“John! John!” A man ran through the underground hallways, feet pounding across the perfectly placed stone blocks as he ran towards his friend’s sleeping quarters. John got up from his bed, still clothed as he had been trying to day dream the time away, and stuck his head into the hallway. The man who had been yelling nearly crashed into him as they both rounded the corner, and the two had to leap away from one another at the last minute.
“John!” The man tried talking in between panting breaths. “Someone sent-, a message. Lady Dei-, has-, a mission-, for us.”
John's face finally perked up as he tried to decipher the words. It had been weeks since they had first taken this gods’ forsaken cave, and he hadn't really been able to do anything the entire time. Sure, he would spend a couple hours out of every day practicing with the sword, sparring against Xei or the sell-swords, but that was hardly what was supposed to be happening. He was supposed to be training an army down here, or a cult, or whatever the girls were always giggling about whenever they planned the damn thing. But no one had come. No one had been here to be trained, and John felt just about pointless as he tried to pass the time in this underground no-where.
The man across from him, George he thought his name was, looked just as excited as John at the prospect of doing something. John reached back into his room, grabbed his sword, and they started jogging off towards the entrance to the catacombs. As they ran they made a couple of hollars and yells into the darkness beyond the reach of George's torchlight.
“Hey! Meet up at Town Square! Meet up at Town Square!” The two called down the empty hallways just in case anyone else was hanging out in this side of the lair, but no one answered. They crossed large square intersections, took a left at the T, then followed the slight right curve until it opened up into the main chamber. It was a large amphitheater style room, lined with hundreds of seats that spread downward like giant stairs towards the main stage. The area happened to be just a bit deeper than the entrance room that the sell-swords had originally set up shop in, and the crew had started to use it as the main hub due to its central placement in the catacombs.
John ran down the smaller stairs in between the stone benches, rushing towards the center stage and a group of people gathered around a large wooden table. Hardly anyone sat at the table, instead standing and leaning over the edge to talk excitedly as it seemed like everyone was chomping at the bit for something, anything to do. Even Xei was there for once, standing there in his customary studded leather with his arms crossed. John hadn't seen the skeleton leave the sparring pits even a single time since they had first come down here, constantly switching out to fight new people as they came to the sandy fighting arena in between guard shifts.
‘He's becoming downright scary with a sword at this rate.’ John thought to himself.
George caught up to him a second later as the two started panting with their hands on their knees after the mad dash to get here.
“So-. What’s-?”
“Save your breath kid. We're gonna wait another minute before we share the message so that everyone has a chance to come out of their holes.” One of the large Golden Kingdom soldiers told John. It was getting harder and harder to tell them apart from the rest of the sell-sword crew as they spent more time together. Sure, they were still different from the rest of them, a little too uptight, but they ended up being good people once you shared a couple weeks with them.
Everyone talked amongst themselves for the remaining wait until the messenger finally decided to share. He was a new man that John didn't quite recognize despite the time everyone had spent together
“Alright, listen up! Lady Dei has sent me with a message from a new co-conspirator that she's recruited from the local nobility.” Several whispers sprang up, including an outright question from the crowd.
“An’ how do we know that this ain't a trick?”
The messenger gestured over at Xei as he continued. “Xei has made contact with Lady Dei to confirm the message, as I'm sure he'll vouch for me now.”
“Hey! It's Lord Xei to you, bud!” Someone shouted
“Yeah, Sword-Lord Xei.” The crowd burst into laughter even as Xei held up a single thumbs up. That was about as good as they usually got from Xei in between fights, so it was good enough for the men.
“Uh, thank you Lord Xei.” The messenger started once again. “Now, Lady Dei has tasked us with hitting a couple of farms along the western coast line. Should be an easy job as the usual guards have become occupied with the defense of the lord's country home after it was attacked a couple nights ago. I'm told we're to kill, loot, and burn anything that can't be carried away.”
John cheered along with the men by his side, their excitement for the mission infecting him. But as everyone started filing out of the room to grab some last minute equipment, he started to feel a bit queasy. Sure, he was bored and all, but looting some farms like they were just a random bandit crew? Wasn't he supposed to be training an army here? George came up from behind him, slinging a travel pack over his shoulders.
“Come on John, they've got some packs already set up to go for us in the supply room next door.”
“I uh. Maybe I shouldn't go on this trip George.”
“Bull shit! You flaking on us John? What's your girlfriend gonna say if she comes back to find you never left the willow tree?”
“She’s not my girlfriend!”
“Yeah, yeah. But just think about the battle experience we're gonna get with this gig. Won't that be good for your training regiment?”
“But, why?”
“Why? Because this is what we're paid to do.” George looked up at John before he started walking away. “And because she will kill us if we don't.”
