Chapter 19 – A Grip of Iron

One by one, soldiers peered over their barricade to look at Adam and Emily. The troops wore dirty, well-used equipment with mismatched helmets and crude leathers. Under their superior’s stern gaze, they hesitantly sheathed their weapons. They stepped away to keep some distance when Adam and Emily climbed up the ‘proud fortification,’ which was basically a rickety pile of logs, old furniture like tables and desks, and other rubble.

A tall man with an ornate beaked helmet, presumably the commander, walked forward. The single feathered arch on his back indicated his higher status within the Royal Army compared to the common soldiers. He pressed his right fist onto his left shoulder in the traditional military salute, Adam and Emily quickly replied with the same gesture.

“Madam Roosenburg, Mister Hase,” the man said with the gruff voice that had yelled at them earlier. “Welcome to our, err… encampment. Glad to see there are others who’ve made it through in one piece.” He waved his arm at the tents behind him. “Maybe we’ve got some food left for ya.”

At the top, they saw that the barricade shielded a small enclosure. The wall of the tunnel bordered it on one side and the mass of growths with the tall wooden statue was on the other. Eight crude tents and disorderly piles of equipment filled the camp. In the middle was a bonfire with a few civilians, and… Oliver. Adam smiled from ear to ear and sighed in relief. Some of the cramped tension left his neck and the sides of his head. By the night… he is safe.

Oliver sat near the fire, precisely as he should be: happy, with rosy cheeks, and boring an old man beside him with a story. “—as you can imagine, they always ask how much extra responsibility an Avurion second class, like me, has above a mere… wait a second.” Oliver blinked a couple of times, looking up. “Aha, marvellous! You made it!” He cheered and waved happily to Adam and Emily. “Took you two long enough!” he laughed.

Adam grinned and waved back. “You better have left some food for us!” he said, making his way down.

“ ‘Long enough,’ he says, ugh…” Emily whispered and shook her head, although her smile and relief were clearly shining through.

Adam felt happier than he’d done in days. All kinds of witty responses to Oliver crossed his mind, but why would he spoil the moment? This was a time to celebrate; they had survived and were safe for a moment.

“Oh! There’s someone I think you’d like to see,” Oliver said matter-of-factly. He turned towards one of the tents. “Catherine?”

Adam stopped in his tracks. His breath halted in his throat when someone crawled out of the tent.

Her long, blonde hair in disarray, Catherine looked up with tired eyes. Her jaw dropped when she saw Adam.

They stared at each other in dumbfounded silence for a moment. Adam’s eyes widened and his hands shook as his initial relief mixed with fear; she may not recognize him again. Memories of how he was forced to fight his beloved in Caine’s house, how she actually tried to kill him, flashed through his mind. He swallowed.

“Cath?” he asked softly. “Is that really you?”

Tears welled up in her blue eyes. She stood up and ran towards him. “I was so worried!” she managed to say between her sobs.

Adam’s thoughts stopped. All worries and stress of the past days washed away. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he ran towards her. He sobbed and laughed with the broadest smile in years. He saw her, right in front of him, grinning with those cute dimples on her cheeks. Her expensive dress may be travel-stained and filthy but he didn’t care a bit. She was like a beacon of warmth to him, she was the one person beside whom he wanted to wake up from this nightmare.

Then he realized her shoes didn’t make a sound whenever they hit the ground. Also, it didn’t smell like a camp in here, with fires and people packed close to each other.

Adam’s eyes widened. He came to a screeching halt, held his arms up to protect himself, and yelled. “WATCH OU—”

A blinding flash of intensely bright light cut him off, a flash that dissolved Catherine and all the people and tents around them.

Adam’s eyes, used to the relative darkness of the cave, squeezed shut in pain. Reflexively, he tried to dash away. However, a white-hot mass of energy hit him square in the shoulder with enough force to send him flying like a ragdoll. Muscles throughout his body contorted uncontrollably as what felt like electricity coursed through him. Adam slammed with his back against the wall at the other end of the enclosure. The air was forced out of his lungs. Groaning in pain, he fell on the cold hard ground.

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Can’t ever be easy, can it?

His heart pumped a wave of intense heat through his body. As if the heat resisted the crackling energy of the unfamiliar Invocation, his muscles gradually stopped contorting. Control and feeling returned to his limbs.

“Stay alive,” his heart whispered. And he intended to do so.

Adam growled with rage. His fingers dug grooves through the dirt as he pushed himself up. White-hot with anger, he tried to open his eyes, but still barely saw anything after the flash. Among the blurry colours, he made out something big that stood at the other side of the enclosure, where the wooden statue used to be. The large figure leaned towards a twitching person, covered in small green bolts of energy, who lay on the ground.

“STAY AWAY FROM HER!” Adam roared for all this twisted world to hear. He drew his dagger and club. Despite his shaking legs, making him barely able to walk, he pushed himself forward.

