May, 1st, 2012 A.C, Late afternoon
The setting sun shone on a long truck that advanced slowly across the sinuous mountain road, dying the white and blue surfaces and turning them orange and brown. The magical gravity propellers lighted the ground and hummed loudly as they worked hard in pushing the heavy vehicle forward and keeping it at a steady height despite the ups and downs of the poorly maintained, unpaved road, but the two men riding in the cab were in a rush to reach the safety of the compound at the mountain pass before nightfall.
Inside the cab, a dark-skinned man was leaning on the steering wheel with his eyes squinted due to the light coming through the front window. The pearls of sweat on his skin and the way he was gripping the wheel, so hard that his knuckles had gone pale, evidenced his state of tension as he tried to navigate the heavy truck as fast as possible through the serpentine path.
Such roads where nice as a shortcut during the day, and also to save some cash at the regulated checkpoints between countries, but at night aura beasts or bandits could appear at any turn of the road. Hell, given how close to they where to the Theocracy, it wasn't impossible to find a band of self-proclaimed zealots hunting anyone who didn't follow the narrow-minded way they saw the world.
The driver lifted a hand to sweep a drop of sweat that started falling down the back of his neck, brushing unconsciously over the black and white slave curse mark that signaled him as a debt slave. The plan had been perfect, he had followed the schedule scrupulously and both him and the Master should have been resting at the compound for a couple of hours already, if not for that fallen tree they had found in the middle of the road.
He had asked for his master's opinion, and he had ordered to get the tree removed from their way for them to try and make it to the mountain pass, because the small town where they had spent the last night was even further and there was no way they could make it in time. Even with help, they had taken too long, and now he had to balance speed and safety because their lives very much depended on it.
The enslaved driver looked askance at his master for a brief moment before returning his full focus to his task. The gaunt man looked calm and serene at first glance, with his thick white mustache and his deeply marked widow's peak , but the driver had served him long enough to understand his body language, and the master's crossed legs and linked fingers on top of his right thigh denoted that he was at the very least as tense as his worker.
The master seemed to have noticed his servant's scrutiny, because he changed the way he had crossed his legs, placing the left on top of the right, and cleared his throat.
“Don't worry, Sev, we have seen ourselves on much worse than this. I'm sure we will... AURGH!”
The trader didn't get to finish whatever encouraging words he had came up with because Sev, with eyes and mouth wide open stomped on the brakes with a silent scream, and watched from the corner of his eye how his master's body jumped against the seat belt, almost crashing face first on the dashboard. The man coughed and spluttered curses while he rubbed the zones hurt by the belt during the rough stop, and glared at his slave.
“What the hell was that for, Sevias? You crazy son of a bitch, I could have broken my neck!”
Without looking at his master, Sev just pointed in front of them and mumbled, “Another tree, Mister Aincrad. We are fucked, Sir”.
Aincrad punched the dashboard, furious and frustrated. “They told me there was a storm around here last week, but the path should have been cleared by now. Who would have thought the forestry service is so lazy in this country?” With a loud sigh, he unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door, getting down to go inspect the bothersome obstacle.
Sev raised a hand to try and stop his master, but desisted when he saw it was too late. With a sigh of his own, a lot lower in volume so Aincrad would not hear him, he got down from the vehicle as well and joined Aincrad in front of the tree.
“What do you say,Sev, can't we just hover over it with the truck?” Aincrad looked at the tree while he twirled the right end of his mustache with his fingers. He was frowning, but the monocle on his left eye made him look like he was looking at the natural roadblock with a raised eyebrow, something that for some reason looked comical in Sev's eyes, and he had to stifle a snicker.
“Sorry, but it is the same as with the other tree, Sir. We are dealing with heavy machinery here, not a holiday glider. We risk damaging the engine heavily, if not burn it completely, if we force it to try and raise the truck so high”. He looked from Aincrad to the back of the truck. “I guess our only choice is to make use of the cargo again”.
Aincrad spat on the ground, and the fact that he would do something so rude told Sev about how angry his master was way better than anything else.
“I would prefer not risking damaging the merchandise and lowering its value, but I guess you're right. It's better than staying here doing nothing and waiting to be killed. Or robbed and then killed”. Aincrad kicked a stone with his obscenely expensive shoes and started walking to the cargo door of the truck. “Let us get this done as quickly as possible”.
Both men started working the safes and levers that kept the doors closed when they heard a whiz and the sound of a metallic impact, and they rose their heads to see an arrow stuck right between their faces. Sev reached for his boot, but another arrow came from another direction and struck the ground between his feet, making a clear warning.
Dark figures started sprouting from the shadows around them: one, two, three... Sev was able to count at least eight men on the path and blocking their sides. Aincrad looked back around the corner of the truck and spat a curse before whispering to his servant. “Don't move, Sev, I can see another two of these bastards coming from behind us on this side of the truck, I guess at least another two are coming from your side as well”.
