The smell hit Adam’s nostrils hard and fast, smoke in the fields and from the house they were just sleeping in the night before. Looking out over the farmland they had just been helping Hammy with, they saw small fires, tossed over wagons and dead livestock laying on the dirt.
Adam stepped forward. “What the hell happened here, we were gone for half a day.”
Brian with a grim expression stepped next to Adam “Only one way to find out, let’s go.”
The three of them started to walk over to the destroyed home, the nice cosy cottage they were staying in was now in multiple pieces and still burning.
“Whoever did this, there’s a good chance they are still around. Just be aware, be present.” Adam felt like he needed to say it but based on the looks he received, they were already as prepared as they were ever going to be.
Now only a few body lengths from the house they stepped forward quietly, trying to listen for any signs of life or chatter, Adam couldn’t hear a thing besides the roar of the fire on the cottage.
Stepping out of the back entrance to the cottage was a man in dark purple robes, with lighter embellishments in the shape of the great Oak tree sewn into the material. He pulled down his hood as he took a few steps out of the doorway on the back of the cottage when he spotted all three of them, his eyes grew huge, he yelled out. Rather, he tried to yell out but Adam blocked his mouth with a gust of kinetic force and then shot another wave of force down his throat through his gaping wide mouth. Adam regretted doing that instantly as now the man was just choking and coughing loudly, though he couldn’t speak, Adam knew it was about to draw attention to this area of the cottage if there were more of them inside. With his increase casting speed and processing now, he had to think more before he used his abilities, he was starting to feel like his brain couldn’t keep up with his casting, probably just a lack of experience he thought.
He dashed to the side of the cottage, waving his hand for his teammates to join him, hoping to avoid being seen by any more of them when they inevitably come out to check on the choking man.
“What is going on here? Is there someone there?” Adam heard as he saw Matilda get past the walls of the cottage, out of view just in time.
“Go down the wrong hole Jon?” another voice said. This wasn’t good, at least two more of them, likely even more. They surely weren’t pushovers if they did this and were affiliated with the church and whatever projects the church were involved with.
Peeking around the corner where the front door to the cottage was, he saw another robed man walking down the main path that joined the cottage to the main road between the farm and the city.
The man was walking away from them, down towards the road. Adam took a risk, again calling his teammates to follow, he had a semblance of a plan at least. He snuck in through the front door of the cottage hoping there wouldn’t be even more there right in the doorway.
The previously beautiful cottage now had the entire right side of it missing and burned down to ash on the ground, it was the area where Hammy had served them tea and several dinners. Where was Hammy in all of this? He better not be dead, surely he couldn’t be dead .
Stepping through the front door, Brian held his imbued axe tightly, ready to make a quick move as soon as it was needed. Brian could hear them still chatting at the back door of the cottage as he went down the life side of the house towards the room where they had been sleeping. Stepping quietly on the wooden planks that made up the floor of the hallway, they crept as silently as they could into the bedroom where they had been staying for their entire stay at Hammy’s farm.
Stepping into the room another robed man had his back turned to them. This was a total of five different robed men Adam had seen now on location. The man turned as they entered the room and started to yell as Adam jumped to the side to let Brian through who was right behind him. Brian ran into the mans’ stomach with his axe, the golden light that was imbued on the axe seeming to sizzle on his flesh, Adam heard it after the initial gush of blood and noise of the blade entering his body. The man screamed in pain before falling silent as he dropped on his knees to the ground.
“Drop your axe now boy, or girlie here gets her throat slit.”
Turning around they found the three men from the back door at the doorway to the room, one of them with a knife at Matilda’s throat, she was wide eyed, tears welling up, a few already rolling down her cheek.
Brian seemed to almost raise his axe again instinctively but fortunately had the sense to keep holding it low to the ground. Adam began his channelling of kinetic force.
“What are you gonna do about it, you are coming back to the church with us, we were warned about you, the three hikers.” The man with his arm around Matilda’s neck said, none of them had hoods on now. All of them were cleanly shaven bald.
The other priest, the one Adam had choked out spoke with a clearing of his throat.
“You messed up sneaking into the house, now you are cornered in here with us. Well, you didn’t have a chance either way but you only made it harder for yourself, not sure what your plan there was geniuses.” He chuckled to himself, the way he spoke marked him as the supervisor or leader of at least this group of priests.
