This is all kinds of fucked up. I’m currently sitting up to my knees in a swamp, and it’s just cold enough that frost has started to set in. I’m looking at my target, but there’s no way in hell that I’m going to try and take him right now.

The target, a Henry Deeter, is standing slightly in front of four other men, and about twenty other people of varying age and size. The twenty he’s ‘collected’ over the last couple of weeks that I’ve been hunting him down. They’re all wearing chains and metal collars around their necks.

Slaves in other words. I’d bet that either the chains or the collars have some enchantment on them that keeps all of them in line. Fucking disgusting. Especially considering who this asshole is selling them to.

Seven trolls are standing on the other side of the small piece of land he’s standing on. Armed with actual swords and clubs, they don’t exactly fit in with the “local” trolls. For one, most of the trolls in this area are too dumb to use weapons, and actually prefer to use their hands to kill. Another point, is that I’m pretty sure the weapons are at least lightly enchanted, which suggest one of two things to me. These ugly bastards are either from near St. Louis, or somewhere down south like Kentucky.

Naturally, all of these ugly fuckers are on one of the few naturally raised areas of this thrice blasted swamp, and thus, all of them are relatively dry, and not freezing their asses off, like I am. I really wish I could ask Anubis for some good advice, but I know better. The gods aren’t allowed to directly interfere with mortal affairs, like this, as it would allow demons, devils, and everything else that goes bump in the night to do the same.

Suddenly I hear a strange scream. Not a human scream, it sounds more like a birds, but somethings a little off. Ducking down further into the swamp, I look up and around. And there they are.

A fully equipped adventuring party. Five people, four being carried in a sling underneath a fucking Griffin! The fifth person is riding the bloody thing! As they swoop down and the griffin sets the sling down so that they can get started on their mission, which is quite clearly the Trolls, I realise that this is my chance.

I start by propelling the two harpoons I had prepared directly at the guards closest to the slaves. Both of my harpoons are made from deer bones, and they shatter after impaling themselves inside the two guards. Both of them drop like sacks of bricks, and I move forward.

The adventurer’s have someone with a machine gun, as I hear them open fire on what I assume is the trolls. I glance over and sure enough, he’s firing at the trolls, and about one in every five round is tracer fire. That’ll be good as trolls are afraid of both fire and acid, both of which keeps their natural regeneration from working.

The griffin flies upwards a bit before slamming back down on another troll. Meanwhile I see two slightly purple streaks come down and attack the next two guards, leaving me Deeter. I draw a pair of bone knives, both made from Giant Boar Tusks.

Unfortunately, Deeter sees me and brings his whip around to try and lash me. I know he’s pretty good with it, as I’ve found several people at the locations he’s “visited” during the past couple of weeks who were killed by a whip. However, I’ve got his number this time.

He doesn’t properly clean his weapon. Ever.

The dried blood on his whip answers the blood magic call I’m wearing. Acid Blood is a very interesting spell. It is manually activated, but once activated it can turn any free blood within five feet into acid. I actually prepared five knuckle bones with the spell on them for this occasion, as each one lasts about five minutes, and only affects blood near the knuckle. I was thinking to throw it at the trolls if I needed to, hoping for cuts and other free flowing blood.

But this works nicely, as the whip falls apart quickly due to the enchantment. Deeter throws the whip away and goes for his dagger, but I’m already on him. A quick stab at his neck, which he ducks to avoid, and then it’s over, as I drag my other knife across his throat. Now that he’s dead, I can look at what’s happening, as gunfire is still going, and I can hear the shouts of both man and troll.

What I see immediately horrifies me. The man with the machine gun has turned it on the slaves, while his party holds off five trolls without his help. The trolls are somewhat emboldened by the fact that the tracer rounds aren’t coming at them, and that one of them managed to get the parties mage at some point.

