Mason wiped the sweat from his eyes, and smiled. Trees and brush flew past him as he raced after his quarry, the branches and other vegetation slipping past him without touching him, like he’d found that perfect opening through a crowd.
He’d found a marker from Kiaan, then one of the raider group’s tracks soon after. Now he was crashing after at near full speed, not expecting time to observe their powers and plan things carefully. He’d try and get around them, if he could, to at least lay a few traps. But they were a bit further and moving faster than he’d expected, so he had to deal with them quickly if he hoped to possibly find and deal with the others.
He knew he was close. No, scratch that—he felt a change in the sounds of the birds, and the many prey animals of the forest. He’d already found them. Footsteps and snapping twigs sounded ahead, and Mason slowed to a walk and steadied his breathing. Another footstep, due East. That made two. A breaking branch to the West. That made three. Patience, he told himself, standing perfectly still. Where was the other one?
He heard water running straight ahead. It slowed to spurts, and Mason drew his bow and crept forward. He found the fourth raider pissing against a tree, still fiddling with his fly. Mason weighed reward and danger, life and death, and attacked.
He loosed a Power Shot straight into Pisser’s abdomen.
The young man crumpled against the tree behind him with a groan and a puff of air, clearly dazed as he touched the arrow now pinning him to the tree. He looked up just as Mason stepped into view.
“Wait,” he spit blood, holding up a hand.
Mason shot another arrow straight through it, directly into his neck. He gasped and soon bled out.
[Player killed. Experience awarded.]
“Hey, what the hell was that? You guys hear something?”
“Hey Timmy,” shouted another voice. “That you?”
Mason dropped two deadly traps near Timmy’s corpse, then dashed back into the trees behind.
“Shit. Something’s wrong,” said one of the raiders as he came closer, the sound of metal ringing in the air.
Their voices and steps quieted now. Mason could still hear them slinking through the trees, their breathing as heavy as their footfalls. One man began mumbling some kind of alien words, probably to a spell, and Mason turned and shot.
“Ahh! Shit! Someone shot me! There’s an archer in the god damn trees!”
Light flashed to Mason’s left. A fiery ball zoomed through the forest until it collided about two trees from Mason’s position. Flames flew like burning oil from the explosion, lighting trees and brush everywhere it went. Mason raised a hand against the heat and light, but kept searching for another target.
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“There! I see him! South side!”
Mason spun and ran full speed from the fire as something whizzed past his head. He ran straight back then angled West and circled towards the fray, waiting with bow at the ready.
A figure came running through the trees, and Mason loosed a Cripple shot. It struck, and the sword-wielding male cursed and dropped to the ground, no doubt hoping to be too low for further arrows to be worth it. But Mason had his Endless Quiver. He loosed arrow after arrow at the lying target. Three. Four. Five.
On the sixth his target cried out and tried to crawl, and Mason lined up a recharged Power Shot.
[Player Killed. Experience awarded.]
He heard a scream and an explosion, then another, smiling as his traps went off. He walked slowly and carefully back towards the corpse of his first kill, eyes back and forth but partly blinded by the growing fire. His senses screamed in silent warning as something appeared from the shadow of a tree.
A blade rammed into his side with considerable strength as an older man appeared from nothing. Mason grunted and seized the man’s arm, tossing his bow and drawing his own dagger as he held on. Even wounded, it soon became clear: Mason was much stronger. He turned and stared into the previously triumphant gaze of his attacker, whose face now paled in terror as Mason’s grip crushed his wrist.
Then he plunged his goblin blade into the man’s neck, straight through the attempted block, and kicked him over.
[Player killed. Experience awarded.]
Mason groaned and pulled the knife from his side, pain lancing up his chest so vicious his legs nearly buckled. He sagged against a tree and smelled the wound with his enhanced senses. It had almost certainly pierced his intestine or stomach. That was bad. Very bad.
He didn’t know the limits of his regeneration. Would it heal organs? Prevent his guts from infecting damn near everything else internally it touched?
He tried to control his pain with steady breaths, knowing at least one more raider was out there, and could shoot giant fireballs. His mind screamed something important, something he’d forgotten, and tried to remind him through the pain.
The traps. The traps went off. And the would-be assassin hadn’t been hurt, so it hadn’t been him.
Mason stumbled towards the first corpse. All around him the forest burned, the heat dripping sweat down Mason’s face and neck. He had to escape. But first he had to finish this raider.
His vision was swimming and he suddenly remembered he’d dropped his bow. Shit. He staggered and gripped a tree, leaving a bloody hand print as he did. He couldn’t leave his bow. It would burn up. And one raider wasn’t worth it, not by a long shot. He turned back and stumbled towards the trees leaving bloody marks on every surface he touched.
He found his bow and cried out as he stooped to lift it, then kept walking towards anything that wasn’t burning. He couldn’t die here. Not yet. Not until Blake was safe, which was maybe never. And the truth was, he didn’t want to die.
He wanted to live as he never had in the old world. He wanted to get back to Haley and fuck her brains out. He wanted to take a trip to the nymphs, clear out their holy tree, and do likewise to them. Then he wanted to see this strange new world and maybe explore it with his brother, and beat all these bastards who meant to kill them.
So his feet kept moving, one step at a time.
He screamed at the pain but kept his body upright, kept it obeying his will and not its stupidity He hated poetry, but one from some damn poem he’d forgotten kept ringing in his ears. “God damn you Blake,” he spit blood as he walked, practically hearing his brother read the lines.
“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them hold on…”
He screamed. But he filled that damn minute. He staggered upwind from that burning hell hole, then collapsed down a hill, rolling in fetal position to the bottom with a few whimpering cries of agony. When he looked up he saw a small, winding creek, and would have leapt for joy if he could stand. He crawled to the water, and tried to hold in his blood.
[Player killed. Experience awarded.]
Mason laughed like a maniac, then stopped from the pain and clutched at his guts. “Got you,” he mumbled. Then he promptly passed out.