“Dammit,” Rizick cursed as he climbed up on top of the carriage roof and looked out into the forest surrounding them. He summoned a sheet of paper with a fist sized waxen snake curling around a goblet and waved it around.
“I am Rizick Ganuur, employed by the Injellar kingdom. At my side is Edward Klian of the Injellar Royal Guard. Reveal yourselves at once.” Rizick shouted into the forest.
Zoe heard some hushed murmuring race through the trees, and then a woman walked out from behind one of the bushes. She wore a well kept set of leather armour with metal studs and her tanned face was scarred across her right cheek, while identify showed her as a level one twenty two dark red warrior. The woman smiled as she walked out.
“Injellar royals, huh?” The woman chuckled. “Two fifty or we take you as slaves.”
Zoe saw Rizick shudder for a moment as he responded. “We will not bow down to you lawless brigands. Stand down and clear the road.”
The woman scoffed. “Always the same with you folk, isn’t it? Lawless brigands this, despicable ruffians that. Two fifty’s nothing to the great Injellar kingdom,” the woman rolled her eyes. “Pay up. Or what? Is your life worth so little to you? The life of your precious cargo isn’t even worth a measly two fifty to you pathetic royals?”
Laughter echoed through the forest.
“This is your last warning. Stand down and clear the road. We do not negotiate with bandits.” Rizick puffed out his chest.
“None of you do at first. You’ve got the royal guard on your side, after all! What could a band of rowdy bandits do to the royal guard. They’ve all looped! They’re unstoppable!” The woman shivered with exaggerated fear. “And then every time, your precious knight falls and all of a sudden you’re wanting to negotiate with bandits.
“Enough of this charade. You think we don’t know about Flester’s refugees? That we stopped you because we thought you were some naïve unguarded merchant? Get over yourself. This is YOUR last warning. Two fifty or slavery. Make your choice.” The woman crossed her arms, exuding a confidence that almost made Zoe waver.
Was it a bluff? Did the woman want Rizick to feel like he couldn’t handle it and hand over the money? Or did she really think that Ed and Zoe weren’t threats to them? Vampyric Empathy seemed to suggest that the woman was just plain confident, but maybe it was an incredible act. Zoe wasn’t sure.
“Fine.” Rizick took a deep breath. “I see you’ve made your decision, then. Ed, kill them all. Zoe, protect the carriage.”
Zoe felt like she’d been hit by a truck. Kill them all?
Ed jumped into action, a suit of dark ash with bright orange burning cracks stretching across it formed around his body as he ran at the woman. His arms extended into sharp blades that cut through the air and left visible streaks of emptiness in their path. He swung his right arm down at the woman and she stepped back just out of reach of his ashen blades.
“You really think you’re the only ones who’ve tried looping?” The woman laughed as ash exploded out of Ed and covered her.
A burst of wind exploded from the woman and pushed all the ash covering her away. Bits of smouldering ash landed on the trees and began to smoke as they burnt through the wet wood and leaves.
“HAHAHA! You will do.” The woman grinned at Ed, her eyes locked on like a dog watching somebody play with its toy. “Get ‘em boys.”
Six more bandits leapt out from the trees and bushes surrounding them. Identify showed them all to be in the low one hundreds. Four were mages, one a dark blue level one thirty seven. Two were warriors, the higher a one twenty eight dark blue.
Magic shot out from the mages and slammed into the carriage. Earthen pillars rising up and shattering against the shimmering barrier that appeared around the carriage and horses. Massive balls of flame washing over the barrier and blotting out the vision of the fight for the moment it engulfed them.
The two warriors rushed at the carriage, the higher level wielding a massive two handed hammer while the other covered themself in an earthen suit and rammed the barrier like a bull.
“ZOE!” Rizick shouted. “STOP THEM!"
What was she supposed to do?
“THE BARRIER WON’T HOLD FOREVER! ZOE!” Rizick shouted at her.
Ed and the woman continued to trade blows. Ash would flood out from him and cut through the air as it reached for her, while her powerful gusts would blow it away and cover the forests in smouldering ash. She’d slash out at him with swords of wind that rattled the nearby trees, while he’d slash through them with his ashen blades.
