Rake

In retrospect, bringing a half-turned Forsaken may have been a mistake. The man was crazier than a cursed tomte. And I once knew a cursed tomte who said her secret ingredient to every soup was a shoe. A fuckin’ shoe.

Morrivan was kneeling in front of a pair of beasts we'd just killed. His hands were inside its belly and his arms glistened red up to the elbow. He wore a blank look as he dug around for something.

He smiled in a way that didn’t touch his eyes, then pressed both palms to his face, dragging them down and smearing blood from his eyes to his neck.

“Wonderful,” Cassian muttered to himself. “He was already insane when we left Thrask. Somehow, he is more crazy now.”

We were standing a little ways off from Morrivan—probably out of earshot. Then again, I didn’t give a fuck if the lunatic heard me. “If he fully turns, we’ll put him down and take his share. Simple.”

Cassian gave me a dark look but said nothing.

There was something off about the boy.

He picked up his sword from where he had set it down and produced an oiled rag. The kid was meticulous about his gear. If he got so much as a drop of blood on his sword or armor, he’d set to cleaning it away once the fight was over.

Better for me.

When this was all through, I planned to persuade him out of his equipment. With enough time, you could get anybody to untether just about anything you wanted. Everybody had a breaking point. Nine times out of ten, all you had to do was remove a single finger. Personally, I liked it when they didn’t crack quite that fast.

That asshole in the helmet back in the Black Wood was the first time I had failed. If I had more time, I would’ve got the helmet from him.

Thankfully, I was going to have all the damn time I needed when I caught up to him in here. He would have nowhere to run. No briarwraith arriving to screw things up.

I eyed the poison mage, who was chewing on the leg of the dead beast now.

Yeah. We were definitely going to have to put him down soon.

“You good, Morrivan?” I asked, raising my voice as I tossed a knife to myself in a lazy pattern. Three loops. Catch. Three loops. Catch.

Morrivan dropped the leg he was chewing on and stood, shoulders slumped. He faced me, hollow eyes white against the red blood on his face. He held my gaze for a few seconds, then started stalking deeper into the passage we were exploring.

“See?” I said to Cassian. “He’s fine. Probably just got hungry. And mistook that things guts for a wash basin.”

Cassian lifted his eyes as he polished the long sword on his lap. “You ever fought an Iron Forsaken?” he asked. “You’re sure you can handle him?”

“He’s not full Forsaken. He’ll still have a regular corestone. At this point, there is a little extra punch to his potency and a little extra physical strength. Nothing more. If he fully turned and had a while to feed and grow his Forsaken class once it awakens? Then… No. I wouldn’t fuck with that.”

Not unless I advanced to Silver, that was. I was so damn close I could taste it.

I knew I could push myself there inside this dungeon. Part of me hoped that killing Morrivan and Cassian would be enough. An ascension token would be the sure thing, but I had proven once that a sufficient challenge could push me to rank up. Course, I’d had to kill a fuckin’ Iron when I was a Wood to do that, but maybe taking on Cassian and Morrivan at the same time would be enough to push myself over the hump.

Cassian fixed his icy blue eyes on me. The boy had backbone. I would give him that. “Morrivan is going to cause problems for us. He already has.”

“What?” I asked. “That little scuffle? I don’t consider killing a few Woods a ‘problem.’ That was just some unexpected fun.”

The boy’s expression was cold. He held his sword out with a straight arm, checking it for any spots of blood he missed, then sheathed it in a smooth motion. “We shouldn’t let him wander off on his own.” Cassian walked after the man, leaving me with the two dead beasts.

I wondered if I had misjudged Cassian when I agreed to hire him on. I had a contact in Thrask who kept an ear to the ground. He always had a few names for me if I needed people willing to get their hands dirty. Usually, that meant types like Morrivan, Jai, or The Acolyte.

While they came in different flavors of fucked up, they all had the same stench. It was a kind of desperation tinged with coldness.

I had seen the coldness in Cassian, but I didn’t see the desperation.

