I turned around to see a face that it took me a moment to place. When I did, it wasn’t so much the man’s appearance that tipped me off, but the stall he was standing next to—one marked “Ted’s Confectionary”.
‘You’re the people that got me shot!’
Val, who hadn’t placed the face quite as quickly as I had, furrowed her brow. ‘What? When?’
‘When that captain was after you. That… that…’ Ted searched for the name. ‘Lambkin!’
Val’s eyes widened with realisation. ‘Ah, you!’
‘You with your funny portal things and that elf with his luscious hair, and you with your…’ Ted trailed off, looking at Val. ‘I don’t really remember what your deal was.’
‘...sorcery?’
‘Right, sure. Whatever. Point is, you got me shot. And look at my stall!’ Ted pointed at three holes in the wood on the side. ‘Turned it into a porcupine, you did!’
‘Technically it was the guy who was after us that—’ Val started, but I cut her off. I didn’t think Ted has much up his sleeve, but at the moment I was keen to avoid trouble as much as possible.
‘Our fault for hiding behind it,’ I said. ‘But what would you have us do? We had to hide somewhere—that we chose your stall was nothing personal. And, besides, you did try and sell us out a little bit, didn’t you?’
Ted glanced down at his feet. ‘Suppose I did a bit. But that doesn’t make up for—’
‘How’s this? We buy some of your sweets, and we call it even? Put this behind us?’
The confectioner looked back at me, not blankly, but as though he was deep in consideration. Only when Val got impatient enough that she was about to interrupted him did Ted finally speak.
‘Alright,’ he said, pulling some blue sweets not from the top of the stall but from the compartment at the back. ‘You’re buying these, though. They’re the ones with my highest profit margin.’
Val raised her eyebrow, but ultimately slammed coins down onto the stall. ‘That cover it?’
Ted sweeped the whole lot into his pocket. ‘Ought to, yeah.’
‘Great,’ I said, taking the sweets. ‘So now we—’
‘No change, then?’ Val asked.
‘Nope,’ Ted said. ‘Enjoy your sweets.’
Fortunately for him, another customer turned up just as Val was about to launch into one of her trademark irritable tirades. I took the opportunity to lead her away.
‘It’s done. No point picking a fight.’
‘You’re paying me back,’ she said.
As we walked away from the stall, we heard a pointed cough behind us. ‘Hope we never meet again!’ Ted called out, waving with a wide, insincere smile on his face.
* * *
We left the small market town with fully stomachs, and Lore had clearly eaten a lot when he’d been off on his own, because he was rubbing his belly in a very self-satisfied manner. Maybe it was for this reason that Lore turned down my offer of some of Ted’s blue sweets, which had turned out to be actually rather delicious. They were blueberry flavoured, but had an undercurrent of creaminess to them. As a result, Val and I absolutely demolished them, and the fight over the last one nearly came to blows.
The road at this point swung away from the coast by necessity of the geology. Here were tall hills—not anything to rival the Bladerocks, of course—but with harsh enough cliffs that the road had to weave between them. The path veered from the rocky beaches and passed through a narrow valley, with high cliffs towering over us on each side, making the road dark and foreboding. The thick brush of evergreen trees only made it darker still.
So of course this was where the trouble began.
It started with a growl, but not one of beast or monster. No, it started with a growl coming from my stomach, one that was so loud it seemed to scare the birds from a nearby tree.
Val opened her mouth to laugh, but found that, instead, a burp came out.
This, of course, was incredibly hilarious to the grinning Lore, but Val and I could no longer find anything funny because we were both diverting all our energies to trying not to vomit.
Lore realised we were in trouble when both of us began to keel over, clutching our stomachs, our faces pale. Knowing him, it probably took all three of these signs for him to have any idea that something was going down.
‘What the…’ I gasped, simply speaking those two words almost enough to tip me over the edge from not vomiting into vomiting.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
‘Ted…’ Val groaned. ‘Poison…’
‘Uh-oh,’ Lore said, watching on as the pair of us staggered to hold ourselves up against a nearby tree.
The path began to spin, the dirt in front of me one seconds, the high cliffs and canopy in front of me the next.
‘That cheeky… little…’ Val retched, and the sound of her doing so echoed around the narrow valley, making more birds flee than I had done. At first, my sorcerer friend “brought up” the usual stuff—mostly the food we’d purchased at the market town—but after a moment it changed. She wasn’t vomiting food any more, but… water.
