Eduard lay on the boat frowning as he stared up the slowly darkening sky, this sky told him he was slowly finding his way back to Firedweller Township, that and the billowing smoke and ashes he could see from a fair distance away. Nyle was rowing slowly and humming an old folk tune to himself as he did so, it was a quite pleasant experience to row through the gulfs on a ship that should have sunk by now after what Eduard had done to it. The boy himself seemed to be frowning all of a sudden but Nyle despite being curious did not open his mouth as he rowed. Then Eduard suddenly sat up and Nyle who had gotten used to the calm atmosphere jumped up as well with shock.
“What is it?” asked Nyle finally breaking the silence and he met Eduard’s scrutinising eyes.
“You said your name was Nyle right?” Eduard thoughtfully rubbed his chin and Nyle’s next words of reply became stuck in his throat as his heart started beating slightly faster.
“Ye...yes,” stuttered out Nyle smiling a little forcefully.
“I believe you,” said Eduard nodding his head and Nyle’s breathed again with relief but then the next words turned the situation upside down again. “But you’re not telling me the truth about why you were locked up on that ship?”
Nyle forced out his laughter. “Really now, why else would they lock me up on a slaver ship?”
“I don’t know,” said Eduard and he looked straight on at Nyle. “I’m asking you.”
Nyle frowned, was his evaluation of the boy off? When he had first realized he had the measure of the boy, he admitted he had let his guard down slightly. Eduard was the type that wanted to be the 'overglorified hero' and he didn’t reconsider his personality but he did reconsider the intelligence standard that he had applied to Eduard.
“The truth is what I’ve told you,” said Nyle. “I was locked up by them for trying to be a hero, it doesn’t end well does it?”
Eduard stood up suddenly and Nyle’s hand went to his dagger as the boat stopped moving, something which Eduard clearly took note off and smirked at.
“Do you want to fight?” asked Eduard with an overconfident grin.
“No,” said Nyle, looking straight on at the boy. “But last time you were captured, you didn’t even see you opponent’s face.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” asked Eduard frowning.
“You might be strong in a head to head duel, combat or even on a battlefield,” said Nyle, smiling gently but the cold light was clearly reflected in his eyes. “But this is a jolly boat, we have barely enough room for the two of us to stand and we don’t even have a sturdy foothold. I’ll slit your throat before you even unleash your pulse.”
“I’d like to see you try,” said Eduard clenching his fists and then he paused, he didn’t have a blade with him, the previous blade he had used had melted because of his pulse, it couldn’t handle his power. His old blade had gone missing so he couldn’t even unleash his pulse power and Nyle clearly caught onto this point as well.
Nyle slid out his dagger and Eduard tried to back off and the jolly boat shook, threatening to throw them both into the water and then Nyle paused. He had clearly remembered Eduard’s value for his own life, it was very little. If he decided to topple the boat, then a fight in the water was a disadvantage to him and an advantage to the larger Eduard but the boy didn’t appear to have made this connection as he tried to stabilize the boat. Nyle knew he couldn’t keep pushing Eduard, because if he turned things desperate for Eduard then he might just topple the boat. He then with a sinking heart caught Eduard eyeing his scimitar placed to the side of the boat.
“Oh no, don-.” Nyle didn’t even have time to finish before Eduard dived for the sword and Nyle tackled him sideways and they both grappled for the sword in the shaking boat.
Nyle’s head was banged against the side of the boat by Eduard several times in the struggle but he held onto the side of his scimitar.
“Listen to me!” grunted Nyle raising his dagger and slamming the hilt down on Eduard’s head with force.
There was painful grunt but the hand clutching his scimitar still stood strong. Nyle was wishing now that he had rowed away, leaving Eduard on the sinking ship whilst Eduard reached around with his other hand and put Nyle in a fearsome one-handed chokehold. Nyle however was still hesitant to use the dagger to cut the boy but at this rate he would have to. He was slowly losing air to his lungs and he would soon black out. Nyle grunted as he tried to twist in Eduard’s one-handed chokehold and he heard Eduard hiss as Nyle accidentally headbutted him somewhere around the teeth.
“Let go!” wheezed Nyle as the chokehold tightened.
Nyle then closed his eyes slowly, he had no other choice. He switched his dagger hand from right to left and slashed Eduard’s palm eliciting a cry of pain and weakening the hold.
“Let go!” said Nyle gasping for air with the momentary relief. “Or I’ll cut you again.”