“ZOE!” Rizick shouted. “Shit. ED! She’s frozen! You’re on your own!"
“A’right boss!” Ed called out from the cloud of ash and dust that was kicked up from his fight.
“Oh no you don’t,” the woman rushed at him with two blades of wind in her hands. Ed responded with a massive burst of glowing orange ash that chewed through her blades. She tried to push the ash away with a blast of wind, but more ash flooded in to overwhelm her magic.
The woman clicked her tongue and backed off. “He’s on you boys!" She called out.
Ed rushed at the earthen warrior slamming his body into the carriage, smashing through a fireball hurled at him by one of the mages. The earthen warrior braced himself as his earthen suit expanded and reached into the ground behind for support. Ed’s ashen blades extended from his arm and slashed through the warrior like a hot knife through butter.
The warrior fell to the ground in two halves, blood pouring out from his midsection. The woman caught up to Ed and drew her two blades across his back, spraying more blood on the ground as they cut through his ashen armour that quickly filled itself back in.
“I’m your opponent.” The woman scowled at him.
“No, you’re an entertaining pest.” Ed spat out and leapt over the carriage, landing on the warrior at the other side. More magic buffeted his form, smashing through his ash and cutting into his flesh but he seemed unbothered by it as his ash reformed and glowed brighter with each attack.
The hammer wielding warrior shoved Ed aside and dropped the head of his massive hammer on Ed’s form. Ash flew out of Ed’s armour and knocked the hammer to the side as shards of heated metal flew off where the ash hit and sizzled on the wet ground.
Ed rushed at the warrior and kicked his chest, a dark charred mark left on his leather armour as he was sent flying a few feet back.
“ZOE!” Rizick shouted, shaking her shoulders.
“What?” Zoe shook her head and blinked her eyes.
“Can you help or not?" Rizick asked.
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“Fuck. I-I… I’m sorry. I don’t know.” Zoe whispered.
“Dammit, Zoe. You’ve never fought people, have you?” Rizick asked.
Zoe shook her head.
“Just think of them as monsters, alright? You climbed Moaning Point, right? They’re just zombies. You can do it.” Rizick said.
“But they’re people, Rizick. They’re humans. They’re not zombies.” Zoe said.
“People trying to enslave us, Zoe. If they beat Ed, everybody here is going to wish we were dead. Trust me.” Rizick said, sweat beading on his brow.
Zoe noticed mana flooding into the carriage from a mana orb he was clutching in his other hand.
“How much mana does the carriage need?" Zoe asked.
“Shit, I don’t know. They gave me five hundred thousand, and we’re about halfway through it now and it’s only been two minutes? Three? With my mana we’ve got maybe another five minutes before the barrier’s down.” Rizick said.
Zoe did some quick math in her head. That was maybe a hundred thousand mana per minute, and with her multipliers and meditation she knew she could do a fair bit more than that on her own.
“I can keep the barrier running.” Zoe said in a hushed voice.
“Are you sure?” Rizick asked.
“Pretty sure.” Zoe said.
“Cause if you can’t, and the barrier falls, then we’re as good as dead. You’re absolutely sure you can handle it?” Rizick asked.
Zoe focused her attention inwards, on the energies swirling around and within her. Mana flooded through her body, and she poured it into the carriage.
Rizick’s eyes widened. “You can keep that up?” He asked.
Mana: 56685/56720
Zoe nodded her head.
“Alright. Let’s get inside, you don’t need to watch this then.” Rizick grabbed her and pulled her into the carriage. “Don’t let up, Zoe.”
She nodded, and sat down on the bench while she pushed an enormous amount of mana into the carriage. Rizick climbed back up on the carriage and shouted. “Ed, we’re good! Take them out.”
Raucous laughter and cacaphonous explosions filled Zoe’s ears as she tried to filter them out on her meditation, and keeping the carriage’s enchantments topped up with mana. What felt like hours, but Zoe knew to only be a matter of minutes dragged on and then there was silence.
Zoe heard Rizick and Ed talking not far away but drowned out their conversation with her intense focus on the energies around her, and the structure that filled the carriage with mana.
——————
“You know it’s stupid to trust a client like that, boss.” Edward told Rizick as his ash burned through the pile of logs blocking the way.
