The blow sucked the air from Redmane’s lungs.

Corpus: 1410

Bleeding (3)

He looked down to see Agneszka’s sword plunged all the way into his stomach, to the hilt.

There was something different about the wound. Nothing visual, simply a feeling. It wasn’t going to stop bleeding, he realized.

With surprising force, Agneszka shoved him off of her sword and sent him staggering backward, letting her free herself from the corner. She danced off to one side, took hold of her gown of human skin and curtsied.

“Does my partner have the strength for one more dance?” she asked.

The wound in his belly closed, but not all the way. He could still feel blood flowing freely from it, dripping down his leg and onto the floor.

He flexed his claws, rolled his shoulder. A leonine growl rumbled in his bely.

Agneszka looked pleased with his answer.

Redmane came at her with every ounce of speed he could muster. Relentless pursuit was the only answer. She would elude him until it was time to land a decisive strike. Whenever that moment came, he had to be close. Close enough to make it matter that his weapon was faster.

Corpus: 1320

And this had to happen soon, or he’d bleed out chasing her around the room in vain.

In the middle of an advancing flurry of claws, the moment came. Redmane’s eyes narrowed as he saw the character of Agneszka’s smile change subtly, before the point of her sword switched from its weaving defensive posture to darting toward his face at blinding speed.

He twisted to the side and it went past. Barely.

Time enough to claw into Agneszka, shred her gown open from shoulder to hip.

Bleeding (1)

Blood flowed freely from four diagonal gashes in her dress. Agneszka looked down at it in horror, then back at Redmane, and all of a sudden her bestial eyes weren’t so coquettish.

They burned with rage.

“Do you see… What you’ve DONE?!”

She screamed and slashed madly at him, as if trying to will him into the path of her blade, no thought given to accuracy whatsoever. Even so, Redmane had to give ground, circle out to the right, make her chase after him with tears of fury streaming down her face.

“I was to be WED in this gown!” she wailed, as she ran at him behind a wall of slashes, her weapon a blur of speed. “And now it is ruined! Because of YOU!”

Redmane ducked a swipe of her sword that would surely have made him headless.

“I shall mend it with your sorry hide!” she screeched.

Perhaps this one was deranged even before the Blight.

She pressed the attack now, unrelenting, smothering Redmane in slashes and thrusts he had no choice but to focus on avoiding or else he could quickly lose appendages. He thought he spotted a potential opening, suddenly broke his pattern of evasion to stand still and let her pass by him.

His claws found flesh.

Bleeding (2)

But so did her blade.

Corpus: 805

Bleeding (6)

His claw caught her across her waist, and in answer she spun and drew a slash across his back.

They staggered away from each other, turned and lunged again.

The exchange was inconclusive this time, and the next. But there were no further histrionics or flirtation. Simply two beasts locked in a struggle to the death. Agneszka seemed to have sunk into a cold fury, for which words were no longer necessary. Which suited Redmane fine.

When it came to fighting, that was his normal mode of existence anyway. Furious action around a calm, still center.

The better to think, and plan. The better to see.

But he had more experience with such things than Agneszka, it seemed. Already he could see the emotion on her face straining to break through. As if an outburst could kill him, and not her sword.

Even so, she moved with such speed and attacked with such ferocity that he couldn’t press a sustained attack of his own. He had to protect himself, to evade and strike aside sword with claw. Already she’d injured him worse than any opponent he’d faced yet.

Corpus: 625

And with the Bleeding condition on him, the situation continued to deteriorate.

It took a toll on Agneszka as well, albeit at a slower pace. He had fewer stacks of Bleeding on her than she did on him. But with careful evasion and well chosen counter attacks, he closed the gap.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The problem was that such patient tactics took time.

Corpus: 465

And his time was running out.

But Agneszka’s strength was ebbing too. Her fury dimmed, and so did the speed of her slashes and thrusts. Cracks began to form in the oppressive intensity of her aggression.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

“We were going… To be married…”

Her anguished screech punctuated the thrust of her sword.

“I was going to be a bride…”

She snarled and slashed at his face, and the blow went wide. Too wide. She wasn’t paying attention anymore.

Redmane struck the sword out of her hand with his left claw, split her face open with his right.

The blow spun her around, painted the floor with an arc of her blood, and made her fall face first onto the ground.

Redmane paused to look down at her weapon. He bent over and retrieved it.

—

Stitcher’s Bodkin

Thrusting Sword (Melee Weapon)

Weapon Profile:

Damage +15

Armor Penetration 8

Evasion Negation 4 (Fast 2)

Corpus Damage over time on hit (Rending 3)

Iron sword re-fashioned into a crude sewing tool.

Its wielder stitched broken things together to restore lost life. But some things, once torn, cannot be mended.

—

When he looked up from the sword, he saw Agneszka slowly crawling away from him, leaving a dark trail of blood across the floor.

She reached for a shaft of light coming down from a hole in the roof above, craned her neck to look up at it as if she were seeing something only she could see.

“Pavel…”

She whimpered. The light shone over her bloody outstretched fingers.

“Pavel... Have you come back to me… My lo—”

Redmane stabbed her through the back of the head with her own sword, and she suffered no more.

Agneszka the Stitcher has been slain

Tasks Completed: 1/4

Level Up

Level 37 —> Level 38

Level 38 —> Level 39

Level 39 —> Level 40

Quality Points awaiting allocation: 3

Redmane pondered the corpse of Agneszka the Stitcher.

