by Eric Ugland
I looked at my comrades.
They looked like shit.
We were all covered in blood. And other gross things. There’s an unfortunate amount of gnarsty shit that comes out of bodies during fighting, though blood is usually the only thing talked about. Let’s just say that if we walked into Doctor Frankenstein’s lab, he’d be able to make a new monster or two just out of all the ursus bits spread over the five of us. My comrades were breathing hard, even though we weren’t moving. No one seemed able to focus on anything. Essentially, they had nothing left.
And yet, if I asked, they’d follow.
“Change of plans,” I said. “I’m going in solo on this—”
Ragnar raised his paw, but I pushed it back down.
“You guys need a moment of rest,” I continued. “Maybe more than just a moment. You four sit in here, wait for the right moment, then attack. Or, you know, if I can manage, just wait it out.”
Tarryn was the first one to nod. Which was understandable – he looked far worse than the others. His skin was drawn in tight around his body, like he’d lost muscle during the day. His eyes were dim, and dark circles radiated out from under them. He dropped back on his butt, and let his hands fall to his side.
I gave him a pat on his knee, and then backed away into the forest again. I wanted to walk around the clearing a ways so the corrupted ones wouldn’t think to look for my party where they rested. When I felt I’d gone far enough, I closed my eyes and took a few calming breaths.
I realized I might have accumulated a few points throughout the day, so I decided to look over my notifications. There were quite a few.
The death notices were practically legion, and I felt pretty terrible just looking at them, so I dismissed them immediately. Plus side to killing so many things:
Huzzah! Against all odds, you have reached Level 25! You receive 3 attribute points to distribute in the next 36 hours or you lose them. Prepare for your Choice. Dare to believe you can survive, and achieve greatness. Or don’t.
So that was cool. Also cool:
Through hard work and extra-judicious use of violence, you have unlocked an additional aspect of your indicium SLAYER: DEATH BEARER. Congratulations on the slaughter. For each new entity you kill within the time limit, you receive an additional 5% XP. Your enemies now have a chance to be frightened even when they are not aware of you, but you are within 20 yards of them.
I rolled my shoulders back, dumped all the new points I had into Con, took a step forward, and tripped over a rock sticking out of the ground.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Whether luck or chance or whatever, I landed in a soft clump of dirt, and made nary a noise. I rolled over and looked at the rock, realizing that it wasn’t, well, a rock. It was a fin. A fin of a bullette. And as I lay on the ground, the ground moved out from under me, depositing me to the side as a bunch of loam cascaded on top of me.
“Fritz,” I whispered.
The big bullette eye looked at me, and I had a feeling he’d have smiled if he could.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“Right — no talking,” I said. “Guess that makes it hard to tell me where you’ve been, too.”
He looked at me. But I felt like he was looking at me harder.
I motioned for him to follow, and I crawled away from the clearing until I felt like I could stand up without being seen by the corrupted ursus.
Fritz dropped back under ground, and burrowed his way to me, popping up again in front of me.
“Buddy, it’s been crazy around here,” I said. “Lots of weird shit going on since the ursus guys came along. I appreciate you jumping to their defense, by the way. Really cool of you to be there for that. But then you left for, like, the length of a bible. What’s up with that?”
Naturally, no answer.
“Okay, let’s simplify this,” I said. I looked around the heavily wooded area, and found an orange and yellow mushroom. I snatched it, and put it in front of Fritz. Then, I got a pine cone, and put it in front of Fritz. “Mushroom for yes, pine cone for no. Got it?”
Fritz pointed to the Mushroom. So, yes.
“Were you in trouble?” I asked.
Pine Cone. No.
“Were you hunting?”
Mushroom.
“Just digging and exploring?”
He tapped the ground between the two objects.
“Is that a sort of?”
Mushroom.
“Are you back to be a companion again?”
Mushroom.
“Okay, so, these ursus are the bad guys, got it?”
Mushroom.
“I have to kill all of them. Not just here, but, like, everywhere. Which is kind of fucked up—”
Mushroom.
“—but I guess just what needs to happen. You want to get in and fight with them?”
Mushroom mushroom mushroom.
“You seem eager for something. Are you bored?”
He vacillated between the mushroom and the pine cone.
“Angry?”
Mushroom.
“Okay, so angry about what…”
He stared at me, and I thought about Fritz as a manticore. He’d been a pretty interesting companion. Sassy in his own way, making a few jokes. And he seemed to like playing with the kids. And the adults. I remembered seeing him almost cackling with glee when he got to drop people off in the river. He definitely liked flying around, which, to be fair, I loved as well. But his current form was remarkably limited. No flying. No talking. No playing.
