"-I’m going to Hold you to your Word.”
The conditions had been met, in fact, they were inexcusably violated. He hadn’t completed our Oath. I couldn’t have done anything for Meredith, but I could have done it the second he held the blade above me, as it plunged down, but if I was going to get out of here I wanted to ramp up the penalty and wait until it was inexcusably violated.
If I had included ‘in Spirit, Word, and Deed’ to the original Oath, I could have done this before… before he killed Meredith. As for the Oath we had made, I had to wait. Legal fucking bullshit. I grabbed the frayed and knotted Oath with my Intent, wrapped it in my Will and pulled on the binding. I used the tether to lash out at him, striking him at the very core of his being.
The cigar slipped from his lips as Morrigan’s hand simultaneously slipped from the hilt. He clutched his head and screamed then settled as his fingers dug bloody furrows into his skull.
The smell of smokey, burning flesh filled my nostrils as ‘OATHBREAKER’ tattooed itself across his forehead in bold letters and blood started to flow from his tear ducts. I idly thought that it was weird that so many letters could be that bold and fit that well on his forehead while still being readable, but it did and they were.
“What. did!? You do?!”
Our Oath said personally give me the spoilers, which, having some other dickhead casually throw them at me, *big hint*, didnt quite count enough to close our deal. Especially when he was already sort of pushing it by tying me up.
”You should pay more attention to the fine print, fucking asshole.”
His body twisted and he screamed as pain continued to rip through his skull. Vivi ran to him and he swatted a hand at her and sent her to the floor. She hissed back before Tracey rushed toward Morrigan, and then veered off as Vivi was back up and came up protectively between the two.
Tracey took a wide turn around them and continued toward us. Not expecting her to save me but I was still a bit dissapointed as she knocked my chair over and to the side to move past me and untie Jon as she hissed out, “Now Jon!”
I screamed as I fell on my still impaled left arm as she snapped and turned to fling a huge ice spike toward Morrigan.
I guess my scream helped as Vivi tackled Morrigan to move him from the strike’s path.
Tracey handed Jon a knife and a bag as she continued to snap and throw spikes of razor-sharp ice at Morrigan and Vivi.
“Ron! Attack Tracey and Jon!”
Ron picked up his pitchfork, still in hammer-form with the spikes poking out the top of it, and charged the two. Jon threw something from the pouch and it exploded in Ron’s face bringing out a roar from the oversized thrall.
Great, fucking alchemists.
Surprisingly, being knocked over so that I was laying on my stab wound did nothing to help me escape my bindings. The llama started thrashing,
In… here?
My eyes widened. The thought of what was to come sparked a new idea. Shit that wouldn’t work. Not that idea either. I was pretty close to just requesting some popcorn to watch the fight. Then I noticed Mark approaching me with a cold, dead smile.
“Oh… hey Mark.”
“Hey shithead.”
“Pretty crazy huh?”
“Oh yeah, it’s gonna get a whole lot crazier for you buddy.”
“I’m not your bud-”
The door thumped and everyone took a beat as the oxygen left the room. My eyes would have looked there if moving my neck like that wouldn’t have given it a crink. A problem since I was nearly out of healing at this point. Okay fine, I was completely out of healing. Almost completely.
Thump.
Thump. Thump.
The door burst open and a swarm of nature’s little monsters came pouring through it. Farmer’s John’s whole fucking flock came to play and I was still tied up like an asshole.
Pookie. Oh thank God for pookie Pookie. I never thought I’d be as happy as I was to watch a charging, near-250 pound pitbull running straight at me. His jaw wrapped around the back of the chair and closed. The wood splintered and my shoulders instantly ached from being able to move again.
“My hands! My hands!”
He grabbed the bindings and shook me, grinding my shoulder with a sword still in it across the ground.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Fuck-Pookie! Not like that! Free my hands!”
My feet were duct taped to the chair legs so my back twisted as he continued to work at my ridiculously sturdy bindings.
Animals continued to pour through the broken door, a tide of furred death. Against a crew of the most powerful humans on the estate, they held the wave back well enough. At least while they were burning Fortitude like crazy.
Morrigan stumbled and Vivi redirected a half-melted faced Ron to protect him. At some point Morrigan seemed to have recovered as he managed to send bursts of black fire across the room that stuck to and rendered down whatever it touched. Really more like napalm than fire. The temperature of the room continued to rise as the black fire filled it, the black-light with the jagged blood-red light of the sacrifice circle really fit the whole pit-of-hell ambiance.
Vivi sent putrid clouds of black curse mist to twist the minds of newly enthralled animals, sending them back against the horde. Ron’s hammer filled in the gaps as it crashed against the larger animals that resisted Vivi’s thralling, though Ron’s movements weren’t nearly as coordinated as he had been during our Bambi-brawl. He was taking damage but he had also almost turned my crotch to paste an hour or so ago so I struggled to care.
Tracey and Jon had to redirect their fight as well, Tracey launching small wedges of ice into animals that came her way though she seemed like she was saving her strength.