He felt the chokehold about to tighten again but he wouldn’t let it. He slid the dagger in through the gap from the release and twisted, with the edge now cutting into Eduard’s arm so he could no longer tighten the grip without hurting himself. It still hurt Nyle a little since the other side of the dagger was cutting vertically into his throat. Nyle then elbowed the boy in the side and there was another gasp of pain and some cursing. He jumped up after the hold released and stepped down on Eduard’s hand and the scimitar he held.
“I don’t want to do this,” said Nyle heaving from trying to regain all the air that he couldn’t get in previously. “But I’ll cut you up.”
He saw Eduard snarling and then the sword under his foot slowly got hotter. With his other leg Nyle kicked the boy in the face, disrupting his concentration.
“Stop it,” said Nyle. “You’ve already used too much of your pulse powers on your ship, and your pulse is the discharge pulse, activating it here could possibly destroy this boat and we’d lose our way back, not to mention the entire thing could explode, you don’t even have control.”
Eduard wiped his nose, clearing the blood that came out from the kick and he scowled and then grasped Nyle’s leg that was stepping on his hand and the scimitar and Nyle gritted his teeth and kicked Eduard in the face again, there was again the familiar grunt of pain.
“Stop it!” exclaimed Nyle, feeling that he should just throw the boy overboard right now and save himself the trouble. “You really don’t give up easily, do you?”
“Shut up!” said Eduard scowling and his hand came to his nose and grasped the base. There was a wince-worthy snap as he righted his nose. “You’re the one keeping secrets, all I wanted was to just know who the hell you really were.”
“Well too bad for you,” said Nyle and he reached down and removed Eduard’s hand from his scimitar and was about to pick it up when his other hand reached up and grabbed Nyle’s headscarf and ripped it off of his head.
Eduard gasped as he saw what the headscarf was covering. It was a head full of silver hair. Nyle clenched his fist as he glared at Eduard. At this moment Eduard received several flashbacks, most of them primarily were to the wanted posters the an envoy from the Adjudicator’s Department of Grifort Kingdom handed to his father to put up on the bulletin board in front of the Firedweller manor and on it there was one poster without picture but only descriptions, fairly unique in that criminal hadn’t been sighted by anyone proper and therefore they could only give descriptions. The age was stated as anywhere from thirteen to fifteen, a frail figure and his most primary and recognizable feature was silver hair, yes, strange silver hair.
“You’re that guy from the wanted posters, aren’t you?” asked Eduard sitting up clutching the headscarf. “The guy that stole Fallom’s continental map which detailed the Magoss Continent on it’s way to Zarech Kingdom.”
“Yes, that’s me,” said Nyle sighing, he had been caught, quite thoroughly, he sat down again and stared out.
“You’re a criminal, a rogue swordsman,” said Eduard nodding with glee. “That’s why they locked you up on the slaver ship, they wanted your bounty.”
“Right again,” said Nyle sighing for a second time, it appeared now that Eduard had worked out the complete story.
Nyle looked at Eduard with an ice cold gaze. “Let me tell you this, just because you know who I am doesn’t me I’m just going to turn myself in, if the worst comes then I will slit your throat and escape.”
“No, you won’t,” said Eduard laughing but Nyle didn’t back off with the gaze and Eduard continued. “If you wanted to you could’ve done so already, you could’ve killed me several times over in that struggle, but you were trying not to.”
“Yes,” said Nyle nodded. “But as I said, if the worst happens then I will kill you. I can’t be caught… I won’t be caught.”
Nyle flicked the dagger back into his sleeve and then he looked at Eduard’s face covered in blood and shook his head in a tired manner.
“Seeing as you’ve already just ripped my scarf off, you can use it to wipe the blood off your nose and then give it back.”
Eduard reached up and touched his bloody nose and he winced.
“Thanks,” he said as he slowly dabbed away with the headscarf, wiping the blood off.
Eduard every so often with great interest looked at Nyle’s hair as Nyle looked away and contemplated. They were stuck in the middle of the gulf of water and nobody had started rowing, Nyle had not even bothered to glance at the oar as he just sat there staring absent mindedly into the horizon.
“I won’t say anything,” said Eduard after a while still dabbing away at his nose with headscarf and Nyle awakened from his daze.
He looked over the huge boy who appeared to be still looking at his hair and then he finally nodded.
“I’d appreciate that.”
Nyle then unconsciously rubbed his hair and then leant back against the boat again.
“You have some questions about my hair don’t you?”
Eduard froze for a moment and Nyle let out a laugh, the boy had clearly thought he wasn’t being too obvious, staring at his hair but then he nodded.
“You probably haven’t seen this colored hair anywhere else,” said Nyle, not that Eduard has wandered anywhere much, thought Nyle.
