“Fuck!” Cried Frazay. “Move!”
More yells of alarm rang out from the camp, as the bandits raced to grab their weapons, standing up quickly and knocking improvised tables over, and pushing the battered women out of the laps they’d been forced onto. Xander raced into cover behind a tree, and Freyja sprinted out of the light, prowling amongst the forest once more in the dark. Xander noticed his teammates also moving into cover as arrows began to fly into the forest. Frazay returned fire in kind, and Xander heard a muffled scream as one of her shots flew true.
“Fuckin’ get out there and get them!” Screamed the wild haired man, tossing another fireball into the sky, further lighting the area.
Several of the bandits began sprinting towards the treeline. Xander managed to lean out from cover, [Ferokinesis] primed to snatch any arrows off course, and fire a shot with his shotgun at one of the running men. The stricken man stumbled, the impact of the buckshot knocking him off balance, but he made it to a tree. Wounded, but not dead, Xander thought to himself as he pumped another round into the chamber from the tube. Five shots left before a reload.
The wild haired leader continued barking orders, and threw another, smaller fireball in the direction of Frazay, her translucent, slightly glowing arrows giving away her position as they continued to fly one after another. She took cover behind the large tree she’d chosen, as the fireball washed over the front of the tree, charring its bark. The leaves on the lower branches crisped and began to burn. She returned fire at the fire mage, forcing him to duck behind an upturned tabletop that had been supported by several barrels before being flipped into a makeshift barricade.
Xander took note of his companion’s positions, feeling Freyja off to his right slowly circling around to the back of the bandits, in true stealth predator fashion. Gabrelle was further behind him. Graffus was making his way forward to the bandits that had made their way to the tree line, darting from tree to tree as arrows flew by. Xander watched as an arrow plinked off his helmet, not even slowing the dwarf as he made it to the next tree. The bandits were doing much the same, six of them, one being the one that Xander had clipped with his shotgun, moving from tree to tree towards the mercenaries. Atrax was making his way towards the edge of the forest, farther off to Xander’s left, likely to directly combat the enemy mage. He was circling wide to avoid the bandits that were moving into the forest.
Considering the speed at which bandits were encroaching on his position, and the fact that they were darting from tree to tree as they did so, Xander decided it would be unlikely that he’d be unlikely to get a good shot off, and stowed his shotgun in his inventory, materializing his red tipped mace and bone shield in his hands. He moved to begin intercepting one of the bandits that was making his way towards Frazay’s location. She was doing a good job of keeping many of the bandits pinned, but with so many in her field of view, it was impossible to suppress them all.
Needing more speed to reach the man before he got to Frazay, who was currently distracted by keeping three other bandits at bay with her arrows, Xander hoisted himself up onto his spindly metal legs as they unfurled from his back. The silhouette he cast in the firelight hanging above him must have been monstrous to the bandits who could see him skittering along on spider-like limbs. Catching up to the bandit, who was unaware of him, back turned to him as he focused on making the final distance to Frazay, Xander opted to simply run him over with the pointed legs he was carrying himself on. Catching up to the man, who had paused behind a tree, one of front legs of Xanders automaton backpack skewered the man, entering near his collar bone and puncturing out his opposite side near the waist. The man screamed for a moment, and Xander stamped on the man several more times with his new mechanical limbs, silencing him.
Frazay finally noticed him and the man he was mauling, and nodded quickly in thanks, calling out “Good work!” before returning to firing at the bandits who were hoping in vain that she’d run out of ammunition so that they could rush her position.
Graffus was currently occupied with two of the bandits, though he was holding his own well enough. One of them was the bandit that Xander had shot, and he was hunched to one side as he tried to swing at the heavily armored dwarf. The swing was battered aside, and Graffu’s hammer lashed out, crushing the man’s knee and dropping him to the ground before Graffus had to redirect his attention to the other bandit who was now swinging a club at him.
