Joe controlled his stomach and retreated as fast as possible from the flowing blood. He wasn’t exactly that successful, the spurting splash hitting the ground sprayed across over onto his shoes. Still, it was enough as Joe could see the blood spurting out quite fast. Joe ran back around to the back of the neck once again, a bit less cautious to run in front of the giant’s face before getting to the back again. When he got to the back of the neck, Joe made sure to climb it well below where he’d broken its spinal cord. He had no desire to allow the giant to be able to feel where Joe was climbing it. Once he was on its neck, he stood and sliced its other jugular, the blood spraying forth to pool at its neck with the rest of the blood. He sighed, leaning back against the shoulder of the giant before dropping his head back. Right… done… It is done… right? He’s … right?
Joe carefully considered everything, looking at the giant and around everywhere before he noticed the monsters of his previous line pressing a bit closer. Ah… right… they’re probably going to want to harvest this thing, right? Joe climbed up high on its shoulder, then walked along its back before he stood on its left hip and buttock.
“Hey. Allanar! Can you bring down some of my arrows from up on the wall? As many as you can.”
Allanar quickly nodded, “Yes, hallowed eccentric!”
Hallowed eccentric? Joe blinked in surprise, opening his mouth to reject the appellation but Allanar had already fled away on a wave of water, climbing the city wall. Joe sighed then turned to look at the guards and crafters.
“You guys wanna harvest this giant, right?”
The crafters all looked wide eyed, and some of the braver ones quickly nodded, shouts of agreement coming from all around. Joe smiled and waved them over.
“Well, come on then. I’ll keep the monsters back. Just be careful, the giant is still alive for a bit. Maybe stay away from its face until it is dead. When the blood no longer spurts in waves from the neck, it is likely dead, but make sure first.”
His proclamation released the crafters and butchers and they sprinted forward in a mad dash, a wave released upon the shore that was the giant’s body. Joe watched on for a bit before turning back towards the monsters with a relieved chuckle and sigh. Shortly after, the group of monster hunters that had come with him to help landed on the body nearby. They stood as a group, their guarded looks long gone and replaced with fearful, respectful, or awed ones. Joe nodded to them. They nodded back. The one who’d marked his arrows spoke.
“I have your arrows marked. I can retrieve them, if you wish.”
“Uh… sure, if that’s OK?”
She quickly nodded and paused, then spoke again, “You will defend the butchering of the giant?”
“For a while.”
“Do you wish help?”
Joe smiled, “If you are willing, I would enjoy the companionship.”
The few that had looked at him with awe smiled brightly at that. The rest seemed to relax a bit before nodding, all of them leaping to various portions of the body. One landed on the head of the giant, which caused it to roar, a loud rolling wave of desperate anger. It was quite a bit weaker than its normal roars, but it was enough to cause the woman who’d landed there to quickly stumble away in shock and fear, blood dripping down her nose as she tumbled to the ground behind it. A wave of crafters directly in front of the giant’s face stumbled to the ground, collapsing as blood dripped from ears, mouth, and nose. Joe cursed.
“Be careful! It is still alive!”
The crafters all halted, fear quickly returning to them as the ones that had been directly in front of the giants face struggled to stand and fled back to the line of guardsmen, stumbling to the triage unit behind them. The crafters that had run towards the body of the giant began creeping forward once again, much more cautious. Joe turned to look back to the woman hunter that had fallen off the giant’s head.
“Maybe don’t touch its head. It can still feel anything touching it there. Only its body below its neck is without feeling. Once it is dead, you can stand on the head again.”
She nodded, her eyes wide before she turned to look back out over the monster waves. Joe waited, but she said nothing and he shrugged before turning back to look out over the monsters. A few moments later, a wet bucket of arrows thumped down beside him and Joe turned to look. Up on the edge of the wall, Allanar stood, another bucket already descending the wall in the grip of a bulbous ball of water. Joe waved to Allanar in thanks.
He then turned and began to once again litter the field with the corpses of dead enemies everywhere. His first arrow he sent out with a mana arrow and the giant roared a bit more desperately than when the woman stepped on its head. Joe looked around to see the crafters far from the giants face but there were still affected, slightly dizzy. The giant grew weaker with each passing moment, and this last roar was barely a gasp. Joe turned back to the monsters and released his arrow, immediately killing the monster. He continued firing, faster than before because of the much reduced range and trajectory. It was a lot easier to aim when the target was running straight at him.
