The sun was around three-quarters of its way through the sky when we found a spot to make camp—more than enough daylight to get everything set up. The Archer had gone to fetch firewood from the area, which would prove challenging in this region. I could see a few trees around us, but we were still in the grasslands. A ways from the forest at the foot of the northern mountain range. The rest started setting up tents while I was tasked with preparing a meal from the game and various plants we'd gathered throughout the day. This was not something they'd have me do again. As it’d just come to light that I am apparently a terrible cook when things went awry.
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"Stew?" The Archer asked, more than a bit confused.
"It's a type of soup. It's healthy." I replied, handing him a bowl of the slightly too yellow mixture at the same time.
"Uh--huh." He sounded less than convinced. While walking away, he looked at his bowl with an expression of apprehension.
"Is it supposed to smell so…" The Mage paused for a moment to think of the appropriate word. "Pungent?"
"I'm not entirely positive about that," I replied in honesty.
"Quite right." She walked away while responding in a similar tone to The Archer.
"Did you use all the meat for this?" The Shieldbearer asked cautiously.
"No," I said while gesturing to the remaining game behind me.
"Good." He replied curtly before taking his bowl and moving away.
The remaining three didn't say anything when they took their bowls. The Hero maintained a courteous smile while receiving her portion. When she received her serving, The Priestess's only reaction was to pause a moment to look at the contents of the dish before walking away. The last individual maintained her silence, as she had the entire day. When she got close to the pot, her hollow-looking eyes bulged slightly from her skull. It appeared those empty orbs started watering a little before she took her food and walked off to sit beside The Shieldbearer.
One by one, they took their food and found a seat around the fire. I was a little shocked The Archer had managed to find enough loose sticks and branches to make a suitable fire. But in the heat of summer, the flame and hot meal it provided were merely niceties.
With everyone sitting around the fire, food in hand, I took note of everyone's faces. The Hero, Archer, and Mage looked at each other apprehensively. The Shieldbearer looked to The Girl, whose eyes were rather blatantly watering as she stared into her dish. The Priestess was the most stoic out of everyone, looking forward into the fire rather than at anyone else or her food.
"What kind of soup is this?" The Archer asked from across the fire, trying to delay eating any of it.
"Mixed meat, with various beneficial herbs we passed along the way," I replied.
"And you are sure it's edible?" The Mage asked.
"Completely." I wrote.
It appeared everyone had something they wanted to say, including The Girl, who'd so far remained silent. But not one of them dared continue delaying, lest the thing they dreaded grow worse as it chilled in the cooling air. So with a semi-simultaneous nod among a few of them, they all took a spoonful of the substance into their mouth.
The reactions were varied and unique to each individual. The Girl promptly started vomiting the contents of her stomach. This wasn't much of a shock considering anything with any taste would be overbearing for her. Meanwhile, The Shieldbearer seemed to gag as he forced the yellow broth down. The Archer subtly let the soup fall from his mouth back into the bowl. The Mage's face stiffened up, but she managed to force the mouthful down before she set the bowl aside. The Hero didn't appear to struggle to swallow the food, but the polite smile on her face shifted into a rather forced one. When I looked at The Priestess, it honestly looked like she hadn't yet decided if she wanted to spit it out or swallow it.
For myself, I had no way to consume the food. I lacked a mouth, and what organ passed for my stomach was no more than a rotted black pile of fleshy molasses. To maintain the illusion, I had settled on lifting food behind my mask before using a minuscule amount of mana to render it as dust before dropping it down the front of my coat. That simple procedure had long been suitable for keeping the illusion that I was actively eating the food set before me. However, drinks had been an issue until straws became more commonplace.
"Mask?" The Hero called out to me. "When was the last time you cooked for someone other than yourself?" She asked politely.
The question wasn't what I anticipated when I'd seen the group's reaction to my cooking. Still, I answered as honestly as I could. Lying to them would grow too quickly into a habit if I wasn't cautious.
"I think the last time I cooked for another was over twenty years ago." I wrote out my reply while scooping the yellow soup behind my mask.
