Hi All.
This is the first time that I’ve hijacked the main chapter to comment.
As of the weekend, there are more thousand novels rated as being better than fate points on royal road.
To be honest, that kind of hurts.
I know lots of authors play this game better than I do by getting rating swaps and roping in friends and family. Not only am I not good, I’m actually terrible at it. There was that period right at the start where I got pissed off at how people were rating me and had the audacity to mention it. The trolls swooped in and gave me a lot of 0.5s, 1s and 1.5s in response... which was lovely.
Given historical context, I wouldn’t be surprised if this backfires.
I’m not going to ask anyone to change your personal rating system. I will ask is that if you rated in the past and you think the book is worth more now that you update your rating to reflect the current state of the book. For fairness’s sake, if you think it’s deteriorated, then you should probably downgrade at the same time.
Also, I made the mistake of checking fate points landing page and there are a number of 2 star reviews on the first page from people that read 7 and 16 chapters, respectively. Why they get real estate is a mystery? If everyone can go and either vote up some of the better reviews on the second page or downvote them, that would be great.
Finally, if Fate Points sufficiently motivates you to leave a review for the first time on Royal Road and you’re giving it a rating that implies that almost every other book on RR is better (you know anything below 4 star) then consider including your personal rating system at the top to give context. i.e.
5 stars - Best book ever
4 stars - Amazing
3 stars - good
2 stars - i’ll read it if I have too
1 star - I wish it came in physical form so I could drop it in dog shit and stamp on it.
End rant... If you can do some down and upvoting on the reviews on the front page, that would be great.
Also Traitor GIT, the second novel in my sci-fi series, just went live to day. Yay!!!
CHAPTER 195
It was definitely someone sobbing and not the innocent ‘I’ve had three digits of my right hand crushed and it hurts,’ type of crying. This was deep anguish that came from the inner soul. Tears of loss and regret.
Instantly, the last dredge of sleepiness vanished. His skill, Instant Awareness, kicked in and he was alert as he had ever been on earth.
Battle Awareness activated and with adrenaline pumping through him he slipped out of the bedroll into a crouched position. Years of practice meant that cloth used for warmth did not impede his movements as he flipped it out of the way. His feet were set firmly, and he was prepared to launch an offensive or defensive manoeuvre in any direction. His spear was a welcome presence in his hands and his eyes searched the cave for a threat.
Nothing blared out a warning by being out of place.
The pile of bodies remained untouched. The disgusting fluids the kobolds released as they rotted still pooled underneath them through Keikain’s tinkering over the last two days had drained some of it away and prevented it from spreading.
It stunk even with the spell Thor had purchased that he used religiously to reduce the impact.
Without sufficient water to flush the liquid or loose earth to bury the corpses, there was only so much they could do and magic was limited against the sheer quantity of decay that was occurring.
Tom continued his methodical sweep of the area.
Toni was crying, with both Everlyn and Clare crouched down to comfort her. The other two girls were not alarmed and didn’t have their weapons drawn.
What was happening? He wondered to himself.
“Easy there Tom.” Michael said. The healer was on his feet, walking towards him having departed a grouping of Rahmat, Harry and Thor. There was no dice game in progress, instead they held mugs and they had been having a hushed conversation.
Toni was crying. Tom’s mind kept coming back to that fact. The other women comforting her, the men excluding Keikain who was working had been near the main cave exit… getting drunk, Tom realised abruptly.
Tom’s mind froze slightly as he interpreted the various details. The hard edges, the emotions, Keikain’s deliberate isolation and Sven…
Sven was not here…
And Toni was crying.
Michael was two metres away, and Tom studied the healer’s face. The eyes that looked back were blood shot.
“Sven?” Tom said quietly. Silence greeted his question. “Where’s Sven?”
“Tom… I.” The healer stopped talking.
Thoughts and possibilities rushed inside Tom’s head. Alternatives, outcomes, timelines, cursed bloodline points they all spun within him, the earlier conversation with Sven, all of them throwing out options and fears. He shot a glance over to Keikain who appeared all too innocent.
