by Eric Ugland
The Thingmen who’d gone into the worm tunnel had finally returned. Just as expected, the night goblins were on the other end. They were building a series of ramps down to the pit where the worm had been spawned, and would likely be able to use the tunnel to get to the kobolds in a matter of days. A week at the most. The news had caught me off guard, mainly because I’d become rather single-minded of focus, doing my utmost to improve myself and Coggeshall, and also because I wasn’t sure how best to use the new intelligence. The Thingmen scouts were confident the goblins had not been aware of their presence, and Harmut’s dwarves had changed our worm tunnel entrance into something that blended in seamlessly. If the night goblins were to march down the worm tunnel, Harmut believed they’d stomp right on by.
Emeline was still missing. Tarryn kept promising me he’d let me know what her books were about, but he seemed increasingly absorbed by her books, staying in his room at all times unless eating.
I started to head in for my bath, knowing I’d also use the alone time to think. I’d been putting in the work, but with everything going on, it still felt like I hadn’t accomplished much.
But then I heard a strangled yelp come from below. Like someone had started to shout something, only to have a hand clamped over their mouth. It was such a short noise that I thought it might have been a trick of the wind. But looking down, I saw a flash of light as a door opened and closed. On the hall. Where Alexios was still being held because Harmut kept pushing building the jail/secure room back in favor of other things that seemed more important. Like a library with no books. And though I had been assured progress was being made, I had a bad feeling Alexios was still firmly corrupted.
I started inside, but remembered I had an emergency response rope. I unspooled it and slid down. Not exactly the best idea with no gloves, shirt, or boots on. There was quite a bit of friction involved, and I definitely had to regrow a fair amount of skin when I hit the ground. Still, it was a damn sight faster than running down the stairs.
I sprinted across the grounds, annoyed that no one else heard the scream. The guards on the walls were still looking out — not a one turned inward. Everyone else, whether guard, soldier, or civilian, was inside somewhere. The weather was too nasty to spend long outside if you could help it.
My feet were freezing, and the snow started coming down with a fury. The Hall was directly in front of me. As I got within twenty feet, someone, or something, crashed through the door. I hurdled the body, and ran into the Hall.
Alexios stood in the center of the Hall, naked. Thick, viscous shadows whipped around him. His muscles were swollen far beyond anything I’d seen on him before; he barely looked like the man I knew. Hell, he barely looked like a man.
The chair he’d been tied to was shattered, its remnants spread across the floor.
Meikeljan the cleric was against the wall, about midway up, squirming against some invisible force that held him there. The two soldiers who’d been guarding Alexios were very clearly dead.
I ran and tackled Alexios. It was like running into a steel girder. His eyes were glossy black with no whites whatsoever, and his teeth had grown to the point where his lips stopped covering them. His face was gaunt, skin stretched tight all over him. I could even see it tearing at a few points, like his body was about to burst forth from within.
He put one massive hand over my face, his palm covering my eyes, and he tried to shove me away from him. But despite whatever bonus powers his corruption gave him, he couldn’t best my strength.
Then his fingers tore apart as his own bones pushed through the skin, turning into horrible claws.
He tried to shove his new talons into my skull, but they just skidded along the bone, heading right for my eyes.
I got one of my legs behind his knee, and tipped him over.
He flailed, but physics is physics, and so he fell over.
I jumped back, just barely avoiding a low sweeping kick from his leg.
I reset myself, getting into a low stance to watch what he was going to do.
He hopped to his feet and sneered at me. A long string of drool came out of his ruined mouth. He looked down at his hands, flexing one then the other, as if he was fascinated by the way they were moving, now that he had talons. Blood dripped down, the wounds very much still fresh. The bones sticking out were black, looking like they’d been charred. It was a fundamentally wrong looking thing. Disgusting and unpleasant. But it definitely seemed like Alexios was a fan of his new appendages. He waved them at me, and he said something, but it wasn’t in a language I knew, and considering I didn’t get a notification of learning a new language, I had the distinct impression I was hearing him try to speak Imperial Common.
“You got ugggglee,” I said.
Seemed like that pissed him off, because he lunged at me, swiping out with his ridiculously long claws.
I misjudged things because his arm grew as he swung, and the tips of his claws cut right through my abdomen, at least partially, leaving four messy slices. Blood poured out, and I winced.
“You have got to do something about your nails,” I said, taking a breath and letting go of the pain thanks to my new ability: That’s Not Pain.
Alexios roared at me, his mouth growing larger. His jaw hung open, and giant flecks of saliva soared across the room in a foul, feculent fountain. The skin on the side of his jaw ripped, and some of it hung loose, revealing red pulsating flesh below.
Then, he charged again.
Thing was, the dude’s body was changing too fast for himself, and though he got me with his new-growth ability once, I wasn’t about to be fooled again. I darted away, and pulled on his arm to overbalance him.
He came at me, swinging wildly, but he had no real idea what he was doing, his moves were easily telegraphed. It seemed like whatever skills or training he’d had in the past had left him in his current corrupted state. I smacked them down, left-right-left, kicked him in the shin and slapped him across the face before dancing back out of reach. His black eyes went wide as if he couldn’t believe what I’d just done.
