‘If the day comes you gotta end a nasty bastard, children, make sure you do it proper’. And such a day is likely to come living as we do. You don’t want no bullshit coming from the past to bite your asses, yea? Best case no one will know it was you. Lie, hide, deny, bullshit! All the things we do on the daily, but better! Owning up is for those who can afford it, and who got backers. You don’t have shit. Lie to the mirror if ya have to! And make sure you’ve finished the job. I can’t stress that enough. Double and triple-check! You don’t want a knife waiting behind each corner, or the pigs knocking on your door.’
Old Rud had tried to prepare them for anything, even if that included murder. Sunday thought fondly of the old man’s lessons as he ran through the swamp. Those memories were one piece of the old him that remained clear, despite most of his former life seeming as if it was a distant fragment of a movie he had seen.
He was sure Jishu was dead. It made no sense even for an undead to live without a head. Maybe he should’ve chopped up the body just to be on the safe side. The man’s last words and actions were nonsensical and downright creepy. However, what was done was done.
Magical murder, as it turned out, didn’t weigh heavy on Sunday’s heart. It was the strangeness of the act and how it had happened that was something of a burden. His time in the city of mists and murals had been a haze of fighting and killing, but it had been different. Killing hadn’t felt like killing – more like racking up points in a video game against unfeeling and uncaring zeros and ones.
Now? He was a thief, a murderer, and a liar. Only two of these things had been true for him before. He had come and sown chaos. Technically he could think of it as a suicide rather than a murder. Self-delusion was the path to a carefree life, after all.
Sunday knew little about Jishu, but what little he knew was enough to know that he wouldn’t have been spared. That didn’t mean the high ghoul was deserving of having his head melted. He had also helped Sunday and made him a mage, even if it had been for his own selfish motivations. And without him and his ghouls, the fight against the hound would’ve been doomed from the start. Unrepaid debts also weighed a lot.
There was a feeling of uncertainty, budding anxiety that even if Jishu was gone for good, the consequences of coming to this strange swamp would follow Sunday for a long while. Was it one of his talents or just paranoia? He cursed at Chaotic Step for bringing him to this place.
The map showed the way and he checked it often, uncaring of who might see. Spells passed by from time to time. He could sense them better now, although it seemed that the weaker they were the easier it was to feel their existence. It was confusing, as he supposed the stronger ones would have much more to sense.
The swamp grew gloomier the closer he got to the camp. It was an eerie place and felt surprisingly worse now that the army of ghouls was decimated, and the owner of it was lying under the shallow water without a proper head. He saw a few of the monsters roaming between the trees as he got closer, but they circled him from afar before disappearing.
Why are they not coming for me? He doubted they considered Jishu anything akin to family or someone they loved. The man’s control over them was an almost absolute thing, as evident from the hound. Ghouls had thrown themselves against the strange beast without a care for their own safety. And Jishu hadn’t seemed to care either. Now they were like stray cats, looking at Sunday and fleeing at the slightest of movements.
This was for the better but made a strange thought swim up Sunday’s mind. What if Jishu wasn’t dead? He shook his head.
The clearing where they had first met was a gruesome sight. The torn-apart remains of the ghouls had made the earth soft with dark blood and entrails. Sunday stepped around, not enjoying the feeling of guts under his feet. Soon he saw a glint and picked up the rusty sheath of the sword. He didn’t care for the things covering it. He was not much cleaner and was sure most of the smell came from him, rather than the surroundings.
His village bag, which he had dropped somewhere without noticing, held some of the dirt-repelling spells. He was curious about their effect now that he was a proper rank one mage. It was still surreal, but so was rebirth and being a walking corpse. Freaking out was saved for the safety of one’s home in the company of obscene amounts of alcohol. Such was the way of the cultured and Sunday had promised himself to do better sometime right before dying.
The clinking of chains drew his attention and he noticed a shape hunched behind one of the trees. He held his sword pointing ahead and neared the toad creature. It was crouched low and trembling. Its bindings were slung around the trunk.
“Can you understand me?” Sunday asked.
The creature hugged itself tighter and tried to make itself smaller. It would’ve melded with the surroundings if it could. Its clothes and look suggested there was a high level of intelligence there, however, it kept looking at Sunday without responding. Was it a language barrier? He reached over to grab the chain. The creature let out a strange high-pitched mix between a yell and a croak and jumped back.
“Calm down!” Sunday pulled his hand and eyed the thing. He didn’t want to have his finger crushed because the toad was too stupid to understand he was helping it.
The thing instantly froze and Sunday once again reached for the chain and then tried to pull it up. Had Jishu done it himself, or could the ghouls even operate locks under his control? The chain was locked with a simple bronze lock the likes of which Sunday hadn’t seen before. He examined it closely. The tip of the sword was too thick, but a dismembered ghoul hand proved enough. He gently used the claw on a finger’s end, until he heard a familiar click and the lock opened. It was quite a simple mechanism.
“There,” he said. “You’re free to return to your people. And not a word about me!”
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The toad stood unmoving and unblinking.
“Go on, shoo,” Sunday said and motioned for it to go. It didn’t. “Suit yourself.”
He had no time to play savior.
Leaving the toad person behind, he found the bound form of Arten behind what was left of Jishu’s chair. There was a deep groove in the mud left by the human’s body. The ghouls, or Jishu had dragged him back without much care before going to look for Sunday. The man looked to be unconscious, so Sunday left him alone for now after checking for a pulse. He was not going anywhere and Sunday had more work to do before making his way back to the village.