More and more, I was beginning to think the boy was hiding something. After all, why would he sign on for something like this? I took him as a discarded noble who was acting out his rebellious streak. But now…

I thought back to our clash with the Woods. He hadn’t so much as raised a sword against them. Of course, he claimed it was because we didn’t need his help. But he had seemed off ever since then.

Again, it wasn’t entirely unusual. If this was his first time off his mommy’s gilded tit, then the whole murdering thing might have bothered him a little.

So what the fuck was his story?

I gave the dead beast a kick before I started walking, tossing my knife up to myself. After a few minutes of walking, I decided it didn’t matter.

For all I cared, his secrets could bleed out with him. In the end, all that mattered was that I was stronger. Most people made the mistake of thinking I was an idiot. I let myself talk more than I should because it helped cement the image. But nobody expects the rambling idiot to suddenly step out of their shadow and gut them, do they?

No…

But I couldn’t wait to reach Silver. I knew I could do it, and when I did, I had a list of scores to settle so long it would make a softie like Cassian’s eyes water.

I smiled at the thought. Nobody ever really understood me. They tried. They even got some of my more admirable traits right, from time to time. They called me selfish, murderous, and greedy.

But if you weren’t selfish, what the fuck were you? Otherish? What kind of dumbass puts other people before themselves? That sounded like a quick trip to the graveyard.

And murderous? Of course I was murderous. Writing off murder simply because it was “morally frowned upon” was also a mistake. Sometimes, a job called for a hammer. Sometimes, you needed an axe. Sometimes, though? Sometimes you just had to end someone. It was a tool, like anything else, and people who refused to use it were idiots.

And greed… That was my favorite. If you didn’t want more, what the hell were you doing with your life? What got you out of bed in the morning if it wasn’t that call for more. For better.

They called me those things but missed the real truth of me.

I was capable. I was so damn capable that I would do absolutely anything to achieve my goals. Unfortunately for my enemies, my goals started and ended with revenge. I’d settle every godsdamn score on my list, and then I’d wait for the next person to cross me. If they were too strong, I’d return to the grind, get stronger, and come back for them when I could.

Rinse and fucking repeat, baby.

Cassian looked back as I caught up to him in the passageway.

That was surprising. People usually didn’t hear me coming. Something to remember, when the time came.

“What?” he asked.

I realized I had been smiling.

I shrugged. “Just excited. I think we’re close. That map we got from the dead guys made it look like there were only two other passageways. If Helmet is in here, that means they are running out of places to hide. And I’m pretty sure they didn’t go to the Iron level area deeper down.”

Cassian gave a bored nod and continued down the tunnel.

He thought he was better than me. Maybe it was because all the girls back home fought for his attention, or maybe it was because his family had money.

Well, that was fine. A pretty face had never stopped my knife before. And I hadn’t met someone yet who didn’t look just as red and ugly on the inside as everybody else.

He’d see soon enough.

First, Helmet was going to learn he fucked with the wrong man. Then the pretty boy and the mad mage would learn that I was never very good at sharing.

Brynn

There was an unspoken agreement that nobody was sleeping until Thorn was healed. Once he was well enough to get up and move around again, nobody bothered to hide their yawns and exhausted expressions.

Since I needed an excuse to slip away and use my bed, I offered to take the first watch.

It was a tricky situation. Offering to take watch meant I was responsible for keeping everyone else safe and alerting them if danger came our way. Trying to sleep for an hour would be a betrayal of that trust.

So I needed to be sure I wasn’t putting anyone’s life in danger just for the sake of keeping the truth about my bed secret.

I had been studying it whenever I could, and the red dots looked like they moved randomly at first. After paying closer attention, I realized none of them ever wandered outside of a rough sphere around where they were located. Sometimes, they’d head in one direction for a while, but they always seemed to wander back as if guarding a particular area.

In other words, I could safely say we were well outside the “danger zone” from the nearest red dot. We also had a collapsed tunnel to our back. Even if the tunnel wasn’t collapsed, there were no red dots back that way, so long as you didn’t count the growing number in the spawning room that were probably going to make a push for the entrance again in a while.

