Chapter 50 – Amnesty

The black-robed casters scattered to the left and right, pulling up barriers of death magic and casting soul bolts to fling at the arcanists. The red-robed mages responded in kind: constructing their own barriers, though one of the magical constructs shattered and the man was flung backwards across the dock into the water with a scream of pain.

There were more yells, screams and flashes of magic between the two sides as Trey watched them try to gain an advantage over one another, but as the man who’d been flung into the water pulled himself up with a large gaping wound in his chest - Trey’s eyes went wide. Summoning circles a little similar to his own lit up in five different spots from each of the black-robed casters, but these summoning circles had significant differences. Instead of a pentagram, symbols of skulls and designs of bones were the centerpiece of the circle with a different type of runic system than he was used to. Instead of a red light: the circles were pale blue, and from the areas of summoning stepped out three undead minions as two more continued to form. To his surprise, the necromancers were focusing the summonings as they simultaneously fought off their arcanist enemies with battle magics... it was definitely a skill he needed to work on.

Three of the summoned undead were ghoul assassins outfitted in thin leather, hoods and short-swords or daggers. Trey could tell the difference between them and zombies due to the way they moved. Zombies were stupid, while ghouls were intelligent and their motions were adjusted to dodge or deflect attacks that zombies wouldn’t do. He’d seen enough of them on the mainland to easily realize this. One of them sidestepped a bolt of arcane energy, another simply vanished with a sneak skill and the other took the attack head on and was split open as the innards of the undead assassin ruptured.

Then the next two minions finished forming, stepping out as massive bone golems - each of them quite unique with a variety of bone arms, tails, spikes. They towered over everyone else at a good twelve to fifteen feet tall each... though as they finally materialized, one of them abruptly disappeared. The master who’d summoned it had been struck full on with a thunderous crash of arcane power that blinded even Trey and the other watchers on the ship, killing the necromancer outright and sending his golem back into the nether realm from whence it had come.

“Impressive.” Atharost said as the ifrit came to stand next to Trey.

Rivia had come over to stand beside him as well, clutching her small black book to her chest and silently appraising the fighters on the beach. Three sailors aboard the ship stood by watching too, placing bets with one another and exchanging money.

Jason, Ashe, Izumi and Eeme were nowhere to be found however, and with a quick question: Trey found out that they’d just gone to sleep. Napoleon had also gone below deck to tell them what was happening and not to worry about coming up: Fights were common enough in Teretog, so it wasn’t something worth getting out of bed for unless it involved their own people.

Explosions, roars, screams and cursing continued on for the next minute as Trey and his two minions watched in silence with moderate amounts of interest. The dock that the arcanist casters had come from was decimated and two of them lay dead. The final red-robed mage was pushed back into the shallows and had used the water to keep track of the undead assassins using stealth abilities, killing two of the assassins already along with three of the necromancers. The other assassin had disappeared upon his master’s death into the nether realm.

Two more necromancers remained along with one of the bone golems now, and the huge lumbering creature was chasing the frantic arcanist around in the shallow waters as it slammed its huge spiked limbs into the arcane shields the enemy mage would throw up in-between firing off arcane spells. The remaining necromancers, a hooded man and a pale gaunt woman, just laughed as they poured death mana into the large golem to regenerate its missing health while it played cat and mouse.

Trey and Atharost were making bets on how long the arcanist would last as they were suddenly interrupted with another scream from their right. Farther back and from one of the dirt roads leading from the docks into the city, one of the dark skinned Amazonian women freed from the galley just earlier that day was running towards their ship. The pirate clothes she’d been given were ripped and bloodied, and she had a long gash along one shoulder as she sprinted barefoot towards their dock.

Trey couldn’t help but wonder where her shoes had gone.

Once she’d seen the ship however, she began to scream at the top of her lungs and wave her arms around to get their attention.

“HELP ME! PLEASE!” the running woman shrieked with an absolutely panicked expression in the dim light of the bypassing lanterns. In her panic she tripped and sprawled out along the ground, drawing attention to her from not only Trey and Atharost - but also some of the others who’d been watching the battle between magic users under the starlight.

