Jack regained his feet, giving some effort to sense for anyone else nearby. So far as his new abilities claimed, they were alone with the dead. There was a clump of light out beyond where he figured the archer had been, but it wasn’t human. Might be their horses, but he couldn’t be sure until he knew more about how the ability worked. He wished, not for the first time since waking up here, that he could see an actual menu. But thus far, everything he’d tried had failed.
He sheathed the sword and looked around.
Tiarraluna was starting to shake as the rush of battle left her and she began to realize what had happened. “Is... is that man—?”
“He should be,” Jack called back.
He took the few steps to the form of the first ape laying stretched out, face down in the loam. He tucked a foot beneath the body and rolled it over. The eyes were fixed and the face grey. “Yeah,” he pronounced. “He’s dead. Yours?”
“Of course not!” she seemed indignant. As though killing the bandit would never enter her head.
Jack held his tongue on that subject for the moment. Instead, “I’ll check on the one out in the woods and see if they had horses. Do what you can to see that yours stays harmless until I get back.”
The archer was as dead as his first kill, with a good chunk of his skull caved in above the eye socket. Glancing around, Jack spotted the deeply dented helm off to the side and back a ways. FoeSmite was harder to find. It had sailed off into the trees as it’d rebounded off the helm, and was hidden in the ground cover.
Experimentally, Jack held out a hand, concentrating. Come, he thought. Brush rustled further into the trees and the staff came sailing out of the undergrowth like a spear, straight for him. He got his hand out and around the shaft as he ducked aside, hauling the staff around and upright, slowing its momentum with what turned into a flourish. Okay, clearly some practice needed.
He frowned down at the still faintly glowing shaft of wood, holding back a curse. Damned thing felt bloodthirsty. He’d need to get a handle on that before somebody got hurt who shouldn’t.
The horses he found less than a hundred yards deeper into the wood, tied to some heavy brush. They were decent stock, he supposed. Not particularly well cared for, though. The saddles and tack were in poor shape, but serviceable. More importantly, there were only three of them, so he probably didn’t need to worry about any more unwanted company. At least not right away.
Tying the horses together and leading the bay while the others followed, he returned to the body of the archer. He knelt and carefully lay the staff in the grass beside the body, holding his hand close for a second or two in case it decided to shoot off somewhere on its own and break something for the sake of it. When it remained still, he began the process of looting the body as thoroughly as he was able.
Much to his disappointment, the bow the guy had been using wasn’t as good as the one laying back out in the grass. The guy was shorter into the bargain, with shorter arms, which meant that Jack wouldn't be able to use the arrows either. There was a sword, but while it was better than what the jaegers had been carrying, it wasn’t all that much better. Certainly not as good as the Jaeger Drop sword.
Decent knife, though. Single edged, clip point blade around seven or eight inches in the blade with short brass quillons and scales of some dark wood. Jack bounced it in his hand a couple of times and tested the blade with a thumb before divesting the corpse of its sheath and stuffing it down behind his own belt.
The rest of the gear wasn’t worth more than trade goods, even should he be able to sell any of it in a town filled with nobody who could use it. The armor, while also good enough, wouldn’t fit him, wasn’t up to what he was already wearing, and stank of old onions and rancid grease. He dutifully bundled it all up, though, and lashed the bundle to the saddle of one of the horses. Even the boots might bring a copper or two, always assuming he could find anybody willing to stuff their feet into the things. Waste not want not, right? Ever the rallying cry of the compulsive loot whore.
Tiarraluna was standing beside the bodies of the bandits’ victims when he returned to the road. Good. He wasn’t quite ready to confront her with what was coming next. Instead, he set about repeating with the axeman what he’d done with the archer. This guy had more cash on him, but his gear was even more unsuitable for anything Jack might desire. The axe was too heavy, the shield the clown had never bothered to deploy too large, and the armor... well, the armor stank worse than the archer’s.
Jack wondered whether there were cleaners here. There’d been a cute isekai back home where the protagonist had started up a laundry service using custom slimes. That kid would come in real handy about now. He wondered did they even have slimes here. He hadn’t seen any, but he hadn’t exactly been roaming the countryside up ‘til now, either. Shaking his head and smiling a little despite himself, he finished his unpleasant task, bundling the gear beside the rest.
A glance at the remaining bandit showed him the guy was tied with a good length of rope, hands behind him and lashed to his ankles. The rest of the roll lay coiled beside him. He smiled a bit wider when he saw that she hadn’t just used a couple of feet and cut it short. Girl was frugal and knew the value of a good long piece of rope. Nevertheless, he made his way over and tested the knots.
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They were good and tight, and the bandit still unconscious. Also, he smelled faintly of burnt hair. Jack whistled and gave her a glance over there by the road. He hadn’t expected this level of power from her. He’d kind of expected more of a distraction so he could move in for the kill himself.
She hadn’t looted the bandit properly, but she’d taken his visible weapons and tossed them well clear. Jack, not being a trusting sort and having played this game more than a couple of times, gave him a further patdown. He found another, smaller knife down in his pants. He tossed it over with the others.
She was weeping softly when he finally arrived by her side. She’d covered the savaged woman’s nakedness with her own cloak, but hadn’t done much else.
“How could...?” she sniffled when she caught sight of him from the corner of an eye. “How could people...?”
