, it was a miracle he¡¯d made it to Wolney without us. A suspiciously big miracle, even, which he didn¡¯t explain no matter how much we asked. That brought on a whole new problem, because the lack of explanation almost had Solitaire leaning forwards to cut the man¡¯s throat from behind, and left me and Beam stuck focusing on talking him out of it about five times per day. Now, as I said we¡¯d been getting used to the long, winding journeys that came hand in hand with this world. And that was true. But it wasn¡¯t all that was gnawing at us during this trip. Before, we¡¯d been going to Wolney. A place with work, with food, with inns. A place, if anything, that would be better than the dogshit little town we were leaving. Now? Now we were leaving Wolney, and rattling towards a death trap. Which has a fairly unique effect on a man¡¯s state of mind, let me tell you. If I had to describe it, I¡¯d do so with the analogy of a spring. Imagine one getting slowly compressed, forced tighter by the second, coiling inwards and building up energy until, just as it reaches its absolute limit, a ten megaton hydrogen bomb falls right on top of you. In this scenario, the spring is our journey, we¡¯re the idiots squeezing it, and the bomb was what we were jittering and spasming in fear of, building up as an inevitable future in our minds and trembling over. Well, I say ¡°we¡±, it was actually only the normal people. Which is to say, me, Argar and the old man. Solitaire¡¯s default state of mind, apparently, is ¡°the entire human race wants to kill me¡±, so this was nothing new for him. If anything, knowing for a fact that he was riding to trouble seemed to actually comfort the lunatic. And as for Beam¡­Well, nothing ever could shake him. Plenty could shake me, though. Including my own muscles, because by the time we were on our last day I was shivering with an adrenal overflow so strong that I actually heard my teeth chattering. Beam and Solitaire picked right up on it of course, and I was braced for the mockery long before it came. Largely because it never did. ¡°Deep breaths.¡± Solitaire told me. ¡°Just focus on the feeling of air moving in and out of you, force it to happen slowly. Remember you''re in control of those lungs, they work as fast as you tell them, and no faster. If they¡¯re too quick for your liking, seize them and drag them down to a better pace.¡± I tried his advice, and it actually worked. Gave me something to think about, for one thing, and the fact that it was something I had power over¡­Somehow that was more soothing than the distraction itself. He wasn¡¯t done with his advice. ¡°This will pass.¡± He pressed. ¡°You¡¯ll feel better, calmer, in the future. For now, you¡¯re still here, and you have an age to think about what you¡¯ll do next. So use it. What¡¯s the plan?¡± I gathered my wits, and tried to come up with something. It was Beam, cutting in next, who helped me along. ¡°What if there is a strong undead there.¡± He suggested. ¡°How do we deal with that?¡± ¡°It¡¯s the worst case scenario.¡± Solitaire continued, catching his train of thought and chasing it. ¡°So imagine that¡¯s already happened, that it¡¯s the only case. This is as bad as it can get¡­So if we knew it¡¯s what was awaiting us, what would we do?¡± By the time there was a village within our sight again, just barely visible over the dawn-reddened horizon, they¡¯d managed to calm me down enough that my blind panic was starting to give way for¡­Embarrassment. It wasn¡¯t like me to lose my shit like that, I was meant to be the calm one. The cool one. I smiled at my friends, and thanked them for everything, but somehow their help had just left me more hollow. Finally starting to slow as we neared the village¡¯s outer ring was a welcome distraction, and I was practically counting the wheel turns as I waited for our cart to finish its deceleration so we could crawl out from under the blankets and leap down. Well, not exactly crawl out from under the blankets. We kept those on as we placed boots back down on snow and came round the vehicle¡¯s side. It was just hard to give them up, after getting so used to the luxury. Whatever effect it had on our cool factor, however, the townsfolk didn¡¯t seem to notice. They were too busy staring with a mix of awe, apprehension and, if my eyes didn¡¯t deceive me, actual happiness. The old man rushed ahead to them, more eager now than any of us had seen him since he first found out we¡¯d be helping. Apparently his failure had been anticipated, even by himself. It was odd, seeing the few dozen citizens as they swarmed the area just around us. They all looked