Eduard shook his head. “It’s not that strange.”
Nyle raised his eyebrows in a questioning look. “Really?”
Eduard looked at his hair once again and then quickly shook his head. “Alright, it’s the first time I’m seeing it, but I’ve never been outside of this town, so you never know.”
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“I do,” said Nyle. “I’ve been around place quite a bit, I’d probably run into other such individuals if it was normal.”
Eduard suddenly had a strange gleam in his eyes and Nyle was taken aback and he moved closer to Nyle while he scrambled back.
“You’re an adventurer?” said Eduard nodding, as if he was confirming his own question.
“Not...not quite, but I am looking for something, a large trove of treasure of sorts I guess,” said Nyle. “Haven’t found it yet.”
“So you are an adventurer,” said Eduard positively shining.
“Yes then, if you insist,” said Nyle and all of a sudden he deflated and sat back down sighing.
“I want to go adventuring too,” said Eduard looking down as he fiddled now with the headscarf.
“Why don’t you?” asked Nyle but Eduard shook his head as if even the thought of it was impossible.
“I’m the oldest son in the family,” said Eduard as he carelessly twisted the headscarf around his fingers. “I’m expected to take over, so I have to train and then study but it’s all so boring, I don’t even want to take over the family.”
Nyle’s face twitched, almost into an involuntary smirk, most people wanted to take over the family, especially one as prestigious as Firedweller family and most people wanted to lead a rich and fulfilling life, not the scrap life an adventurer was so very often offered.
“You know adventuring isn’t as fun as it seems,” said Nyle, and Eduard shook his head.
“I don’t know that yet do I?” he said. “I mean apart from your word and old man Hordus’ stories. I don’t really know much else, but I really want to know what it feels like to just go around places.”
“No, you don’t,” admitted Nyle, as he stood and extended his arm towards Eduard for the headscarf, which he passed back. “You probably won’t anyhow, so just enjoy the little things in life, like your possibly big house, hell of a lot of money and amazing comfort.”
Eduard scowled. “You haven’t even seen Firedweller Township, just you wait.”
Nyle smiled as he wrapped his headscarf around his hair tightening it carefully and he sat down. “Do you want to row?”
Eduard looked at the oars that Nyle had pointed his way and then he nodded and took the seat while Nyle switched and took Eduard’s relaxing spot and lay back down.
“We can still see the smoke so just row in that direction,” said Nyle pointing towards the possible spot where Firedweller Township docks were.
Eduard nodded and with his powerful arms he pushed down and started rowing, the boat moved at a much faster pace than when Nyle had rowed and it sped off towards Firedweller Township docks.
***
Arraind was turning a pale shade of purple by the time he was brought back to the manor in an urgent manner carried by Andomus. As soon as they had reached home and Raeden saw the shape of his father, he fainted and Guila despite her greater deal of worries was managing, she was taking care of Raeden and it was turning into a real and huge incident. Eduard was still missing, Arraind was poisoned and Raeden had fainted. Hordus had went back to his shop citing the fact that he needed something from the shop but he had given Andomus a non-confident confirmation that he could ‘maybe’ deal with the poison ‘the Snake’ had used in poisoning Arraind. Right now the Firedweller Manor was waiting for the arrival of Hordus who was rushing from his shop towards Firdweller manor, he however wasn’t as fit as he used to be and was admittedly frail. He was gasping as he stopped halfway from the manor. Several passersby gave him strange looks along with some carts and the men on it. Hordus felt a little embarrassed, he was a little too old to be running like this, something he knew very well but the life of Lord Firedweller right now depended on his speed. With him he carried a black metal and leather case within which contained several of his medical utensils. He had, before he left the manor, asked Andomus the head guard and Guila, Arraind’s wife to thoroughly check through the assassin’s possessions, strip him bare if necessary for the antidote. The venom that currently raged through Arraind came from a particularly nasty concoction of skin fat from a hedgering toad and maimon (a type of lizard found in deep forests on Magoss) venom. The antidote to such a potent venom could not naturally be found just anywhere but every assassin that used poison carried an antidote with him, it was a precaution they as human beings liked to take. Hordus arrived at the gates which were open and waiting. He ran inside and saw Guila standing over a ghostly pale and clammy Raeden who appeared to be awake but seemed now to be having trouble breathing. Guila was lightly patting Raeden’s back and Hordus hurried a quick greeting towards the fine lady and moved on to Andomus who was waiting for him with a worried look.
“Did you find the antidote?” asked Hordus setting down his case and calming his breathing.
“We found several vials and a myriad of other things,” said Andomus. “I don’t know what the antidote looks like, so you’ll have to tell me.”