A man with chubby cheeks and a horizontal scar across his forehead took a step ahead from the other men towards the merchant and his slave, and he started talking with a disgustingly arrogant smile on his face: Well, gentlemen, keep your hands and treasures where we can see them and nobody needs to get hurt... yet”. Some of his men snickered or laughed openly at the words of their boss.
The driver looked at Aincrad, and his master nodded his head in an answer to the silent question. Both men raised their hands above their heads, and Aincrad spoke calmly. “There is no need for anyone to get hurt. My servant can't reach for the knife on his boot, and my Treasure is this monocle; it has no use in combat, it just lets me appraise the skills on those I look at. Why don't we settle this in a way that benefits both of us and we go on our way?”
The bandit chief started pacing in front of his men while he twirled his weapon, a spiked mace that had a sharp point on one side, similar to the beak of an eagle. “Well, aren't we cooperative? If only all of our prey were just like you”. The bandits laughed again, and their chief pointed at the truck “And what merchandise are transporting, good sir?” The bandit performed an exaggerated reverence and his men laughed even harder.
“We are transporting slaves to the north...”
Before Aincrad finished speaking, the chief turned around and screamed at his men, enthusiastic, “Have you heard that, you fuckers? Tonight all of us will get it wet!” The bandits threw their arms in the air and joined their chief's celebration.
Among shouts and whistles, the fat man ordered Aincrad to open the truck, and when he did, the interior showed three long rows of seats, almost half of them occupied by men and women in chains. Aincrad made a gesture and talked, “See? All of them are healthy, I can pass you the key for the chains and you can take them away”.
When things calmed down a little, the boss waved his weapon in a negative gesture. “Don't take me for a fool, I know that the slave trader has to transfer the rights over the slaves or they will show as stolen goods through appraisal. Your load is ours now, but I don't think that is enough pay for our efforts. Chopping trees down to block the road would have been very suspicious, so we had to work together on pushing them down and making it look like they had fallen naturally during a storm, you know? Some of my poor comrades even got hurt”. Once again, the criminals laughed with the arrogance of sadists who had a prey between their hands.
The slave trader started looking actually nervous. “Well, what about this? We leave the truck as well with you and later we pay you a ransom fee for it, How does a gold coin sound?”
The bandit chief sighed. “Again, I'm not an idiot. If we agree to that, you can have the city guard on our asses when we go to deliver the truck and collect the money... but I like the idea of the ransom”. He turned to look at his minions. “Hey guys, what about we take them home, ask for a ransom from their family, and after they pay we give them back corpses?”
The criminals started laughing and shouting things that made Aincrad's blood freeze in his veins, but everyone turned silent when they noticed a sound that was coming closer, similar to a beast trampling through the underbrush towards them. The criminals prepared their weapons and face in the direction where the noise came from. They could see how whatever was coming towards them was pushing aside the bushes in it's run, until it finally came into view.
It seems like the young man, a teenager at most, had slipped while walking a crest up from them, slipped and came tumbling down the slope until he ended up in the middle of the road, between criminals and victims, with a “thud” and an “oof”. The thin boy stood, coughing and patting dust off his ragged high school uniform, and pulling twigs and leaves from his messy, raven black hair that reached his shoulders.
Aincrad looked at him through his monocle and turned ghostly pale. He unconsciously reached for Sev's shoulder, “We're saved. Just wait for the right moment to run into the container and release Mayra as quick as possible”.
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Sev frowned, understanding. His master's monocle allowed him to see people's skills and the name of their Sacred Treasures. What kind of monster walked under the guise of a such a frail boy to get such a response from Aincrad? The slave tried his best to slide his feet a step backwards without being noticed, and then another step, but he stopped his movement when the bandit chief finally got over the surprising appearance and started talking to the boy.
“You better not move, kid, aside from the twelve men surrounding the truck, I have ten archers and three attack mages hidden in the trees. Even if a bit mistreated, you're wearing the uniform of one of those schools for well-off boys, right? This is our fucking day of luck. I'm sure we can get a nice ransom for you before we send your severed head to your disgusting rich parents”.
The boy didn't seem perturbed in the least by what he had just been told. Instead, he started looking to the trees and bushes, turning around on the spot to take in his surroundings. The chief got angry at the lack of response, and started screaming at the boy, but he simply lifted a hand, gesturing for the man to shut up.
The tall and fat bandit lost his cool for a second and started walking to the little shit while he lifted his mace with both hands, but he stopped when the boy suddenly turned to him, looking him dead in the eyes and started talking.