But there were a large number of Wood and Iron colored dots all gathered there, now, ready to defend against the next wave.

That only left the group of two Irons and the greenish dot traveling with them. They were halfway through a passageway near ours. None of the smaller, secret tunnels connected it to our passage, either. By my best guess, it would still be an hour or two before they even reached the end and headed back for the entrance.

And the murderous, roaming purple dot was deep inside the dungeon, nearly to the guardian chamber.

The fully greenish-yellow dot that I assumed was a Forsaken hadn’t moved for hours, either. My best guess was that they were in no rush. The Forsaken was probably lurking, hoping to feed on the corpses. Maybe they weren’t high rank yet, and didn’t have the power to threaten living targets?

I would also be between the group and any danger, so if something did come wandering our way, I’d be the one getting screwed—not them.

In summary? As long as magical dots didn’t appear out of thin air on top of the group in the next couple hours, there were no active threats to worry about.

I spent a few more minutes thinking through all the potential holes in my logic and found none.

“Hey,” Thorn said, finding me as I refilled my Silver Scream quiver and infused my arrows. I was sticking with one healing arrow and two Viperlilly arrows for now.

“Did you need some more healing?” I asked, pushing my senses into his core. Nobody but Lyria knew I was actually using Devour Mana to speed up the healing process. From what I could tell, Thorn couldn’t even feel it when I used my Devour Mana ability, which raised some interesting possibilities for the future.

It made me wonder if there was some kind of offensive application for the spell. Could I reach inside an enemy and inefficiently spend their own mana to heal their wounds, for example?

It was something to think more about for later.

Thorn shook his head. “No, no,” he smiled a little from behind his big, bushy brown beard. “If you try to make me drink any more of that fucking potion, I might just spit it in your face. No offense,” he added.

“None taken. I once refused to eat bread for six months because it was all I could stomach when I had food poisoning. Negative associations are a powerful thing.”

“Ah… Right,” Thorn said, not quite seeming like he understood what I was talking about. “Before I rest, I wanted to thank you for saving us back there. You saved me ten times over, and you saved my friends by making such short work of that nightmaw.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“It was a team effort,” I said. “If you hadn’t kept that first one busy, the fight would have gone a lot differently.”

He shook his head, as if hardly hearing my attempt to shrug off his share of the credit. “Sylara tells me you fight like a demon. Strong. Decisive. She says you took down the nightmaw behind us in mere seconds while the five of us struggled to bring down just one. “You would have been quite the terror in the arena, you know?”

I chuckled. “Let’s hope I never find out.”

“There are tournaments for free folk,” he said. “Something to consider. With skills like yours, you could earn yourself quite a bit of coin. Fame, too, if you care about such things.”

Technically, I wanted to stay as far from fame as I could. But coin? Yeah. I wanted money. “Good to know,” I said.

“Anyway, we are honored to fight by your side. And I owe you my life now. It is not a debt I take lightly.”

“I don’t want you to owe me anything. I got good experience from the fight and some practice with my abilities. That’s all the thanks I need.”

“It’s not about what you want, Brynn. A life debt is a life debt.” He finally smiled again and gave my cheek another pat.

“I was wondering something,” I said, mostly to change the subject.

“Yes?”

“Where did you guys enter this tunnel from? We had just fought an enemy between us and you. So I wondered if there was another pathway up ahead, or did you all sneak by the nightmaw we fought somehow?”

“We found these small tunnels,” Thorn said. “We were in trouble and pinned. But Zahra can see in pure darkness, and she noticed small ‘windows’ along the tunnel. She was able to see the tunnels were rigged to collapse, though. With some careful digging and the help of her night sight, we were able to navigate the smaller tunnels and escape danger to here. But when we emerged, we caught the attention of those two beasts you helped us with.”

“Huh…” I said, frowning. “What do you think dug those tunnels and rigged them to collapse? Some kind of ambush predator?”