He was hungry. And still bleeding.

But so far as he could see, her only Skill was the creation of these stitched up horrors. It wasn’t something he had an interest in. He already had Skills aplenty, several of which were seeing no use due to his lack of Gnosis.

There was also the matter of her last words.

Pavel the Powder Keg. He supposed that’s who she was calling out to.

But he’d sent his men here to eliminate her. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he meant to save her from her own madness.

Redmane could consume the poor souls she’d already killed for sustenance, he stood in a room full of them.

He’d spare her corpse. Deliver the bad news to Pavel personally.

Then he’d bury them together as consolation.

----------------------------------------

That evening, in the courtyard of Häerz Castle, the green flower bloomed.

Over the course of the day it had grown from pumpkin-sized to person-sized. The bud of the flower, and indeed, the whole plant, emitted a faint halo of light as well, drawing the curiosity of about everyone who passed by. And at this point ‘everyone’ included the fifty some townsfolk rescued from Midva Forest, as well as the Khazador brothers, Valtr and Vengarl.

They had stood with Magister Helmold in the late afternoon looking at it for a while, the two Hunters’ arms folded, the Magister scratching his head.

“No idea what it is?” Valtr asked.

“Ah, you must forgive my lack of horticultural knowledge,” said Helmold. “But it is no breed of flower I’ve ever heard of, magical or otherwise.”

Vengarl grunted. “Hopefully it isn’t the people-eating sort.”

Helmold shrugged. “I’ve never seen its like, in any text or manual of Monsters available to me.”

“Any idea where it came from?” asked Valtr.

“By all accounts it appeared two nights ago, on the eve of the Blight, when ser Redmane claimed the castle.”

“Suppose he’d know somethin about it then?” asked Vengarl.

“I would ask, but he has yet to return.”

Valtr walked over to the immense flower, and bent down to pluck one of the bright blue fruits sprouting from the bush that had grown up around it. He brought the thing up to his nose and sniffed it, his handlebar moustache bristling a bit.

“Ah, I wouldn’t—“ Helmold began to object.

But Valtr bit into the thing anyway.

The Hunter’s eyebrows rose with surprise as he chewed. A bit of juice trickled down his chin. He turned and nodded at Helmold and Vengarl, enthusiasm plain in his expression. “Tasty!”

“Let me try one,” Vengarl came up and plucked off a fruit as well, popped the whole thing in his mouth and chewed it down.

He swallowed, patted his gut.

“Like ice in the belly, ain’t it?”

“I think it gave us some Gnosis,” said Valtr.

Vengarl checked his status. “Indeed it has!”

The two Hunters and the Magister booth looked upon the bush with newfound interest. Then they looked at each other.

It seemed the next course of action required no discussion. All three turned to fetch baskets from the kitchen without a word exchanged between them.

Not a quarter hour later, the trio came down to the kitchen bearing a fully laden basket of blue fruits each.

Letha was down there with a few other ladies, chopping beef, potatoes, carrots and onions for a stew. In the absence of everyone else she had become the senior cook of the castle, and none of the survivors of Midva Forest felt like challenging her for the role. Letha had taken on the job of getting the rescued townsfolk settled and fed, with the help of her son Kale, who assisted his mother but complained about it the whole time.

He’d wanted to patrol the battlements with Valtr and Vengarl and look out for Monsters. What he really wanted to do was question them about their Classes, and how he could get one, but he didn’t tell his mother that.

“What’s this?” Letha side-eyed the basket in Valtr’s hands as they walked in.

Valtr smiled and handed her a fruit. “Have a taste, they’re lovely.”

The way she smiled up at him when she took the fruit from his basket made Helmold frown and look elsewhere.

Kale came up to them as his mother bit into the fruit, and made a small noise of surprise at its pleasant flavor.

He looked up at her curiously. “Whatcha got? Can I try one?”

Letha nodded with her mouth full and took another fruit from Valtr’s basket to give to him. Kale took it, looked at it, chomped a bite off and had the same reaction they’d all had.

“Good stuff!”

“Aye,” said Valtr. “Though it’ll be less useful for you two. The fruit replenishes Gnosis.”

Letha smacked her lips, wiped her teeth with her tongue, staring at the fruit. “Could make a fine pie with these,” she said.

Vengarl set his basket down on the kitchen’s central table, next to where Helmold had placed his. He looked around. “That Magister run off already?”

The Magister had run off already.

Not simply because of the repugnant sight of Letha smiling up at that brute of a Hunter.

He had things he’d like to look into here. Questions, for which the answers may be close at hand.

Helmold had spent a good portion of the day searching the keep, and the apartments of the recently deceased knights and Lord, for some clue as to origin of Redmane.

He’d been too polite to say so, perhaps too intimidated. But a Monster could not become Imbued.

Imbued existed to destroy Monsters. An Imbued Monster was an impossibility

There had to be some explanation…

He was walking up from the stairs to the castle yard, and then across it to the keep, when he stopped dead in his tracks. The question of Redmane’s identity completely forgotten.

Because the great green flower’s petals were unfurling.

One by one they unfolded, reaching out to touch the grass, making way for the next layer, and the next. The petals grew a progressively deeper shade of green. Until at last, the center of the flower was laid bare.

And there was a woman inside.