“Fargo?” Adam asked, turning his head from the robed men.
Brian shook his head “That’s not him, Fargo is far more intimidating. Also much older.” Brian smirked at Adam and dropped his voice “We’ve got this, we always find a way out, I trust you will save her. Don’t make me eat my words okay?”
The leader priest grew agitated “Not sure how you know so much about Fargo as outsiders. Also, why are you discussing amongst yourselves like that in this situation, we gave you an order, drop the axe. We meant right now.” His eyes of grey were like steel and it felt like a blade with the sharp glances he gave Adam. The bald man’s eyes closed as he went flying further down the hallway and into the wall of the cottage, chunks of burning wood come flying through the hallway from the central area of the cottage. Long logs and plans and other random pieces Adam was able to pick up from the burning area of the house. All of these pieces were flooding through the air of the hallway for at least five full seconds, he knew he risked hurting Matilda considering he had no line of sight to what he was doing, being inside the room, but he tried to push them all higher to the heads of the tall men that were holding Matilda. The three men were all lying crumpled in a heap at the end of the hallway, up against the wall, with blood pouring out of the sides of their head. Matilda had become free from the mans grasp in the commotion and managed to step into the room, she was smart enough to duck from all of the debris rushing through the hallway where she was being held but Adam didn’t have the accuracy to avoid hurting her entirely.
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She cried as she crawled along the floor near the door to the room, gasping for air and rolling onto her back as several pieces of wood stuck out of her body, a few of them still smoldering on the end.
Brian grabbed her “It’s okay, I knew you wouldn’t die. It’s okay. I’ll get the wood out, you’ll heal yourself, we will be okay. I promise.”
Adam was impressed at the way Brian was handling these tough situations, it was like his mental fortitude had grown through his time on Trystoff as well as his physical. Adam still felt very panicked in these types of situations but just focused on the solutions that came to his mind and focused on his ability usage to not completely freak out and panic, he couldn’t become useless. He refused.
Adam snapped into another alert state “There was one more man heading to the main road from the cottage when we snuck in. Let’s check it out.”
“Wait man, she is really hurt. One thing at a time, your brain is crazy man look at what is right in front of you.” Brian grimaced at the sounds Matilda made as he pulled out the chunks of wood that had dug into her body.
“I hope your healing covers the infection side of wounds Maddy, these are nasty.”
“Since when do you call her Maddy.” Adam raised an eyebrow.
“Since we spent a whole day on the farm while you chatted up nerdy hiker stuff with Hammy. You and Hammy are kind of cute hey.” Brian tried to ease the tension he was feeling with a joke, Adam knew that much, he smiled in response but felt a little hurt, a little insecure at those two growing close. Not any kind of jealousy but just concern that he wasn’t likeable enough, wasn’t good enough, it took him back to the more painful side of his life on Earth. Adam shook himself out of his mental spiral, he had way more important things to worry about.
“Shout out if you need me, I’m going to check the front, I’ll be careful.”
“Good call, shout out if you need us.” Brian responded as he crouched down and soothed Matilda as she wailed.
Adam looked out of the front door to the cottage, he could barely see the man in the distance but he was running the other way, down the end of the path that connected the farm to the main road, Adam guessed he was heading back to the city to give the news of what had happened. He tried to see if he could do anything even from this distance of several minutes walking where the man was barely visible, with his psychokinesis. He strained his mind to no avail, there was no way he could focus on something that far away and create anything tangible there. He was proud of himself for what he did with the burning wood but he felt frustrated that he couldn’t do more, he knew his class had a lot of potential from the moment he could pick up all the burning wood without even seeing it and cause that damage with it.
He come back into the room with Brian and Matilda, finding that Matilda was casting radiant burst healing on herself.
“I’m okay, sorry for the freak out.”
“You had every right to freak out, they had a knife to your throat, please don’t apologise Maddy.” Awkward silence filled the air as Adam tried to use a nickname that was obviously not appropriate in their relationship, well it wasn’t obvious to him, obviously. But based on the silence and reactions of the two others, it definitely wasn’t appropriate. Why did he try to call her that?
“Matilda. It’s all good.” He corrected himself clearing his throat with a cough.
“The ring is working, I can feel my wounds getting better from that periodic healing effect. I think it’s nice, it looks pretty as well, unlike the bug that gave it to me.”