Thorn shook his head. “I cannot say. There were signs that something had been through the tunnels, though. Half-eaten roots and mushrooms were left everywhere, usually clustered around the small windows.”

I raised my eyebrows. Could the tunnels be—no… Surely not.

“Alright,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks.”

Thorn clapped my shoulder and smiled. “I don’t envy any beasts who think to try themselves against your magic.”

I took my leave from the man and wandered just a little distance from the rest of the group.

I waited on a large fallen rock, alternating between meditation and practice while the others settled in to rest. Nobody had any blankets or pillows, so the party formed a comical scene that reminded me of sleepovers I had as a teenager with my guy friends.

Ramzi had pushed together a small pile of pebbles to form a bed. It looked like he had thrown some random handfuls of dirt on his body, too.

Zahra was using some fallen moss for a blanket and a rock for a pillow—which, I had to assume was far less comfortable than simply not using a rock.

Lyria had her shield extended and laying on top of her body, as if it would provide any warmth.

Thorn and Sylara were cuddled up together, looking by far the most comfortable of the group.

Once I was sure they were all asleep, I watched my map again for a long time. I was confident that nothing would sneak up on my group.

My only real concern was the group of two Irons and the half-green and half-yellow dot. They were the one factor in all the chaos on my map that I couldn’t predict with near-certainty. Technically, they could turn around, skip the next passage, and come straight toward us. But even then, I judged they were too far in their current tunnel to make it before I’d have time to sleep.

I still wondered what they were doing.

At first, I had assumed they were trying to farm the easy parts of the dungeon, but… that didn’t make sense.

My secret messenger told me the accomplishments only came from creatures at your rank or higher. So what could they hope to gain from clearing out the Wood sections of the dungeon? A little experience, maybe? At Iron rank, I couldn’t imagine they were getting much. Or maybe they simply wanted some practice with their abilities?

I supposed it was also possible they didn’t know about the limitation on accomplishments, considering they would need to go to the surface to check. But that seemed unlikely, too. I imagined an Iron would have already figured such things out long before leaving Wood rank behind.

So what the hell were they doing? Something about it made me uneasy, even if I couldn’t put my finger on why. I may never figure it out, either.

Chances were, they’d see that cave-in and assume it was the end of the passage. I doubted they would think to dig their way through. The idea of eventually being trapped on a collision course in this passage with the group was slightly unnerving, either way.

I had to remind myself they had only fought one other group of adventurers. I had seen them pass several others without apparent incident. It wasn’t as if they were on a murderous rampage.

Not like that purple dot.

I didn’t mention it to Lyria, but part of me was more worried about that purple dot than whatever guardian was at the end of the dungeon. Little by little, the purple dot was leaving behind a trail of “X” marks. Remembering each of those had been a living, breathing, person gave me both a foreboding chill and a surge of anger.

I wished I had the power to stop it from killing more people, but it was burning through Iron dots like they were nothing.

I still didn’t feel much of an effect from the supposed influence of dark mana down here. There was that faint pressure at the back of my skull, but it was more like a slight headache than any kind of malicious force trying to influence me.

Once I was certain everybody was fully asleep, I traveled down the tunnel until it curved out of view from the others.

I summoned my cursed bedroll and watched it flop to the ground.

I looked at it and gave a heavy sigh. Maybe if I just kept thinking of it as my creepy, gross, definitely haunted pet, it wouldn’t be as bad?

“If I ask you nicely, will you tell the bedbugs not to bite me?” I whispered.

I was surprised when the bedroll let out a low, rumbling growl.

“Was that a ‘yes’?” I asked.

No response.

I carefully undid the leather straps, shaking my hand as I saw a bug hop straight onto the back of it. I stared at the bug because it was just standing still in a weird, non-bug-like way.

I brought my face closer and realized it was standing on its two hind legs, waving a skinny arm toward me.

Holy shit. The bugs are intelligent?

“Hey, little guy. Did the bedroll ask you not to bite me? Is that why you’re waving and looking kind of cute?”

The bug waved again.

Wow. I think he likes me.