I blinked, not quite taking in what was going on, and then a moment later the poisoned sweets caught up with me, too. Water projected forcefully from my mouth.
‘What do I do? What do I do?’ Lore said, his eyes wide, part of him wanting to rush to my aid, part of him wanting to rush to Val’s. ‘Poison? Do you need an antidote? Do I—’
‘Not… poison,’ Val said, this change in circumstance apparently having informed her some. ‘Summoning… charm. Summons… water.’
That seemed to be about the extent of it; the volume of water erupting from my stomach was surely more than my body could naturally hold. ‘Will it’ — I paused to retch — ‘kill us?’
‘Only if we don’t… get it out.’
At the echoes of our retching, most of the wildlife in the valley and the surrounding area fled, presumably thinking that Val and I were some monstrous creatures, screeching and growling. The average bird probably couldn’t comprehend the idea of “spurned confectionary vendor getting revenge on people who’d put him in the middle of a fight by giving them charmed sweets that would summon water to their stomach”. And that was fair enough really; I was much smarter than a bird and I could barely comprehend it.
For a moment, I considered trying putting a portal inside my own stomach to get all the water out, but immediately stopped myself. If I let it close on my own flesh, there was no knowing what internal damage I’d do to myself. Besides, I’d never tried opening a portal inside someone before—surely that wasn’t possible, was it?
There wasn’t the opportunity to continue this line of thought because more water came pouring out of my mouth. ‘Is it ever going to—’
‘Is it ever going to what?’ asked Lore.
‘...stop?’ I added.
Lore looked to Val for an answer.
‘It… will. Cheap charm. Won’t… last long.’
‘Is it long enough to fight off some wolves?’ Lore asked.
Val furrowed her brow even more than she was doing already. ‘Weird… example. Why?’
‘Cos there are five wolves walking down the path,’ the barbarian answered. ‘Came to check out the noise, I reckon.’
‘Ah,’ Val said, followed by, ‘Aaaaah’ as a load more water came out.
‘Lead them away!’ I managed to gasp.
Lore looked at me, nodded his understanding, and then pulled his sword free. He mumbled something about “revenge for what you lot did to my sheep” and then charged, screaming, towards the approaching beasts.
I tried to watch him go, but the water had weakened me, and I tumbled to the ground. I faced upwards, at an old rope bridge hanging across the top of the chasm, and quickly I found myself drowning on the water erupting from my stomach. With a stifled groan, I pushed myself over, and the water washed over the ground around me, lapping at Val’s shoes. At least she herself was too distracted to care.
In the distance, I heard shouting—from Lore—and growling—not from Lore. Was he really taking on five wolves at once? Even at a low level, it would be hard to occupy that many enemies in one go.
With all my might, I heaved myself back to my knees, and turned my attention to Lore and the wolves.
The answer to my earlier question? No.
No, Lore was not handling five wolves at once. He was handling three.
And the other two were approaching fast.
‘Val…’ I said.
‘I see them.’
‘Any… ideas?’ I gasped.
Val replied with a retch, and I turned to fix my attention back on the closest wolf, identifying it.
Level 14 Wolf
Variant: Storm
Identification — +100xp
With this, I levelled up my Identification to level 8, but I dismissed those notifications immediately. After all, I had a wolf to fight.
Scratch that: a storm wolf to fight.
I pulled my knife from my belt, vomited more water, and scoured my brain desperately for a plan.
"Styk"
Level 8 Novice Bladespinner
Base Stats:
Vitality — 14
Intelligence — 61
Dexterity — 22
Strength — 35
Wisdom — 23
Charisma — 0
Skills:
Worldbending — Level 14
Knifework — Level 14
Identification — Level 8
Stealth — Level 5
Abilities:
Slice — Slice the enemy for physical damage worth weapon’s base damage and additional damage scaling on [STR].
Stab — Put your weight behind your wielded blade and force the tip through tougher hides and armour. Damage scales on [STR].
Closed Reach — Bend reality to narrow the gap between blade and target by up to 8 inches. Uses mana.
Local Portal II — Create a portal to another location within current range of sight or within a ten yard radius. Uses mana/second.
Portal Slice — Passive. Portals can now be spawned within non-sentient objects. Doing so slices through all objects that are not reinforced by magic.
Stealth Attack — Passive. 50% boost to damage when unnoticed by enemy.
Basic Identification — Discover basic attributes for a particular object or person. Ability scales with [WIS] + [INT].
Active Effects:
Legacy of Sisyphus:
XP gain increased by +400%