“Yeah, I know. I met her a long time ago and she always seemed weird, but she was honest. She said she cleared moaning point, solo. At level one twenty. I doubt even you could have done that.” Rizick said.
Edward shrugged. “Maybe, next time.”
“See? You’re not even sure. But she did it. She’s powerful, Ed. And I thought, in twenty years of travelling she would have run into some problems. She would have had bandits attack her, would have had her home raided by looters when Flester was destroyed, something. She must be almost fifty years old, Ed. At least, who knows how long ago she became immortal. And that’s the first time she saw death up close like that?
“I didn’t even think I’d need to ask. I didn’t think she’d break like that. She’s an enigma, Ed. She’s not normal.” Rizick said in a hushed voice.
“Why’d you let her take over the carriage charging?" Ed asked, shoving all the burnt wood to the side of the road with a large ashen scoop he created on his arm.
“You should have seen it, Ed. It was incredible. I’ve never seen somebody dump so much mana out so effortlessly like that before. She was doing more than I could with the help of this orb, and she could maintain it, Ed. She could maintain it. And besides, I was right there with the orb. If the endless well that was her stopped, I would have picked it up.” Rizick explained.
Ed nodded and gestured to the charred corpses that littered the ground around them. “What are we gonna do with them?"
Rizick sighed. “Store ‘em. We can burn them when we get back to Korna.”
“A’right boss,” Ed said and walked around storing all the bits of the bandit’s bodies in his storage item.
When all the bodies were tucked away, Ed blanketed the road in a thick covering of glowing ash and burned away the blood. “All clear, boss.”
“Good,” Rizick said and climbed up on driver’s bench of the carriage. He opened the curtain and looked at the shivering passengers inside. The old lady was consoling the kids and Zoe while the middle aged man looked like he was trying to put on a brave face.
“Everything’s dealt with. We’re going to continue on. Tonight we’re going to eat dinner on the move to get as much distance as we can. Hopefully that was the whole group.” Rizick said and closed the curtain.
He looked at Ed next to the carriage and nodded, then grabbed the reins and pushed the horses onwards. The horses would struggle without their normal break, but they’d survive. Better some discomfort than some bandit’s dinner.
Not that the horses knew that. They were beautiful, and for animals they were even quite smart. But they couldn’t talk, they couldn’t tell him how they were feeling. And Rizick couldn’t tell them what was happening, what the plan was. Why they were skipping their break. To them, he was pushing them harder than normal and he hated that he couldn’t help them understand better.
——————
The rest of the trip was much more somber, all of the happiness and excitement from where they were headed drained from Zoe after the attack. After all of the death that surrounded her. The smell haunted her, weeks later. Of burning flesh, the sounds of the blood boiling from the ground as Ed surely cleaned the fight after.
Everybody else seemed to get along just fine after a day, and their routine continued on as normal. They played card games, chatted about their families and friends they hoped were in Korna or shared stories of their time in Flester. But it all felt so distant to Zoe.
People died. Seven people were ripped apart by the royal guard that was escorting them, their bodies burnt to a crisp. And nobody seemed to care.
She thought back to Flester, and how little she seemed to care for its destruction. She cared about her friends, and was glad they were alive. But the hundreds, if not thousands of other people that died in Flester never weighed on her mind. Even as she rummaged through their homes and shoved their charred skeletons aside.
Was that just a normal part of life here? Being so close with death just to get to a nearby city? Was that something that everybody else here just expected to be a part of the journey? Just a matter of course for travelling to Korna. Your carriage gets attacked, and your guard slaughters them all?
Zoe wasn’t sure how she felt about that. They were bad people, without question. But did they deserve death for it? What were their stories, how had they ended up in that position? Were they all even there by choice, or had they been forced into it for reasons nobody would ever know now?
Rizick opened the curtain and smiled at the passengers. “We’ll be arriving in Korna in about two hours. Just as a reminder, you will be dropped off at the refugee station and given assistance with getting your feet on the ground in Korna.”
Zoe took a deep breath. Soon she’d be in Korna. She could relax in a comfortable bed, eat some good food, and find something to take her mind off of it for a while. She’d gotten through a lot, with time she could get over this one too.