“Either you don't know how to count, or you are lying to scare us. There are only three archers on that side”. He pointed to three different spots on his right. “And another two archers and one mage over there”. Then he pointed to another three places on his left. His left hand had never left his waist, where had tied a crude broad sword, seemingly made by sharpening the scapula of a big animal.
Before anyone could say anything, the boy lifted his right hand over his head and snapped his fingers twice in rapid succession with a devious grin on his face. After a few seconds, screams, suddenly cut by gurgling noises could be heard among the trees in the general direction of the places he had signaled. Everyone stood there in shocked silence until several small shadows crossed the air and impacted the ground around the bandits; someone had killed their ambush party in the trees, severed their heads and thrown them at their colleagues.
All the bandits stood there in silent, horrified stupor. They were the ones who used to do those things to their victims, so them becoming the target of such savagery was totally new to the bandits. Sev took the chance to follow his master's order. One of the bandits shouted a warning to his companions, and most of them started coming out of their shocked state at different paces.
The first one was their boss, the most ruthless of them, who started screaming at his men to try and make them focus on the coming battle. When he saw that his words where finally starting to have an effect, he turned to the boy, lifting his mace and walking towards him with a grim expression of hate. Instead of running or cowering in fear as the leader of the bandits expected, the young man just sighed and made a disdainful gesture at the bandit with his hand while intoning: “Open grievous wounds”. Seemingly out of nowhere, a dark mist appeared in the air following the boy's words, taking the shape of a claw and tearing at the bandit chief's chest.
Stopped in the middle of his charge by the impact, the bandit chief looked without understanding why that hand made of black smoke had dropped what seemed to be bloody rags when it vanished as quick as it had appeared. It wasn't until he realized there was a warm moisture soaking his pants that he looked down. The unnatural hand had torn his cloth armor, and didn't stop there, because the bandit could see his torn chest, his broken ribs and even his own beating heart through the gashes provoked in his chest by the high-level curse. He fell to his knees and then, after a few seconds, his weigh slid to the ground, his mind clouded by the horrifying pain and the blood loss that ended up taking his life not long after that.
Once again, the bandits stopped in their tracks, this time because of their leader's gruesome death. One of them started turning around to flee, but the young man pointed at him and mumbled “Cripple”. A loud snap could be heard, and the fleeing bandit fell face first to the ground, starting to scream seconds later while he grabbed his leg; the jagged edges of his broken bones poking through a wound that bled profusely.
Behind the boy, the voice of the older man echoed, “Mayra, support that boy in battle and cover his blind spots!” Before he could turn his head, a woman with long, flowing chestnut hair passed by his side, slicing the head off of one of the bandits that approached from the front of the truck with a long-bladed saber that had a white and golden hilt. She spun gracefully on the tip of a foot, like a ballerina, and moved towards her next target. During that movement, the boy could see that the woman was barely covered by two rectangles of cloth; one at the front and one at the back, tied to each other with thin cords at the shoulders and waist. He even caught a glimpse of a deep black triangle below her waist.
The young man shook his head to snap out of it, and untied his self-made weapon to face the six enemies still standing in front of him. The two men had moved inside the truck and closed the doors, while the blade dancer was taking good care of the three men that approached them from behind. The boy wondered how a woman with such a heavy load on her chest could be so swift and precise.. his distraction almost cost him, because he was barely able to lift the sword in time to stop an enemy attack. In response, he grabbed at the bandit's wrist, and looking him in the eye, he pronounced, “Mutilate”.
The criminal took several steps back, screaming and holding up his arm, that now ended suddenly at the elbow, with blood squirting out of sliced veins and arteries. The young man threw the severed hand he was holding, knowing that he would bleed out to death before the fight ended, and looked from his downed enemy to the five remaining. Just as he expected, they were busy fighting a trio of skeletons equipped with leather armors and a short sword on each hand. It seems one of his subordinates had finished the man with a broken leg by throwing a dagger at his throat.
Instead of casting more spells, he walked up to the nearest couple of bandits, who were fighting the same skeleton, and with his sword up high he discharged a vertical slash, slicing his unaware target along the spine. The other bandit lost focus, and the skeleton took the chance to stab him through both of his eyes with its two blades, giving him instant death. The bandit that was fighting another of the skeletons on his own screamed; one of his legs had a sword stabbed through, and the sword in the other hand of the skeleton had just sliced off one of his arms. His screams where cut short as the skeleton pulled the sword from his leg and slashed brutally at his mouth, cutting his head in two and leaving only the lower jaw and the tongue still attached to the neck.
Of the two remaining bandits, one started running for his life, but he fell on his face without a noise when four throwing daggers from the two skeletons that weren't still locked in combat pierced his back. The last bandit fell on his knees, crying and soiling his pants. The boy moved a finger almost imperceptibly and the last skeleton stopped its death blow, just to take a few steps back and join its silent comrades.