I leaned even closer. Maybe I had been too harsh on these little bed bugs. I mean… they were just hungry, right? And it wasn’t as if the little guy meant any harm by biting me. It wasn’t like I ate salad because I had a grudge against lettuce. And the way he was just waving that tiny arm was sort of adorable. Honestly it was—

God dammit. I had a sudden moment of clarity when I remembered the bug trophy hanging in my personal space. At least I could go take the thing down if things ever got too weird.

I cleared my throat.

The blood-eating bedbug is not cute, Brynn. He’s vicious. He would eat your family and punch puppies without a care in the world.

But the trophy improved my ability to seduce bugs… I wouldn’t say I wanted to seduce the bed bug. I only wanted to flatter it enough that it would convince its friends to stop biting me.

I briefly thought about the pheromones I had. Even if they did work on non carapax bugs, it wasn’t as if getting the bed bugs sexually aroused by me was going to be in any way better than being bitten for an hour. There was a slight bit of brain-fog from my trophy, but, thankfully, I could at least see clearly enough to know not to touch those damn pheromones.

I sighed, then smiled. Simple flattery it is. “You don’t want to bite me, right, Buddy? We’re friends. Friends don’t bite friends, do they?”

The bug was still waving his arms at me.

My smile widened. Hell, yeah. This was progress. Maybe he could talk to—

The bedbug lowered itself, reared its tiny head back, and aggressively bit the shit out of me.

“Fucker,” I hissed, slapping it and watching an explosion of more blood than the critter should have contained.

I glared at the bed, hoping all the bugs within felt my wrath. “Knowing you guys can understand me and you’re still biting me makes it way worse. I was starting to like you all. But now we’re done. Understand me?”

Even if I still think you’re kind of cute.

I sighed. I really loved trophies, but this was pushing it. Even for me.

“The sound of you guys getting haunted to death will be music to my ears,” I promised. “I’ll smile every time I hear your tiny screams. How do you like that?” I angrily crawled into the bed.

Within seconds, the tickling, stinging sensations began. I closed my eyes, using every meditation trick I had learned to separate my mind from the agony of the bugs.

Despite my threats, the tiny chorus of screaming bugs was not helping me sleep. Neither was the creeping, crawling feeling of hundreds of bugs emerging from the bed and roaming over me.

I knew better than to swat at them, now. All I’d do was cover myself in blood and look insane when I met back up with the group.

All I could do was endure it.

Think of it like training, I told myself. You’re learning to separate yourself from pain and discomfort. Learning to be calm in chaos.

They were noble thoughts, but I still struggled for a long while before sleep came.

My “sleep” felt like blinking. Before the blink, I was tired, cranky, exhausted, and suffering a few bumps, bruises, and cuts. There was also that nagging pressure at the back of my skull.

After the blink, I was pumped so full of energy I almost jumped out of bed and started pounding out push-ups—and I hated push-ups.

I was wide awake and more refreshed than I had ever been in my life.

I got up from the bed, slapping at my body to make sure no bugs were still on me.

They were all gone, and so was any evidence that they had been biting me all night. Actually, it hadn’t been all night. It had only been an hour, which felt disorienting to think about. Getting a full night’s sleep in only an hour was going to take some mental adjustment.

Even that pressure at the back of my mind was gone.

Cleansed of the influence of dark mana and fully healed of all wounds.

I pursed my lips in appreciation. “Alright, alright. I’ll give you a slight pass. These benefits are pretty awesome, even if you’re super weird about it.” I put my hands on my hips and looked at the bedroll. “I feel like I should give you a name. But it should be something kind of badass and deadly, right? After all, you’re basically a Diamond rank monstrosity masquerading as a bed.”

I thought about that for a second. My enhanced seduction only worked up to Wood rank on bugs. Maybe the bed bugs were higher than Wood rank? I hadn’t thought to inspect them to see their level and rank. I spotted one crawling on the bed and inspected it.

[Cursed Bed Bug, Level 1 (Wood)]

Hmm. Maybe I just needed to be more charming next time?