"It freaking shows." The Archer said while wiping a spare cloth across his mouth.
"You said it's healthy?" The Priestess asked, having reached a decision about her turmoil while I wasn't looking.
"Quite so. It helps with spirit and mana recovery while also providing enough nutrition for a day of walking." My statement obscured some details about the soup, but only things like how it gave sick people odd dreams.
"Seems you forgot to make it actually taste good." The Shieldbearer said snidely. Oddly, I noted a lick of panic in his eyes while he said so.
"Yeah, no offense Mask, but this is one of the worst things I've ever eaten." The Hero said as kindly as the statement allowed.
"I'll make something else." The Shieldbearer volunteered before anyone had even suggested the idea. "Did you leave enough meat for that?" He asked with a surprisingly hollow gaze.
"I did." I gestured to the remaining ingredients.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He hadn't even covered half the distance from his seat to the cooking equipment when Scales flew from beneath my coat with a note of panic in his movements. I didn't know what he'd noticed, or if he'd spotted anything. But I had little doubt he was constantly watching the world to a better degree than I could. In an instant, I tossed the contents of my bowl forward into the fire. The sputtering flames quickly overtook the yellow fluid, while I used more than a smidgen of mana to force a nearby stone into the shape of a spear.
The look of confusion on the faces of the others lasted a while, too long for my liking. The Shieldbearer was the first to drop the air of bewilderment around him. His training took over at the sign of confrontation, even if he couldn't see his opponents. He slammed his arms together, and in a bright flash of warping space, he bore a dual set of brutal-looking spiked shields. The Archer was next to recognize what he had to do. Drawing his bow from some unknown spot, he nocked an arrow that started glowing with the spirit within. The Hero was the last of those to react successfully. The blade she kept at her hip sang through the air into a readied position mere moments before a pair of men stumbled out of the tall grass before me.
The Priestess, I gave a minute amount of leeway in this instance. As a healer, she had no equipment to draw, and her only job would be to move to a safe space among the combatants. The time it took her to move behind the group would need work. She’d only managed to stand as the men stumbled out of the grass, but she'd at least moved to stand beside the other noncombatant. The Mage was the worst of the group. While everyone, including the sister of The Shieldbearer, had stood from their seats, she was still sitting. With a look of utter confusion and panic on her face, she gawked at the sight of two men breathing heavily in front of me.
The two men looked panicked, out of breath, beyond grimy, and about to collapse. When they saw us, their faces washed across a multitude of emotions. Panic shifted into relief, then stepped again into the territory of resolve and resignation before landing on a frightened curiosity.
"Where are we?" The first man blurted out rapidly.
"About a day's walk north of the capital." The Shieldbearer replied with some agitation in his voice.
"Dammit. We strayed too far north." The second man sounded almost defeated. The thought seemed to leave him exhausted as he collapsed to his knees after saying it.
"You needed to go to the city?" The Hero asked kindly.
"Yeah, but we got some bad directions from a guy a while back." The first man said while collapsing to the ground.
"He said he'd just come from the city. How'd he send us so far north?" The second man muttered.
"Damn. Hern, you think we can still make it in time?" The first man asked his companion.
"Doubt it." The second replied. "I'm as good as spent. We might make the city by daybreak if we march through the night. But I doubt any help we get would make it before it's too late." The second man started to tear up as he spoke.
"What did you need help with?" The Hero asked, slipping from her kind tone into a more concerned one.
"Don't worry about it." The first man said while standing up once more and dragging his friend to his feet. "I'm as spent as Hern is, but even if I gotta burn myself, one of us has to get to the city tonight," he said while hugging his friend. "You follow behind when you can. I'll get the help. You check to make sure come morning. Alright?" He asked with a grim determination.
"Whoa whoa whoa!" The Archer interrupted the seemingly heartfelt goodbye. "What's this all about? I'm no fan of watching someone resign themself to death, so why not tell us what's what?" He said while lowering the arrow he'd kept trained on the two.