Atrax had finally made his way to the treeline, drawing the fire of the archers and the enemy fire mage. Atrax was once again incinerating arrows to ash as they flew towards him, and the two mages were hurling fireballs at each other, neither one able to strike the other and their various skills allowed them to shield themselves from the washes of flame or jerk the incoming missiles off course.
Xander began making his towards the three bandits that Frazay was firing at. No longer impeded by arrows, thanks to Atrax’s efforts, Xander was able to rush directly at the bandits.
He heard several shouts of “What the fuck is that thing!” amongst the archers, as he careened towards the still pinned bandits. This time, though they had noticed him, and did their best to use the trees to keep him from being able to simply trample over them. One of them misjudged his use of cover and, while he shielded himself from Xander’s charge, he opened himself to an arrow in the neck from Frazay, dropping the man to the ground, lifeless. Xander dropped to the ground onto his own feet, his charge defeated, and unfurled the rest of his mechanical limbs, raising all eight of them menacingly as he faced the bandits, bone shield raised, covering the rictus grin of his skull shaped helm. The two bandits began to circle him, doing their best to ensure that they kept a tree between them and Frazay’s location at any given moment.
For her part, Frazay simply swapped her fire to the archers that were firing upon Atrax, striking another, downing the man. From her position, she was unable to fire upon the wild haired leader, who was screaming curses at Atrax as he flung bolt after bolt of fire.
What neither Atrax, the screaming fire mage, nor the remaining archers noticed was the form of an absolutely massive panther stalking closer to their turned backs as they focused on the two-legged mercenaries that were assaulting them. As the loravian panther crept withing pounding distance, she immediately pounced upon the enemy mage, crushing the man underneath her paws as she ripped his head clean from his shoulders with a crushing bite. The two remaining archers screamed in fear as the cat suddenly appeared in their line of sight, mauling their leader to death in an instant, and tried to scramble away from the cat. They were far too slow, though. One was incinerated by Atrax, no longer held in check by an enemy mage, while Freyja pounced from the corpse of the mage onto the other archer, knocking him face first onto the ground as she severed his spine with a bite to the back of the neck.
Back in forest, Xander was still contending with the two bandits, who were now once again having to deal with arrows flying towards them any time they moved from one piece of cover to the other. Xander moved slowly towards the nearest man, mentally commanding his automaton to defend him. As he drew closer, the bandit sprinted at him, making a wild slash at his torso. Xander felt [Weapons of War] guiding his instinct and raised his shield to catch the blow. However, he felt no blow against the shield. Instead, both he and the bandit were greeted with a flash of light, fire, and sound, as the bandit’s arm was wrenched backwards way from his shield by a small explosion. Xander had forgotten that he’d cast [Reactive Armor] all those days ago, and was now seeing the results of the spell. He capitalized on the man’s surprise and swung his mace at the man, who raised his arm reflexively to try and mitigate the blow. The mace impacted the man’s raised left arm, and its runes activated, increasing the momentum and force of the blow, as it continued towards the bandit’s ribs, crushing both them and the arm. The bandit began wheezing out a scream as he dropped to the ground, and Xander could already see the effect of his corrosion array eating through the man’s clothes and then into the skin.
His attention was torn from the morbid sight as he felt an impact coming from one of his automaton’s limbs, jostling him slightly. He turned to face the other bandit, who had snuck around to Xander’s back while he was distracted by the now downed marauder, who was gurling in pain and coughing up bloody foam. The sneak attacking bandit seemed shocked that he’d been blocked by one of the shield-bearing arms of Xander’s backpack, as Xander rounded on him.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
First and foremost, Xander resolved to cast [Reactive Armor] on himself again. As the glow of the skill surrounded him, he began a flurry of stabbing blows at the man with his spider legs. The bandit dodged the first, second, and even the third strike from Xander’s four pointed limbs, but the fourth struck him in the shoulder, skewering the man. Xander used the strength of the metal limbs to hoist the now screaming man into the air, whereupon his remaining three spider legs impaled him in the chest, silencing the noise.