I focused back on the bed. “What kind of name would suit you? Beezlebub? Dragon-eater? Gorefax?”

I waited for the bed to give me some kind of indication if it liked one of the names.

“No?” I asked. “We’ll keep brainstorming, then.”

I checked the bed’s hunger.

[Hunger 6%]

Not too bad. I wondered if it was able to feed on any of the dark mana it cleansed me of. That was an interesting thought. If cleansing me of dark mana also fed the bed, it felt like there were a number of potentially concerning implications to explore.

But there was something I wanted to do, first.

I snuck back to the sleeping party and knelt by Lyria. Her bright red hair was stuck to her sweaty forehead and drool was dripping from the corner of her mouth. The Basilisk Shield she was using as a blanket had slipped off her.

“Hey,” I whispered, shaking her slightly by the shoulder.

Her eyes snapped open and she fumbled for her sword, but paused once she saw it was me.

“Can I ask a favor?”

She blinked, rubbed at her eyes, and sat up. “What?”

“There’s a monster farther down the tunnel. I know this probably sounds crazy, but I want to try to solo it. I just need you to take over guard duty for me for a little bit.”

“What?” she hissed. “Are you insane?”

“No.” I smiled, realizing the smile probably made me look even more unhinged. “I just… I think my new abilities and items are really clicking for me. I think I can handle these things kind of easily, now. I wanted to give it a shot.”

“Out of the question,” Lyria said. “What happens if you get hurt? I’m coming with you.”

“I appreciate it, but…” I pushed my focus into her core. “You barely have any mana. Just… trust me. I can do this.”

“No. Here’s the deal.” She got up, taking my arm and leading me a little way down the tunnel so we weren’t at risk of waking anyone. Once we were out of earshot, she continued. “If you want to fight something on your own, I’m going to chaperone.”

I scoffed. “What?”

“That’s the deal. I’m not going to sit around while you risk your life. I’ll come and I can save you if it goes badly.”

I smirked. “You’ll save me. Somebody learns they’re Soulbound and suddenly they’re a badass, huh?”

“I’m not the one planning to go off and fight something by myself when I have a perfectly capable party.”

I sighed. “Okay. Fair point. But if I’m going to be sleeping for one hour a night, I want to get used to making the most of my time,” I said. “There are really good accomplishments for soloing stuff in here, too. So I thought maybe I could just sneak in one or two solos per night while everybody sleeps. I only woke you to ask because I felt bad leaving my watch duty. If you come with me, who is watching over the group?”

Lyria considered. “You said the monsters don’t move far from where they are. That means if it hasn’t wandered into our camp yet, it’s probably not going to, right?”

I couldn’t help smiling. She was clever. I had to give her that. “Yeah,” I admitted.

“Good. Then I’m coming. The camp doesn’t need watch if you have a magic map that says nothing is coming.”

“Hmm,” I said, tapping my chin. “One second.” I yanked a stick-like root from the tunnel wall and knelt down, using it to write a message in the dirt.

“Hey new friends. Me and Lyria are just a little ways up in the tunnel doing some scouting. We will be back soon. Don’t worry about us!”

Lyria gave the message an unimpressed look.

“What?” I asked. “Criticisms? Constructive feedback? Was the tone a little too carefree?”

She sighed. “Let’s just get this over with.”

I nodded and started walking down the tunnel with Lyria behind me.

I couldn’t completely explain it, but there was a powerful sense of confidence thumping inside my chest. I wanted the challenge. I wanted to test myself and find my limits.

There had been a feeling of freedom and a kind of ecstasy when I fought that nightmaw by myself. I couldn’t say I had ever felt so in control in my life. I didn’t know if it was all from the small percentage of mana manipulation I maintained through my prestige path, some buried muscle memory or reflexes the system failed to purge, or just a part of myself I didn’t know was there… All I could say was that I wanted more of that feeling.

I cracked my neck, checked my quiver, and pushed deeper into the torch-lit tunnel with Lyria trailing behind me.