The rest of the group started marching towards the main entrance with their gear. Watching them walk away from him, off to actually go do something that mattered more than just wasting time in bed, he wasn't so sure about his choice. After the last man turned the corner, John was left standing alone in the center of the grand amphitheater. Footsteps echoing from the direction the men had traveled.
The silence was deafening.
His thoughts were so loud.
The face of a man that he had once fought alongside came to mind, pale and bloodied, head resting back against the tree.
John ran into the store room as quickly as he could, grabbed the first bag he could find, and started sprinting down the corridors towards the main entrance.
“Wait for me!”
—
The field ahead of him burned tall into the night. A boundless wave of spindly stalks tipped by flax flowers spread out in front of him, or what was left of it in the inferno that raged. It wasn't even all that difficult to start the burning, a single torch flung deep into the field and suddenly an entire acre of land was engulfed by fire. The flames were so hot, so deep that John could feel the molten temperature making it hard to breathe even fifty feet away.
Despite the heat, something was moving in the blinding light. A single man, unarmored and unarmed was running down the side of the field towards John. As he reached the corner of the blazing mess closest to John, the stranger finally seemed to see him, and bolted sideways across the edge of the field. He was so close to the fire that it must have been sweltering as the man continued to run less than five feet from the main fire's edge. Embers swirled through the air as the man passed through smoke clouds billowing out of the inferno. He was running from something worse than burns.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
John didn't chase the man, even after someone had told him to wait here and watch for runaways. Instead, he watched as something disturbed the fire farther into the field. The smoke and the way the flames whipped through the air distorted his sight enough to make him doubt himself, but something was moving through the field. And it was fast. The closer it got the more nervous John felt as he considered the possibilities. Was it a flamer? They almost never came this far into the Princedoms, but what else could survive a blaze like that?
The creature was cutting across the field at a diagonal, running straight at the fleeing villager like it had a pinpoint on the man even through the smoke and fire. John could start to see the field part as the figure of a man ran straight through the center of it, uncaring about the endless flames. The figure burst out from the field in a pillow of embers and smoke that followed after him as the very armor on his back seemed to smolder into the night, but still he didn't stop. He came out perhaps five feet behind the running villager, who looked back at the pursuer even as he continued to run. A single set of burning orange eyes stared after the man as John watched the two chase after each other.
Xei was bounding across the front side of the field now, legs extending almost unnaturally in a strong rhythmic gait that John doubted he could match even if he wasn't in armor. The villager didn't stand a chance as Xei finally caught up with the man, hooked his hand into the man's hood, and posted his feet into the ground while turning. The villager was all but yanked out of the air, stopping like his momentum had been entirely redirected, and was instead sent flying in a sideward arc away from the fire. His body bounced across the ground as his feet failed to find purchase with the surprising turn, and the man ended up rolling across the grassy dirt for twenty feet before he finally stopped.
The skeletal figure turned and walked slowly after the villager as the man gasped and groaned on the ground. He had gotten to his hands and feet by the time that Xei reached him, but the skeleton merely wrapped his hooded cloak in its hand and started dragging the half conscious body back towards John.
Xei looked a little worse for wear given the circumstances. Singes and blackened marks of burned leather crossed the entirety of his body. His chainmail had all but melted into the side of the leather, cutting into the black fabric like some strange pattern of warped snake scales along the sides of his chest piece. And every visible inch of bone on the skeleton was stained a sooty gray black color of ash. Despite it all, Xei still looked like a walking force of nature as the orange glowing eyes bobbed with every step, steam emanating from his shoulders as his hot body passed through the cold air.
The body Xei had been dragging along was dropped off unceremoniously in front of John, the stranger having resigned himself to his fate by that point as he merely lay there, crying. Xei pointed at John, pointed at the man, then pointed off into the distance where they knew the main farmhouse was standing. He then started walking off in that direction, leaving John behind to interpret his actions.
John looked down at the man groveling at his feet, and almost grabbed him by the scruff like Xei had. But no. John was no feature of nature. He bent down and tapped the man on the shoulder, drawing his attention as John extended a hand out to him. The villager was still weeping, but John could see the confusion run through his face as he spun his head between John and Xei, trying to understand. He didn't take John's hand, but he did decide to stand up and face him as John pointed into the direction that Xei was walking.
“Come with me willingly and I won't have to drag you.” John said.
The man sighed, then nodded in between his tears, wiping at his face with his arm as they started walking after the monster in the night.
—
As Xei caught up with the rest of the raid by the farmhouse he found a large number of men standing by a large stack of boxes as well as several obvious farmhands sitting on the ground. The farmers looked a bit bruised and battered, but not all that hurt other than a single man who was struggling against the arms of two sell-swords, desperately trying to get back to the farm house.
“You monsters!” He yelled at the men. “You think that you can get away with this?”