Oh, no. Please no. the thought ripped through Tom as a potential explanation occurred to him. Only his chat with Sven yesterday and the True Dreaming visions stopped him from leaping up and confronting the earth mage, who was deliberately not looking in his direction.
Those visions, Tom told himself had been for a purpose. They had been for this instant and he would not let the warning of his Skill go to waste. He would not allow himself to over react.
Tom forced himself to look away from Keikain to Michael. He knew he was glaring unfairly at the healer, but couldn’t bring himself to stop. “What happened? Tell me”
“He ran out of time.”
There was a burst of crying from across the room, and Toni doubled over. Everlyn and Clare… both comforted the woman. Clare doing that made his blood boil further.
“He was going to go mad,” Michael continued the explanation. “He explained his dwindling points and the fact that he would get stronger when he lost control and all of us together might not be strong enough to take him down. So he sacrificed himself before that happened.”
Tom’s mind was racing. While he had his suspicions there were too many gaps. “What about our camouflage ritual? I thought none of us could leave.”
“That’s correct. But an opportunity came up while you were sleeping. Low perception, geese like birds took over the whole place briefly. It was a chance to get him out. I wanted to wake you, but Sven insisted he’d already said goodbye to you and he didn’t want you to lose the chance to gather intel that might help us survive. He was a grown man, and he made his choice, so we helped him leave during the limited window.”
Michael stopped talking for a moment. “I know we should have woken you, but it was Sven’s wish for us not to. It’s sort of like giving a man on death’s row a last meal. I couldn’t deny him that final request.”
Tom lowered his head. It didn’t make sense. “And?”
“His stated plan was to fight through the immediate monster host and then find some sapients to sustain him and link up later.” Michael shook his head. “We both know that’s not what he planned. Even if he found sapients, he wouldn’t sacrifice them. He went to die.”
Keikain was still refusing to look in his direction, and Sven should have lasted longer than the other two. His visions had made that clear. Still, he could be wrong and leaping to conclusions, so he suppressed his emotions and concentrated on accumulating the facts. “Did you see him die? Did he fight valiantly.”
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“He did.” Keikain interrupted suddenly. “But he didn’t get far. The geese were rank twenty one after all.”
Tom did not look away from Michael. “How did the monsters react to his presence?”
“I didn’t see…”
“As you would expect.” Keikain answered. “They swarmed him.”
“Why is Keikain answering these questions?” Tom asked in a flat tone. While internally, he asked different questions. How had he done it? He guessed he was about to find out.
Michael looked slightly distressed. “Keikain’s answering because he and Clare were the only ones who saw.”
Tom’s emotions froze. The clues were coming together to perfectly. He didn’t want to push further and confirm it, but he couldn’t help himself. “I don’t understand.”
“We wanted to keep you safe.” Keikain interrupted. “Over the last week we realised how far you went out of your way to save us. We appreciated it and Sven having to leave was our fault, and we didn’t want that to create a vulnerability. When it was obvious that Sven was going to need to sneak out before the event ended, well… sneak out if the monster composition provided a window, we collected our points and purchased an artefact that would allow us to extract him without exposing Harry’s camouflage ritual. We weren’t sure we could get back in, but it in short, the safety of the rest of you was more important than our individual lives, so we risked leaving.”
Liar! Tom screamed the words in his head but said nothing out loud and let none of the emotions play across his face. Those visions he had about how long each of them had before going mad had to have had a point. If it wasn’t to save Sven, then it was for a different reason, and he wouldn’t allow his emotions to destroy an opportunity before he understood what he was supposed to be doing with the knowledge.
“But I don’t understand.” Tom said cruelly. He did. He knew exactly what had happened and why the only thing he wasn’t sure about was how he was going to react. “I don’t understand why you and Clare would be needed. Couldn’t Sven have activated it himself?”
“No,” Harry interrupted, his slight intoxication making him more expressive than usual. “The artefact they purchased required blood sacrifice from three people. Three people had to leave to use it.”
