Yalen wanted to chase them into the treeline, but he knew better. Taking a few extra moments to survey the area one quickly noticed that there was more to this than it first seemed. Shiira didn’t use shoes so it was quite easy to recognize her footprints compared to others. He couldn’t guarantee just how many were from the party earlier and how many were related to her disappearance, but based on the footprints around the dragging marks through the grass it seemed to be at least three people.
He considered their relative location, a popular road between the city and the docks, traders were as likely to use it as random travellers. Odds were that the people who had taken Shiira were organised.
He looked over his group, he hadn’t gotten to know everyone personally yet, and in this kind of situation, he would put more trust in Shiira, simply because of her woodland skills. He would have to figure out something based on the little he knew about the people he had.
And from all of those one stood out.
“Toron, I need a favour from you...” Yalen spoke to the only one he knew had proper combat experience.
Toron didn’t ask any questions, he could guess what the deal here was. His life experiences told him what he needed to know, someone was taken against their will. Though he was not against a proper fight, kidnappers and slavers were very high on his shit list.
Grabbing his armour he walked closer to Yalen, he stabbed his sword into the ground and started putting on his breastplate as they talked.
The group had woken up to Toron’s thundering voice, followed quickly by the sounds of rustling fabric and a weapon or two drawn. Once Aldar lit up the area they could only see a surprising amount of nothing. Harroc was probably the one that could see the best, but Aldar’s flames were like beacons of illuminating pain to look at. It seemed the fire mage understood this and made sure that as few as possible directly entered the lizard's line of sight. This continued as they could overhear Yalen and Toron’s talk, it seemed to be about tactics. Specifically, if Toron felt comfortable going in first and trying to find them while the rest set up a flanking manoeuvre.
Evesi was an odd one out of place, she was simply cleaning herself as everyone else was fumbling about, seeming strangely calm about everything.
Once Toron was properly armoured and Yalen seemed to be done talking, he nodded. “No problem.”
In the back of his mind, it didn’t feel right to take orders from someone weaker than him, Toron was a fighter who had problems with being ordered around, after all. However, he was not an entire ass and was going to aid the people in his group. Shiira was taken and he intended to aid her regardless, it also helped that Yalen was formulating things as a request more than anything.
Taking his sword he walked into the treeline and disappeared into the darkness.
“Listen up-” Yalen said with a slightly raised voice, taking the attention of the remaining people in the camp. “-It seems that Shiira has been taken, we need to get her back. Toron has gone ahead and we’ll follow him now. Make sure not to do anything rash, if this is a hostage situation... Just don’t do anything sudden.” He had only rough ideas of their skill sets, but not their mindset yet, so though he knew that Harroc could make potions and was good with explosions, he didn’t exactly know just how trigger-happy he could be.
The group seemed to be on board and followed Yalen into the forest, Aldar disabled his flames as they moved, returning them into darkness. They followed the tracks but after a short distance, the dragging marks disappeared, however, it seemed that one of the footstep sets started getting a little bit deeper, hinting that someone was carrying her. Toron’s footsteps were not hard to separate from the rest, however, after following it for a moment longer they separated and disappeared into the forest brush. It seems that Toron took off on his own.
The rest of the group were sneaking along the tracks until they heard a voice. “What’s this, then?”
Looking towards the voice it was clear they had walked into a trap, a man was standing over a tied up, but blindfolded and gagged, Shiira. As if planned on his command there were people hiding in the forest with crossbows, a total of three that Yalen managed to notice.
Though Shiira was currently tied up she seemed to be somewhat panicking. This was probably why the kidnappers were still alive as her abilities weren’t reliant on her moving her arms around.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of there soon.” Yalen spoke to her if nothing else to let her hear his voice.
It didn’t remove her panic but it seemed to calm her down at least a little bit.
“Oh, getting ahead of ourselves, are we?” The man standing over Shiira commented as he pointed his short sword towards her tied-up form.
“It all depends on how much gold you all have.”
Yalen was able to compose himself, but on the inside, he was practically frothing with rage. He never wanted to kill or had any specific need to do so, but certain people didn’t deserve to live. Besides, even if these people were to be captured and brought to justice, one of two things would happen. They would either be hanged for their crimes or get out of jail in a relatively short while, able to return to their current lives... There was only one proper thing to do here.
“Oh, I know that look.” The bandit gloated. The moonlight was enough for him to catch details. “You might want to leave your swords in their sheaths... Perhaps you want to just drop them on the ground with my companions.” He vaguely gestured to the forest with his blade.
