The elf felt a cool breeze upon her skin and opened her eyes. She was sitting beneath a large, familiar oak tree, leaning against something soft. Then the something chuckled.
“Nice to see you too, hun.”
Vivi sprang to her feet, spinning to face the familiar voice.
Emerald eyes met azure. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything, the world began to blur.
“Seems like our reunion will have to wait,” the voice said cheerfully. “Nice to see you still have someone watching your back. Try not to panic them so much next time, eh?”
The world faded to black once more.
Vivi groaned as she woke up. Everything hurt, and the ground was lumpy… and shaking? She opened her eyes to see Lucas staring at her, his smirk almost concealed by his scraggly beard. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said glibly, “and thank you for traveling with Lucas and Co. Do you have a moment to fill out a brief survey on how well we saved your ass?”
“You’re not supposed to just say ‘Co’,” She muttered with a weak smile, “it’s supposed to stand for company.” She looked around to find that she was laying in the back of a moving cart, surrounded by crates, bags, and barrels full of supplies. “What happened?”
“We patched you up - by which I mean Damaia patched you up while I taught those dogs a few new tricks. They learned how to play dead pretty quickly!” Lucas chuckled at his own joke, unable to help himself. When he saw the distinctly unamused expression on her face, he tried to cover it up by clearing his throat. “In any case, I carried you through the tunnel, and we’ve been on the road a few hours by now. You missed a fun little scrap with a Stonemaw Slime that managed to eat through the tunnel walls, but that’s about all. And before you ask, there were no casualties from the Stonemaw fight - unless you count my old breastplate.” The warrior scowled, gesturing towards a cracked and rusty chunk of metal that was currently being used to hold down a particularly loose barrel lid.
“I know a few people where we’re headed,” Vivi said as she slowly rose to her feet. “I’m sure I can get you a good deal on a replacement - probably a whole set of new equipment, actually.”
“How do you even know where we’re going?” He questioned, trying and failing to disguise his interest at the prospect of new gear.
“Because Andrew only has one place he’d go after all of this,” She said, a hint of sadness creeping its way into her voice. “Back home, to Twinwater. It’s about a week away by horse, but it might take a bit longer, depending on how many of the villagers came with us.” She looked questioningly to Lucas, who nodded slowly.
“Two weeks, I’d figure, since basically every survivor decided to tag along,” He grumbled nervously. His eyes flicked up towards the sky as he grimaced. The sunset tinged the sky above his head with vivid orange and pale red, a bittersweet parting gift as night crept in to replace it. But Lucas ignored the sun as it slowly disappeared beyond the horizon, his eyes set on only one thing.
The moon. It was nearly half full, by his reckoning. And if they were headed east…
“The Bleakwoods lie between us and your hometown, don’t they?”
Although he phrased it like a question, there was a grim certainty in his voice as he turned back towards Vivi. Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. “They mark the halfway point, and it will take at least a day or two to move through them.”
“It won’t quite be a full moon,” he muttered, eyes flickering back to the ever brightening moon. “I’d say… waxing gibbous by then. But that hardly matters in the Bleakwood. The whole damn place is crawling with werewolves these days, Vivi. It won’t be an easy trip.”
“I’d bet every gold I’ve got,” Jubel said as he hopped on the cart behind them, “that it’s still easier than dealing with that damn horde. Will they follow us? Urhaz - that’s the orc’s name - said they take the existence of survivors as a personal insult.”
Vivi shook her head slowly. “The Devourers themselves never saw our group, and the hounds that saw us are all dead at this point. They don’t even know who we are! They might find the tunnel if they search the inn, but it’s pretty tough to spot when it’s closed, and honestly, they probably won’t even bother looking inside the buildings. Devourer raids tend to end with the town being burnt to the ground.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Jubel said slowly, “what exactly are Devourers?”
Vivi frowned. “That’s rather difficult to explain,” she admitted. “Nobody’s entirely sure. They’ve got some traits from a few different creatures, but nothing seems to line up perfectly. For instance, they’re all pale, eternally hungry, and view people as food, so some think they’re a sort of ghoul or vampire - but they don’t react to sunlight, holy water, or healing magic the way that most undead do.”
“I can tell you what they are,” Lucas replied with a scowl. “Shapeshifters. Damn nasty ones too. Like a Doppelganger, they can take on the form of just about anyone flawlessly - but unlike the faceless freaks, these bastards are able to combine stolen biology from other creatures to make themselves stronger. They’re damn tough, too. If even one of those bastards had been mixed in with the hounds, we’d be having this conversation in… what the hell’s that in between afterlife called again?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“The Eternal Halls?” Vivi guessed. “The Endless Mountain? The River of Souls?”
“One of those, sure.”
Jubel swallowed hard as a lump formed in his throat. “They’re that strong? We’d have no chance at all?”
“Not a chance in hell!” Lucas barked out a laugh. “They’re strong, fast, and a lot smarter than most critters. They know how to work together, they live very long lives, and the shapeshifting stuff means that they age like dragons; the older they are, the stronger they get! They don’t have many weaknesses. Of course, they also lack the sort of immunities that make other monsters so strong, and there are limits to what they can copy, too. They can regenerate, for instance, but not anywhere near as quickly as trolls or werewolves. Same goes for things like breathing fire or reading minds - if it’s magical, they probably can’t copy it properly. Speaking of which, they have a talent for destructive magic and necromancy, but have a great deal of trouble casting other kinds of magic - probably because they’re all furious or starving basically all the time. That’s how they got their name, you know- they’ll eat anything they can swallow, and they don’t get full. The real dangerous part is -”
“Enough monster talk!” Damaia called from outside the cart. “When’s dinner? We’ve got a lot of scared, hungry kids out here, and I think they’re due a hot meal.”
