Cadoc seemed to already have an idea of what was going to happen - although I had thought the same thing myself when I used my new magic, and had been mistaken.
He approached the corpse of the insectoid monster and, after only looking at it for a moment, laid his hand over its side, over a gap between two seams of exoskeleton that I either hadn’t noticed before, or simply wasn’t there until the creature had died. Maybe its body was unstable in some way, unable to keep itself together for even moments after death without cracking. Cadoc’s hand didn’t quite touch the corpse, leaving a couple inches of air in between.
“What do you think it will be?” Naomi asked in a half-whisper - we had all grown quiet after hearing that Cadoc had reached the Second Ring.
“Anything would be better than summoning sticks,” I said, momentarily forgetting my disdain for the person I was talking to.
Cadoc didn’t appear to hear us. Although he was grinning slightly, he looked surprisingly pensive. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, nothing happened.
Then, appearing from nowhere, was a stick. It slid slowly out of some invisible point, and the only thing that looked different about it compared to Cadoc’s existing magic was that the stick was pointed, sharpened like a spear. It quickly reached the surface of the bug body, failed to even scratch it, and then slid along the corpse as Cadoc slightly moved his hand.
“Great,” I said. “We’ve gone from sticks to pointy sticks. I guess he absorbed something having to do with the monster’s stinger that it shot out. At least we’ll save time on sharpening.”
“Bear with me a moment, friends,” Cadoc responded. “I am still discovering how it works.”
While disappointing, I couldn’t say I wasn’t a little happy about having stronger magic than Cadoc. Power was rewarding in a way I’d never realized back on Earth - never had the chance to, naturally. Though I could never imagine him turning on me, something primal in me enjoyed knowing that I could burn up his sticks in a flash if I needed to. And then there was Naomi, with her slave collar. In theory she could slice me in half, but in practice, I had defeated her. If I focused only on the power - and not the guilt, or even the debt - then I was really becoming quite pleased with my position. The main exception was Amaia, both because her poisoning put a damper on my mood, and also because she could probably still beat me in single combat - although if I didn’t use anything metal, who could say. She had too many tricks up her sleeves, perhaps literally - I had seen how quickly her arm had moved in that fight, and was suspicious.
Before I could think more on the topic, Cadoc had summoned another pointy stick.
This one, again, began to appear from a point of empty space a little in front of his hand. This time, however, the point shot out like an arrow from a drawn bow, and the sharpened point pierced the corpse’s side. In the space of a second, a stick about the length of Cadoc’s arm had speared itself into the corpse and out the other side, newly-coated in strangely-colored blood.
“Oh shit,” I said. Naomi cheered.
“Wow,” she said. “Like, wow. Does it work on anything? Could you spear a tree?”
Cadoc happily obliged her curiosity. Smiling, he walked over to a young tree, trunk not much wider than the torso of a child. He put his hand to its side.
He kept it there for awhile, but his eyebrows knitted together and it looked almost like he was beginning to sweat. I wondered if he was able to charge the magic, and perhaps the first try had been so weak because he hadn’t.
The stick launched out - and seemed to get stuck. Not in the tree, but in the air. The tip appeared, shot forward, hit the tree, discovered it could not pierce it, and then the stick simply stopped appearing - because you couldn’t see where the spear was coming from, it looked like it grew a couple of inches, then simply stopped. Then it fell to the ground, a stubby wooden point.
“Guess not,” Amaia said.
“Still,” I said, “We don’t fight many enemies made of wood. If it can pierce the bug thing, then it can pierce skin, and that’s a day-wrecker for anyone on the wrong end of that pointy stick.”
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As if to reassure himself, Cadoc walked back over to the corpse and sent another spear rocketing through it. Sure enough, it pierced and skewered it, running clear in one side and out the other.
“It’s perfect,” Cadoc said. “Any combatant within range will find a sword in their side and a spear through their neck.”
Range. The word hit me. “Can you shoot it?” I asked, remembering my lament that we didn’t have enough ranged attacks. Cadoc shrugged.
“Oh!” Naomi said excitedly. “I hope he can.”
“What are you so excited about?” I asked. “You’re now officially the weakest one here.”
“Weakest?” she answered indignantly. “And, like, how did you make that calculation? I could still cut you in half, y’know.”
“First of all, you keep making that threat, and yet here we are, collar still on, me still in control. Second of all, you’re the only one still in the First Ring.”
She didn’t answer.
This time, Cadoc stood planted in place, his frame tilted slightly backwards, his hand raised at something like a forty-five degree angle.
The stick launched. I hadn’t expected much - at best, a range similar to if it had been thrown. Instead, the simple spear shot out like a ballista, and I traced its arc through the sky until I lost it somewhere towards the outline of Coernet in the distance.
“Woah woah, wait up-“ but Naomi interupted me. She was practically jumping up and down.
“Do it again!” she yelled. “This is perfect. Maybe I’ve finally found it.”