thin, frail and undernourished as most of the homeless people we¡¯d seen in this world, and yet most of them had grins on their faces and light in their eyes. Hope, I realised. Hope because of us. In that moment, any regrets I still had about riding over to save this town evaporated, and I felt a bizarre new resolve creeping in to cast my spine in steel. I tightened my jaw, straightened my back, and took a few steps forwards. Speaking to address the people we were going to save. Chapter 37 Shango POV: Day 50 Current Wealth: 1 silver 47 copper I wasn¡¯t actually entirely sure how to start a heroic speech. Truth be told, I wasn¡¯t exactly a hero. I¡¯d seen plenty of movies, though, and read a few books, graphic novels, and played through video games. I was familiar with a vague set of behaviours that tended to strike people as impressive and larger than life. The major problem was that they also tended to kill the person who acted them out, unless he had superpowers. I pretty much didn¡¯t, so being the real deal was sadly out of the question. My pause to think wasn¡¯t long, though. The mind works quickly under pressure, particularly the pressure of half a hundred eager faces aimed in its direction, and my mind in particular was plenty fast. ¡°My name is Shango,¡± I declared, ¡°Shango¡­¡± Fuck, a last name, what was our name. ¡°Belahont. These are my brothers, Solitaire and Beam.¡± I gestured at them as I named them, and eyes turned to each of them in turn. ¡°We¡¯re here to help all of you with your undead problem.¡± Faces seemed to relax slightly as they beheld us all. One thing that definitely helped the illusion of heroism was that we did halfway actually look the part, at least for now. We¡¯d gained a lot of muscle during our frantic weeks of training in Jhigral, and though our money was starting to run low, we¡¯d still been eating well enough to maintain it for a while. That, and the fact that none of us were less than six inches above the average peasant¡¯s height. We might¡¯ve resembled demigods to these people. Maybe not. One of them was certainly not as daunted as the rest, stepping forwards with sharp eyes as she stared me down. She was a tall woman, and remarkably dark skinned. For this part of the world. Her tone was still a great deal lighter than mine, but she wouldn¡¯t have been out of place in the middle east back home. ¡°And what are you charging for your help?¡± She demanded, voice all but confirming my observation. Her accent had that deep-throated, scraping note that I recognised as, in this world, belonging to Vitonnia. That was strange, Vitonnia was a good thousand leagues southeast of where we were now. She was very far from home to be living in some dog water Eregarn village like this, and very, very grumpy to be receiving help for it. Vitonnians were a mixed bunch, but most were used to violence and warfare. Their civilisation existed as a series of city-states, infinitely disparate and eternally warring with one another. If you met one, chances were they¡¯d at least witnessed a serious skirmish or fight. The land of mercenaries, they were oftentimes called. If anyone were to see through us, it was a Vit. Still, I¡¯d won over hostile clients before. The trick was patience. And I¡¯d won over clever clients- the trick there was being even cleverer. ¡°We¡¯re charging a sum of however much you can spare.¡± I replied, calmly. ¡°We need to eat too, sadly, and we need funds to do more good. But for now that¡¯s of no concern, because we¡¯ll only be collecting our payment if you and us band together and manage to keep ourselves from getting chewed to bits by undead, hm?¡± She didn¡¯t seem convinced, but most of the people around her definitely were, muttering happily amongst themselves as she took a step back, still eying us balefully. The woman seemed¡­Oddly frustrated. The old man was speaking next. ¡°They¡¯re mercenaries.¡± He declared. ¡°And they¡¯ve managed to kill trolls before, so I think we can safely trust them to help us deal with some rotters!¡± I ignored the hollow, worried feeling his blind faith had growing in my gut. The people, now, were grinning openly at the man¡¯s testament, some even going so far as to applaud our presence. I couldn¡¯t correct that. We needed an attitude like that if everyone were to make it through this. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. ¡°So,¡± The man continued, turning back to me, ¡°What are you going to be doing first? Sunset should be in around twelve hours.¡± Which meant I could safely take about eleven to prepare, I considered his question, then turned to Solitaire and Beam. ¡°Any idea-¡± Solitaire was cutting me off already, practically screaming his question. ¡°Do you have any animal shit?