Vivi smiled. “She has a point. There’s more to saving the day than just escaping disaster- we’ve got a lot of frightened people to reassure.”
“If it’s ‘reassuring’ we’re going for, I’ll leave the talking to you,” Lucas said with a fresh scowl. “People tend to act like I’m trying to murder them if I so much as smile their way.”
“I’ve only known you a week,” the felblood engineer piped up from her place alongside their cart, “so take this with a grain of salt, but I don’t think I’ve seen you smile unless violence was involved. Remember when you threatened to snap the old drunk guy in half because he called me a demon? You had a huge smile then!”
Lucas managed to hide his chagrin beneath a mildly offended expression as Jubel tried in vain to stifle his laughter.
Nearly a hundred people had escaped the destruction of Westwind through Andrew’s tunnel, and out of those, the only one who hadn’t followed them was old Rufus. He refused to travel alongside the orc, Urhaz, and seemed personally offended when nobody agreed with him. His departure still left 90 people total, half of which were children, and that left them badly disorganized.
With all that in mind, it was actually miraculous how quickly they managed to set up camp that night. True, it took a full two hours, but there wasn’t a single argument to be heard as Vivi and Andrew barked out orders at the refugees, managing to get something that vaguely resembled coordination out of them.
Jubel liked to think the smell of the stew he helped put together contributed to that, if only a little. He wasn’t much of a chef, but with Andrew’s help, he managed to make something perfectly edible - maybe even tasty!
When it finally came time to set up the night watch - for who could sleep after a day like today without some reassurance that they were protected?- He chose to take the first shift, exhausted though he was. He had to take a shift, after all, and the sooner he finished his shift on watch, the sooner he could get some proper rest. He nearly fell asleep just imagining how good it would feel to just lie down after a long day on his feet, but shook himself awake when he felt his eyelids droop.
They weren’t completely safe out here, he reminded himself. He couldn’t let himself relax just yet. Wild animals might avoid a group this large, but there was always a chance something more clever was out there. His limbs felt heavy as the night wore on, but he had to stay awake. Soon, he would be done. Soon, someone else would replace him, and he could sleep. SOON!
But not yet. Not… yet…
A sudden hand on his shoulder jolted him awake just in time.
A pale man with a wide smile shook him gently. “Don’t go passing out just yet!’ He whispered enthusiastically. “You’re supposed to be on watch! Come, let’s talk to pass the time until your shift is up.”
The man pushed his dark hair out of his eyes with one hand while steering Jubel towards a dim, flickering fire. He threw a few branches from a nearby pile onto the flame while gesturing for Jubel to take a seat on one of the logs that had been rolled over to us as a bench during dinner.
“You’re doing well, I hope,” the stranger asked, his perpetually wide smile still firmly in place. “No serious injuries? You should make sure you apply a salve and bandage up any scrape you get from those dogs, you know. They can carry some nasty diseases, and some people think they might even be venomous!”
“I’m… fine,” Jubel replied slowly, staring at the chatty stranger. For some reason, the man seemed strange to him. Some small part of him felt like he should know who this is, as if he was some sort of long lost friend, and he couldn’t help but feel at ease as they spoke. “Actually, I seem to heal pretty quickly these days, so there’s not much need to worry about me.”
The man tisked at him, straightening out the crimson tie that Jubel had only just noticed he was wearing. Now that he thought about it, was the man wearing a white and red tuxedo in the middle of the forest?! “Now now, none of that!” the man said firmly. His voice was easily heard over the crackling of the fire as he fed it another branch, but still kept quiet enough that it seemed unlikely to wake anyone up. “We have a lot to do, Jubel Heartfell, and I can’t have you dying from something as easily preventable as an infected bite. You’ll heal from wounds quickly enough, but without proper treatment, illness and poison can still kill you.”
Jubel felt his blood run cold as the man’s words slowly sunk in. He realized what had seemed so off about the man, other than his peculiar clothes. The entire time they’d been talking, he’d been using the strange, harsh language that Jubel hadn’t understood a week ago. “Who are you?” he whispered in that same unnatural tongue, his hands clenched into fists.
“Someone who accepted your silent offer,” the man replied calmly. “There was a part of you that, when faced with death, refused to accept it. A part willing to pay any price to survive. I’d been waiting for decades for someone like you - someone with the drive to not only live, but thrive, who sincerely needed my help.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question,” Jubel replied dryly.
The man waved a hand dismissively. “I have many names, my good half elf, but if you insist on having something to call me, I refer to myself as Nihlus.”
“And what can I do for you, Nihlus?”
The strange man’s smile somehow grew even wider. “I’m glad you asked, Jubel my boy! I granted you power, knowledge, and a second chance at life. The price of such power is often quite grave. In fact, I’d be well within my rights to claim your soul… but I won't. I want us to help each other, Jubel. There’s something I need rather badly, something I lost long ago… and I want you to help me reclaim it. In return for my three gifts, I want three things from you. Or rather, three pieces of one thing - three fragments of a blade I forged long before there was even a single living creature on this world. In return for gathering them, I will renounce my claim on your soul and allow you to use the weapon until such time as your life ends.” he held out one hand, his smile softening.
“Do we have a deal?”
Jubel had the sinking suspicion he didn’t have much choice in the matter, but paused to consider the situation as if he did. He’d been willing to work off his debt to Andrew, hadn’t he? This was a bigger debt, to be sure, and as such it would likely be more difficult to repay… but if he hadn’t been willing to pay the price, he was somehow certain he’d never have received anything from Nihlus in the first place.
He grasped the pale man’s hand firmly with his own, shaking it once.
“Deal,” he said softly.