Xander looked around him, dropping the corpse to the forest floor, and saw that there was no more combat, and heard no more yells, or screams. The bandit with the crushed ribcage had expired, and so there were no noises near him at all. He saw Graffus jogging towards him, having eliminated the two bandits he’d been fighting, though he had a slight limp to the run.
The other mercenaries were converging on his position as well, and he could feel Freyja coming nearer through their bond. In the silence, he could hear one of the women in the bandit camp sobbing quietly.
“Is it over?” Gabrelle called out, finally, breaking the silence.
“Aye… it’s done,” Graffus said breathlessly.
“Graffus, you okay?” Xander asked, having noticed his limp.
“I’ll be alright. Made one of the most classic mistakes you can make: assuming an enemy was down without killing them. Once I crushed that bastard’s knee, I focused too hard on the other one I was fighting. He paid me back with a nasty wallop to my ankle when I turned my back. Crushed his head for that one,” Graffus growled.
“Well, have Gabrelle look at it in a minute,” Xander replied. “Glad it’s not more serious.”
Frazay came out from around her scorched tree, smiling. “Holy shit, Xander, that was wild watching to take out those bandits. You can move fast with those legs!”
Gabrelle had caught up to them at this point, and hearing Frazay’s comment, added, “And the way you killed that last bandit… Xander, you’re kind of scary, has anyone ever told you that?”
Xander shook his head and chuckled a little uncertainly. “No, I don’t think I’ve ever been called scary before, actually.”
Atrax and Freyja finished making their way to the party as well, the cat radiating pride as Atrax complemented her on her ambush.
“Did you guys see how Freyja snuck up on that mage?” he asked, enthusiastically.
“I did,” replied Graffus. “He was there one moment, and on the ground headless the next. Can’t say I’d ever fancy a bout with a cat like that.”
Freyja rubbed her still bloody muzzle on Graffus’s shoulder affectionately, leaving a new smear on his armor.
“Blugh,” Graffus said, backing away from the bloodied cat.
“We should sweep their camp now, and check on their… victims,” Xander said solemnly.
Frazay nodded. “Maybe hold Freyja back, they don’t need any more frightening right now. Poor sods.”
Xander agreed, and the five of them began walking towards camp, ensuring each of the ten marauders they passed were dead, and there were no counter attacks waiting for them behind upturned tables or behind tents. The sobbing of one of the women could still be heard, and they used that to home in on the location of the woman, which was a tent as far from the fighting as possible. Frazay held up her hand, motioning for the rest of the group to stop, as she neared the tent alone. Carefully, she used one end of her bow to pull the flap of the tent back, revealing three terrified women huddled together. They were wrapped in small blankets, to cover themselves as much as possible. All three looked to have been crying. They looked fearfully at the mercenaries outside of their tent.
“Please… don’t hurt us…” The closest of the women said, through muffled sobs. “We, we aren’t bandits, please.”
“Hey now, no one’s going to hurt you anymore,” Frazay said, soothingly. “We saw how they were treating you. We know you’re not bandits. We’re with the Mercenary’s Guild, we came from Anlet.”
The women broke into more sobs upon hearing this, though these seemed to be less of fear and more of gratitude and joy that they were no longer going to be subjected to the ungentle attentions of a band of roving marauders.
Xander turned the sheets as well as some other fabrics he found in and amongst the other tents into simple clothes for the women to wear, as they had none of their own left to them. Speaking with them, once they finally calmed down from the fear of the slaughter of the bandits, and then the joy of realizing they were being freed, it came out that they’d been there varying lengths. One had even been from the caravan that their client’s sword had been coming in on.
“I remember that sword, the leader, they all called him ‘Firebrand,’ claimed it for himself, said it was too nice for any of the other bandits to handle. They didn’t like that… but they also didn’t want to get burned.”