I feinted to the left, then smashed him across the face with my right fist, connecting solidly with his lower jaw. His head snapped around so fast it took a minute for his legs to realize nothing was telling them what to do. Finally he collapsed.
An inhuman tongue lolled out of his mouth, something tendril-like, and a sickly greenish color. Ragged breaths came from him, and flecks of blood sprayed out with every exhalation. Looking over him, he wasn’t recognizable any longer. His arms were too long, his legs were squat, his skin had torn to release huge muscles, his jaw looked dislocated, and his hair had fallen out. A raspy cough wracked his body once. Twice. Then he gave a long, slow exhale, and nothing more.
GG! You’ve killed a Corrupted Human (lvl 36 Ranger).
You’ve earned 5000 xp! What a mighty hero you are.
I stood there, really fucking confused. You should have seen my face when the body exploded.
Chapter Forty-Two
It was one of the most disgusting things I have ever witnessed. The corpse blew apart with remarkable force, sending a horrifying blend of pus and blood and other bonus fluids flying. It painted the interior of the Hall in the least appealing shade of red imaginable. Tendrils of foul-smelling goop flew about and managed to make connections across the room. Sadly, it wasn’t a completely foreign smell to me, rather, it smelled a lot like gangrene.
Call it fate, call it luck, call it kharma, but none of that nasty stuff got in my mouth. Or my eyes. Granted, the open wounds across my stomach probably had a bunch of nasty in it, so, you know, win some, lose some.
While wiping the gunk off my body, I did my best not to add my own vomit to the mix. But then I realized there was something moving amongst the gunk. I grabbed a chair leg, and advanced on the thing squirming in my general direction. I caught a glimpse of something white, and I feared the worst: a magic maggot.
I swung the piece of wood at the thing, and just before
I was about the brain the bastard, I saw two terrified eyes looking at me. Eyes I recognized. I pulled my swing up, so it just grazed the ears of the little cleric. With my other hand, I picked the little dude out of the mire. His pristine white fur was covered with, well, probably literal shit as well as plenty of the figurative stuff.
“Meikeljan?” I asked.
“The same, your grace,” he replied with a nod.
“Any chance you can explain what the hell happened here?”
“As soon as I make sure you have not been infected, your grace.”
“How do I know you’re not infected?”
“I am blessed with protection against it.”
I looked at him, and he looked at me.
“You will need to untie me and put me down,” Meikeljan said.
“Yeah, that makes sense,” I replied, then I did so.
He put his hands together, bowed his head, and chanted under his breath. Slowly, very slowly, all the nasty stuff that was formerly Alexios began to lift off Meikeljan and move away from the furry little guy. The clean area grew in a perfect sphere until he stopped chanting. Then, there was a thick ring of goop around a perfectly clean spot.
“Lay down,” Meikeljan said.
It seemed a bit gross, but, hey, I’ve done worse in worse.
I felt his tiny hands probing the wounds across my stomach, and, as he muttered something, a warmth spread across my abdomen that quickly dissipated.
“You are fortunate,” he said softly. “Her blessings seem to have given you a measure of defense against the corruption’s infection.”
“Score one for Eona,” I replied, getting to my feet as my wounds closed up.
“That is quite the gift you have,” Meikeljan said, peering at my now-healed stomach.
“Lucky boon. But I’m still trying to figure out what the fuck happened here. Care to share?”
“We need to burn this before anyone else can come in here.”
“Dude, this is the Hall—”
“It is the central point for the corruption to gain a hold of your dukedom, my lord. If someone else comes in here, someone who is not protected as we are, they will be infected. They will not be known by us, and that corruption will spread faster than you can imagine.”
“I can imagine some pretty fast infections. I’ve seen—”
“You have seen nothing like this.”
I thought about trying to explain zombie movies to Meikeljan, but then I’d have to explain movies, being from a different world, and the fact that zombies were a different thing back home than, well, in new-home.
“Noted,” I said. “But can’t we just, like clean it up?”
“Yes, with fire.”
So, you know, that’s how the Hall burnt down. Tarryn and some jugs of oil did the trick. Nikolai was none too pleased that he lost his office. I did, however, manage to save all the paperwork.
During the lighting of the old Hall, I had some prinkies bring my armor and weapons. I didn’t like the feeling of being out in the winter weather with no shirt on. Or shoes. And it felt odd being without arms and armor. I felt naked, well, more naked, without a sword by my side. I had the distinct impression it was going to be a long night, because I needed to get a new Hall built. Without it, I’d have no real information about the holding.
Perhaps because it was the sign they were waiting for, as soon as the flames from the Hall started to lick the sky, the ursus outside attacked the walls.
Chapter Forty-Three
Spears came out of the darkness, seemingly from nowhere, and slammed into several of the wall-guards, who were then pulled over the wall. The spears had chains on them. It was almost like the ursus were fishing for humans, and they’d gotten quite a few. The stillness of the night was broken with screams of pain and terror from those who were dying outside our walls.