And I got it.
“You don’t like being a bullette,” I said.
Mushroom.
“Well fuck, why didn’t you say so?”
Despite not being able to talk, a bullette can glare with the best of them.
“If you die, like in combat, do you come back again?”
The middle spot.
“You don’t know, got it. So let’s keep you out of the fight here, but I can do the absorption thing again, and you can swing back to Typhon and he’ll pick a new form.”
Mushroom.
I reached out, and then I paused, thinking about the upcoming fight.
“Could you do one little thing first?”
Mushroom.
“I’ve got this plan…”
Chapter Fifty-Six
After waiting for Fritz to do his dirty work (literally), I put my hand on his tough skin.
“Absorb,” I said.
Fritz’s eyes closed, and I swear he was as close to smiling as he could have gotten.
There was a bit of magical swirling, some flashing lights, and a few fun noises. Then he was gone, and I had a little notification.
Ability Gained: Armored Hide
That was nice. My armor rating basically doubled, and my skin thickened measurably. It also had a slight grey tinge to it, so I looked a bit like the love child between a bodybuilder and a rhino. But hey, it certainly helped combat survivability. And as I thought about the members of my hirð, I realized I couldn’t wait for things, I couldn’t leave things just sitting when I could give my hirð a better chance at making it through the corruption. So, quick as I could, I spent the hirð points, buying two levels of Hit Harder. The first for two hundred hirð points and the second for four hundred hirð points. Now, for each member of the hirð in combat, we’d do an extra 10% damage. That was huge. And it was time to throw down for one more fight.
I walked, nonchalantly, through the woods, and stepped into the clearing.
Immediately, the posture of the ursus changed. Shields and weapons went up, and snarls echoed around me.
“Good evening,” I said.
I don’t know why I thought there’d be some sort of conversation with the big bear. The main guy. Maybe because that’s the way things always happened in movies. There’d be some discussion. Some sort of trading of one-liners and insults. Or that rare grudging respect wherein the bad guy says you’ve done well, or s
ome bullshit along those lines.
None of this happened.
They just charged at me.
The big dude came first, holding a wicked blade up high and giving a tremendous roar. But the rest of his soldiers followed quickly behind him. Suddenly I had a veritable horde coming down on me.
Shield up.
Sword to the side.
Low to the ground, feet planted, ready to receive the charge.
Which was a bit of a show, because midway through the charge, the ground fell out, and the corrupted ursus dropped out of sight.
There were a few screams of surprise, followed by more than a few of agony.
I wasn’t sure how deep Fritz had dug the ditch, but it seemed like it was enough for some serious damage.
It didn’t kill them all, though, because it was only about ten seconds before the first one crawled out of the ditch. And as soon as his feet were on the ground, he was charging again.
This time, I did it for real, shield up, sword out to the side, low to the ground, feet planted, ready to receive the charge.
As soon as the impact came, I pushed forward at full strength, holding nothing back.
The big motherfucker came to a stunning stop, getting crushed against his own soldiers by my push.
I stepped back and reset immediately. The fight was on.
The training with Carpophorus paid off. I felt how to parry the ursus’ hits into their comrades, how to position my shield not just to block their blows, but set them up to be eviscerated.
Bodies were falling.
I left my sword stuck through a bear’s skull into his spine, and took his war hammer. Then I spun it through the air and hit a big dude, just in time for the grey furry dude to throw his spear right into his buddy’s back. I kept grabbing weapons from dead hands, and plunged them into living bodies as deep as I could. Somehow I kept moving faster and faster. My heart was thudding in time with the smashes on my shield, a shield I was using just as often as a weapon. Pushing bodies back, catching snouts and breaking teeth, slamming down on feet and severing more than a fair share of toes.
Despite everything, my preternatural prowess, all the boons, abilities, and skills, I was so outnumbered that I took wounds as well. Nothing horrible at first, but they began to add up. The bleeding debuff activated, and my health steadily dropped. Then I got hit upside the helmet, and my head bounced back and forth off the steel. My vision blurred, and I saw bears everywhere. Which, to be fair, wasn’t that different than before the smack.
I slipped on entrails, and dropped to my knee.
A great huge fucking bear swung a spiked club my way. I raised my shield with just enough time to send it bouncing off, but it forced me further into the ground.
