Reaching the soil outside the walls of HCR, what greeted Ragnar’s vision was in quite a contrast to the lush jungles at their entry point of HCR.
Well, the first thing he saw was of course the vast purple sky with the sun hiding behind the clouds giving them a rosy hue. It still looked just as odd and out of place every time he saw the sky.
Under the odd sky was a vast stretch of plains biome that didn’t seem to have an end as it stretched into the horizon. It was sparsely populated with thin dull green grass that seemingly got even sparser as once’s gaze travelled away from HCR. As Ragnar got a closer look at this grass, he found out that it looked more like very small bushes and ferns instead of grass.
This lifeless stretch of land however, was not all dull as it seemed to be sharing a small chunk of its horizon with some oddly placed elevation in land. These five elevations looked like a bad attempt at recreating the scenery from the most popular wallpaper ever, the one with the grasslands. Everyone knows that one.
These elevations spanned over several kilometres each and were covered in a distinctly green and dense grass that also had several glowing strands mixed in. Ragnar found that glow to be familiar but couldn’t immediately remember from where.
Just as he had made these observations, he noticed Aura who had already covered quite a distance on the road that seemed to be made naturally over time, just from the footsteps of all the people and mounts that travel on it on a regular basis. There were a few of these roads and even some signposts indicating which direction led where.
Ragnar didn’t need the directions since Aura seemed to know where she was going like always, so he simply followed after her mount and observed the new landscape.
After taking in the sights for a while and travelling a good distance away from the crowd near the gate, Ragnar noticed something pretty odd. He could clearly feel the presence of the stalker number 2, but they were nowhere to be seen. He had of course been keeping an eye out for them ever since leaving HCR, and he wouldn’t have found it odd even if they maintained several kilometres of distance from them but they never appeared. Instead, he constantly felt the presence of another person near them, no one appeared in his vision. It was just him, Aura and her mount.
They were surrounded by nothing but plain land with sparse to no grass, the stalker couldn’t possibly be hiding somewhere, or following them from the shadows, so what exactly was going on here?
Could it really be another person with invisibility?
Ragnar considered leaving the ground to check with his echolocation for a while, but in the end decided not to. He was pretty sure anyways that the stalker was still there even if he couldn’t see them. He will just wait until they get a bit further away from the gates to finish them off.
Or on second thought, he might as well wait until they decide to reveal themselves, since if he appeared above ground right now, he will need at least a fraction of a second to activate his invisibility, which might give away his location to the stalker. He would like to end it in one strike, so appearing in front of them wouldn’t work well for him.
He didn’t mind waiting a bit more. He was sure that they would reveal themselves sooner or later, since not everyone could have a tainted perk like his own, so their essence was sure to run low eventually. Once it did, they might try to use Aura in order to bait him out, that would be the perfect chance to appear behind them.
With that thought, three people and one shifted travelled through the soulless lands heading towards one of mounds in the distance with a steady pace.
Aura was travelling with a lot of things taking up the space in her head. The most prevalent of which being that she will probably only have this potential homicidal maniac to talk to over the coming month. Even if the ‘homicidal’ is removed from the equation, the situation still doesn’t get that much better.
It’s fine… some sacrifices have to be made to achieve great things. She sighed and tried looking at the flip side. But…
‘Fuck’
***
‘Fuck’
‘Asshole’
‘Bastard.’ Tanya had been cursing incessantly for quite a while.
That bastard refuses to show himself even after they have reached this far away from the HCR.
If he was really using his tainted perk for this mobility, then she knew for a fact that she couldn’t outlast him in this hiding contest that they have going on over here.
Even though she had a lot larger reserves of essence being a True Spectral, it was still nothing compared to the capacity of a tainted perk. So, she had to give up on hoping for him to appear and make things easy for her.
She couldn’t even consider following them until they reached their first resting spot, since hiding herself using her ability was a very taxing affair for her essence reserves, being a very complex application of her ability. So, she will have to act now, when she still had about half her essence remaining.
She was aware of Ragnar’s strength from her research, so she wasn’t about to underestimate him.
Although, she would have preferred not to involve the Sylvancrest in their matter, she was left with no choice.
***
Aura was trying her hardest to think happy thoughts, imagining herself as the next Matriarch, and eating the Velvet-in-buns every Sunday after convincing its owner to open up its headquarters in the rooftop lounge of the Sanctuary.