Yalen’s head was spinning with ideas and possibilities, he could perhaps throw something, like one of his swords, at the bandit leader but... This might not only miss and hit Shiira, but it would have the others shoot them with their crossbows.
Taking a quick look at his party, though he could accept getting shot with crossbows and healing if needed, he didn’t like the idea of putting others in danger.
The only option was to become the main target and give his party an opening.
Tapping into his angry side was hardly a problem, Yalen had plenty of dislike for these kinds of people, especially when they took people against their will like this. Gambling on that the rest of the party knew how to react, he pulled both his swords and let his bloodlust seep out of him, he wanted them to know what he could do to them and he wanted them to see him as a dangerous beast.
“I think I have a... different idea.” Putting pressure on the latter part of his sentence seemed to throw the men in the forest off a bit, the leader didn’t take a step back but it was clear to see that he was affected a little.
“Listen here, Old man-” The bandit crouched down and put his blade against Shiira, not enough to do any form of damage but enough that he could easily do so if he wanted to.
“-I don’t think you want this gamble.”
A deep muffled grunt could be heard from the forest to the side. A short second later a fist-sized rock impacted the leader’s ribs with a sickening sound of breaking ribs and a fleshy squelch. The force was enough to lift him off his feet and move him a few metres (1 metre ~3ft) away from Shiira.
This was enough of a trigger for everyone involved.
Yalen darted forwards to the leader, closing the short distance in only a second, both his swords ending their swift movement embedded in the bandit’s chest. A sudden gasp of surprise and pain escaped his lips as the light faded from his eyes.
Surprising reactions from the bandits in the forest were backed up by further confusing swearing. One crossbow bolt found its way to Yalen, embedding itself deep in his side. Yalen let out a pained grunt as he pulled both his swords from the lifeless bandit leader. The blades left his chest with a single pulse of blood as he fell to the ground without resistance, turning towards the remaining bandits he saw that one was already on fire, screaming out in a mix of panic and pain. The second was struggling with reloading his crossbow and the third got a face full of some viscous liquid from Harroc, the liquid seemed to spread itself across his face and harden instantly, causing one of the bandit’s hands to be stuck to his face and the other helplessly scratching in panic at the now hardened shell clogging his mouth and nose.
The second bandit was nearing ready to fire again, but a swift move from Yalen had his short-sword clip one of his arms with a deep wound. Dropping his crossbow the bandit simply ran into the forest in panic.
The sound of something flat but large tearing through both the air, as well as flesh and bone, stopped the sound of his footsteps as it spray-painted the near area with blood. Toron came out of the denser brush with a bloodied sword and splattered armour.
Yalen ignored his bloodied ally, as well as the crossbow bolt in his side, and ran over to Shiira. He took off her blindfold first, followed by her gag before he cut her restraints. She instantly locked him down in a hug as soon as she was loose, seeming to struggle with her current situation.
Now that he was on his knees with her, the reality of running around with a sharp object embedded in his side was catching up to him. He could feel the internal bleeding, and that was without considering the external bleeding. Without medical care, he was going to be in some serious problems very soon.
Evesi seemed to have taken this as her cue, she was casually walking up to him during their hug and bit into the crossbow bolt, yanking it out of his body. Due to the lack of care this didn’t only hurt like a bitch, but it also made the wound even larger due to the broadhead the bolt had.
Yalen turned towards her and was about to loudly ask her the fuck she was doing, but he stopped himself as she was talking in some weird language which seemed to trigger a pleasant, pale white energy to build up around her body and extend into his wound, closing it and dulling the pain substantially.
It only took about 10-15 seconds but after this, the only remnants he had of the damage the bolt did was a lingering dull pain and some bloodied clothing.
She smiled at him and trotted satisfied away, seeming to head towards one of the bandits.
Once Shiira finally let go of the embrace, they got to their feet, she seemed to not even have noticed the healing or the event with the bolt and Evesi, being too focused on her own.
“Are you Ok?” Yalen asked her, sort of looking her over but finding nothing.
“They didn’t hurt me much, I’ll be fine.” Shiira smiled at him seeming more relieved than anything.
The area lit up like five torches were suddenly ignited, a glance showed that it was Aldar who was doing this with the same fire-orb spell he used earlier. This seemed to be preferred for everyone involved, except Harroc who was shading his eyes with his hand as if the sun was out. Everyone seemed to be gathered except for Evesi, she was over at the bandit who got hit with Harroc’s concoction.