"We don't have time. They sent us to get the hero. We have to get going, or it'll be too late." The first man said while dusting himself off. The air around him thrummed dangerously. If no one stopped him, he'd be as good as dead by morning.
From anyone else's perspective, the two men coming across us here would seem an odd twist of fate. To my eye, it was a blatant case of my bargain impacting chance. These two didn't have the tang around them that spoke to the binding lines I'd scattered around the city. So it had to be the man who gave them directions. Either way, they'd followed the wrong directions to the correct spot.
I could tell the man was about to bolt out of reach of our group. He was likely a runner or a transporter of some kind. If he got out ahead of us, none of us would catch him before he was a broken, empty shell waiting for the end.
I could see The Hero making to reveal who she was, but the first man was already dead set on speeding down the road; he wouldn't wait for her to speak. Doing my best to avoid any lasting damage to the man, I lunged forward into him as he tried to dash past our group. I let the stone spear in my hand fall to the ground as I went, the weapon ill-suited for this kind of work. My shoulder slammed into the man's chest as he picked up an absurd amount of speed in mere moments.
Ribs cracked against the metal under my cloak. In an instant, his lungs emptied, the air within bursting out of his mouth in one go. I felt the unnatural momentum carry into me, pushing me back along the road. The man fell to the ground with a look of shock on his face, my actions proving successful. But at the same time, my prosthetic leg caught on a piece of land I couldn't feel, and I fell backward to tumble into the tall grass beside the road.
My body proved unwounded by the impact, and the tumble hadn't damaged anything on my person. But the display wounded my pride more than a little. I recalled my earlier judgmental thoughts about the others and turned them doubly on myself. I was foolish to think I could simply acquire the experience necessary to use this limb while already in combat. I was foolheartedly optimistic in thinking that walking equated to proper footing under force. Put bluntly; I was an idiot.
Still, from the eclectic sound of angered and panicked shouting, I appeared to have succeeded in stopping the foolish man from wasting his life. If no one had stepped in, he'd have reached the city with just enough of himself left to hear the news that The Hero had gone to the north that same day. So with my pride wounded but my goal achieved, I clambered out of the tall grass back onto the road toward the yelling group.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!" The second I got out of the grass, the man started yelling at me with a look that screamed his desire to punch me. He'd already pushed past everyone else to reach me. Left alone, I was sure he'd throw his punch then speed down the road.
"Sit and be silent" I leaned into him as he approached and whispered the command right in his face. From behind the man, it would look like I'd smashed my head into his. Using a power like that here was even more stupidity on my part. But I'd put myself in a bad mood, and I didn't care to deal with someone as foolhardy as he. The backlash from forcing his body to obey me left a painful spike deep in my chest to add to my agitation.
Almost violently, the man fell backward into a sitting position. I could see the panic in his eyes at losing control of his body, but I frankly didn't care. Let him sit and think about his recklessness. Without another word, I moved past his sitting form to the rest of the group, who'd fallen silent when the man had appeared to fall to another blow from me.
"Start talking." I wrote out for the second man to see. While typically, my writing was clean and orderly. This time, the letters took on an agitated edge to them from my irritated movements.
"Uhh, umm." The man fumbled with his tongue.
"TALK, NOW." I let my irritation get the best of me almost entirely this time, the mana burning instead of safely returning to me after I'd finished writing.
"Uhh." He started panicking from the literal heat generated by my words.
I almost moved to grab the man, to try and force him to talk. Before I did, I felt a calming hand land on my shoulder, a familiar energy racing underneath the palm that brought me back to myself. Turning to face that familiar presence, I found not the person I once knew, but The Hero with a look of concerned confusion. Her eyes ask a question within a question. Are you alright? Do we have a problem?
It didn't take me but a moment to figure out why she was confused. I could feel the madness taking hold, making me angry and reckless. My mask was in place, and so too was everything else, so I didn't know where the leak had originated. But something was wrong, and I'd need to look into it. For now, that familiar energy in The Hero's palm was enough to banish the excess madness lingering around my mind. Later I may not be so lucky.
With much to think about, I took a step away from the panic-stricken man, allowing The Hero to try and get information from him.