¡± I must say, I have seen people stare harder at my friend than the town did then, but not often. It took a few seconds for someone to reply. ¡°...The barn floor should be¡­Uh¡­Crusty with it?¡± Solitaire nodded, sharply, and started marching away. ¡°Bring me someone clever.¡± He ordered. ¡°In the absence of that, bring me all the people who know what sulphur are and I¡¯ll vet them for usefulness myself.¡± Eyes turned to me, questioning, and I had to resist sighing. Give Solitaire a time limit, I supposed, and he¡¯d invariably decide that being polite doesn¡¯t make the cut on his list of priorities. I gestured the people after him with as gratious a nod as I could manage. ¡°I thought he said explosives wouldn¡¯t be very useful here.¡± Beam whispered, I turned to him and tried to convey my own confusion as well as I could, without tipping the audience off. ¡°They¡¯d still be better than nothing, if he can make as much as last time.¡± I noted. ¡°We couldn¡¯t buy enough ingredients, maybe we can find them.¡± ¡°Uh, excuse me sirs,¡± Came a voice from behind, I turned to see it was the old man we¡¯d followed here. ¡°Thank you again for, you know, volunteering to help us, but can I ask what you¡¯re planning to do exactly?¡± It was a valid question, and fortunately we¡¯d all discussed it well in advance on the way here. Solitaire had, thanks to his antisocial personality disorder, been preparing to defend a position from hordes of shambling attackers for most of his lifespan. I didn¡¯t trust anyone else I¡¯d ever met, spoken to or seen evidence of existing more than him to get us out of this situation. Which meant that the optimal thing, as I saw it, was making sure everybody else did what he said, too. And that was where I came in. These were people, I knew people, and all I had to do here was make those people thought I knew what was best for them. The only thing that made this different from the standard dealings I¡¯d learned from my dad, of course, was that I actually did know what was best for them this time. But that isn¡¯t the sort of thing one says out loud. ¡°My brother, Beam, will be practising combat drills with your people. ¡°Spear thrusts, that sort of thing.¡± He eyed me like I was a moron. ¡°You realise I was a sword fighter, right?¡± He snapped. ¡°And sometimes a martial artist, but never a spearman. I don¡¯t know the first thing about spear fighting!¡± Fortunately he had the prescience to keep his voice low as he said it, and I did the same. ¡°You can thrust, right?¡± I demanded. ¡°And you know how to parry, how to control a weapon, there should be some overlap.¡± Beam hesitated, and I slapped him on the shoulder. ¡°Well there you go, then!¡± Before he could argue further, I turned back to the group. ¡°Furthermore, my other brother, Solitaire, will help you with your defences. Believe me when I say he¡¯s studied methods of siege warfare that haven''t even been invented yet.¡± It might have been a bit much, because more than one of the people turned sceptical- even among those who¡¯d been happy to see us. Still, I didn¡¯t expect to win them all over right away. One night. Give them one night to see what we could do, and they¡¯d trust us by the end of it. Either that, or they¡¯d all die, and us along with them. The silver lining of that eventuality was that nobody would really be in a place to care. I thought it best to avoid it in any case. ¡°Alright.¡± I called out, clapping to recapture the attention I¡¯d sensed slipping away in my pause. ¡°Everyone get moving, quick march, Beam will be training you and I need to catalogue the resources available so we know what to use.¡± Best way to take power is to get everyone too busy to notice it happening, as my father used to say. Besides, having a comprehensive list of materials would make it easier for Solitaire to violate the Geneva Conventions. Say what you will about terrified, starving pre-industrial peasants with PTSD, but they were remarkably quick about hopping to obey. For the most part. The tall Vitonnian woman who¡¯d given us shit was still just standing at the back and glaring, but a sizable enough fraction of the others were desperate enough in helping out. I watched them diffuse through the village, darting into buildings, storerooms, clearing out the crowded streets with remarkable ease. Something about the sight was oddly¡­Inspiring. But I didn¡¯t wait to enjoy it for long before marching on to my own work. I¡¯d have to be quick, after all, if we were going to survive this.