I went running to the wall as the screams echoed out, getting to the top just in time to see a maniacal fur-covered face with big teeth and wild eyes. The spears that hadn’t pulled my soldiers off were offering a way for the ursus to climb up.
The bear-man roared in my face, flecks of saliva covering me, but I didn’t bother stopping my charge, dropping my shoulder and hitting him full force. The bear’s eyes went wide as he sailed off the wall and arcing through the air into the darkness.
Skidding to a stop on the top of the wall, I heard a loud shout from behind me, and a brilliant light shot up into the sky, illuminating the entire area. Tarryn had made a flare. A magical one, since it danced through the sky holding the same altitude, instead of dropping back down to the ground. It seemed to be buffeted about by wind. Or magic, who knows? The movement of the light caused shadows to flicker, and we saw that the situation wasn’t quite as dire as it initially seemed. It wasn’t an all out attack, there weren’t thousands of ursus swarming Coggeshall. Rather, there were small groups of corrupted ones trying to climb our walls, and plenty of clumps of the ursus busy dining on my soldiers.
I dropped my weapons, and switched to Eona’s bow out in a heartbeat. As fast as I could, I lined up a shot, and let the arrow fly.
This time, I knew more of what to expect. A loud booming noise, and the arrow exploding on impact. The effect on the corrupted ursus was devastating. They exploded. And it didn’t matter if I hit their armor — the boom was so big it didn’t seem to matter.
I unleashed arrow after arrow into the bastards. I shot as fast as I possibly could, and the sound started to lessen. At first it was a big ka-boom each time, then less and less so. The corrupted ones weren’t stupid, but it took them a hot minute to catch on to where the death was coming from. But even then, there wasn’t exactly much in the way of cover for them. They could run, of course, but the bow had incredible range, and even five hundred yards away, I was still scoring hits. The hits weren’t quite as explosive, but they still knocked the big bears down. And they most definitely died from the hits, as large chunks of flesh went flying off with each arrow strike.
As the last of them slipped through the trees, I looked down at the open field, at the destruction that had been wrought. Not much was still alive. None of the ursus for sure, and though there were a few soldiers who’d survived the pull over the wall and the spear through their abdomens, none made it past the bears’ picnic.
It was oddly quiet. I couldn’t hear anything.
I looked around, a bit frantic, seeing that there was quite a bit of action happening behind me. People were running around, trying to tend to wounds. Civilians emerged from the mountain to see bleeding soldiers and a burning building. But in my head, silence. It took me a legitimate minute to realize there was a small icon in the corner of my vision denoting my deaf debuff. I’d been in Vuldranni for a few months at this point, and it still took me time to realize the information I had at my fingertips. It was strange how simple this world was and yet how much more information they had. When you were sick, you got a notification. You never had that confusion of whether you had allergies or a cold or the flu — you just knew it. It sort of balanced out all the other dangers in the world: you know, dragons, wyrms, worms, demons, a whole encyclopedia of things who ate humans for breakfast.
A second later, though, I was back.
“… Lord?” a voice said.
“What?” I asked.
“I asked what that weapon is?” Nikolai was looking around me.
I held up the bow.
“Just a little present from a goddess for this fun against these assholes.”
“Even for a bow from the goddess, it is impressive.”
“Yeah.”
Nikolai took the bow, and looked over it. He lined it up, and he tried to pull. The string didn’t move in the slightest. He passed it back over to me.
“How many did we lose?” I asked.
“Twenty,” Nikolai said. “None who went over the wall will come back. There were twelve guards killed. Eight who responded were killed in the fighting.”
“How did no one see the ur
sus sneaking up?”
“It is something we will have to investigate, but not a question I can answer now. Perhaps it was because we were engrossed in the Hall. It seemed as if the corrupted ones outside knew we would be doing something so visually striking as setting a building on fire.”
“I mean, if that’s the case, it’s really fucking bad news.”
“Yes,” Nikolai said. He watched the flickering shadows across the open space. It struck me how thin and wan he was. A far cry from the man who’d been escorting Cleeve. The new Nikolai looked frail. He had a lot more wrinkles, and I’d catch him breathing hard going up stairs. I worried about him. Of course, if I said anything, he’d just yell at me. Either tell me I had better things to worry about, or tell me he was fine, dammit.
“You doing okay?” I asked.
“You have better things to worry about than my health,” he snapped, his cold gaze trained on me.
“Just asking—”
“Focus on other things. The soldiers are concerned about your weapon.”
“Which one?”
Nikolai held up the bow.
“Why?” I asked.
“There is little discrimination with this device. It does massive damage to everything near where you shoot it. They worry you lack to accuracy to use it without—”
“Friendly fire.”
“An unfortunate term. But yes.”
“I’m learning. And I didn’t kill any friendlies today.”
“There are some doubts about that.”
“What? Who?”
“Beyond Alexios—”
“You know he was beyond far gone—”
“I saw him, Montana,” Nikolai said. “Of course I know how the corruption had tainted him. But the others have not. There are also stories about the Legionaries who were pulled off the wall. Some believe we could have saved them, had you not been shooting so wantonly.”