The group searched around the camp, looking for anything else of interest. They found some coin, which was liberated from the bandit’s stores, though nothing else was of any particular interest to the already well-equipped mercenaries. One of the women took a sword from a pile of discarded weapons, belting it around her waist, but other than that, most of them had little interest in the remains of the loot from various trading caravans.
Xander, however, began rendering down all the metals he could find into ingots, especially any gold or silver ornamentation he could find. This would give him a source of inlay materials that wouldn’t be tied to being in proximity to him. He also formed various weapons and armor into a steel ingot or two and stored them and some of the choicer cuts of cloth and leather in his inventory. It would be handy to have in case he needed to create anything for his teammates.
The bodies of the bandits were left where they fell, none of the mercenaries feeling that they deserved any kind of a burial. Upon a closer inspection, the now headless leader of the group did indeed have an ornate sword strapped to his waist. Fortunately, it had survived Freyja’s attack. It was quickly removed from the corpse, and stowed in Xander’s inventory for safe keeping. Xander had given the sword a once over before stowing it, and seen no runes, leading him to believe it was enchanted in some other way that he was unfamiliar with. He was hesitant to start swinging it around to see what it might do, since he had no knowledge of the possible enchantments, and he didn’t want to hurt anyone or damage the blade by accident somehow.
Once Xander created some leather boots for the women they’d rescued, they began leading them back to the horses, where they would camp for the remainder of the night. As they neared the remains of the ambushed caravan, they skirted around it, to prevent any more trauma to the victims from having to see even more bodies and corpses, especially considering it would be reminiscent of the ambush upon their own groups.
The next morning, they began walking back to Anlet. Xander had opted to allow the woman with the sword, who introduced herself as Teri, short for Terianna, to ride Freyja. She had been the least nervous around the cat of the three women, and had even been brave enough to pet her and thank her for her part in the fight. The other two women were riding on Graffus’s and Atrax’s horses. The mercenaries felt it was right to let the rescued women ride instead of having to walk, and to be frank, they would have slowed them down without the horses, given their battered and malnourished states. Xander continued practicing his spider walk, giving his legs a break every now and then, not that he really needed to with [Eternal March] keeping him from getting particularly tired. The other mercenaries were similarly able to walk all day without much trouble.
They stopped early on their first day of travel, and Xander used [Improved Creation] and [Improved Manipulation] to create a shower once again, inscribing it with fire runes for hot water, mostly for the three women’s benefit, though he’d definitely be taking one of his own once they’d finished. His four companions were also looking forward to being able to clean themselves from the grime they’d accumulated during combat and travel.
With their slower pace, it took them ten days to return to Anlet. All three of the women had been originally traveling there. Two of them were hoping to link up with any remains of their caravans, or at least with the same trading company, and the third had family in the city that she’d been intending to stay with. The first thing that was done was to swing by a guard station that was near the entrance of the city, to relay what had happened with the bandits, and for the three women to give their statements. A small reward was paid out for their elimination of the bandits before the city itself had to deal with it, as the guard had become aware of the issue from the multiple survivors of caravans that had come through, but had yet to muster to forces required to hunt down and eliminate the bandits.
Each of the three victims were personally delivered by the mercs to their final destination, with some coin in their pockets from the reward from the city guard. It had been small compared to the payment they’d be receiving for bringing the sword back, and none of them felt comfortable leaving the women completely destitute. The first woman to be dropped off was the one who had been visiting family, and the reunion was tearful and full of thanks towards the mercenaries. The other two women, one of which was Teri, had more subdued and professional welcomes, as they were rejoined with their original companies, but not their caravans, who had already moved on. The two women took the time to sincerely thank the mercenaries before they left, though. Xander hoped they’d all be okay. He knew that back on Earth, an incident like this would take years of therapy to even begin to undo the damage. But this world was crueler in some ways, and so people were more hardened in general compared to Earth. But he knew there would be lingering damage. He hoped that [Therapist] was a class out there somewhere.