Trey raised an eyebrow, picking up the pipe he’d been smoking earlier and had another puff as he watched the woman start to get up. Then he saw why she was so panicked.

Out around the corner of one of the larger buildings down the road from the dock, three burly men were rapidly closing on her. One of them was bearded and obviously drunk while laughing hysterically, and the other two clean-shaven muscular jarhead-types. They were only thirty yards away and one of them let out a shout when they saw her.

Atharost watched with an unconcerned hum as she continued her sprint off the dirt road, onto the sands of the beach and towards their dock. “Is she not one of the slaves we freed earlier?”

Trey nodded, lazily laying down the pipe and propping his chin in his hands to watch the final moments of the battle between bone golem and arcanist. The bone golem had finally gotten a hold on the man. Perhaps the arcanist had run out of mana, or perhaps he’d just been stunned with that last strike of the huge oddly shaped undead creature, but it was over. The screaming red-robed caster was locked in a vice-grip between huge fingers created from bones much larger than should be found in hands, and was being crushed. A second later amidst the screams and the crunch of the man’s spine could be heard from even where Trey stood, blood came up in a rush to belch out of the man’s mouth.

“AMNESTY! PLEASE I SEEK AMNESTY!”

Trey’s head casually swiveled right again. The darker-skinned woman had regained some distance from her pursuers after picking herself up from tripping. She was taller than the average woman and had some muscle definition, so it didn’t surprise Trey that she was relatively fast. It was apparent though that she was out of breath as she reached the dock and continued sprinting down it towards the spot where she saw Trey and the others observing her.

One of the two sailors who’d been put on watch duty leaned over the railing and promptly shouted back at her with an irritated scowl. “We told you lot that you were on your own after ya left! You aint gona be bringin no trouble to us and ours, ya hear!? Begone and find someone else to deal with your problems!”

Trey chuckled at the gruff man’s words. As brutal as it seemed, the man wasn’t wrong for telling her to get lost. Things could easily spiral out of control and get you killed here if you were to stick up for every innocent person you saw wronged in Teretog, so you could only watch out for yourself and those close to you. This city of vermin was an all-you-can-eat fiesta for anyone wanting to prey on those weaker than themselves, but also ran the risk of being victims on a day-by-day basis depending on who they ran into.

Sithis was not so amused, and the symbiote let out an internal sigh. ‘They never learn. Despite your warnings and her previous situation, she could expect something like this to happen. Your species has a long way to go on the intelligence scale.’

Trey just rolled his eyes at his good friend’s jab. Sithis was ever the critic, but he was almost never wrong about the things he said either.

“PLEASE! PLEASE THEY KILLED THE OTHERS FOR BODY PARTS!” Now that she was closer, Trey saw glistening tears streaming down the woman’s face. She looked like some of the latina women he knew back home, with long braided black hair and appeared to be in her late 30’s or early 40’s. She stopped beneath them on the dock and began to grovel, begging that they let her onboard and sobbing uncontrollably.

The sailor just scowled even more as her pursuers closed in. “I don’t know nothing about people wantin body parts, but I SAID you on your own now woman! Get thee hence! Begone! You aint startin no trouble for us after we already gave ya coin and freedom!”

The three men pursuing her came to a sudden halt at the docks, looking between the woman they were pursuing and the people looking overboard from the ship. The drunk bearded man was the first to step onto the wooden planks, yanking out a short sword from his scabbard and pulling at the torn leather tunic he wore as the woman on the dock began to outwardly tremble.

“Is this bitch yours!?” the bearded man called out, spitting and hitting his own thick leather boot as the wood creaked underneath his weight. He arrogantly strode forward, testing how those on the galley would react as he advanced. To add to his growing confidence, no one said anything or made an effort to stop him.

The sobbing woman began to scream and scrambled back across the creaking wooden planks. “YOU EVIL BASTARD! GET AWAY FROM ME!”

She spit back at him, still trembling and glared up at the man towering over her.