“Where are the vials?” asked Hordus.
Andomus pointed inside the room where they had the snake strapped down, unable to even wriggle a finger. It was the iron cast Hordus recognized with some shock, it was an imprisonment device that only adjudicators of Grifort held but then he realized, the woman, Guila was no ordinary woman, she used to be an adjudicator, one of the best before she had married into the Firedweller family. She must’ve, Hordus surmised, taken a souvenir. Hordus stopped for a moment to admire the handiwork of the ‘iron cast’. It was in its usual form the size of a small doll but the ‘iron cast’ used magic, the last of its kind, an ancient power that had disappeared off the continent several millennia ago. The man who invented the iron cast was a legend but he never told its secrets. Even in death the secrets did not pass his lips. His hands made around a thousand iron casts before his death and three-hundred of the thousand remained in Grifort to be used by the adjudicators. The fact that Guila had one of these told a lot about her status at the adjudicators’ department. Hordus stopped staring at the iron cast and turned to the multi-colored vials set aside from the assassin. He walked over and uncorked each one of them and smelt it. Poison, vial after vial, it was all filled with poison, raw ingredients to concoct deadlier poisons were in some of the vials as well, a vial contained, as Hordus noted, water from the ‘calamity pond’, a small stretch of water where sea animals turned up dead. It was a particularly nasty place, containing water of high danger but the antidote that he was looking for was not here. Then he remembered back to his information on Kaiuga. The man was a tribal warrior that had concocted his own trademark poison. The cross between hedgering frog’s skin fat and maimon venom was a particularly nasty combination of poison that Kaiuga had pioneered, the snake’s name was in the annals of poison history for inventing this poison, there was precise method to making this poison, the correct measurements were of great necessity when making this and since the snake had invented this poison there would be only one place that he would store the antidote, the safest place for him to both hide it and use it.
“Make him bleed,” said Hordus suddenly and he got a raised eyebrow from Andomus.
“The antidote isn’t here,” said Hordus gesturing towards the vials. “It’s in his blood, just a small incision, enough to draw around a pint’s worth of blood…”
The snake suddenly shuddered, or rather he tried to shudder and Hordus realized the man was awake all along. He had been feigning unconsciousness and Hordus looked over the man with a half-tonsured head and tattoos covering his face, it was fierce some sight to behold now especially when the man had no scale mask. Hordus guessed from the ugly face he was making that his guess was spot on and it looked like Andomus realized it too. He grabbed a knife from the side table, a pile of torture instruments lay there, waiting for use on the prisoners that came in here. He wielded the knife with some amount of clumsiness.
“Cut on his forearm,” said Hordus. “Near the wrist, he bleeds faster that way.”
The snake tried to struggle to resist, to make things harder but the iron cast held on like vice and he wasn’t going anywhere. Andomus closed in with the knife.
“Let me,” said a voice from the door and suddenly and both Andomus and Hordus whipped around in surprise.
They both saw Guila standing there and anger could clearly be seen on her face, not the violent type that they were prone to seeing in Arraind, but a calm restrained one, something that made it all the more scary and unpredictable. Andomus bowed and handed the knife over Guila, something Hordus watched with interest. There was not even a hint of protest, it was highly interesting for him. This made him all the more curious about Guila reputation, what exactly had she done during her stint as an adjudicator? Guila twirled the knife between her fingers with expert ease and she glanced at Andomus.
“Call for Ano to take Raeden to his room and then get yourself back here,” said Guila and she looked back at the snake who seemed to be watching her with some amount of curiosity.
Andomus frowned a little, “Ano hasn’t turned up for work in two days.”
Guila thought back and Andomus was right, “Sorry, you can call for someone else, do you know what happened to Ano though?”
“I heard her daughter had disappeared,” said Andomus. “She could be on the slave ship as well, along with…”
Andomus trailed off as he watched the cold rage of Guila’s wash over him as well. All of a sudden he felt the room cooling down a lot, he felt very cold himself.
“I’m sorry,” said Andomus controlling the shivers.
“It’s fine,” said Guila turning her rage back the assassin who seemed to have felt it too, as his eyes were as wide open as it could be without it popping out.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Andomus and hurriedly left.
She smiled coldly and as Andomus left she plunged her knife into the assassin’s inner thigh and there was a loud scream. Hordus watched with shivers as he saw how close she had stabbed to the man’s balls.
“The wrist would bleed more,” reminded Hordus but she coldly snorted.
“A large wound will bleed the same.”
She dragged the knife up, ripping through the flesh all the while the snake tried to struggle futilely, his unholy scream echoing from the walls of the house.