My blood runs both hot and cold as I charge at the gunner. Luckily my fight with Deeter took me behind him, so the lunatic doesn’t see me before I tackle him from behind. We both roll onto the ground, and the machine gun goes silent as it flies into the swamp. I quickly get back up and turn as I hear another scream, this time human.

Without the gunfire, and with the mage down, the trolls came back, though there are now only five. The griffin is fighting two, protecting a priest as he quickly uses magic to heal the mage. The mage has a bad cut across her chest, which ripped open the robes she was wearing, and she looks extremely pale as she lays on the ground, clearly struggling to breathe. Two others, a man and a woman, are holding off the other three trolls.

The man is dressed in strange armor, that reminds me of samurai armor, and he’s armed with a strange curved blade spear. The woman has more normal looking plate armor on, and is doing her best to hold off the troll she’s fighting with her sword and shield.

Quickly glancing down, I see that the gunner is out cold. I make a quick prayer to Anubis that he stays that way for a while, and run to help the griffin. The unique thing about griffins is that lies can not exist around them. I know that sounds weird, but if anyone tries to tell a lie near a griffin, they find themselves unable to. Makes me really glad that Anubis taught me about dealing with elves about a month ago. Elves also don’t lie, they just only tell as much of the truth as they think you deserve.

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So I yell at the griffin, “This will turn blood to acid!” before throwing another knuckle bone at one of the trolls. The griffin has just enough time to slash open that trolls throat before the knuckle activates, causing all of the now free flowing blood from the trolls throat to turn into acid and eat away at the troll.

The troll screams in anguish, and as I look over, the other trolls are stepping back, looking at me. Then the three that were fighting the duo, as well as the last one fighting the griffin, turn and run into the swamp. One of them yells something in Troll at me, before all four of them disappear.

And, just like that, the fight is over. Obviously we stay on guard, but we’re in no condition to try and chase them. And they’re not in a good spot to try and take us. Trolls have a notoriously hard time trying to sneak up on anyone, so all of us feel somewhat confident of what’s going on now.

“Thank you stranger,” says that man in the strange looking armor, as the woman goes to the griffin. She’s the one that was riding it before. I nod at the man and say, “No problem. But before we get to everything else, you might want to restrain the lunatic over there. He was firing on unarmed civilians.”

At this, both the man and the woman turn to look at me, before glancing at the, thankfully, still passed out gunman.

“Is that so,” says the woman, in a voice that nears icy cold. I suspect that there might be something more going on here, but I’m not sure what.

“Do you have any proof?” says the man, sounding cautiously aloof.

I look over, and realize that every single one of the slaves is now dead. A few look like the collars around their neck just tightened until they couldn’t breathe, and I curse.

“Not anymore,” I say, “A few of those out there were alive a few minutes ago, however I’m guessing one of the trolls had the controller for the enchantment on the collar. They’ve all been killed.”

He sighs, then looks at the woman. “Once again, we don’t have enough evidence. He could have opened on them for a dozen reasons, and we’ll know which one when he recovers. But without one of them alive to tell us if his reason is true, we’re stuck with another situation of conflicting reports, and Bill has enough backing with the Lords that we’d never get it through the courts.”

The woman grunts, “Too bad they passed the law that Griffins aren’t allowed into the court house. That’d solve this problem pretty quickly.”

He sighs, “I think we’re just going to have to kick him from the Tempests and you will have to assign him somewhere he can’t do too much harm.”

She sighs then looks at me. The priest had overheard what was being talked about, and had already tied the man up before he could awake.

“So, who are you and where are you from?” she asks me.

“My name is Daniel Greyman, I’m from what used to be Northern Indiana,” I immediately shift into what I’m starting to think of as Elf mode.

She nods as she looks at me, with slight suspicion, “What were you doing out here, Mr. Greyman?”

I snort, before pointing at the corpse of Deeter, “That was my target. Slaver Henry Deeter. Wanted Dead or Alive. Took the request about two and a half weeks ago, when it was still ranked E rank. High E to be sure, but still.”

