Time: 4 days 9 hours 49 minutes 1 second
Joren met Samson in the living room. “Ready to ride?” the old man asked the Morriim.
Joren answered with a single, solemn nod, his brow furrowed, his steely gaze unclouded despite the lack of sleep. When it came time to fight, Joren gave himself over to his warrior, who lived in a state of constant preparedness.
Nahlia emerged from the bedroom, stuffing the ends of her white shirt into her brown leather pants. She drew the hood of her green cape over her head and flicked her eyes between the two men. “We ready?” she inquired.
There was a faint air of wariness attending their wizened host, its suspicion directed at the petite elf. Joren sensed this tension like a string pulled taut between them. Though Samson had not made known a prejudice against elvenkind in the brief time they spent together, Joren considered that it might be the early hour peeling back the genial veneer. It was unmistakable, the trace of contempt in the way Samson regarded her.
Yet, nevertheless, he led them back to the stable where he provided them with a pair of mounts, even going so far as to offer his assistance to Nahlia. But the spry elf hoisted herself atop the beast with remarkable adroitness.
“Now, you must be careful,” Samson warned as he led their horses into the road. “These bandits have trained with a sorcerer from the west. They will employ their dirty tricks to overcome you.”
“Dirty tricks?” Nahlia repeated. “Would that be magic, old man?”
Samson, dwarfed by Nahlia now that she was astride her mount, fell silent.
Clopping hooves drew their attention to the westward stretch of road behind them. Erik, seated atop his mule, hurried over the stone bridge. Samson passed between their horses to intercept Erik. “Son, what are you doing?”
Brandishing a rusted sword, he replied, “Avenging my love!”
Angry eyes welled with tears. As they streamed down his face, Joren thought Erik looked like a little boy. It roused his pity. No sooner did he inquire about the young man’s ability than he saw it written across his vision.
Blood: 2/2 cups
Muscle: 1/1 sinews
Soul: 1/1 motes
Spirit: 10
Body: 11
Mind: 5
Useless, thought Joren. If he allowed Erik to ride with them, it would be an invitation to his own death. And perhaps Joren’s and Nahlia’s, too, if that ass delayed their surprise assault.
He dismounted and approached Erik. “You are not lacking in courage, but unfortunately in everything else. I can’t allow you to come.” He heard Nahlia stifle a titter behind him.
“I know I lack your Muscle, but I can still swing a sword.” He cut recklessly at the air and both Joren and the boy’s father had to duck to keep their heads. When the arm swept back, Joren caught it by the wrist.
“Where did you even find that?” Samson asked.
“I went out to visit Vivienne,” Erik answered. “I found the corpses of her killers, half-eaten by wolves. The sword lay beside them.”
“Where it should have remained,” Samson grumbled. “You’re a farmer from Wenderton, not a soldier in the city. Son, we have hired help to avenge Vivienne. It is by your labor that we can afford them, that should be enough.”
Joren was vaguely aware then of a set of stats attributed to Erik that he couldn’t decipher. They were written in a language he didn’t understand, but knew intuitively spoke in terms of agriculture. A parallel system for farming, he surmised. It was useless trying to intuit the meaning of the words, but the numbers that followed them were quite high. If they progressed in similar increments, then the boy’s thumb was as green as the grassland after a spring rain.
Releasing Erik’s wrist, Joren said to him, “Wenderton needs you now more than your beloved. Stay. Let us carry your righteous fury.” Accompanying this was a second, tacit message delivered through Joren’s gaze, a warning that augered death. Erik lacked the worldly knowledge of the Morriim but could see its ugly truths flickering like the coals of a dying pyre in the centers of his pupils. The resulting cold shiver doused his bloodthirst and he turned his mule back towards home.
Joren could sense the young man’s shame as the mule plodded over the bridge, the desire to be unseen as he shrunk away from the call of vengeance. But what Joren couldn’t relate to Erik, as he lacked the words, was the ignobility of all violence. He lacked the words because this actuality was scrawled upon his bones in a primal, wordless language, made itself known only through silence, the awful silence of death, a constantly ringing tinnitus in Joren’s ears. It didn’t matter the reason, bloodshed never transcended its squalid reality.
Bloodshed was the dominion of beasts.
Joren felt his prowling within.
He turned to Nahlia. “Let’s ride.” Prodding the sides of the horse with his boot heels, he launched forth, leading the way east. Eight powerful, equine legs kicked against the earth, carried the two Morriim into the dark. They raced towards a horizon where mountain silhouettes rose like teeth into the night sky, biting at the stars.
