I had tried to do the same thing with Tom, years before. Unable to figure out the secret to his success, I decided that it might just be his blood. So, if I could somehow get some of his blood…

The point is, when I saw Cadoc draw the blade across his palm, leaving a thin red line behind, droplets of blood springing forth immediately, I knew what he wanted before he opened his mouth.

“Here,” he said, taking the knife by the blade and offering it to me. “We will swear on our blood. My immediate family may be cowards, but our blood cannot be so easily defiled after decades of honor.”

I sighed. My internal special-person detector wasn’t calibrated for this dimension yet - everyone seems special when they can do magic - but Cadoc was either special, or special, if you catch my drift. I feel like I’ve already made a mistake, taking this guy with me. And what if he has fantasy AIDS?

Cadoc looked at me expectantly. How big of an insult is it to refuse?

“We don’t have this custom where I come from,” I said, which was only a little bit of a lie. Most people have heard of a “blood brothers” sort of pact, but I didn’t think it was common, exactly. “What are you asking?”

Cadoc smiled. “Ah, what a fool I am,” he said. He withdrew his hand. “You must truly come from far away. You will have to tell me of your country, some day. But I will not offer a blood oath to someone who does not understand it. Let us simply shake hands, then. That will be bond enough.”

Good enough for me, I thought. We shook on it, my hand getting a palmful of blood in the exchange. He didn’t flinch.

Tom had refused as well, back on Earth. Not directly, but in a sort of roundabout way. Like “yeah, sure, let’s do that sometime,” but I could tell he didn’t want to, and I was afraid to push the issue.

Instead, I’d gotten creative. You’d be surprised just how bribeable the average nurse - or even doctor - is. You’d think that, because they make so much money, they would be somewhat immune to that sort of offer. But you have to remember that their job is hell, and usually the only reason they put up with it is because of the money. So they’re very money-motivated people, by and large, and for the right price, could even be persuaded to, for instance, take some extra blood in a patient’s next blood screening, and perhaps even misplace said blood. For instance. Using loan money for such a bribe is unusual, maybe, but worth it.

In case it’s important to you, I should probably mention that drinking the blood of someone special like a misanthropic vampire does not, in fact, make you special. Maybe it gives you a bit of a stomach ache - and apparently, a risk of haemochromatosis, which is, luckily, rare - but it doesn’t make you special. Although, you can always use a syringe to try and inject the last few drops into your veins. That doesn’t work either, but feels right.

“Alright,” Cadoc said, bandaging his self-inflicted wound. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine, honestly.” It was true. I could feel that my head had an awfully tender bruise in one spot, but other than that, I felt perfectly normal. If the blow knocked me out, shouldn’t I be more injured? Or am I an absolute dweeb and I just fainted at the first hit of a fight?

“Good. Get ready.”

Just then, Anwyl returned, carrying a pail of water. “I can’t believe you made your poor old mother go and fetch the water,” she said, immediately after entering. It sounded as if she had been stewing over that the entire time she was gone. Then why did she go? Couldn’t she have just said no?

She stopped, staring at Cadoc’s bandaged hand. Then she let out a shriek that shook the tent.

“What are you doing?! Are you insane?” She seemed hysterical.

Cadoc stood, now towering over Anwyl. “I am leaving, mother. I cannot live another day in slavery. Our guest has agreed to take me with him.”

She turned to me, eyes aflame with rage. “How dare you. After we helped you. After we saved your life. This is how you repay us? By taking our son away? We should have left you to die.”

I was not expecting quite this reaction.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I didn’t mean-“ I started, but was interrupted.

“I was leaving either way,” Cadoc said. “Whether Miles had come or not. He is only a sign of divine providence blessing my choice.”

A loud fleshy noise resounded, a violent *SMACK* as Anwyl turned and slapped her son.

We were all stunned for a moment - even Anwyl, it seemed. But then she continued, as if momentum carried her forward.

“You are not going anywhere,” she said. “You are going to work, then you are coming home, right here.”

Cadoc shook his head, a pink handprint growing on his cheek, and, ignoring Anwyl, grabbed a pack from the back of the tent, from underneath a pile of blankets. He came back over to where I lay - still stunned - and offered me a hand. “Do you need help getting up?”

I took his hand automatically, still staring at the coiled viper threatening to strike again, while at the same time careful not to meet her gaze. Like a wild animal you didn’t want to anger, but also couldn’t risk turning your back to. After I was on my feet - a little unsteady, and with a bit of a headache, but not so bad - Anywl took a decisive step towards us, and slapped us both. It stung.

I looked to Cadoc for guidance. What was I supposed to do, slap his mother in front of him? Just take it? He seemed to be ignoring his mother, now, a look of disgust on his face, mixed with resolution. He motioned for me to take my own backpack, which I did. Then, he simply made to exit the room, not saying another word. I followed.

When Cadoc opened the flap of the tent, I squinted and blinked at the sudden morning brightness. I turned my head back to the interior of the tent, partially to avert my sensitive eyes.