“People generally can’t,” he explained. “The creatures who do this sort of thing aren’t people, though.”
She turned her head to him, her face confused. “But was it not it those men over there who did this? The big man even admitted it.”
He didn’t even bother to look away from the bodies before him. “When I was little,” he said quietly. “Back on Earth. I had quite the imagination. I thought that the world was filled with monsters. All kinds of monsters. That they were everywhere. I used to have nightmares. My parents told me it was just in the stories. That monsters weren’t real. They convinced me finally, and the nightmares stopped.
“Turns out, though, I was right and it was them who were wrong.” Now he did look to her. “But it was only when I’d grown up that I realized it. And that all the monsters on my world were human. For sufficient values of.”
She didn’t understand. “Jack san? What...?”
“Eventually, I kind of got around to the idea that they weren’t human in the same way most everybody else was,” he explained. “Some offshoot of the genus. A variant of sorts. Mutants. Nearly human, but not quite.
“Those things over there, little sister,” he told her, his voice going harsh. “They’re human after a fashion, but they aren’t people.”
She still didn’t understand.
“They’re not the first human monsters I’ve killed,” he admitted after a bit, looking back down. “Not even close. After awhile... after I’d realized... they’re just the enemy now, see? Or any of a number of names we gave them, depending on where us were and who them was.”
“Surely that cannot be,” she shook her head violently, sincerely puzzled. “We are all—”
“NO!” he spat. Then more softly. “No. We’re not. We’re us, who preserve life and dignity so much as we can, and them, who destroy both and care for neither. Get used to that, little sister. It’ll make things easier going forward.
“Now,” and he straightened his shoulders. “First things first. Can you free their souls?” he indicated the man and woman before them.
She was still working on the previous topic, but she forced herself to answer. The other she filed for later discussion, for it was a world altering concept. “Should we not bring them to their relatives?” she wondered. “Won’t their family—?”
“Look at them,” he interrupted. “You think their family wants to remember them like this? Even if we could figure out who that family was, or if it exists?
“No. Best to deal with their remains here, with as much dignity as we can manage. We’ll see what we can find to identify them and bring that back. Perhaps that’ll be enough.”
The bandits hadn’t left much, but they hadn’t bothered with the clothing. Maybe there would be something distinctive about some piece or two of it. Jack took care of the man’s remains, Tiarraluna the woman’s. He took their belongings to secure on the horse while she performed the ritual of release.
“Jack san?”
Jack paused in his task at the tone of her voice. Looking over, shifting his eyes to where she was pointing, his eyebrows went up. Damn!
He hustled back and looked down. Where the man had lain, there were a scattering of silver coins and a small gemstone.
“Gifts of Jehsha?” he inquired.
She nodded uncertainly. “But... Jack san.... An ungifted should not drop gifts. Nor a life stone. We perform the ritual merely to send them upon their way, not for rewards.”
He knelt and caught the coins up, counting them carefully. “Seven, uh, reals, right?” he announced. “Not much, if I’ve got the theme right.”
“Seven too many, Jack san,” she countered. “And the gemstone. Amber only, it may be, but there is power in amber, make no mistake.”
The woman’s body yielded nothing beyond the glittering light of her released soul. That was curious, particularly to Jack. Then he remembered the blood on the scythe blade. Trotting over to the nearby bandits, he checked them over for wounds he hadn’t made. There, on the arm of the big one. A long slash.
“Farmer made a fight of it,” he called out. “Got him a chunk of this one before they butchered him."
“That should not matter, Jack san,” she insisted. “It remains that he was neither gifted nor a monster, nor yet a wild beast.”
“It remains,” he persisted. “That he fought them, wounded one, and then dropped gifts. That is an interesting set of data points if nothing else.”
He stowed the silver and the amber shard in his pouch. Were they to find any relatives of either, he’d pass the gifts on to them. Along with any other of their possessions he and Tiarraluna might happen across in their travels.
Going up the road a ways while Tiarraluna saw to the remaining dead, he found their tracks, along with traces of wagon or cart tracks, and the prints of a single, plodding horse. They’d probably been leading it when set upon. He circled wide around the scene and found what might be the trail of the wagon’s departure heading westward, cross country.
Tiarraluna, meanwhile, saw to the tarnished souls of the dead bandits.
They met back at the remaining survivor, where Jack informed her of his discovery and deductions. Then he regarded the unconscious man. “You hit him pretty hard with that spell, didn’t you?” he commented idly. “I’m impressed. Sure you weren’t trying to fry him to ash?”
“His armor is warded,” she pointed out. “See?” and she pointed out the telltales. “If you use your inner eye, you should be able to see a faint glow. Had I put any less power into the spell, he would not have been affected at all.”
Magical armor, eh? He thought. So it should be valuable after all. Good to know.
Then, “Inner eye, huh? While I’ve heard of the concept, I’ve got no idea how or if I can use it.”
“I will teach you.”
“When there’s more time,” he held up a hand. “At the moment, we need to find out where the rest of them are.”
“The rest of them?” she wondered.
“None of these knuckleheads is exactly leadership material,” he pointed out. “And I didn’t find any horses or carts in their pockets. No, they killed and robbed those people, took their stuff somewhere off to the west, and then came back to see could they catch anybody loitering around trying to figure out what had happened.”
“I see,” she said softly.