The man just laughed, pausing briefly to give Trey, Rivia and Atharost a quiet, appraising look. Their demonic features weren’t lost on him, and even in his drunken state he made an effort to curb his obnoxiousness upon seeing the telltale signs. Demons weren’t to be fucked with, he’d seen what warlocks and summoners could do in the Deadlands and didn’t want to be on the receiving end of their anger.

The bearded man bowed apologetically to the viewers on the ship. “I’ll get this wench out of your way, sorry to bother you all on such a fine night.”

Trey watched as the man slammed his leather boot into the woman’s chest, flooring her and knocking her breath away with a forced exhale. The man took his shortsword out and without a second thought he sunk it deep into the woman’s gut, causing her eyes to go wide in horror and screaming with what little breath she had left. Her face twisted into a painful plea for mercy mixed with utter disbelief.

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The two comrades who’d followed the first man laughed to one another and began walking down the docks as well, listening to the tortured and horrified sobs of their victim who struggled vainly to push the sword out of her innards. The weapon had the man’s weight on it though, and the bearded attacker standing over her just twisted the weapon maliciously to cause her even more pain. Blood poured from the wound and began to run down onto the dock beneath her, dripping into the waters underneath.

The screaming and laughing was all giving Trey a headache, and it left a bad taste in his mouth to watch what was going on. He didn’t mind killing people, hell he’d been doing it all the time recently. It was, however, a targeted set or category that people fell into whenever he did select them for death. If they deserved it, he had no second thoughts. He even enjoyed it, he’d admit that openly now. He enjoyed cutting people open and eating their corpses, with Sithis and his minions often prodding him on to be even more vile than he would be otherwise... but this woman likely hadn’t done anything to deserve what was happening to her. He thought about what his mom would say if she was here, how horrified she’d be, and he facepalmed at the guilt he was feeling. He couldn’t afford to get involved in the affairs of others here, lest he be dragged into a feud with some other group that could get himself or someone he cared about killed. Situations like this one were beyond common here in this city and even more-so on the mainland of Ornthas.

He knew this to be true, but he also could feel the veins in his face light up with crimson energy underneath the hand covering his features. According to Sithis and Rivia, different mana types are fed off of different characteristics. For example, fire magics and miracles fed off of strong emotion in general. You could learn fire magic regardless of whether or not you were an emotional person if you still acquired the attribute, but the attribute was stronger with an emotional backbone. The celestial attribute magics and miracles fed off of perfectionism, and a person who was an actual perfectionist was not only more likely to be accepted by this magic lineage but also had their powers improved in effectiveness or raw power just by how alike they were to that lineage. Holy attributes were emphasized upon how kind someone was and it made sense that most of the Holy spells were healing or buff spells because of it. Dark mana fed off how malicious or selfish one was being, the more Trey did things to benefit himself or whenever he thought of how he wanted to seriously inflict pain upon someone – the more powerful the dark spells he cast were. When it came to his Chaos attribute... well, it fed upon rage and the desire to destroy or kill. That’s what made Chaos magic so potent in battle, which was often deemed as the most potent of offensive magics. The one simple fact that because he was starting to get angry meant the chaos energy in his soul flickered to life and ran its course across his face – brightening the already crimson irises along the pitch black backdrop of the sclera in his eyes. The crimson mana spiderwebbed across his face, connecting through various blood vessels and brightening the underside of his hand with a glow that caught the attention of the others.

But he still did not move from that spot on the ship. Despite his anger, or for a better description – ‘annoyance’ at what was going on, he didn’t move. He didn’t know who this guy’s friends were, nor did he want to cause trouble for Brae if he murdered someone while being associated with this ship.

‘Kill him.’

Sithis practically drooled at the thought of ripping this man apart, but Trey’s symbiote was to be disappointed as Trey shook his head adamantly. No, he wanted to but he wasn’t going to do it.

Trey placed his hand back on the rail and continued watching as the bearded man twisted the sword again, causing the horrified pleading shrieks to climb even higher and muttering something about taking out the woman’s heart and liver for ‘medicinal purposes,’ whatever that meant. The woman’s sobs continued, and she coughed up blood while weakly kicking and hitting her attacker with wide, terrified eyes as her struggling started to mellow out.