“Why didn’t you get something more suitable?” Tom pressed. “It seems unnecessary to put yourself and Clare in danger. You only needed to get one person out. This three person artefact seems stupid and a little overkill.”
Keikain shrugged and looked embarrassed. Tom’s opinion had already transitioned from a grudging admiration to a strong dislike over the last week, but the act that Keikain was clearly putting on right now really grated on him. The earth mage was undeniably competent and an asset to have around, but as a person he left a lot to be desired.
What he was witnessing… This performance, the false embarrassment, made Tom wonder if other parts of his assessment were wrong. If Keikain was that manipulative maybe his strong dislike was underselling the emotions he should be feeling.
How could someone switch off like that? And pretend… after they had done… Tom forced himself not to think about it directly and mentally reached out to check the contract. He needed to understand the restrictions placed on their ability to sacrifice others. They weren’t allowed to kill humans that was guaranteed while the mission ran … but what he wanted to know was if there was a loophole.
A Sven sized one.
The contract appeared in his mind and he drilled in around the definition of human.
This was a magical contract. There was no ambiguity in the definitions. The exact meaning of each clause was apparent to everyone who the contract bound. In this case, human was what Tom considered a human to be.
He felt like vomiting. His stomach was a dull ache, and he swallowed bile.
His definition and no one else’s.
Tom wished he could go back and slap his past self. Why?
Why hadn’t he thought it through?
Why hadn’t he taken more time to compose this clause?
What did a cursed bloodline do to someone’s classification as human? That was the key question.
Especially a cursed bloodline that changed those it infected on a physiological level. Their muscles were different, their affinities as well and how they grew would be separate from the rest of the humanity. That on its own wouldn’t make them non-human, but the cursed bloodline did not stop there. It also drove them to commit abhorrent acts. To kill people, to abandon their humanity to allow them to coexist with their new non-human instincts and needs.
It all coalesced down to a single question.
Under the contract was Sven human?
Tom almost cried such was his fury. There was a loophole, and he had assumed that because it was a magical contact a way around the intentions was impossible. He had been wrong. If Keikain and Clare considered themselves to no longer be human… then… There would be no contractual blowback if they killed the likewise non-human Sven.
Internally, he cursed his sloppiness. This was something he should have prevented. If he had contemplated this outcome, even for a second, he would have closed the exposure. It wasn’t like the problem was a stretch. He had been aware of bloodlines and if a person had evolved to gain a dragon’s bloodline Tom would still have deemed them human. Those people were protected. But if someone was cursed, turned into something else like a wretched vampire from folk law… then… It was all the stories from earth that had created this blind spot… because in the case of someone being turned into a vampire like from the movies then Tom wouldn’t consider them to be human anymore and that was his mistake.
“We were just thinking about protecting everyone else,” Keikain continued. He appeared to be genuinely sad despite Tom’s near certainty that it was an act. “We searched the auction house, but there was next to nothing that would work. Initially, we were looking for a spell to let him slip out, some form of random teleport… but I consulted with Harry and we weren’t sure about it. There was a risk the random teleport might get directed to travel through Harry’s ritual and burst it. Then we saw the artefact, and it was perfect. If we used it, you guys would be a hundred percent safe.”
“What was it?” Tom asked and directed the question to Harry who looked startled at being put under the microscope once more.
The ritualist scratched his beard. “It was really clever. An artefact that had a magic shell to bind at least eight active rituals. When triggered, they would activate in a cascade. The design was brilliant and something I’m definitely going to develop in a few years. I can see so many ways to weaponise rituals better using the technique.”
“Topic,” Tom said with a smile, amused at Harry being so easily distracted with the potential of a theoretical discussion.
“Oh yeah,” Harry chuckled. “My curiosity sometimes.”
Tom coughed.