Cadoc launched another two spears in quick succession, and even at such a pace they were launched impressively far.
“Stop!” I yelled over Naomi’s cheering. “Look at where you’re shooting. Some poor fucker in town is going to get impaled from the sky.”
“I don’t believe it’s shooting that far, Miles,” he answered. “But still, you are right. Let us not risk it. Besides, while the coward may be impressed, she fights at a distance because she is scared of combat. I don’t believe I’ll find much use for shooting.”
“Well let’s not get too hasty here,” I said. “Shooting at that kind of range is incredibly useful. We need something like that. As a team.”
Naomi was muttering under her breath. “Some team,” she said, mood suddenly soured. “The coward, he called me. You’re allowed to be friendly, y’know. Especially when someone’s giving you compliments.”
Cadoc ignored her and spoke to me. “You were the one who just said it was too dangerous to civilians, friend.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “But we could adjust that, I’m sure. Shoot it at slightly less range, and not aim it towards inhabited towns. But you’re probably right anyway. The chances of it actually hitting someone are practically-“
“Stop!” A voice cried out from the distance. It was coming from the direction of Coernet.
Within moments a small troop of armed men in near-identical outfits were upon us, each armed with weapons like spears but with long blades on the ends instead of points. They were dressed in a metal armor that shined in the sunlight like it was recently greased.
“Zero,” I finished.
Great. Cadoc actually impaled someone, and now the police are here. What’s worse, he’ll probably offer to kill himself as a form of restitution. Just when he was becoming useful.
The guards held their weapons out towards us, and I debated whether or not we were about to murder some guards. I’d almost done it before, way back - or at least I’d threatened to, revolver in hand.
But before I drew my drows, the guards visibly relaxed. They were looking at the dead bug.
A man, slightly taller than his compatriots, stepped forwards. He wore a helmet shaped vaguely like the beaked visage of an eagle. The other guards wore helmets as well, but theirs were less decorated. The man lifted up his pointed visor, revealing the same pale complexion we’d seen in Harfin.
“We heard reports of Lexpajal activity,” he said. His voice was surprisingly high - not quite like a woman’s but more like a child’s. “It seems they were truthful. You have slain it, or only found it.”
“Slain it,” Cadoc said.
The man nodded. “You have quite the little party here, then.” He looked at us all one by one. We met eyes for a moment, but they may as well have been two hunks of lifeless amber. “We could use the likes of you in the garrison.”
“We’re travelers,” I said. “We’re not looking to settle down. We were on our way to Coernet.”
He nodded. “That, at least, is something. If we are attacked while you remain in the town, perhaps I can convince you to join a sortie. Come. We will lead you to town.”
He turned without waiting for our consent, and I wondered whether we were being offered an escort or being forced to come with. Amaia shrugged at me, and Cadoc and Naomi made no protest. I returned the shrug, and we followed behind the guards.
There were five of them, and their armor made surprisingly little noise as they marched. Maybe it was because of the oil, or grease, or whatever. I’d only been in a world that used armor at all for a short time, so I was still largely unfamiliar with the finer points.
The sun was already beginning to set, and the leader of the guards - of the whole “garrison,” perhaps - commented on this as we walked, not turning back to so much as glance at us as he spoke. “You are lucky to have come before nightfall. One Lexpajal would not have been all you found.”
“We know,” I answered. “We’ve met worse in the woods already.”
“And yet you live,” the guard answered. “I will ask you to join the garrison many times while you are here. I am warning you of this now.”
“I will say no just as many times,” I said. Then I paused, and said, “Unless the pay is amazing, that is.”
“Ha! Yes, well, that could be discussed. What is your business in Coernet, anyway?”
“We’re looking for-“ but before I could finish the sentence, an elbow was jammed into my side. Naomi’s. It was obvious enough what she didn’t want me saying. I wasn’t planning on it anyway, but almost did just to spite her. Ultimately, I decided against it - why give these strangers more information that they needed?
“One of us has been poisoned,” I said. “We were told we could find a cure here.”
The guards stopped at the word poisoned, and I finished my sentence only out of momentum, trailing off towards the end. They turned to face us, hands once again on their weapons.
“Which one?” the leader asked, his voice growing serious again.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you mean to do?” I asked. “I feel like I am being threatened.”
“Perhaps you are,” the leader said. “If you would sneak one about to turn into our walls. If they are within the limits, we will do them no harm, only bring them to a healer. But we cannot suffer a monster to live.”
“A monster?” I asked, but Cadoc had already drawn his sword.
“Then we are all monsters,” Cadoc said. “And you will die fighting us.”
Amaia, though looking quite confused, drew her sword as well. I followed suit, sighing.
“Then you are indeed enemies. You would endanger us all to save yourselves.” The man shook his head, and then replaced his visor. “You hid yourself well, even killed that Lexpajal to gain our trust. But your lips were too loose, and now you will die.”