The huge creature made a weird, rasping sound. It seemed to raise something high up in the air. Jumping to the left, Adam barely dodged the massive limb that crashed into the ground. His opponent swept what seemed like an arm to the side, missing Adam’s head by a hair’s breadth. The wind from the fearsome blow brushed against Adam’s face.

Adam raised his club, but bolts of green crackling energy gathered on the massive shape that loomed in front of him. As he was unable to see what exactly was happening, Adam jumped back. The strange Invocation, reminding Adam of an arching bolt of electricity, hit the place where he had just stood. Adam made some distance as he let his sight recover.

The creature he was fighting turned out to be a humanoid that stood more than twelve feet tall and was partially entangled with Overgrowth vines. His blue-skinned right half, gaunt as a mummy, reminded Adam of Caine’s servants. With his green beard and armour of inscribed wooden plates, he may have been a dignified warrior once. His left half was covered by a mass of Overgrowth thorns and vines, which had grown through his arms and legs. The corresponding half of his face was covered by a driftwood mask, like a Root. Vines grew right through his mouth and jaw, resulting in a rasping, gurgling sound whenever he breathed. There seemed to be a bright intelligence in the single, yellow, and blood-run eye that was visible, although it stared at Adam with feverish expression.

However, its most peculiar feature was the battle standard that towered over his head, attached to the backplates of his armour. Although similar to the standard of the shepherds, it was covered with scrolls, parchments with wax seals, and books with yellowed pages. Instead of the crooked, spiky symbol carried by the Shepherds and Roots, its standard was crowned with a woven, idealized depiction of Caine.

About twenty feet to the right of the giant, Emily lay on the ground. Although the crackling green bolts of energy had disappeared, her body still convulsed in spasms. Drool came out of her mouth. The giant bent forward, his eye fixed on her gourd pouch for some reason.

Adam clashed his weapons together above his head and ran towards the giant. “Playing it safe with your illusions, eh?” he roared. “Come and get me, you rotting pile of garden waste!”

The giant’s red-rimmed eye shifted towards him. A scroll on his standard—with an intricate symbol of jagged lines and circles on top—glowed in green; shortly afterwards, green bolts of lightning-like energy gathered around his eye.

It uses written text and symbols in its Invocations, just like the Shepherd,! Are the Overgrowth vines converting it into—

A boulder flew right at him. Despite his distraction, Adam managed to duck right before the rock could take off his head. The giant grunted, its right arm still outstretched after the throw. More and more energy gathered around his eye. Adam ran straight towards him, ready to jump out of the way when necessary.

The giant’s left arm, covered by the Overgrowth, appeared immobile and useless. However, the giant seemed to fall over and reached forward as far as possible, sweeping his right fist sideways. Adam rolled out of the way and grazed the enormous limb with his thorned club. Hissing a garbled war cry, the giant unleashed his Invocation as a green beam, but Adam nimbly jumped away.

Rationally, Adam knew well that long-range or mid-range weapons were far more useful against large foes than his club and dagger. Bows and spears for example could counter an enemy's far reach. As Adam had always picked short-range weapons or his bare fists, and preferred to use light armour, he was often at a disadvantage.

Adam rolled to dodge the giant’s grasping hand, grinning fiercely despite the hard rocks that poked his back. But where’s the fun in playing it safe? He loved the thrill of close combat, even though he knew he shouldn’t. It was one of the elements of the War of the Prophet that he had actually missed during the past years of worry and doubt. To know that one wrong move could mean his end, the heavy beating of his heart, the heat that flowed through his veins—it made him feel alive like nothing else.

Adam gained some distance from the giant, who bent forward as far as possible but couldn’t leave its place. Focussing on his left heart, Adam tried to reactivate Schultora’s ability. However, no matter how clearly he thought about using his guilt as a power to set things right, nothing happened.

Typical. My guilt is always there, but when it would actually be useful it’s gone! Couldn’t I feel guilty about that, or something?

The giant’s eye gathered green energy again.

His left heart beating rapidly, Adam breathed in the cool air and savoured all its scents. He roared like a bear, for all this devilish world to hear, and charged. Oh, how I missed this.

The giant bent towards Emily and frantically tried to reach her gourd pouch. An unfamiliar symbol on his standard—a circle containing blurry, interwoven shapes—lit up in green light. However, Adam ran up at him at full speed. The giant swung his enormous right arm at him from the side. Adam roared, spun towards the limb, and swung his weapons.

Suddenly, the giant’s arm disappeared and a bound Oliver flew towards him instead.

“Help me, please!” Oliver shrieked.

Adam’s eyes widened. Reflexively, he changed his swings, causing the weapons to pass beneath Oliver.

The giant’s enormous hand grabbed Adam by the head and slammed him into the ground with brute force; Oliver had been an illusion.

All Adam saw were bright flashes amidst the darkness. Numbed by the crushing pain, he had fumbled his weapons. He yelled, but the enormous hand grabbed his windpipe and squeezed it shut with a grip of iron.