Harry glanced away, embarrassed. “Anyway. As I was saying, the first of those rituals was a powerful localised temporal displacement. It stopped time for a period in a small area. That let them step outside the coverage of my ritual and revert it to its locked state safe from observation, because no time existed during that period. That allowed them to exit completely. Then the other rituals kicked in that laid extra protections on top of what my defences already did. For example, it created a fifty metre circle of invisibility and monster expelling psychic deterrence… but really subtle. A barrier that would persist for at least an hour and then when done it would dissipate in a way that would be unnoticeable and even if it was observed it would draw the attention of whatever was probing the disturbance to the far side of the circle. Basically pulling it as far away from my ritual as possible. It was an amazing piece of work. Perfect for slipping someone out and giving them a chance to get back safely as well.”
Tailored, Tom thought to himself, it was too perfect to have been a random item. They must have purchased and configured it with experience as opposed to paying with the more readily accessible auction credits. “That was a lucky find. Seems miraculous it was on the auction house.”
“Yes, it was,” Keikain answered with a perfect even tempo. “Which is probably why we panic bought it when we saw it. That was stupid,” Keikain scratched his head and if Tom didn’t know better, he would have believed the body language the man was projecting. That he had made a foolish mistake that happened to work out in the end. “We should have checked with Harry that it would work before buying. Luckily, he confirmed it was compatible… But it could have been a huge waste of credits… absolutely dumb in hindsight. But we were lucky, and the purchase worked out. We had something that would guarantee all your safety and give us a good chance to retreat after Sven was gone as well.”
“And why didn’t you watch? I can’t imagine that Toni wouldn’t have wanted to see to get closure.” The question was once more directed to Harry.
“Tom,” Michael warningly. “You’re being callous.”
Tom frowned and glanced over at Toni. He guessed the hostility he was treating Sven’s noble actions with could be misconstrued.
“It was a side effect of one of the rituals.” Harry answered. “Just like it stopped others looking in it prevented us from staring out. Obfuscated everything in both directions. It’s the normal way these things work.”
Tom shut his eyes to hide the emotions that were roiling through him. Nothing here was coincidence or luck it was all planned.
“Sven was at peace with the decision.” Michael told him carefully. “He didn’t want to go after the scientist even if it would have brought him more time.”
“I’m sure he was.” Tom answered.
“Before going, he gave a heartfelt speech,” Michael continued, sounding worried. He had clearly picked up that Tom was furious about something even if the healer could not work out what. He did not have the knowledge from Tom’s True Dreaming and his mind probably wasn’t suspicious enough anyway to imagine that the three killers had lied, deceived and manipulated the situation to engineer the outcome that had occurred. “and I know Keikain and Clare don’t have the best reputation, but they didn’t coerce Sven into this action. I made sure of it. I took him aside and gave him a private consult with Everlyn, guaranteeing our privacy. This was Sven’s decision. It is what he wanted. He regretted not being able to do more for you and the rest of us, but he had run out of time and he felt this was the only choice he had left. The best of several terrible options.” Michael patted Tom sympathetically on the shoulder.
“I can see by your expression that you disagree. But we had a window of opportunity and Sven insisted he take it, and he wanted to let you sleep.”
“He gave a speech?”
“Yes, he told all of us about the countdown and how he’s worse than everyone else. That detail surprised us, well everyone but Toni. She already knew.”
When Tom glanced up, Keikain wasn’t looking at him and nor was Clare.
Tom had a choice to make.
He could take his spear and skewer Keikain before the man could move. Finish him here and now. He might get contract blow back.
He would get contract blowback. Tom corrected the thought, but the act would deliver justice.
At what price? He asked himself.
A significant one.
They would be under-manned, he would be crippled in the underground, his mission might never get started, let alone finished.
But there would be justice.
The spear was firm in his hands. A welcome presence that said I don’t have duplicity. I will serve.
It was a single leap and thrust. Keikain would be helpless and if he was quick, he could also get Clare before the backlash hit. He shifted his position, got his hips under him, straightened the line, tensed his left foot to ensure it had a full purchase on the rock floor. His eyes flickered, checking to see if anyone was opposing him.
No one was. One moment of violence and it would be over.