“That’s good, the baby was kind of cute.” Adam enjoyed when they could just laugh, despite the ridiculous circumstances they found themselves in.
“No it was not!” Her laugh fell off. “Adam, you almost killed me! What the hell!”
“Hey, Brian back me up, I did what I had to and I save you!”
“He’s right, sorry.” Brian stretched his arms above his head and shook his hands and legs, Adam thought it was a nervous twitch he had when he felt awkward or something.
“So, what now Adam?” She asked him, sitting down on one of the lounge chairs, seeming to be feeling a lot better already.
“Well, that guy is going to alert the city of what happened here most likely, Hammy still isn’t here, we can do a final sweep of the farm but I think they have already taken him somewhere else. We need to find Hammy for sure.”
“Or he is already dead” Brian added quickly.
“I can’t believe he is dead, the guy is level eighteen, we fought off a few of them at level four ,what could they really do to him?”
“Well, how did they take him then? He was pretty out of shape for a level eighteen, who knows how much the level matters if you fall out of your way like that.”
“Who knows, maybe he went willingly, maybe he wants to get in closer and cause trouble.”
“Sounds like something you would think of, not him.” Brian retorted.
“You know what, that’s a good idea, let’s get in close and cause trouble!”
Brian placed his hand on his forehead out of frustration. “What man? That’s not what I meant, why would we do that, everyone in that damn city wants us dead, maybe even Tob of all people wants us dead!”
“Well we need to find Hammy right? The first place to look would be the city, Vincent will be there as well. But, the city is not going to exactly welcome us with wide arms right? I say we steal these robes and we sneak into the church!”
“I think you have become way too arrogant now that you can fling some logs of wood around and have a special class.” He looked at Adam with disappointment.
“I never made that claim about my class.” Adam stated firmly.
“You didn’t have to.” Brian snapped back.
“Stop it, you idiots.” Matilda ran her hands through her hair, pinching the soot and ash that she pulled out in her fingertips.
“I think, at least, I hope that all three of us recognise that we all need each other and that we couldn’t afford to lose anyone.”
“Of course.” The boys said in unison.
“Adam is right, what else are we going to do, wait for them to come back here and die?”
“I don’t know, isn’t rushing into the city still just insane all things considered?”
“So insane it just might work, they won’t be expecting it right?” Adam shouted, defending his plan.
They walked back into the hallway, approaching the three men laying on the ground.
“Should we make sure they are dead?” Adam asked, looking at Brian.
“You think I like killing people? I want to go out there and puke over the last guy I just killed. Murder isn’t fun. You started it Adam, why don’t you finish it. You can use my axe if you want.” Brian dropped his axe on the floor and walked out the front door of the cottage.
Matilda looked at Adam blankly. “He’s going through a lot. Don’t mind him. We can probably convince him to in a little bit. To kill them.”
Adam picked up the axe “He is right I guess, he is the one that has to do all the nitty gritty fighting, we didn’t get to choose our classes. He got the up close fighter with weapons. Not fair he has to do all the murder right?” He held the axe near one of the large, bald men that were bleeding out on the floor.
He raised his arm in preparation to swing. He dropped the axe on the ground and walked back into the room, sitting in one of the armchairs. Matilda followed him in “It’s okay that you can’t do it, it’s not easy, it’s horrible. If the refined are so refined why did they send us into this deathmatch you know?”
Matilda waited as Adam sat there with no response, she sat down. Suddenly the sound of the axe cutting flesh could be heard as they both sat in their chairs.
“See, Brian will do it. I told you.”
“It’s not Brian, I’m doing it, with my powers.”
“Oh” She said back in a surprised voice. Her face twisting slightly in disgust.
Adam flung the axe up and down, hacking into the flesh of the bodies with his kinetic force.
He preferred not seeing it and it was less messy this way rather than just closing his eyes and hacking away, what if he hurt himself too, it was better this way.
“That just seems a bit weird.”
Cult Acolyte Slain! (400/6000 xp)
Cult Acolyte Slain! (800/6000 xp)
Cult Acolyte Slain! (1200/6000 xp)
“Maybe. It’s done now, I don’t want to look at them.”
Brian could be heard coming back through the front door of the cottage.
“I saw the experience notifications, you did it? Jesus, what did you do? That’s nasty even by my standards.”