The crescent sliver of the moon and the silvery pinpricks of light surrounding it were all that lit their way, until a flash of blue light shone behind Joren. A hundred battles against the White Mage’s hordes formed thoughtless pathways in his mind so that when he saw the flare of unnatural light his body went rigid as stone, bracing for the arrival of an explosive projectile formed of magic.
But then Nahlia brought her steed alongside his and he saw in his periphery the summoned ball of magic held aloft in Nahlia’s right hand. “Figure we could use a little more light,” she said.
Joren, settling his nerves one by one, simply nodded, then turned back to the road.
It seemed to stretch interminably, and Joren almost had the impression of stillness. The mountains did not loom any larger, the road never bent, and night erased any landmarks beyond the reach of Nahlia’s orb, which illuminated the road and little more. He might’ve convinced himself he’d been locked inside a moment of both time and space had it not been for the digits logging every second as it passed. Emblazoned at the bottom of his vision the numbers continued their ceaseless countdown.
Time: 4 days 8 hours 13 minutes 45 seconds
To the left of the four, as if two of its lines came together like an arrow signaling it to Joren, were tracks leading away from the road. He pulled up on his reins to slow the horse, then returned to the subtle indentations stamped into the ground. Nahlia spied them, too, and with a silent glance at Joren communicated her readiness. Her fingers collapsed into a fist, reabsorbing the light in her hand.
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Oncoming dawn traced the distant mountain peaks in blue, laced the air with just enough light that the Morriim would be able to see their enemy in the dark. They followed the tracks away from the road for another twenty minutes before the camp appeared, a grouping of tents nestled between hillocks, a depression in the earth like the hollow of one’s throat.
Joren would drag his blade across it.
“Life,” said Nahlia with a grin, “for the taking.”
A woman shambled out from one of the tents, eyes blinking asynchronously, shoulders stooped, legs performing the mindless sort of dance exhibited by the freshly awake. But when her gaze, sleepy as it was, picked out the figures of the Morriim dismounting their horses, alarm cut through the fog between her senses and the world.
Before her mind had time to evaluate the threat, a humming ball of bright magic crashed against her. Nahlia Sprawled the bandit, though her strike did more than knock the woman off her feet. Joren saw, above her disfigured face with its skin charred and melting, that her Blood decreased by 1 Cup, leaving only one remaining.
Nahlia expended a second Mote to finish her opponent with an identical attack, hurling a ball of blue magic across the distance. It crashed against the bandit’s chest, dissolved into her body. Her veins lit up like cerulean lightning, a color that erased the irises and pupils from her eyes. A belch of smoke erupted from her mouth and then she fell back into the dirt.
Six others poured out from the tents to discover their companion dead. Nahlia retrieved her light potion of magic regeneration, dumped its contents down her throat, and pitched another attack, Sprawling half the remaining bandits.
Joren charged, brandishing his chipped sword as the bandits scrambled to retrieve their own weapons. At the cost of two Sinews, he swung the blade in a skyward arc, passing it through the left side of a half-naked young man bent forward to snatch his dagger from the ground. His fingers only just curled around its hilt when his innards strewn in the gathering dawn, viscera unspooled in the cold light of morning.
Opponent Felled
Time awarded: 12 hours
Total Kills: 4
1 remaining to reach Level 1
Exp gained: 2 Body
New Body total: 50
The stats clouded his vision. Joren growled, blinked, and cleared the information from his sight. He spun just in time to block the downward cut from another male bandit. Their swords met with a clang, a shimmering note that spread across the hills and seemed to call forth the sun. It bloomed from the horizon to spill a blood-red daybreak over Eldaviir.
Joren gazed into the eyes of the bandit, dark and mean, but only as a mask for his terror. They pulled back their swords and swung again. Joren disarmed his opponent, the result of a 50 Body stat meeting 12 at full strength. Left with a single Sinew after the previous strike, Joren stuck the bandit between his ribs and saw one of two Cups spill forth as a crimson river from the gash.
Effective Strike Sprawled Opponent
The bandit stumbled back and fell, cupping his wound and pulling in ragged breaths. Joren went to deliver the killing blow, but found himself unable to lift the sword, held back by an acute sensation of exhaustion. In red, a message above his Time read
0/4 Sinews
“Shit.”
The stinging heat of a magic blast singed his arm and he collapsed.
Sprawled by Opponent
Against the brightening sky, he saw the bandit mage preparing the coup de grace, its violet light coloring the side of his face like a vast bruise. The same cheek dissolved in the next instant to expose the muscle underneath when a blue orb of magic drilled him in the ear. Shock registered a moment later, the remaining eye blinking before the light behind it extinguished. He fell back into the blackened logs of their firepit.