Jon threw vials from his pouch into the surroundings that… had plenty of effects. Melting skin, fur, and flesh. Animals simply dropping dead. Bursts of fire and ice, though he was also pretty good with that knife that Tracey handed him.
The animals knew they were losing but the front ranks were pushed onward by those behind them. The only way through was forward, through the hellish attacks of the Humans.
Underlying the chaos were Human screams echoing through the broken door and coming from the rest of the estate.
Shit. Mark was approaching us both now, ever closer and cleavers out.
Pookie put my hands into his mouth and did a zoomie-spin that ended with a head snap that flung me away from both of them. My sight turned white as I spun and my sword rattled around inside my arm.
I slammed into the wall and the impact shoved the sword out of me about as urgently and ungently as possible. I… uh maybe screamed a bit.
Still, I cut that shit as quickly as possible, I wasn’t interested in drawing any more attention to myself than was absolutely necessary. I twisted my hands back and forth and felt a bit more give than usual, almost almost…
Oh fuck you bunny. Hop. Hop. Hop. It steadily approached, aiming for my face as my fingers writhed and twisted, the bindings now cutting into the flesh of my wrists as I desperately tried to free my fingers. I just needed my fingers.
Blasting just straight Will at them was still too risky, I wasn’t sure if it would work and if I burst out not enough I’d still be trapped as well as having wasted Fortitude. If I blasted too much to ensure I was freed then I’d be dead on my feet. I just needed my damn fingers free, on one hand!
Hop.
Lacking proper retributive capacity, I spit at the bunny and it stopped and sniffed at it. Oh thank God-
Oh shit. I started hopping faster. Where was Pookie?! Him and Mark were fighting each other, Mark was bleeding from a vicious bite on his thigh but Pooks had taken a couple of pretty good slashes for it, though I would have expected deeper wounds. Was everyone just tankier than I was? Absolute bullshit is what that was.
Fuck that bunny. It hopped closer. Only a few more hops and it’d be at my face. I pushed myself backward, feet awkwardly stuck on the legs of the chair, now more like a stool that Pookie had shattered the back of it. I twisted… almost… almost….
The bunny picked up speed and landed in front of my face.
Chomp. A black set of jaws clamped down and ripped the bunny into the air before tossing its head back and swallowing it in another clamping, crushing bite.
Now that I was thinking about it, the bunny wasn’t so bad.
“Heyyyy she-bitch.” Fuck.
“Yup. Soooo what’s been up with you?”
I continued to twist and writhe my hands furiously, ignoring the grinding pain of the restraints. I was almost sure that it was some old ass rope now that my torn skin was able to find direct nerve contact with every single one of the threads. I could basically count each of the dozens of threads, that was if it hadn’t just melded into one rough slithering mass of burning pain.
Oh jeez. Thanks lady.
The squeaky voice sounded as the largest rabbit stood slightly ahead of the rest of the rabbit family which was arranged in a long and deep mass of rows behind my nemesis. It was slowly spreading out to encircle us; it hadn’t so far, but it would soon.
She snarled at them,
I mean, that clearly wasn’t what she meant, also if I was being objective, I was kind of on Team Nemesis here. They’re rabbits for fuck's sake, they have like a million family members apiece.
I also wasn’t really on Team Nemesis though. Just a little bit longer, I felt like I was dislocating my thumb at this point.
“Damn, she kills your brother and talks to you like that? She must think you rabbits really are pathetic and weak.”
My nemesis growled at me and started to move toward me despite her earlier words, before yelping and leaping into the air.
She wagged her tail trying to dislodge the rabbit swinging at the end of it before she caught it in her maw and ate it in a vicious set of bites.
“Attack the she-bitch!” I modulated my voice as squeaky as I could make it and the rabbits took the bait and charged the wolf. Bless their tiny, little fluffy hearts they really were dumb creatures.
There. With entirely too much effort I angled my hand and closed my grip feeling my Will Sword form and cut my bindings as well as a sharp line through my back before it instantly dissipated.
My teeth were permanently grit at this point as my head filled with the sharp fuzzy static of pain. Disregarding the bunny-army-nemesis-wolf-deathmatch happening a couple of feet away I grabbed my sword and cut my ankle binds before snapping my fingers and burning what remained of my heal to address my arm stabbing.
Somewhat surprisingly the tiny amount of stab wound healing I had left managed to completely heal my arm. Did similar types of healing work more efficiently? The fact that my sword had caused both wounds, was that a double-double factor? A quadruple factor?
Piercing-piercing, blunt-blunt… Whatever, I didn’t have time and I was officially Out Of Healing. My nemesis was in the middle of a tide of bunnies and as I looked closer, there was no way I could get in the middle of that in my state.
It really was a really vicious fucking thing they were in the middle of. My feet instinctively moved away from the fight happening next to me and toward Pookie and Mark. Mark was on the backfoot now that other animals were targeting him and not Pooks.