Rick sat alone in the entrance to the cave doing his best to isolate himself from the others sleeping or working in the cave. He kept occupied with his collection of knives, inspecting and polishing each to a perfect finish. Leopold was diligent about maintaining and cleaning his equipment, but it paled in comparison to Rick who was practically a fanatic when it came to ensuring his knives gleamed perfectly. It was only after a meticulous inspection that he would be satisfied that no trace of blackened blood remained along the blades’ edge, and he would allow himself to move on to different tasks.
While absorbed in his work with his blades, a sudden clinging sound rang out next to him as a small leather pouch was tossed, landing at his side.
“Surprised you bet on him so favorably Rick,” Leopold said from behind, a clear tone of mock disappointment in his voice. Rick didn’t bother turning around to address the sudden interruption.
“Just a gut feeling.”
“Gut feeling huh?” Leopold said a smirk spreading across his face “Well you’ve always had good instincts.” With that Leopold walked away, leaving Rick alone to continue caring for his knives.
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When Jake awoke the next morning, he found a roughly stitched blanket had been thrown over his sleeping form. Sitting up and looking around the cave he found only Lana sitting in the corner, reading. At a guess, both Leopold and Rick were out hunting again.
After waking up Jake was slow to rise. His leg still felt incredibly sore after yesterday, though it felt easier to move his ankle and toes. After a decent amount of time just sitting on the floor, preparing himself for the next step to come, Jake gripped the wall behind him and slowly lifted himself upright till he was standing. His leg groaned in complaint immediately. Jake shifted his weight as much as possible to the other leg to alleviate the pain and make standing easier but it felt like it did little to help.
Using the wall of the cave Jake slowly began inching around the cave again towards where Lana was sitting. Moving somehow felt both easier and harder than yesterday in a strange paradox. His ankle felt less stiff, and it was easier to flex and get it to respond to his commands. On the other hand, his whole leg felt incredibly sore. So putting any weight on it, while doable, felt incredibly painful and left him feeling unbalanced. He felt shaky the entire time he walked toward Lana but after a sizable amount of effort, he was finally able to reach her.
Lana had noticed him waking up as well as watched his unsteady walk over towards her but had decided not to interrupt his progress outside of a simple wave she gave when he first woke up. Now that Jake had reached her and had stopped his shaky walk in favor of a shaky stance that leaned into the wall, however, she broke her silence.
“How’s the leg holding up?” She asked, carefully noting how much he was shaking and how much of a struggle just crossing the room seemed to be.
“It feels more flexible, but it’s super sore. It feels like it’s going to give out any second.” Jake said, slowly beginning to slide down the wall despite his best efforts to remain standing straight up. Lana pursed her lips in a frown for a second before nodding and saying,
“Go ahead and sit down for the time being.”
Jake let out a sigh of relief and let himself collapse down to the ground next to Lana. He let his legs fall forward directly in front of him, his injured leg still shaking slightly. Lana looked over it for a minute before giving a slow nod and standing up, walking out of the cave and leaving Jake alone.
Looking around the cave, trying to pass the time Jake’s eyes eventually landed on the book Lana was reading. ‘Advanced Spell Craft and Energy Research Volume 2: Study of Magical Manipulation and Invocation’ was printed in bolded text across a leather bounded book, and beneath the bolded title a series of smaller words were printed in quotations, though Jake couldn’t make out what they said from where he was sitting.
“Interested?” Jake heard next to his ear, turning his head to see Lana had returned carrying a decently sized branch a little longer than the length of his arm.
“Yeah,” Jake said with a nod “Is it interesting?” Jake couldn’t imagine he’d understand half of what was written in the book but a textbook on magic was still an interesting topic of discussion for Jake. He could understand if others didn’t feel the same way, though, since magic was so commonplace for them.
“Not interesting so much as required.” Lana said with a shrug “The longer I go without reviewing the easier it is to forget the fundamentals. And a forgetful mage usually ends up as a dead mage. I'll lend you one of my easier books sometime.” Lana then reached down to help Jake up. He was grateful for the help, as even with her help he still found standing to be a challenge.
“Here,” she said, presenting the branch out to Jake. “Use this as a cane to take the weight off your leg. The most important thing right now is you keep moving it, the more you move it the more your muscles will reawaken. I rebuilt them exactly, but right now they're essentially dead. The more you move around, the sooner you’ll wake them up and stop needing the cane.”
Jake gratefully took the Cane and positioned it to properly alleviate the weight of his leg. It was a bit of an awkward stance for Jake, he was not accustomed to using a cane at all. However, with some practice, he got used to standing with it and started practicing walking around the cave with the cane.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Will that work?” Lana asked, sitting back down next to her book. Jake gave a slow nod after taking a few measured steps. It was awkward walking, but he felt infinitely more stable and the pain which had dominated his leg was now gone. His leg was by no means comfortable, but it was manageable. Giving a satisfied nod, Lana picked her book back up and said,
“Come get me if you have any problems with the cane or need help with anything else, ok Jake?”
Jake gave a nod before adding “Thank you, I will” after realizing it was unlikely Lana had seen his nod since she had reabsorbed herself into her book. After the short talk with Lana, Jake continued pacing through the room. It was slow going at first, but after a few laps around the cave, he felt like he was getting the hang of moving comfortably with the cane.