Finding the dug-up dirt mound where Jishu had held the Omen was easy too. More ghouls were skittering around, but they fled once Sunday got closer. Their behavior got him worried once again. He hadn’t had much time to use the Black Breath and recover, but his essence seemed to be slowly building up on its own. There was barely enough for a single cast in case of emergencies.
His main goal was Jishu’s hut.
The door opened with no issue and Sunday stepped in with care. The inside of it didn’t hold much. There was a simple desk and a chair covered in various leathers for cushions. A few barrels filled with torn and bloody rags stood next to one of the walls. There was another opposite them, filled with rusty and broken weapons. Lastly, there was a large chest lined with iron next to the desk.
Sunday didn’t expect more spells or anything of note, but he wanted the manuals and maybe some better clothes.
He beelined for the large chest that seemed to have kept most of the moisture out, even before Arten’s spell was put to use. It was mostly empty, holding a few sheets of leather-wrapped papers filled out with strange names of people or places, along with some gibberish words. Was it a code or a different language? The orphans had often made codes, more for the joy of it than any practical reason. It was fun pretending that what you did mattered. There was no other indication of what the documents signified, but Sunday decided to take them.
There was also a small pouch filled with oxidated bronze, silver, and about five gold coins. The faces stamped on them had long lost their notable features, and the words were an unreadable mess. The only mark on them that could be recognized with certainty was a tower on the opposite side of the face. Sunday found them fascinating. He felt a sudden onset of deep love for the little pieces of metal and their coldness and weight in his hands. That’s what money should feel like, not numbers in a bank account. He grinned.
He put away the bag of coins. The only other thing in the chest were two skulls. One looked human – the other not so much. It had double canines, larger than normal - similar to how Jishu’s had been. Sunday furrowed his brow and left them where they were. There was no sign of the manuals so far.
Rummaging through the clothes yielded little results. Most were bloody, torn by claws or weapons, and downright filthy. After digging for a bit, he took out the most preserved ones. They proved to be a bit too baggy for him, but they were of good make. Soon he was outfitted with leather pants which he tightened with whatever cords and pieces of stray leather he found, a thick shirt promising good protection against strange weather, and a large leather backpack which was much better than the one from the village.
Sunday shoved whatever he deemed useful inside the backpack. While looking through all the clothes he had considered the high possibility that they belonged mostly to Jishu’s many victims, rather than the man himself. The rusty swords and broken bows supported the theory. Not that it mattered. There were no significant marks that could land him in trouble and all clothes had long lost their initial colors.
There were no good weapons in the weapon’s barrel, and for some fucked up reason, there were no shoes anywhere either. None. Had Jishu thrown them all away or did no one in this world own shoes?
What was left was the desk. There were only two books, a wooden box, and some candles and a flint. Sunday opened the first thick tome that, despite having suffered quite a lot of surface damage, looked as if it belonged to a proper ancient library. The title, once deeply engraved in the leather cover, had been rubbed off with time, but the first page repeated it. It said ‘The Common Ghoul: Rearing, Uses, Spells’. The paper was yellowed but surprisingly well preserved with only a few pages outright missing or being torn out. He put it away in his bag without thinking about entertaining the topic further.
Not fucked up at all. I might read it for the hell of it. Knowledge is always a good thing.
The second book was another strange one. Its title was a single word – ‘Undeath.’ It was proclaimed boldly, with black letters that stood like pieces of charcoal upon the grayed leather. Sunday opened it and found himself frowning. Many of the letters inside were unknown to him, while some he could read just fine. The book could be too old, and whoever had given him his ability to understand and read the languages of this world hadn’t accounted for it.
With that out of the way, he aimed his attention at the box. One of the ghoul claws he had conveniently separated from their respective fingers did the job again, and with a satisfying click, the small box opened. What he wanted was there – a stack of papers neatly arranged and covered with dry leather. The first one was the awakening technique he had been given. It was possibly very valuable; despite the fact he didn’t need it anymore.
The next was the Black Breath. However, there were more pages than the one he had learned from. They explained further intricacies of the art and the proper patterns and amounts of essence needed for one to progress further upon the path of a mage, rather than just use it to recuperate essence. There was also a stack of notes, hastily and haphazardly written and bound like a small book. They were hard to read but from what Sunday gathered they were observations and ideas for the improvement of the Black Breath. The art seemed to be good up to rank three, depending on the user’s proficiency in it.
Sunday smiled as he put everything back in the box and made sure the lock clicked shut, despite his abuse of it, before putting the box in his bag as well. It was the most important find so far. Jishu was treating him well even after his death, bless him. Sunday frowned as shivers shot up his spine but he wrote it off to paranoia.
Acquiring the rest of the art was something of great value. He had practiced the Black Breath a few times now, and each time the art stopped having effect after his soul space, or core as he called it, was full. However, now he knew there was a way of practice that aimed to strengthen, rather than recover.
There was not much else of interest apart from another broken box of blank paper and quills, which he took too along with the candles and flint.
Turning over every corner of the small hut yielded nothing else, so he left it behind and headed for the dugout mound.
The small cave, where the moths had been preserved, was bare apart from the remains of the sacrifices. Sunday felt it more acutely now – the death essence hanging in the air. It was not much different than being out in the regular world, but he simply knew this was a place good for the practice of the Black Breath.
And he did just that, Arten be damned. With his back to the room and his front looking toward the narrow tunnel, Sunday started meditating. The essence was sweet nectar that poured like honey and gently flowed through his body before settling in his core. It took him a mere hour or so until he felt full.