I immediately had my sword in hand, while he was hurriedly fitting his shield back onto his left arm. He pulled his straight sword out of its sheath and charged towards the incoming Red Runners. I followed closely behind, letting his shield and armour act as a bulwark against the two archers in the rear of the seven dagger-and-or-sword-wielding bandits. The first arrow tip broke against Jakob’s reinforced kite shield, splinters shooting every which direction. The second arrow whiffed completely, and before they could restring more arrows, we’d reached the bandits at the fore of their group. Aside from the archers, all of the Bandits were the slate-grey monstrous kind.
The bowmen in the back retreated deeper into the blazing street, no longer confident enough in their skill to avoid their mates, but still seeming ready to pelt us with arrows if we came into their line-of-sight.
Like a spectre, I shot out from behind Jakob’s chainmail visage and scythed my blade through the three attackers in front, spilling open their guts and vile blood, and even cutting one cleanly in half. The sharpness of my blade left the cuts clean and straight as if performed by a surgeon’s scalpel.[1] I spun, returning my blade to its scabbard just before letting it loose again, the Quick Draw slicing apart the two Red Runners unlucky enough to be next in line.
I fell back, and Jakob followed me up so perfectly that one might think we’d practiced this move together. With his shield he broke the nose of one, likely shattering a few teeth as well, and used the blade in his other hand to first deflect a rabid swing and then stab the other, before returning to the broken-faced bandit with a deadly jab up under his ribcage.
With panicked haste, the two archers ran even further into the long alleyway and we quickly gave chase. Further down the street, one tripped over a broken wooden pillar and I ended him with a clean stab through the back before he had a chance to recover.
We made it deeper-and-deeper into the furnace of burning buildings as we chased down the last archer, who by now had cast aside his bow and gone into full sprint. A wispy orb glowed above where the bow fell to the ground, but I didn’t pick it up.
The Red Runners seemed quite easy to rout, except for the corrupted ones, who were just ravenous and too single-minded in their bloodthirst to consider retreat. But what did I expect? Bandits were hardly paragons of courage and bravery.
At some point, the fires started calming, the houses around us reduced to smouldering, charred husks. The end of the street was blocked by something trapped in the narrow street between the buildings. It could have been a wagon, but it too had been reduced to blackened sticks and warped metal. The bowman who’d escaped us was busy climbing up the side of a house that’d collapsed and become a makeshift ramp. I almost followed him up and over, but then a voice rumbled from behind the rooftops, its cadence eerily familiar.
“To catch dangerous prey, a hunter needs his bait, and he needs his trap.” Backlit by fires further beyond, Red Rian came to the top of the house-turned-ramp, and the rooftops of all the charred buildings now had two archers each, all with their arrows trained on us. We had entered what could only be described as death trench. It was a formidable trap to be sure, and proof of its effectiveness lay near the burnt-out wagon. I hadn’t noticed them at first, as they too had become fire-blackened ash, but in each of them were a good dozen arrows. Two over-eager players who had underestimated what they were jumping into, now dead and returned to the green rolling hills, their lives here forgotten. Near each hovered a wisp, but I didn’t let them draw my attention.
“Well, now we know where the two others went,” I said. I didn’t feel anything in that moment, since I knew we might very well share their fate the second Red Rian let the arrows fly.
“This is all wrong,” Jakob mumbled. He was terrified. “You did something, Raven. It was supposed to just be Rian by himself, none of this. Players never die to the Bandits here. Never.”
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“An alternate boss fight: isn’t that what you’d call this?” Clearly the way I’d completed the Hideout had triggered this. But I mean, any man who loses an arm, and lives, is bound to have a score to settle.
He swallowed hard. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Fuck. Let’s kill this bastard. We’re not dying here.”
Jakob nodded nervously. I didn’t blame him. The odds were bad, and unless we found a way to deal with this, we’d end up charred pincushions like the couple by the wagon. “I’ll guard your back, you guard mine.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Aww, I prefer it when they run,” Red Rian said, with mock sadness in his voice. “Kill ‘em boys!” Surprisingly obedient for a gang of killers, the archers all at once let loose their strings, sharpened ends racing to be the first to settle themselves in our tender, fleshy bits. I distantly noted that all the archers were uncorrupted, as though those overtaken by that vile blood were not trusted to hold a bow steady.
More by instinct and learnt muscle memory, I let a Quick Draw fly, and the half-moon I drew in the air cut the shafts of several arrows in two, the rest flying wide or landing too short to do any damage. Behind me, I heard Jakob yelp as one arrow pierced his thigh, and another skidded off his shield at such an angle that it nicked him across the side of the head. The rest however, firmly planted themselves in his shield.
“Go!” I yelled with a nod of my head, and he immediately understood what I meant. I ran up the ramp, where archers were frantically trying to readjust their aim and draw new arrows. My blade met Red Rian’s dagger, chipping a bit off its edge, while my obsidian glass remained true and strong. I kicked him in the chest, which sent him sprawling into the street beyond, where houses still burned. I made short work of the archers on the adjacent rooftops, as the fools had put all their faith in the bows, which at close range left them defenceless.
In the street behind me, Jakob had picked up the discarded bow, and was now laying into the bowmen on the rooftops opposite me with deadly precision. In a past life, he had likely been good with a bow, as I saw no nervousness in his eyes, only the practiced calm of a killer. I was sure I looked exactly the same when I fought, but it was still disturbing to watch, so I turned my attention back to Red Rian, who was struggling to get to his feet in the street beyond. It was clear that in the day since I’d taken his arm, he had yet to adjust to the upset balance and learnt how to compensate, as he rolled on his back like a turtle on its shell. I had no qualms about killing him in this disabled state, since he’d do the same to me in a heartbeat, although he was designed to behave this way, whereas I’d been trained into it.
“There is no honour in fighting. Only the winner is righteous. The dead are just dead.” Like some mantra these thoughts crossed my mind. Where had I heard them before?
I leapt from the perch, my boots producing a thump as I landed before him, my katana eagerly waiting in its sheath.
In one fluid movement he suddenly sprang to his feet and, in the next, hammered his blade, his Fang, into his stomach. Vile black-purple blood vomited forth in thick waves. From the stump I’d given him the day before, blood also started dripping, as though the Blooddrinker trait on his dagger had reignited the barely-healed wound. Then, moments later, his jittery-and-dancing shadow, cast by the multitude fires surrounding us, surged into his feet and ran up along the length of his body.
Sensing he was about to empower himself somehow, I moved forward like a predator bird seizing a vulnerable prey, but just as he came within my katana’s reach, darkness exploded from him and I was punched back.
With the sound of cracking bones and unfolding flesh, the shadow on his body moved onto the shoulder of his clipped arm, before surging into his body and emerging from the stump end in a long, disturbing arm of pure darkness. The hand at its end easily touched the ground, its length nearly double that of his other one, and upon its hand were seven long, taloned fingers. Though I’d severed his arm just below the elbow, another elbow had been added to his shadowy limb, giving it a disturbing range of motion, akin to the limbs seen on some insects. The sight gave me pause. I hadn’t expected something of this nature from this World, but clearly there was a twisted sort of magic at play here.
Consumed by his own bloodlust and grievous wound, the humanity, whatever tiny shreds had remained, disappeared from Red Rian. He was still tightly gripping the dagger in his healthy hand, but when he leapt for me, it was this new shadowy limb that guided him.
I fell back as the talons dug into the cobblestones, carving grooves in them with disturbing ease. Immediately seeing my new position, the double-jointed arm pivoted and spun, and I caught two boots to my chest, sending me tumbling backwards.
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[1] Except, you know, bigger.