The men held him firmly in place, though they seemed to be a bit uncomfortable with the situation for some reason. Xei started to hear a woman scream from the house. John came up behind him with the runaway Xei had to chase down, and the worker sat down with the rest of the group sullenly.
‘I'll have to talk to John about what happened after this.’ Xei thought, none too happy with the conclusion. He started walking towards the farmhouse as he thought about the boy, and he was a boy. John was hardly twenty one years old by any count of the stars. He was one of the first additions to Dei’s followers, but it was certainly not by his own choice, and that distinction was starting to show itself. He was reluctant, obviously so when it came to his own country. But where else could they use him?
As Xei came up to the front door of the house the woman's screams had turned into something more like a mix of wailing sobs and begging.
“Please, please. Don't do this.”
Xei followed the woman's voice through the house, listening to the sound of a grunting man and tearing fabric followed by more sobs.
“No!” She screamed, followed by a smacking noise that echoed throughout the house, and more sobbing. Xei rounded the last doorway to find the girl pinned up against the kitchen table by a large man in armor bunched up around his waist. The woman was clutching at her cheek, crying even as the man adjusted at his belt and-. Xei had enough.
He grabbed the man with both hands by the back of the shirt and spun around, throwing the man up and out of the doorway like a sack of potatoes. Xei had at least learnt how to make the most of his in-ordinary strength, and followed the man out the doorway where he lay on the ground after hitting a wall. Xei left the girl behind as he grasped the man by his short hair, and started dragging him through the house.
As they went, Xei finally recognized the man by his grunts of pain, Robert, and he thought back to the handful of times the two of them had spared back in the catacombs. He had always struck Xei as a prideful man, though there wasn't much to be proud about in his sword play. Sure he could out fight some of the other men, but that was also like saying that a soldier was better than a servant at fighting because he was the one with a sword. The other men had started to catch up to Robert in skill the last couple weeks while he had been sulking in his room after being beaten by Xei.
As the two came out of the house, Robert came back to his senses and tried to stand back up. Xei let him do so, before whipping his own knee into the man's groin area. The man collapsed into the ground with a squeal, and Xei took him by the hair to start dragging once again. The resisting farmer looked at them with rabid eyes as they approached the group.
“What are you? And what have you done with my daughter?” He screamed at them. But Xei merely walked by the group with the whimpering Robert in tow. His soldiers stared at the two of them, but no one said anything. If anything, the two holding the farmer back seemed to relax a bit, as they watched him drag their companion with hard eyes. Xei heard the patter of soft footsteps running behind him as he continued to walk towards the open field.
“Oh baby, are you okay?” A soft thud came from behind Xei as two bodies collided into a hug, followed by muffled weeping as the girl cried into her fathers shoulder. Xei just continued walking. It was starting to get hotter now, the same sweltering heat from his earlier run returning to Xei's memory as he got closer and closer to the open flames. The man in his arms started struggling again as he realized his fate. His hands grasped at his scabbard, trying to draw a weapon that wasn't there, dropped somewhere, forgotten back in the farm house. It was too late to go back for it anyways.
Xei grasped the man by the jacket again and tossed him headfirst into the blaze. The man screamed as he made contact with the molten ground, rolling into a standing position, then trying to run back out of the blaze the way he came from. Xei appeared as soon as he got out of the blaze and kicked him back in. More screaming, more pain, more awkward attempts to escape the fire as each time the man grew more and more hampered by his injuries.
When he finally failed to get back up, Xei walked in after him and picked up his remains like a bag off the ground. The man's arms and legs drooped in the fire, the very skin sagging off the bone in bright red angry pustules, but Xei still pulled him out. He wasn't quite sure whether his timing would be good enough, but he at least wanted to try this before letting the man die. If he could still serve Dei in his own way, then he would serve.
Xei deposited the body in front of John for the second time this night. This time instead of hand gestures he walked over to a small board and a pouch that he had left behind the first time he went running through the fire. When he returned to John, he showed him the slate piece as he wrote out his words.
“Make sure he lives.”
John merely stared at the burnt husk of a body in front of him, so Xei shoved the man back by the shoulders then pointed back at the slate board. “Make sure he lives.” This time, John seemed to get the message, and started calling out to the other mercenaries for help with the man. Xei let him take care of it from there as he walked over to the rest of the group. He stopped in front of the scared workers, all staring up at him with a mix of terror and exhaustion.
“Serve us. Or die.” He wrote.
No one moved.
One of the sell-swords that had been holding back the father stepped up next to Xei and started yelling. Xei was fairly certain the mercenary's name was George.
“You ‘eard ‘im! Pledge your lives to Lord Xei and you'll get to live!”
The workers started to bow, red motes of fire slamming into Xei's chest, then following a smokey tether up and away to a distant city. Even the father bowed with his daughter as he held his arm protectively around the girl in the dark night.
“What’s your command, Lord Xei?” George asked.