Chapter Fifty: Ambush

“What?! Where is he?” Val asked, her voice thick with urgency.

“He’s about five minutes away, coming from the north east.”

“Tom.” She grabbed him by the shoulders, searching his face with wild eyes. “Listen to me. You have to run. I’ll delay him as best I can.”

“What? No! I won’t!” he said, affronted. “There’s two of us and one of him. I won’t just leave you!”

“You don’t understand!” she hissed at him, verging on panic now. “He’s a monster. Go! Run!”

Memories flashed through Tom’s mind. Gad thrashing on the ground under an orc. Sam, staring at him with lifeless eyes from inches away, dried spittle on her blue lips. His father bullying him, torturing him, making him wish he could be anywhere else. The Lord of Blood, so self-assured, preaching to the Hunters like they were his faithful congregation.

Val must have seen something change in his face. Resolve welled in him. He would not run. He would not leave behind the first person to treat him with unconditional kindness and respect. He couldn’t.

Tom stared at Val mulishly. Despair fluttered in the muscles about her eyes, then melted into resignation.

“You fool. You damn fool,” she sighed. “We don’t have much time, then. He follows Decay, Blades, and Wounds. He’s tough, and he can put out a lot of damage. No familiars. Watch out for his weapons, they’re ritual skills, and damn powerful. Get ready!”

Val immediately began checking her arrows, pulling one and nocking it. Tom checked the axe at his belt, loosened it, hefted his spear. He pulled a pair of Harvey’s potions out of his storage and downed them. Between his nerves and the taste he almost threw them straight back up.

Skill activated: Sweet Suffering (Passive).

Deathsdrop Poison - negated: Extreme buff to health. Extreme buff to health regeneration. Duration: Moderate.

Wasting Wine Poison - negated: Major buff to toughness. Major buff to coordination. Major buff to perception. Duration: Long.

“One minute,” Tom said, referring to the information Sere was sending.

Val placed herself behind a tree with Smitten. Scorn immediately climbed it, tucking himself in the nook of a branch a third of the way up.

Tom hid himself behind another tree, taking care that his spear was fully occluded behind it. Sesame was panicking. After a rapid exchange with Tom, he eventually just slumped to the ground amid the corpses and played dead.

Tom’s heart beat a wild rhythm as he watched Honeyfield approach. The man was a spectre sliding silently through the undergrowth.

His hooded head twitched as he came upon the scene of the fight. He pressed against a tree, peering around it with glacial patience. He seemed to come to a decision, and stepped from his hiding spot and amongst the bodies of the orcs.

His gaze slowly swept around, taking in the carnage. He reached to his hood and gently lifted it away from his face.

Once again, Tom was struck by an undeniable feeling of evil. It rolled off Honeyfield in waves. The man’s eyes, circled with deep rings like bruises, stood stark in an otherwise unremarkable face. They burned. They were a flinch before a punch, the moment between pressure and pain, the gut-grip of life-changing bad news.

Tom let out a slow, silent breath. He could see why Honeyfield was so feared. He was terrifying. In the same, indefinable way in which you could be sure a dog was mad and would bite, so too was Honeyfield a picture of evil locked behind unreliable restraint.

“Neck wounds are a real bitch, aren’t they, Carver?” he opined. His voice was higher than Tom expected, and made him think of the whine of wasps.

The forest was still.

“Come now, Carver. I read wounds like a map. They speak to me. Like ghosts,” he said.

“Like …lovers,” he continued, his voice barely more than a whisper.

“Come on out now. That prissy little prince you’ve got following you too.”

Val stepped from behind the tree, bow drawn, trained on the intruder.

“What do you want, Honeyfield?” she asked. “We’re of no interest to you.”

Honeyfield laughed, a sound in between a child crying and a dog being beaten.

“Oh, but you are. You know what this is about. Come out boy!” he yelled.

“He’s gone,” Val said, through gritted teeth. “Told him to run.”

Honeyfield cocked his head at her. “A shame. I had hoped to have this done quickly. Though I suppose hunting him will be fun.” He leered like a maniac, and Tom got an eyeful of rotten teeth from Sere.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I won’t ask again. What do you want?”

“You know what I want, Carver. The Lord can’t have word of the orcs getting back to Wayrest. If they’re prepared, they won’t be as easy for us to take. No, you and the boy are …inconveniences. Something must be done.”

Val had obviously heard enough. She loosed at Honeyfield. Her bowstring sounded overloud in the tomb-quiet of the forest. She immediately pulled another arrow from her quiver, nocking and releasing.

Honeyfield’s hand moved, almost casually, and the first arrow was deflected. It twitched again, lazily, and the second pinged from his blade and sailed harmlessly away.

Val kept up the barrage, and suddenly Honeyfield burst into action, rolling away to the side and coming up to his feet again. As he rolled, his hand flicked out, and Tom saw several pieces of metal glinting in sunbeams as they fired at Val.

She ducked, dropping almost completely to the ground. It seemed a waste of movement, until Tom saw the blade’s trajectory change mid-flight, pulled downwards. Luckily, Val had anticipated the control skill, and the blades passed over her.

Tom felt mana surge in Val, once, twice, as she cast on Honeyfield. A lash of green energy snapped out from her, whipping at Honeyfield, catching him on his hip. The other skill would have been Love You to Death, intangible and unavoidable. It would already be burning away at Honeyfield’s health, even as Spite, the green lash, damaged him and lowered his defences.