She nods, “It was only moved up to C rank about a week ago, when we got word that he might be working with a group of trolls. You’re lucky we came along when we did.”

I shrug, “I’ve been hunting this guy for over two weeks now, and he hadn’t even heard I was on his tail. I’m good at being out of the way.”

“All right,” she says, “Last question for you, what’s your class. I’ve never heard of a class that lets you turn blood to acid.”

I sigh. “That was these knuckle bones I’ve got.” True, if not completely. “Can I ask a question? I’m still an E ranker, and I joined the guild out in the middle of nowhere basically. Who are you people?”

Of course, I know who they are, but this does it’s purpose of distracting them from asking me what class I am.

“We’re the Tempests,” she says, but before she can continue, the man wakes up.

“What the hell is going on!” he shouts, glaring at everyone around him.

“Bill,” the woman says, “You’re no longer part of the Tempests. You are now officially reassigned to Oxhollow, in the western territories. Your actions today, while I am unable to take you to court for them, have lowered the trust we have for you. We don’t want you in the group anymore.”

At all of this, Bill’s face is conspicuously paled. “You can’t do this,” he says, but before he can continue the man starts yelling at him.

“This is the fourth time we’ve gone into a fight, and someone has gotten seriously injured. Melanie almost died Bill! A troll managed to cut her open and if it wasn’t for Paul, she’d be dead! As it is, she is in no condition to continue, and Ashley and Reginald are going to have to medevac her before it gets to dark. Which means WE, meaning you, me, Paul, and our new friend here, get to stay in this fucking swamp overnight! And you say, we can’t do this? Good Riddance!”

I’m actually rather impressed. I mean, it’s kind of apparent that this guy has a crush on that Melanie girl, but he’s some kind of machine, cause he’s been taking care of what needs to be taken care of, before looking to how she’s doing.

Either way, I’ve got a long night ahead of me, especially since these guys probably won’t want to travel in the dark. They’ll want to set up a camp and set a watch to keep the monsters and such away. And of course, I’ll have to stay with them, because I’m just an E rank adventurer, I don’t even have my regular title yet.

Granted, I’d imagine there’d be other words to be said if they knew I was a Necromancer.

Before they can say anything else, I walk over to the corpse of Deeter, and saw his head off with my knife. Everyone just kind of watches me as I do this, but I don’t really pay attention. This far away from the Griffin I can safely lie, and I need the head to collect on the bounty.

As they say, a man’s got to eat. Thankfully, my behavior doesn’t really throw any of them off. As a matter of fact, the guy with the strange armor comes over and hands me a bag.

“This is a gift from us. It used to be Bill’s, but he borrowed it from the group, and now that he’s no longer part of us, he doesn’t get to keep it. He already took his stuff out of it, he’s got more of them. He mostly kept ammo in this one.”

The bag he hands me is a dark red, not quite the color of blood. As I open it, I realize what this is. It’s a bag of holding. Bags of holding were initially created by some former dungeons and dragons nerd in the Saints Ring. He took the concept and figured out the spell work to make the actual bag. Now the guy is living the good life, as everyone wants one of these.

Each bag of holding is ranked from Least up to Master. A Least Bag of Holding is basically a backpack the size of a coin purse. It’s mostly just good for keeping money in. The higher you go, the more you can carry, and the less it will weigh. For example, a Bag of Holding can hold up to three hundred pounds of stuff, or ninety cubic meters, and will always only weigh two pounds.

“This,” I say, “is awesome. But, before we go further, I never caught your name.”

He chuckles, “My name’s Jamie. Jamie Buchanan.”

I nod, then say, “Well, Jamie Buchanan, this is a kick ass gift, and I think,” glancing up at the sky, “If we get moving we can be outside of the Swamp before dark. Won’t make a town until tomorrow, but it’s better than being in the middle of all this,” waving my hand to encompass our surroundings, “Plus, I know the way.”