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“What did you throw at him?” Yalen asked Harroc as he walked over to the group with Shiira.
“I call it Rapid Glue, it hardens after only seconds in contact with air. Not good for construction but very good for combat. I can dissolve it with this.” Taking a vial out of his bag he shook it in a displaying manner as he smiled satisfied with his work.
Toron came walking into the group, just stopping and not saying anything. He thought about what he saw with the group before the attack. He might have misjudged Yalen as just some pompous adventure leader type. He displayed the eyes of a true killer, or rather; someone who has seen true combat. Eyes Toron was very familiar with when growing up. He didn’t trust Yalen blindly after this but only seeing this gave him good cause to give him the strong benefit of the doubt.
Yalen had a look over his towering ally and felt glad that he gauged him correctly. There is a strange feeling, a sense, you build up after years of fighting. And the feeling he got from Toron fit his registering as a combatant.
At the same time he felt that he almost owed the others some apologies, he did think lesser of them but they held their sides completely fine.
As the fight was over there was no need to keep here in the woods. Nature would handle the cleanup and none of them had any interest in poorly maintained old weapons and gear. However, one thing seemed a bit strange... When everyone was about to leave, Evesi was doing something to the corpse that had his face glued earlier. A casual glance seemed to show that the man managed to get his hand loose before dying, but now Evesi was sitting next to him, saying things in a weird language as a strange swirling energy could barely be seen around her.
“What are you doing?” Harroc asked her through the little he could see.
“Getting us a friend, go back before me, I’ll be there in a few.” Returning to her weird words afterwards.
Everyone in the group had ideas of what this might be, based on her introduction earlier. At least Yalen had puzzled together that she was raising the man for her abominations.
“I think we’ll be fine, you don’t have to do that... Besides, you can’t bring them with us when we go on the ship.” Yalen saw the value in what she was doing, but it also didn’t feel entirely right, he thought stopping her from doing it in the first place was the better thing to do.
To his dismay he was too late, suddenly she stopped talking and the whole corpse twitched a few times. It looked like one of those random twitches you sometimes get as you wake up, nothing major or super weird looking... if it wasn’t for the fact that this was a dead man.
The corpse supported itself and sat up, looking around with blank, vacant eyes, seemingly not even worried that his nose and mouth were glued shut.
“Good, welcome to the world, Captain Tim.” Evesi smiled at the raised corpse. It looked at her and the party with oddly terrifying eyes before it got up on its feet.
“Now, to the next one!” She smiled as she trotted over towards the next corpse, the one that Yalen stabbed. Captain Tim was following her with surprisingly nimble steps compared to what you’d expect a corpse to do. Though it wasn’t ‘there’ mentally, it was still moving around very similar to what a person would, only if you paid attention could you see that it wasn’t moving exactly normally.
The party seemed to have... mixed feelings about this. Harroc was the only one who properly didn’t seem to mind, he just looked interested in them and by extension; Evesi. Toron seemed largely indifferent, bordering on uncomfortable, he didn’t properly understand how this worked but the only thing he knew was that they were perfectly loyal to the one that raised them. Aldar didn’t seem entirely comfortable with it, much like Yalen and Shiira, it seems they accepted this being done but perhaps only because it was done to bandits. Shiira might have double reservations about this due to them having kidnapped her just now.
Since nobody stopped her, the bandit leader also woke up, the two wounds in his chest were still there but as blood was no longer important it didn’t seem to matter. Blood did what blood does and coagulated in contact with air, so it had already thickened in the wounds and though it might not form a crust it should at least plug up the wounds enough to not bleed everywhere.
“Good evening, Sir Tim.” She smiled at the newly raised ‘ally’.
This specific zombie didn’t sit right with Shiira, the leader was the one that ‘handled’ her when they took her. He was the one that knocked her out, he was the one that had tied her up and said all those awful things.
Yalen noticed Shiira’s reaction, and it made a lot of sense. Speaking up in Evesi’s direction, Yalen thought to stop this before it became too bad.
“Do you have to do that, especially to him?” He didn’t sound that happy, more that he was tired and didn’t enjoy this. Putting pressure on the word ‘have’, more than anything still wanting to talk her out of it.
Evesi stopped a moment and thought about it. She honestly didn’t have to, but she wanted to. The undead she raises were always her friends, meaning that the more she raised, the more friends she had... Having to do this was not a question, it was more that she could and wanted to.