As chance would have it, she caught Trey’s gaze and with a pleading outstretched hand she begged him one final time in a desperate attempt at salvation. Blood dripped off her violently shaking hand, and she gasped before the words left her lips. “Please! Help me!”

Trey sadly shook his head, pitying her as she lay there tortured and struggling at death’s doorstep. “I’m sorry. I gave you a chance to stay and you didn’t take it, and I can’t go saving everyone all the time.”

The light in her eyes began to fade and her struggles were now noticeably weaker.

“Please... I’ll do anything...” The woman sputtered and coughed up blood again as the drunk bearded man slammed his foot repeatedly into her chest, breaking her ribs with an audible crunch.

Trey felt the mana surge into him again. She was alone, and she was scared. It was obvious these men were taking their time in killing her for their own enjoyment as they laughed and joked, and Trey couldn’t help but wonder what sort of parents raised kids to become men like these. They could have ended it a while ago, but they had chosen not to... likely because they were fucked up in the head.

To his right, Atharost gave him a slight nudge with an elbow. “I could use her, master. If it is acceptable.”

‘Kill him.’ Came the ever-familiar voice of his symbiote. Sithis’ prompting was more forceful this time, and Trey felt a surge of hunger course over him. He practically lurched forward with the impulse and his facial features began to morph. The mask of the demon overtook his human features in a swift transition to pitch black skin ending at the neck and long lipless teeth. Sithis didn’t hold any emotional response towards the murdering of this woman beneath them, the symbiote simply wanted to have some fun. That didn’t stop Trey from eventually giving in to Sithis’ wishes though.

“Fine.”

Trey’s body vanished and instantaneously reappeared next to the murderous bearded bastard, giving the startled man a wide set grin just before Trey’s teeth sunk into his neck and tore out his windpipe. Swallowing moments later to the astonishment and horror of his victim and the victim’s two comrades, Trey wiped the blood away and roared. The crimson light across his face bloomed and red hellfire blasted from his open mouth to incinerate the next two would-be opponents before they even drew their weapons.

“You have gained XP.”

The explosion from Trey’s hellfire blasted the beginning of the dock along with the two bodies in front of him, evaporating the waters of the shallows nearby, sending charred bits of flesh scattering along the beach and pieces of wood high up into the air. The power produced from that one attack was a little unnerving to the two remaining necromancers searching the bodies of the arcanists nearby - and they exchanged looks before commanding their bone golem to stay between them and the summoner while they continued their investigation.

As the wood, flesh and other bits of debris crashed to the ground, the smoldering crater on the beach was soon covered with seawater. Trey watched in satisfaction as his hunger continued to build, standing on the solitary island of dock that remained - he righted himself and eyed the remaining man bleeding out beneath him in a state of shock. It was the one he’d ripped the throat out of, and the one who’d stabbed the woman nearby.

A swift motion of Trey’s demon tail saw it puncture the man’s skull, ending his miserable life instantly with a satisfying crunch and a jerk of his head when the impact connected.

“You have gained XP.” The prompts from the All Spirit were very annoying at this point, but there was nothing Trey could do about it to his knowledge. Something that vexed him, truth be told.

“Dumb motherfucker.” Trey spit on the corpse, wanting oh so badly to eat it with the hunger continuing to build. He did realize that he had something more important to do though. Wrapping his tail around the shortsword still impaled in the nearly-dead woman - he flung the weapon out into the shallows with a splash.

Sighing and kneeling down, he called up to Rivia. The demoness knew what he had wanted before he’d even said her name, and the healing miracle slowly began to bring the Amazonian woman back to life. Slowly but surely, the color started coming back to the woman’s face and the wounds along her body began to sew shut. Trey’d seen many other types of healing magics and a couple miracles from others here in this vile place, so he could safely say Rivia’s healing ability was only decent. It could heal someone at a long range as long as the incantation was still being uttered, but if that prayer was disrupted the miracle would end and the healing would stop. It also gave a steady but relatively slow progression to healing, whereas many of the better healing spells he’d seen were instantly cast and worked much faster after being cast. He had known that trying to heal this woman after being so close to dying was a little bit of a stretch, but he also knew that the miracle only had a small area to work on. The primary problem was the loss of blood, so the miracle didn’t need to focus all over the woman’s body and got started right away on the area of concern.