He sighed, turning his gaze back up at the wall, then back to the monsters charging at them. His thoughts turned to Garnedell and the others, a soft concern rising within him. Yeah… the others really need to get stronger. If they… none of them could have survived this. Joe thought. His mind wandered through considering each of them in turn, and as he did so, he found himself also considering Telnia. He frowned, unhappy to have her in his thoughts and immediately dismissed her, not willing to entertain her at all.
A few moments later, the thought returned and he sighed, immediately turning his thoughts back to the others. Despite his efforts, Telnia seemed to drift in his thoughts, somehow even subconsciously, and yet all he could think of her and the situation was disgust. He didn’t understand what his subconscious was doing, but he found it disturbing, putting effort into simply rejecting the thought.
Finally, a thought solidified, one of Telnia being his wife and he immediately revolted, even as he still acknowledged her physical beauty. He couldn’t deny that and a part of him found her beauty incredibly appealing but everything else was so vile he couldn’t even tolerate it. All he felt was an immediate visceral nausea. No… no… Yeah… not at all. Monsters pressed forward again, and his thoughts faded and all he saw was the task before him, all thought focused on taking out the monsters. After he'd cleared things out a bit, he paused and sighed, relaxing and then frowned again with frustration when the image of Telnia returned and faked a gag. Not with a freakin' ten ... hundred foot pole! Get out of my head!
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The image faded and he sighed in relief, firing his arrows for a few moments until it returned again. This time, the nausea hit even harder with the thought of her beauty not even registering, his only thought was unqualified rejection. Not even with a freakin’ ten foot pole! Never! Joe’s stomach quivered at it, then slowly began to calm. He worried about what was going on but the fight was still ongoing so he focused on firing arrow after arrow. After waiting another ten or twenty minutes, he finally felt relieved, certain that whatever had happened wasn’t going to happen again and he fell into a robotic repetition of drawing and releasing his arrows.
He was too exhausted to use mana hurricanes, and sent out his mana points in his arrow heads again and again. The giant roared each time a mana point went into his arrow, but Joe’s exhaustion left him with little mental capacity to realize this until the giant’s roars were little more than whispers. Despite his exhaustion, Joe was able to test it a bit, firing normal arrows, hurricane arrows, and mana point arrows. Only his mana point arrows elicited a response, and Joe felt a bit of regret when he realized that his first arrow had instigated the giant to roar. By now, however, it did not matter as the giant’s roars were now nothing more than fitful gasps and the giant died shortly after. He continued to fire for another few moments before a soft cry came from behind him, calling for his attention.
“Master? Hallowed Eccentric?”
Joe paused, looking around him. He saw the other monster hunters firing out weapons and magic of their own and noticed that they were easily keeping the monsters at bay. He turned to the voice who’d called.
“Yes?”
A short portly man with a minor bald spot stared up at him, “Is the giant dead, Master Hallowed Eccentric?”
Joe was too tired to deal with the name, barely parsing the question. He turned to look at the giant’s head and neck. He saw no obvious heart beat pushing out blood, nor any rhythm of breath.
“Let me check. Close your ears. It’ll probably roar again, so get everyone protected.”
The man seemed surprised, “Close my ears?”
“The monster might roar again,” Joe replied curtly, too tired to explain more.
The man quickly took off, yelling, “Monster attack! To defenses!”
Joe squinted at that, but waited as all the crafters and butchers quickly sprinted away. Beside him, several of the hunters tensed. Huh… more than just a vocal attack?
Joe dropped the thought, too exhausted to follow it. He drew an arrow and buried it into the cheek of the giant. It didn’t even flinch. He fired another three into its nose, cheek, and ear. He looked at it a bit then shrugged, shouting out to the people.
“I don’t know if it’s dead… but it looks like it. Who can check? It seems like it is dead.”
Joe then turned away, too tired to care what they chose to do and returned to clearing out the monsters quickly and efficiently. Behind him, the guards stirred.