“Use your potion!” Nahlia yelled from across the camp. Joren saw two bodies piled behind her, but a third bandit seized the opportunity to launch her attack. She slipped her dagger into Nahlia’s belly. The elf howled and fell back, Sprawled.
Panic surged through Joren’s veins, the familiar battlefield desperation setting in as the balance shifted. He reached in his pocket and clamped his hand around the vial stored there. Thumbing away the cork, he poured the bright red fluid into his mouth. It had a sickly sweet taste, and when it reached his stomach he felt a modicum of restoration.
Joren rose off the ground and noticed a Sinew available for use. He leapt over the firelogs and the dead body lying there, sword in hand, battlecry warm and rumbling in his chest. The female bandit, poised to kill Nahlia with a downward thrust into the elf’s throat, only just rolled her eyes to see Joren before his blade cracked open her skull like a watermelon.
She stammered for a moment, sword wedged into the side of her head, then collapsed.
Opponent Fel—
Joren dismissed the update in favor of his fallen Morriim. Nahlia winced as he inspected the wound. “Leave it,” she said. “I’ll be alright.”
But Joren could see that if they didn’t repair her, she would suffer Bleeding, as the calligraphy over the gash read. In hours, she would lose her remaining Cup of Blood and die. “We have to get you back to Wenderton,” he told her.
A spark of light alerted Joren to a magical reprisal from behind. But when he turned, saw that the last remaining bandit could not summon magic. His additional Motes were spent, the last available to him powering his soul, which looked to be readying its departure. His fingers could only tremble and bring forth evanescent flickers of magic above his palm.
Joren stood and crossed to him. “Cut me good, you bastard,” the bandit choked out.
“Samson Origath sends his regards.”
The bandit scoffed. “Cheap cunt.”
Joren slit his gaze. “What do you mean?”
“He didn’t tell you? He paid us to kill that pretty thing his son so adored. Well, paid us half, the rest to be paid upon completion.”
Joren didn’t believe it, a bandit’s word was worthless. But then, something about the dying man beneath him caused him to doubt that lifelong assumption. “Why would Samson pay bandits to kill his son’s betrothed?”
“Magic. She aspired to become a mage and like all country bumpkins he’s afraid of magic. He couldn’t stomach the idea of his son marrying a sorceress. So he cut a deal he obviously didn’t intend to make good on.”
Joren stepped on the bandit’s wound. The bandit wrapped his hands around Joren’s ankle as his face flushed. “You wouldn’t be lying to me to save yourself, would you?”
“Fuck!”
“Or perhaps you know I wouldn’t spare you and it’s a ploy to sow discord as your revenge.”
“Look in the tent! Samson gave us a letter written by Vivienne to his son telling him when she’d make the journey through Virii.”
Joren swept the flap aside and rummaged in their packs until he found it. Scanning the letter, he verified the bandit’s claim. Did Samson really give them this? It was plausible that they intercepted the courier and learned of her travels independent of a saboteur. But then how did the town know of Vivienne’s intended arrival that night? It could have been delivered by magic, Joren considered, recalling the distress call the girl sent before she died. Yet, that appeared to have contained no information beyond a plea for help. Could she have managed a more complex missive via magic? And why send this letter then?
As Joren chewed on these questions, the bandit perished and his death added to Joren’s count.
Opponent Felled
Time awarded: 2 days
Total Kills: 6
9 remaining to reach Level 2
Exp gained: 3 Body, 3 Mind
New Body total: 57
New Mind total: 37
You have met the kill count for Level 1. Ready to upgrade?
Joren thought he didn’t have time right now and no sooner had he than the question erased itself from his vision. I need to get Nahlia back to Wenderton first. He hurried out of the tent and ripped his sword from the skull of the dead bandit, then picked Nahlia up off the ground, her slight frame almost weightless in his burly arms. “I can ride, Joren,” she said weakly.
“All the same, I’d rather not risk you tumbling off your horse.”
After tying the reins of the second horse to the first, he placed Nahlia in the saddle then lifted himself onto the beast and held her against him. As they rode out from the camp, sunrise painting the eastern sky a vibrant shade of red, he saw the mission update in his vision.
Mission: Wenderton’s Scourge
First Task: Kill the bandits [5/5] COMPLETE
New Task: Expose Wenderton’s traitor
Then, beneath that, the updated counter:
Time: 1 week 7 hours 49 minutes 2 seconds