While walking through the darkened corners of the cave, where the light being projected by Lana’s magic didn’t quite reach, Jake managed to discover another function of the cane Lana had given him. As he passed through into the darkness of the shadows dancing around the cave, he found he could still see perfectly fine. Looking down, he found the cane in his hands was emitting a low glow that danced out around him and kept his vision unobscured.
Thinking back, he guessed the same magic must have been applied to the crutch he’d lost while climbing up the mountain as he’d had no trouble seeing the trail around him despite the overwhelming darkness of the sky above. In the moment he hadn’t thought much about it at all as he was already in such a frantic rush to climb the mountain on his struggling leg. As he was pondering this retrospective bit of magic, he felt a sudden bit of resistance against his cane and heard a clattering sound ring out against the rocks.
Looking down, Jake saw a glint of metal reflected at him gleaming in the light of his cane. Bending over carefully, he retrieved one of Rick’s throwing knives. Looking at it carefully, it was still mostly coated in dried blood, which had helped it hide unseen in the shadows of the cave. As he examined it Jake realized with a chill that it was the same knife he’d borrowed before and plunged into the chest of the attacking Swarm. In the aftermath of the attack, Jake had found himself too shocked to properly return it, and so it had slipped from his grasp rolling into the dark, forgotten.
Jake gripped the knife in his hand, a shiver rolling down his spine. Despite his talk with Leopold and his own internal rationalizing about the horror of the monster attacking him, he still felt uncomfortable holding the knife. He decided to return it to Rick as soon as possible, both for his own sake and to avoid angering Rick any further.
Teetering out of the cave, careful not to let the cane catch on any rock edges and trip him, Jake arrived outside the cave into the small clearing that marked the entrance of the cave. He’d passed through it only briefly, being dragged before by an exhausted Lana and having no chance to take a proper look. The light provided by his cane was dim, but he could still see the edges of the rock walls around him and the outlines of trees off in the distance. Looking around though, he saw no trace of Leopold or Rick.
Jake decided to wait outside the front entrance to pass the knife as soon as possible. Looking down at the blade, he found it to be a short, symmetrical blade with a simple leather wrap secured in place to act as a handle. Before, while waiting for The Swarm to attack Jake had been so focused on preparing for their sudden attack, that he hadn’t bothered paying any attention to the weapon hastily handed to him. Now, even upon thorough examination, Jake couldn’t see anything exciting about the knife. Unlike Leopold’s armor, it lacked any sort of special trim or design, though he supposed they might be hidden beneath the layer of black blood coating the blade.
What he remembered about the knife was its sharpness. It had been sharpened to perfection, to a point where even Jake, as unskilled and unprepared as he was, had been able to easily stab through the chest of The Swarm with little resistance.
Holding the knife by the handle and extending his arm in front of him, he recalled how easily Rick seemed to throw his knives. Looking at the knife in his hands he couldn’t help but ask himself how difficult that was. Looking ahead at a tree visible in the dim light coming from his cane, a grin spread across his face. Checking the clearing one last time and finding no one in it, Jake drew his arm back and flung forward. The blade flew from his blade at a terrible arc, crashing into the ground with a clatter before getting anywhere close to the tree across the way.
Jake let out a sigh, before hobbling over to pick the knife up, but before he could bend down to grab it a gruff voice from behind the tree line called out.
“Terrible job.” And Rick stepped out into the clearing across from Jake.
“Sorry,” Jake said, before carefully bending forward to scoop the knife up off the ground. Embarrassment washed through him, at having failed so spectacularly. This embarrassment was tempered by the fact that thus far, Rick had been a dickhead, so he didn’t care as much about failing in front of him. More so than embarrassment he was nervous about how Rick would react to him messing around with his knife.
He’d hoped returning the knife would act as a sort of peace agreement after the incident between the two last time. He wasn’t sure what exactly, but something about his question to Leopold had set Rick off in a worse mood than normal. Jake had hoped that finding and returning his knife could smooth things over to their normal uncomfortable diatribe, but now it was looking like it could make things worse than ever.
“Sorry about that,” Jake reiterated, “I found this on the floor of the cave, and was trying to find you to give it back. I just wanted to try throwing it once, my bad. You can have it back now.”
“Sure about that? You could use the practice.” Rick said dryly, while still accepting the knife from Jake all the same. A disgusted look flashed across his face when he saw the black blood crusted to its surface. He pulled a small handkerchief out from under his cloak and began using it to scrape the dried blood off.
“Slipper fitting you ok?” Rick asked, not looking up from his work with the knife in his hand, “Didn’t have a lot of time to tailor it. Hopefully, it stops you from slowing us down.”
“What? Oh yeah, fits fine.” Jake said, surprised at the revelation Rick had custom-tailored the slipper he was wearing now.
“That’s good,” Rick said, before giving a satisfied nod, and pocketing the knife under his cloak and continuing, “We’ll, I’m starved. Don’t wander off too far and die. Lana and Leopold be sad.”
Jake gave a nod and watched Rick retreat into the cave, unsure how to react from here. He’d expected their next meeting to go even worse after Rick stormed out before, but to Jake’s surprise, he was almost pleasant to talk to this time. Jake shrugged, deciding that if Rick wasn’t going to bring up their last meeting himself Jake would just let sleeping bears lie.
With that, he continued practicing walking for a bit, pacing around the clearing outside with the cane to try and get used to walking over rougher terrain, before heading back into the cave to grab something to eat.