Anwyl was staring at us, sobbing. And…

She’s a psychopath. An absolute psychopath.

“She’s got a knife,” I said. Cadoc turned, and saw for himself. She was holding a large knife, well worn, which looked like it was used for cooking.

Cadoc, who had been quite talkative before, said only one word.

“Run.”

-

Eventually we outran the knife-wielding maniac, finding ourselves panting in the shade of a massive tree, on a hill that overlooked the valley of Eraztun - though this hill too was far below the peak of the city.

I think I did the right thing, I thought to myself. Right? Cadoc’s mom is a crazy person. On one hand, I understand being distraught that your son is leaving home. I think if I had told my mom that I was dropping out of college or something, she might also have drawn a knife. It’s not like she would have actually used it. I think. But anyway, Anwyl was dangerous. And Cadoc said himself he was going to do this eventually, with or without me. So I’m not to blame, right?

Or did I just cause all of that?

“Are you okay?” I asked Cadoc, who had sat down, back against the deep-brown bark. The trunk of the tree was wide enough that we could both sit with our backs to it, and still leave room for a dozen more people to sit beside us. It reminded me of those trees in California that were so big they used to drive cars through them, though nowhere near as tall.

He shook his head. “Cowards.” He’d been saying that a lot.

That’s not exactly the word I would use. Slapping someone a foot taller than you, then chasing them through the streets with a knife - crazy, sure, but I don’t know about cowardly.

He sat for some time. I sat down as well - head throbbing as I did - and looked out over the view this spot afforded. This tree did not sit near one of the roads that led to the city, but from here you could see two of them, and still they teemed with people.

“Let us think of it no more,” he said, at length. “We have plans to discuss.”

That suited me just fine, because the more I thought about it, the more I was certain I had fucked things up, that the whole violent episode behind us was my fault. Everywhere I go, as long as I’m making my own decisions, things fall apart. Unless I find Tom soon, Cadoc will leave. There’s no doubt. Staying with me is a liability, and it won’t take him long to realize that. I’ll need to use his help while I still can.

I realized Cadoc was staring at me, so I spoke.

“Money, and power. That’s the long and short of it, right?”

Cadoc nodded. “It doesn’t get much simpler. Not easy, not easy at all - but simple.”

I wonder how much Cadoc knows about magic. If I could turn my nails into gold, or if he could teleport expensive jewelry right off of a traveler’s neck…

“What do you know about magic?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Little. I don’t even know if I have a proficiency for it, of any kind. You are a body-mage, correct?”

One very specific part of my body, I thought, but I nodded. “We do not have magic where I come from, so I’m still figuring that out. But I can turn my nails into fire. The guard didn’t seem very impressed by that, though.”

“You don’t have magic?” Cadoc gawked at me. “How- traveler- no, my apologies, Miles, what do you mean? Do you mean it is a land of weak mages?”

“It is a land of no mages.”

“How does such a land survive? How is it not destroyed by its neighbors, razed to the ground in an instant by bandits, or monsters, or by one ambitious mage?”

How do I put this so that he doesn’t catch on that I’m from another dimension? I want him to trust me, obviously.

“We use powerful weapons, like the one I tried to use on the guard yesterday. I wasn’t bluffing, that weapon could have killed the guard instantly. Not that I wanted to kill him, exactly, but… well, the guard broke it, but we have weapons like that one, except even more powerful. There’s one weapon that could destroy all of Eraztun in a moment, leaving the land unlivable and the air toxic to breath. People more or less leave us alone, since they know we have that weapon.”

“Incredible,” he said. “Though I doubt very much there is a weapon anywhere that could touch Eraztun. The wards alone would not allow it. Still, you speak of a powerful and strange nation. I have never heard such things, so it must be very, very distant from here.”

“You could walk for years, and never reach it,” I said.

“Then how did you come here?” Cadoc asked.

“It was…It was because of a magic I don’t understand.” Then I realized I had just told him we didn’t have magic, and corrected my course. “From outside our country, I guess. It brought me and my friend Tom here, stranded, without support. I don’t know where he ended up, but I woke up in the desert, not far from here.”

Cadoc laughed. “That is Cho’l territory. You are lucky you survived.”

If Cadoc is going to leave me soon - which is inevitable, as soon as he realizes how crap I am - then I shouldn’t be spending all this time talking about myself.

“What about money?” I asked. “I desperately need money. The people I owe, they are relentless. I have to send money home, and I have… something like twenty-five days left to send them part of it.”

“They would come here?”

“Maybe.” Probably not, honestly, but I’d like to go home, at some point.

“If you were powerful,” Cadoc said. “You could simply not pay.”

I shook my head. I thought of how disappointed my mother would be. “It doesn’t work that way. Not in my country.”

“It always works that way.”

A bird let out a strange cry above us. I looked up. It was like a massive raven, with wings shaped like those of a butterfly. I couldn’t tell if it was a bird or a bug.

“Well anyway, that’s the time frame I’m working with. I don’t imagine you have any ideas for our first move.”

“The first move is simple.” Cadoc replied. “We have to kill.”