* * *
Allanar stared out over the walls as the eccentric continued to fire upon the monsters below. The crafters worked efficiently to butcher the city killer quickly. The first city killer ever… Allanar’s breath shuddered even as the thought came to him. The Matriarch came to his side.
“Mist mage.”
Allanar shivered at the appellation, joy, pride, and fear shuddering through him equally, “I… it is too soon, Matriarch.”
“But possible?”
Allanar looked up at her, before nodding softly even as the privacy shield wavered into existence around them. He stared at her for a bit before looking to his hand. He brought up his hand, palm up, then Worked. Mist formed in the palm of his hand, breath quivered in an exhalation, excitement erupted from his heart. He looked back up at her.
“I believe a conversation with the eccentric may prove… beneficial… to your dao?”
Allanar nodded excitedly, ecstatic in his hope.
“Join us for our meal tonight in his villa.”
She turned and walked way. Allanar vibrated in excitement in his spot.
* * *
A group sat around a small desk, a variety of mugs and cups of beer or other alcoholic beverages laid across the table while they all chatted with one another. A man with wings folded across his back chewed on a small object in his mouth. His wings were rather undersized for his bulk, making them either residual wings or something entirely magical. Shadows seemed to shift along his wings and flicker across his body as he stared at the board that took over most of the table. Before him rested a variety of stone pieces across the board, a darkish grey bordering on black as his preferred color. It was cliché, but it was who he was. To his left, a beautiful looking woman, who appeared young however was anything but, growled.
“Hurry up. I tire of waiting.”
He looked up at her with a frown. She was wearing deep red clothing designed to accentuate her beauty. Plain mousy brown hair draped down her shoulders and tumbled across her back and chest. Her hair, however, didn’t remain still. It wafted and tumbled around her almost like what it would look like if it was drifting lazily in a pond of water. However, when it did fall, it fell down at normal speed through the air. Swirls of green twisted through her hair and worked to display her hair in the most beautiful light possible.
He grunted, “I’ll go when I’m good and well to.”
She swept her hair back with a hand and wings of green wind flared for a second from her back, sweeping outwards in a rush before the winds calmed, “Don’t push me.”
He ignored her and turned his focus back to the game. Across from him, another man stared at him and growled, frustrated as his patience wore thin. Although he appeared completely normal in base form, red flames seemed to crawl all over his body and through his hair.
Their game was interrupted rather abruptly when the door to his room opened, the heavy wood oak slamming backwards to thud against the stone wall and echo hollowly down through the stone hallways of their temporary home.
“Someone killed a city killer! Farthest plane! We need to go and make sure…”
“Hey! Newbie. Shut up.”
“But… we can’t let…”
He sighed deeply and looked up at his roommate, a relatively new member and still quite excitable. He’d been the same, just like his roommate, when he first arrived, but as his duty continued on, he’d grown to realize that this deployment was ridiculous.
“There’s nothing anyone on this cradle can do to us. Relax!”
“But…”
He sighed and turned from his pieces and looked up at his roommate, “Are you worried about a ‘city killer?’” he added a heavy dose of sarcasm to the final phrase.
His roommate fell silent at that, frowning, “But, sir…”
His shoulders fell, “You really want to go all the way out there and talk with them? Are you looking for bonus pay that badly? And if nothing comes of this, are you willing to pay the Gate cost?”
His roommate finally shut his mouth at that, and he turned back to the board while ignoring his roommate, happy to be done with it all. He shook his head, then frowned, looking over his pieces carefully. Hmm... well, maybe it’s a good idea to look into it just to mak... He trailed off, his frown growing deeper, twisting in disgust. Then again… I’ll just get yelled at again for using the Gates. Almost lost my job sending everyone out in Gates a year ago for all those eccentrics landing… and that was following absolutely strict protocol! This is… yeah… nope… not going. Not hauling my sorry ass to the furthest plane the hard way, drifting between planes, either! Just going to finish out my term and leave quietly. No need for political suicide here. Nothing’s gonna happen… at least in the next year and a half. So I'll jus... Oooh! I think I won!
His grin grew triumphant and he picked up a small piece, slapping it on the board before moving another one of his already deployed and more powerful pieces before looking up at the other two. Their looks of shock followed by their shouts of bitterness that came quickly after only sweetened his satisfaction.