Just as her lips had started to curl upwards into a small smile, few drops of something splashed on her face, breaking her out of her dreams. Following their trajectory, she looked down, only to notice her ride missing something… its head.
Her face hardly even had the time to change expressions, when the scenery around her shifted into a view of the sparsely grown grass on the ground. But before her face could meet the soil, she instinctively jumped off, using her saddle as leverage. She landed on the ground with a roll, her face a few inches away from touching the soil.
Just as she was about to sigh in relief for protecting herself from eating dirt at her age, a hand suddenly dashed her hopes as it pushed her face into the ground. She felt her hands being held into a grip as well as a knee pressing her down with its weight.
The hand on her head moved back momentarily allowing Aura to face to the side so she wasn’t eating anymore dirt, but it came immediately after with something sharp pointing at her neck, a clear indication that she should stop moving.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Aura was finding it hard to process the turn of events, she couldn’t think of any reason why someone would come after her in this manner. It couldn’t be Lucian or the Knights, she didn’t threaten his position nearly enough in their eyes for them to act so recklessly. And they were family after all, they wouldn’t.
Wait, was it her…
As Aura tried to decipher who her assailant could be, clearly forgetting that she was supposed to be a little scared in this situation, it will probably kick in after a second or two, but the assailant shouted beforehand diverting her attention.
“Roach!!!”
A sharp feminine voice came out of her cloak, that did a perfect job in hiding her body. The parts that were revealed were covered in black clothes and gloves not revealing any skin.
Aura felt a somewhat twisted sense of relief at the fact that it was a woman, since being in this situation with a man would have been really uncomfortable.
At the same time, she was really confused as to what her assailant meant by that. She wanted to clear it up but the assailant’s voice shook up her thoughts once again.
“YOU BETTER COME OUT! If you try anything rash, your new master might get hurt.” She said with a chuckle.
Aura’s mind blanked out as she gulped. This bitch won’t just die herself; she’s going to get her killed as well.
At that moment, she felt fear for the first time during this incident, and it wasn’t towards her assailant. Even Aura would find her thoughts to be weird if she ever thought back about the event.
Albeit, in the heat on the moment, her fear overwhelmed her thoughts, forcing her to take action.
A shimmering sabre appeared in her tied hands and materialized towards the assailant’s chest. But her captor seemed none the wiser, as if not noticing the life-threatening attack, bringing a slight smirk to Aura’s dirty face. But that smirk vanished as fast as it had appeared.
The sabre seemed to be entering a twisted space as soon as it reached the chest of her assailant. And although Aura couldn’t see it from her angle, that part of the sabre had appeared behind the assailant’s back from a similar looking space.
Another cold chuckle sounded in Aura’s ears as she heard the assailant speak once more. “You better come back with me roach; your old Master misses you.”
Aura panicked, finding her almighty sabre to be completely useless, and also somewhat uneasy since he still hadn’t acted despite the situation. Had she been abandoned? She doubted it. It can’t be… right?
***
Ragnar had been standing behind Tanya’s back for a while now. Although he still had doubts about her origins when she mentioned ‘new master’, it was all but confirmed who had sent her now that she had mentioned ‘old master’.
As for the way she had addressed him, he didn’t know he had a nickname in that hellhole. He never really talked with anyone other than Tristan or Vorlock, who both used his code name, so maybe he had just ignored the others using it, just focusing on what they were saying.
Right now though, he was considering whether knowing that she was sent by him changed anything. And it didn’t really seem like it.
For information? Nah, he didn’t need any.
For the fact that he actually recognised her or that she was also a victim of that bastard? Yea, no fuck that shit.
Then maybe the fact that she was in a relationship with Tristan for a few months? Definitely not, he’s dead anyways… she might as well go accompany him in hell.
So there was nothing… that stopped him…
But just as Ragnar was about to puncture a hole into Tanya’s head, she suddenly acted, pressing down harder on Aura with her knees, as her blade scraped her neck, drawing out blood.
“The fuck did you just do, bitch!?”
Aura’s face looked twisted but she spoke out her words as calmly as possible that sounded quite familiar.
“Ah… I should explain shouldn’t I, lest you harm yourself.” Was how far she could reach before she received another shove in her back from the knee.
“Get to the fucking point.” Growled Tanya.