“How are you planning on collecting his blood?” asked Guila.
The stunned Hordus stayed silent for a moment more and then responded. “It’s not the blood I want…”
He looked around and saw an iron bucket at the corner. He glanced around the room and realized that this place seemed more like a prison. He then guessed that bucket must’ve been used for defecation and urination. Just how many prisoners had they held in here, he wondered. He moved over to the bucket with care, as he feared there might be some leftover waste in there, but to his great delightful surprise, the bucket was very clean. He grabbed the bucket and put it next to his iron case. He opened the case and pulled out a paper.
“This paper is a type of strainer,” explained Hordus. “It’s made from the Ayol Tree, and it is enough separate his blood from the antidote in his body.”
“I see,” nodded Guila, she seemed unbothered by the now whimpering of the once deadly assassin.
He placed the paper over the bucket and held it near the wound and blood slowly started dripping on it.
“I need you to stop the wound from clotting,” said Hordus looking at Guila. “I’ll tell you when we have enough blood.”
Guila nodded and then her face turned into a repressed grin, she was enjoying this thought Hordus with some amount of shock. Nobody would associate the pale beautiful woman by Arraind’s side with the cruel psychopathic one, ever. Even without the wound clotting she seemed to dig the knife deepening the wound and all the while fresh new screams would erupt from the snake’s throat. Andomus came back at this moment with a satisfied look on his face. He seemed to happy too, to see the snake scream. Hordus shook his head with some calm, all warriors were psychopaths, Hordus had realized this truth in his youth. The paper was now soaked and he moved the bucket away slowly and removed the paper. Inside the bucket he saw a pale green liquid, a higher concentration of Kaiuga’s concocted venom, he had guessed there should be more off the maimon venom, the viscosity wasn’t much, just like running water. He smelled it and to his shock he realized that Kaiuga had added water from the ‘calamity pond’. It must’ve worked whatever he did, thought Hordus, but the water from the ‘calamity pond’ was such an uncontrollable thing. Not even he would dare to play with something like that, yet this man, this assassin had somehow tamed its power and was now using it as part of an antidote of all things. It was enviable to Hordus as a man who had studied poison and alchemy for his entire life. He looked at the bucket, there was he guessed enough to deal the poison inside Arraind’s body. He sighed and placed the wet blood paper on the man’s thigh where he was bleeding after Guila had pulled out the knife. The assassin had gone into a trance of sorts some time ago, he guessed that it was a method to control the pain during torture, either that or the shock had got to him and he was a catatonic state. The paper meanwhile had slowly stuck itself to the assassin’s wounded thigh and it looked like a layer of skin.
“That’ll be enough to heal him,” said Hordus. “Ayol paper, is an excellent medicinal utensil as well.”
“It’s more than he deserves,” said Andomus.
“Is that enough?” asked Guila and Hordus could swear she sounded a little disappointed.
He smiled weakly and nodded. “More than enough, we just need to feed this Lord Firedweller and the poison in his body should be burned out by tomorrow, just be wary of the high fever he will have.”
Guila nodded and her lapse back into the normal ordinary housewife was flawless. She tossed the knife to Andomus and adjusted herself. Andomus snorted as he glanced at the dead looking assassin and threw the knife onto the table beside him, where he picked it up from. Hordus carried the bucket and traversed with Guila and Andomus to the room where Arraind lay and his breathing seemed to be more haggard and weaker, it was almost to the point of him not taking a breath at all.
“Quickly force his mouth open,” said Hordus with urgency. “If he goes into an unresponsive state then we won’t be able to feed him this.”
He handed the bucket over to Andomus and ran to check Arraind’s pulse which was very weak, almost to point of non-existent and yet the man still hung on.
“Feed it to him,” said Hordus to Andomus while Guila stood back and watched the proceedings with a worried face.
As the venom slowly went into Arraind, Hordus felt the pulse strengthening, the poison burning required the body functioning at a rate beyond the body’s capability and therefore the heartrate would speed up to an incomprehensible rate much like what Hordus was feeling now. It meant the antidote was working. Hordus finally released a sigh of relief and his weak legs gave away as he fell back onto his butt ungracefully.
He looked at Guila. “He’ll have a high fever while the antidote works to remove the venom from his body, it doesn’t matter how bad the fever gets, it will subside, just keep him cool, nothing else will happen.”
Guila as well as Andomus too heaved a sigh of relief as he set down his bucket with still a little of the pale green liquid left. With one problem out of the way, they could now focus on the other, young Eduard Firedweller was still missing and he needed to be found quickly.