After a couple more sputtering coughs and red flecks of blood along Trey’s shirt, the woman sat up quivering from the trauma. She was still crying, though her sobs had turned into a silent stream of tears as her lips trembled.

Trey’s features had returned to normal (well, as normal as they could be considering his eyes, horns and tail never changed), and he looked her up and down to make sure all of her wounds were healed before he signaled Rivia to stop the healing.

The sailor up above wasn’t too happy with Trey’s decision and he cursed loudly before making his opinion known. “Why’d you go and do that lad!? What in the bloody hells is ya thinking!? If any one of their buddies saw that, ya be bringing a fight to our doorstep! Ya arse!!!”

Trey gave the gruff sailor an irritated look. “If it wasn’t for me, you lot would have been dead about twelve times by now already.”

The sentry just threw up his hands, grunted, and stormed off - likely going to go inform Brae of what had happened. Trey’d be surprised though if that blast hadn’t woken Brae and the others up if they were sleeping, and if they’d been awake they’d no doubt be deckside soon enough.

Trey reached out a hand helping the woman to her feat and used spit to wipe off the blood from her face. Blinking once and crossing his arms, he snorted in annoyance as her eyes met his.

“Thank you…” the girl began before she was cut off with a dismissive wave of Trey’s hand.

“Don’t thank me yet.” Trey replied sternly. He shook his head in irritation and snorted yet again. Then he looked to the city where many eyes were set upon them. He scowled back, and their looks drifted elsewhere or faded away into darkness. “You said they wanted you for body parts?”

The woman nodded, clasping her hands together to try and settle her trembling. Blood still covered her ripped clothes despite the wounds being healed, and she looked like she’d just gone through a blender with the lack of shoes, torn blood covered sleeves and similar blood-stained holes in the shirt where the sword had pierced her stomach. She had a pretty unique looking ankle bracelet made of some kind of white, orange and red beads on a wire that caught his attention for just a couple seconds before moving on.

Trey sighed. “You said you’d do anything so that I’d save your life, correct? And that does mean ‘anything’?”

It took a while for her to create words, and she had to force herself to remain calm. The remnants of the recent trauma were still fresh in her mind. She cleared her throat, wiped away some more of the tears, and replied: “Yes… Thank you… for saving my life. My name is Juila.”

Atharost landed beside him a moment later, taking the woman in and walking around to appraise the amazonian. She had a particularly nice ass with thick thighs and he unashamedly looked her over while walking around. He wasn’t disappointed, coming back around to the front and hearing commotion on board. Then he glanced Trey’s way for approval. “Ashe had the last one.”

Trey folded his arms and watched the ramp descend when Brae and the sailor from earlier appeared at the rails. Brae didn’t seem very happy, but didn’t say anything. The scarred captain only waved Trey up and disappeared back to wherever he’d come from after getting a good look at the dock’s devastation.

With a final, long, drawn out sigh, Trey nodded towards the ramp. “Well Juila, you’re our slave now. You can call me Trey or Master. Whichever suits you, now get along. We’ll clean you up first then get you some food. You need to meet the others and you’ll be sleeping with Atharost here tonight. We usually stay at the Fost guild compound, so expect to head there in the morning.”

Atharost grinned wickedly.

The woman nodded, sniffling and placing a hand over the place where she’d been impaled. Taking one look back over her shoulder at the city, she started up the ramp with Atharost right behind her. For Trey, today had been a pretty good day all things considered. They’d acquired two new and otherwise expensive slaves, improved their relations with Brae, and acquired a ‘relic’ tier artifact.

Hopefully he wouldn’t have to listen to Jason berate him about Juila the same way he’d berated Trey and Ashe about Eeme.