Tom felt hope blossom, but it was immediately crushed. Honeyfield just stared at Val, his hands full of tiny knives. He seemed completely uninjured. Val discarded her bow, drawing the needle-thin sword at her waist.

Honeyfield watched her stalk silently towards him. His hand flicked, and she repeated his own trick, batting a knife from the air. His hand flicked again, and Tom felt mana surge within the man.

Now! He thought, and cast Hush on him, stepping from his hiding place.

Honeyfield looked baffled, then realisation dawned as Tom came into view. He levelled his spear at the evil man, moving with Val to circle him.

Honeyfield immediately dismissed him as a threat, focusing on Val despite the Silence debuff he was suffering under. He twitched the knives between his fingers, impatient.

Val lunged at him, her sword extended in a thrust directly at his chest. At the same time, Scorn opened with a salvo of green beams of light.

Honeyfield’s knives disappeared as if they’d never been, and suddenly he was holding a greatsword. He pivoted, holding it high, the broad blade pointed low, parrying Val’s thrust even as several of the beams struck the blade and reflected off at mad angles. One or two pierced his cloak and might have hit him. It was difficult to tell; the man showed no pain.

He settled back into a swordsman’s stance, easy and calm, and Tom shivered. If he knew one thing well, it was swords, and Tom could see just from the man’s stance that he was surpassing excellent.

Tom cast Agony at him, got no noticeable reaction, and followed up with Misery. The thin pink line connecting them made him feel vaguely nauseous. The last thing he wanted was to be connected to this man.

He stepped in, thrusting his spear, cautious, only wanting to try and create an opening for Val. Honeyfield deflected the strike without even looking, and as the sword came around on the backswing, Tom shuffled to ensure he was nowhere near its range.

His eyes widened in shock as the blade extended another couple of feet. It was heading straight for his chest. It must have been some innate ability of the weapon, which meant it was one of his ritual skills. It was the only explanation, with him Silenced.

Luckily, he had expected a similar trick, and slid further, leaning at the same time. Upon hearing Honeyfield followed the Ideal of Blades he had prepared himself to face similar skills to his father’s. It turned out to be a prescient move.

Val was not so prepared. She saw the greatsword extending, about to cleave Tom’s chest open, and threw herself at Honeyfield in a fury. She couldn’t have known that his father would have such a similar skill, that he was already prepared for it. And for her love for Tom, she suffered.

Honeyfield’s greatsword vanished as soon as Val committed to the attack. Proper daggers appeared in each hand, blades black and gleaming like oil. He parried her thrust with preternatural quickness, and stabbed her in the gut, deep, and again, and again.

Tiny, soft noises left her throat with each strike. Then she crumpled.

Tom stabbed at Honeyfield, completely enraged. He assaulted him, came at him like a storm wind, thrusting, whipping his spear in graceful arcs, trying to box the man in. He parried every strike with infuriating casualness. Slipped and slid around those he could not. Tom cast Agony on him twice more, as soon as it was available, and felt like he was throwing wet rags at a brick wall. Nothing seemed to have any effect on the man.

He just simply wasn’t fast enough to hit him. Honeyfield’s three Ideals must have been at least Supreme, by his best guess, and the difference in body tempering was simply too great a gulf. He had to find some way to level the playing field.

Sere pinged him with images of Val, her lying doubled up around her stomach on the ground. A filthy, sick, greyness was spreading slowly up her neck, washing the colour out of her face. She was shaking uncontrollably.

Tom slowed and stopped. Honeyfield hadn’t even bothered to try and attack him, merely dodging everything Tom threw at him. He kept his spear levelled at the man, and cast another Agony at him for good measure. It had to do something eventually.

He realised he was waiting for the Silence debuff to end, and that he wouldn’t be waiting long. Any minute now Honeyfield would be free to use as many skills as he liked, aside from those rituals he could summon and subsume at will for no mana cost.

Tom prepared to attack again. He would not go down easily.

As rushed forward leading with his spear, but as he thrust, he cast Wild Boar Strike. It caught Honeyfield completely unawares, and he stumbled backwards, but didn’t fall, a testament to his poise and strength.

Green beams of light lanced from the treetops again, and Honeyfield was forced to resummon his greatsword to deflect them. As he turned to do so, a great, black shape rose behind him.

Sesame roared, the pure bestial note completely at odds with the metallic clashing that had been ringing through the woods. Honeyfield was bombarded with shards of rock from his blindside, but Sesame wasn’t content with just that.

The bear smashed his paw into Honeyfield’s back sending the man sprawling, skidding on his front through the earth. He fetched up on an orc’s corpse, his greatsword disappearing.

Tom turned, and found Val standing again, colour in her face, only looking slightly out of breath. Two halves of a broken wooden mouse tumbled from her fingers.

The mouse! Tom thought, jubilant. She still had her own one!

Tom reset himself, moving to flank Honeyfield. Val took another angle, her sword in hand, Smitten at her side. Sesame completed the encirclement, a low growl issuing from his barrel chest.

It was just then that Tom’s buff from the death’sdrop poison guttered out. His heart began to race. It put them on a timer, a very short one.

Because his Silence debuff was about to run out too.