“It’s not that I have to, no. But I like to, the Tims are really good at simple jobs, and they’re just so friendly.” She had an honest smile and seemed to properly enjoy this.
Referring to them as ‘the Tims’ did raise a few questions, though some of them answered themselves given that both the raised corpses were named Tim, just with different titles.
“You can’t bring them with you anyway, we’re not taking them in the cart or on the ship.” Yalen commanded like telling a toddler they can’t keep the animal they found in the forest.
“That’s fine, I’ll just dismiss them when we wake up and get on board.” She said this with a strange casual tone to it, which only raised further questions when considering how adamant she was on wanting to raise these ‘friends’.
“Well, in any case... Can you at least not use him?” Yalen pointed at the leader, having him walk around the camp would probably not give Shiira any sleep at all. “And If it’s only a guard, I don’t think we need more than one...” He realised a few things with this little discussion.
She was listed in the Guild notes as skilled in raising corpses. He did have reservations about this from the start but all things considered, should you look at this purely logically; it was a free workforce.
“Fine.” In a moping dissatisfied tone, Evesi agreed. She changed her walking path from the forest where the other corpses were, to instead walk towards the party. The bandit leader just fell straight down like someone cut the strings holding him up. This seemed to calm Shiira down a tiny bit, but Evesi still had the one bandit under her metaphorical wing.
Yalen decided to end this here, the night was already long enough and though they had plenty of time to rest on the carriage tomorrow, it wasn’t going to be the most pleasant of rests.
The group followed their leader back to camp, Aldar keeping the road illuminated with his flying fire, but Harroc was more interested in how Evesi was raising the corpses. Since they weren’t far enough back that they couldn’t be overheard, all questions and answers were easily heard by the entire party.
“The spell I use isn’t that complicated. I channel my energy into the corpse where a mana-crystal forms, this acts as the energy source for everything they do. The magic also gives them a few abilities that they didn’t have before, but they lose almost everything they knew before-”
Seeming to not mind sharing the secrets of this kind of magic, she continued. “-They get much, much more sturdy, they have neverending stamina, live forever as long as I do, can sense living things to a certain range, and they are linked to me. Even if they don’t have eyes they can ‘see’ because of the magic and since I’m the caster they are linked to me mentally.”
Harroc only seemed more and more interested in this. “So, how do you tell them to do something, do they understand speech?”
“They are linked to my mind, I can command them by thinking at almost any range. But they are completely dumb, their mind doesn’t work anymore so they can’t use any skills that I don’t understand. I can see and hear through them if I focus really, really hard. The only skills they keep are simple combat they knew in life; like if someone knew how to use the sword, they can still use it. But if they knew magic or were good at picking locks, that won’t work.”
Evesi kept explaining and Harroc kept taking notes in his book. The undead zombies aren’t actually “undead”, or rather they aren’t unholy evil abominations. They are more like reanimated ‘things’. This magic only worked on corpses due to the magic taking the place of where life was, making this process much easier. She referred to some other animation magic that could animate any random object, but she was not able to use this.
She could have a small bunch of them at the same time, but it depended on how powerful they were. The more powerful the more energy they needed and she was only able to allocate a certain amount of energy to these links. She was still able to cast other spells during this and it didn’t affect her mana reserves, it was more like a separate pool dedicated to this.
As this explanation went on, the party’s collective mind became a bit more at ease, save Harroc that was just more and more interested the more he was answered, the rest seemed to take solace in the thoughts that there was no soul involved. Though they are technically undead, they aren’t really; they are more like animated objects that happened to be corpses.
For some weird reason, this helped people cope with the unholy nature of corpse mutilation. It also gave them some insight and information on how to take the undead down, you just needed to find the crystal, the core, that kept them moving. Damage that and they are disabled.
Arriving back at the camp, Yalen chose to have Evesi keep Tim out of sight, mainly for the carriage driver’s mentality. Yalen himself took the remaining guard duty until they would leave, even though Evesi stated that Tim could do that without a problem. He didn’t exactly trust ‘Tim’ just yet.
“Everyone try to get some more sleep, we have a long day tomorrow as well.” Though a good chunk of the day was going to be in the carriage, and later on the boat, it never hurt to have some rest.
The group turned in for the remainder of the night. Shiira opted to sit awake with Yalen but fell asleep sitting against him not long after, Yalen felt she probably just wanted the company more than anything.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day for Yalen, perhaps for the others as well.