The last survivor of the failed road assault started kissing the floor and rubbing his forehead on the dirt in front of the young man. While the bandit begged and humiliated himself, the woman with chestnut hair, Mayra, approached silently, with blood stains on her face and “clothes”. The boy saw the disgust painted on her face while she looked at the criminal and he knew that he must have been making a similar expression. “Please, I beg you! Please, spare my life! I won't come against you, I'll even let you take me to the guards at the compound in the mountain pass so I can be made into a slave!”
“You dare to beg for your life?!” Bellowed the young man. “You are a bandit! You are a murderer, a kidnapper, a rapist and a thief! How many people has begged for their life in front of you, and you have just laughed?!” In a fit of rage, the boy discharged his sword on the begging criminal, ripping him in two from the right shoulder to the crotch.
While the young man stood there, looking at what he had done with ragged breathing, Mayra walked back to the truck and knocked on the cargo door, letting the ones inside to know that everything was over.
Aincrad approached the boy carefully and talked to him with a calming voice. “Nobody would blame you for what you just did. However, as a man of business I feel the obligation to say that it's a little of a waste, at least on the last one. These are wanted criminals for sure, and you could have gotten a bigger reward by bringing them alive so they can be sold into slavery”.
The boy turned to the white-haired man and found his outstretched hand and a wide smile. “Lemuel Aincrad, slave dealer. Let me express my undying gratitude for saving my cargo, my business, and more than anything, my life”.
The young man shook the hand offered by Aincrad. “Theon Forrester, senior high student, last year”.
Aincrad's initial expression of surprise turned rapidly into one of curiosity. “I hope you don't mind me asking, but why is it that you are here now? We are relatively close to the border with the Theocracy, and I would say you are at least a couple hundred kilometers away from home”.
Theon frowned, feeling the need to up his guard. “How would you know something like that?”
The older man chuckled and pointed his tattered clothes. “For the emblem on your uniform. There are no private schools... out here in the sticks, as they say, only in the big cities”.
He relaxed a bit, and when he answered, his voice was dripping with sarcasm. “Yes, well, we had a field study trip, and one of my classmates decided to play a prank on me the last day by pushing me inside a crevice in the mountain and closing it with earth magic. Luckily I found a cave system and could get out of the mountain through it, but when I came out I had no idea where I was. Luckily I heard your truck and ran towards the sound”.
Aincrad frowned, showing again that amusing expression with a raised eyebrow. “That's going too far for a joke, you could have died in several different forms along the way... but I guess your Treasure saved you. It seems it is a high-spec one. So, you were attacked out of envy? How is it possible that nobody noticed your disappearance? What about your family?”
Theon sighed, and his shoulders slumped before he started talking. “I wasn't attacked out of envy, you probably know that I'm just a commoner thanks to my surname, which is just the name of a profession. I don't have a family anymore; I entered my actual school by working part-time as a servant there, and about my Treasure, I didn't know what it could do until I was close to death when I fell. Until then, it was sealed by chains, reason why I was bullied by almost everyone around me for having a useless Treasure”.
“Well, boy, I would say that now that you know what it can do, the tides have turned against those who mistreated you, just don't be too rough on them when you get your revenge”. Aincrad winked at Theon amiably. “Sorry to poke too deep into your matters, is there anything I can do for you?”
He looked around and answered, “Well, it would be very nice of you if you could take me to a town with shuttle service so I can go back home before they declare me legally dead”.
Aincrad twirled the edge of his mustache with his fingers. “That would be nothing. Tonight we'll be resting at the compound in the mountain pass, and we will reach a town that matches your needs by noon tomorrow. Why don't you go up to the cabin and seat to take a rest? I will have Sev, my driver, collect all of these right hands for you?”
Theon opened his eyes wide, and a gesture of disgust crossed his face. Aincrad laughed and explained: “I see you don't know. Great Tablets and Portable Tablets have the ability to read your stats, skills, Sacred Treasure and criminal record. This feature works even after death, reason why independent criminal hunters who have to kill in self defense take the right hand with them instead of the whole body as a proof that they have accomplished their mission”.
The young man just nodded his head and started walking towards the cabin. Aincrad simply stood there and Sev, after collecting the hands of the fallen bandits around them and before going for the ones that were further away, came close to his master and whispered, “Are you planning on branding him in his sleep?”
Aincrad opened his eyes wide, turned his head to make sure that the boy had not heard his careless servant, and slapped him, and then started admonishing him. “Do you want to get us killed? I've seen it through my monocle, that boy has five digits in all of his stats except for charisma. He also is Master in broad sword, Master in chain mail, Advanced in fire magic and barrier magic, Expert in laws, and on top of all that, his Treasure gives him a unique skill I can't read and the Absolute grade in black magic.