Aura’s face broke into a grin as she replied in kind. “Check your neck… ‘Bitch’.” The curse sounded quite odd from her lips but she seemed quite satisfied having gotten back at her captor.
But she didn’t stop there, instead, using the momentary silence from the stalker to complete her rehearsed phrase.
“I just linked our bodies. It’s my ability, you see. Now any wound I receive will automatically be transferred to you. Heh, you should have found out about my ability before attempting this fruitless endeavour. You can’t kill me anyways, so there is no point in threatening him with my life.” Was what she said, but her mind had different thoughts. ‘He might not come out even if I was dying.’
Aura’s baseless confidence managed to hit a nerve as Tanya brought the knife in front of her face.
“Is that so? Let’s see if he won’t come out even when I fuck up your pretty face. YOU HEAR ME… ROACH. You know I will do it.”
Ragnar knew that she would…
Her words brought back some memories that he would rather forget.
It was the way her relationship with Tristan had ended. It was when one day, for some obscure reason that Tristan refused to tell him when he asked, they had gone to visit Vorlock, together.
And the next thing he knew, they were being hacked by whips in front of everyone in the name of setting an example.
Ragnar knew that they weren’t really exempt from the pleasure of the skin or from finding a partner within the camp since it would provide Vorlock with better leverage over their emotions. But the reason for things that happened back then was too vague for Ragnar to understand on his own.
It was only later that he found out from overhearing some gossips that Tanya was actually pregnant with Tristan’s child and they had wanted to leave to raise their child, but Vorlock had flown into a rage over the matter.
That day, the two were whipped till their skins started bleeding, but neither of them let out a sound in protest. In the end, Tristan was spared after the whipping for the reason that he was still a mundane human, but Tanya wasn’t so lucky.
Vorlock seemed to have some extra hatred for her, since as her punishment for the matter, her face was sliced with dagger laced in several poisons, completely ruining it for the rest of her life. She was already an Arcane at the time of the incident but the scars were probably present to this day despite the enhanced healing of walkers.
There was no need to mention the fate of the child…
And she was still doing his bidding to this day…
Her dagger came within a millimetre of touching Aura’s cheek, and in the next moment, a single sharp yet intense crackling explosion was heard, followed by the ripping sound of air as it travelled into the distance.
BOOMMMZZZZZZZZZZZ
Like Ragnar had guessed, she needed to know about the attack beforehand in order to use her ability to dodge.
Ragnar stared at his ‘hand gun’ that had blown a hole through her head. He had clearly delayed killing her for quite a bit, was he really hesitating because of the past? Well, it could be said that he was waiting for the perfect moment to strike to end it in one blow, but that wouldn’t be right either.
In truth, he had wanted to test Aura’s limits, to find out if she had it in her to one day become worthy. Aside from that, they were about to go through several battles together, so knowing her character better would be helpful in making decisions during battle. Although he doubted she would be very useful in the task at hand considering her ability.
***
Aura still had a somewhat scared expression as she stared at the gaping hole in the cloak of her assailant with the echoing booms still reverberating in her ears. Spurts of blood and what seemed like brain matter leaked from the hole. The body slowly started leaning forward, and Aura rolled away on reflex to prevent the gooey stuff from landing on her.
She clumsily stood up, with no expectations from Ragnar to give her a hand, as she started registering the situation that had just played out.
She had really started to break down as the dagger neared her skin. But her worries were unfounded. She sighed a sigh of all times, the stone stuck in her gut finally dissolving.
Facing Ragnar with a complex look, she muttered. “I-I’m sorry.”
“Hm?” He asked while matching her gaze with an ever so calm look.
“I’m sorry…” She spoke out loud.
Ragnar had of course heard her the first time, there might not be another person with a better hearing ability than himself. He had wanted her to state the reason behind her apology but it was clearly too much for her to understand.
“For what?” He clarified.
Aura spoke as she lowered her head to look at the thin grass. Now that she got a closer look, this thin grass wasn’t actually grass, instead they looked like very small trees.
“For the ‘master’ thing.” Her voice came out almost as a murmur, but was loud enough for Ragnar.
“The fuck are ‘you’ sorry about, she said it, and now she’s dead.” He replied, his tone lacking any emotions.
Aura looked back up, although the horror of how casually he had killed someone answered a lot of her doubts about him, she still had a very small smile on her face. She quite liked his straightforward nature in these situations.
‘The killing in this case was necessary, of course.’ She told herself.