Then there was a bright flash and a loud boom, and that bear was gone, his boots still in the ground, smoking.
Tarryn was back on line.
He slung spells left and right, faster than he had ever before. Darts of fire set fur ablaze everywhere.
I noticed the bleeding and concussed debuffs were gone. Meikeljan. It was good to have friends.
With a barbaric yawp, I sprang to my feet and reentered the fray. I felt renewed, like I hadn’t been fighting literally all day.
With everyone back, fighting turned to killing.
The gruesome work was done just as the sun settled behind the mountains. As the day slipped to twilight, I stood in the clearing, gore up to my knees. I let my arms drop, releasing a stolen sword, and just looked at the carnage. A hundred, two hundred bodies. Maybe more.
Many had been dropped by Tarryn, who was currently wiping vomit from his mouth while leaning against a tree. Ragnar and Skeld worked their way through the clearing, making sure all of the corrupted were dead.
All the while, Meikeljan walked around, blessing the ground and the corpses.
It was an odd thing to see, because it turned the dark black blood and ichor of the corrupted ones to a deep red.
I hurt.
My HP had dipped way down several times, but with combat finally over, I started to heal and feel better. Physically, at least. The rage over Emeline had gone down somewhat, but every time I thought about her, I remembered The Master, and thought about going to Osterstadt and killing him. Or kill everyone there, and assume I got him in the bargain. So maybe the rage wasn’t quite gone yet.
I began to follow Meikeljan – after he’d cleaned an area, I’d scour it for loot. There wasn’t much in the way of coinage or armor, and their weapons were so rudimentary they’d probably be more useful as raw materials. But there was quite a lot of precious metals and gems. The corrupted ones had them weaved in their fur. Perhaps, back in the world, I’d have felt weird going over bodies like this, but I knew these gems could help feed kids. Or build a school. And that made it worth it. Even if it continued well into the night.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
We staggered back to Coggeshall in the light of the four moons. Exhaustion rested heavy on all of us, and I had to carry Tarryn. We all stunk. But a saving grace in the cold: there weren’t many flies swarming us. Some came around the bodies, but they seemed happy to stay on the bodies and let us be.
The Thingmen at the gates stared, and it took Wian coming and yelling at them before they let us in. Mercy and Essie grabbed Tarryn from me, and took him into the mountain to get his healing started. I sent the three little furballs off to the healers to do the same. I wanted to get to my room, take a shower, try and become marginally human again.
Nope.
Nikolai came up.
“There is someone here to speak to you,” he said.
“Are you kidding?” I asked.
“Caticorix.”
“Fuck him.”
“I think you would do well to speak to him in this state. He will not be expecting it.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get him to attack.”
“Do you have something prepared?”
“You might say that.”
“How long has he been waiting?”
“Not that long. Perhaps an hour.”
“And he can’t wait longer?”
“I am sure he would, but it behooves us to make him attack as soon as possible. I doubt anyone outside of this valley knows he has foreign mercenaries. And the rest of the Empire will not like having foreigners meddle in our succession. If word gets out, Legions will come. So he must attack us, and he has to crush us. Completely. However, he clearly came here to talk to you to buy time. Either he has more soldiers coming or he is betting on finding a way around our walls. So for a short while, we maintain the advantage, we have him where we want him, we just need him to commit his forces and attack. So go piss him off.”
“That sounds like something I’m good at,” I said.
Nikolai gave me a smile. “Indeed you are.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
I walked up the wall and hopped off, landing on the other side to see Caticorix on his horse.
The man’s eyes went wide at my appearance.
I took two big steps and swung my fist around, catching the horse in the side of the head.
It dropped, unconscious.
Which was not at all what I thought might happen. I thought the whole thing was an illusion, and, instead, I accidentally knocked a horse the fuck out. And, to be honest, I felt pretty bad about that. The horse was just being a horse, minding its own business, and here I come, boom, punch it.
The illusory Caticorix remained in place, floating in the air with the slightest of visual flickers. He screwed his face up, doing his best to be political and swallow the anger. A moment later, and he was standing in front of me. Still an illusion, but at least I knew it now.
“You are a disgusting excuse for a human,” Caticorix said.
“Yeah, well, you’re a disgusting excuse for a goblin.”
He was confused.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked.
“Why are you covered in b
lood?” he replied.
“Because I fucked your wife. You want to tell me what this is all about?”
“I know you are a man of no honor, but to stoop to thievery when—”
“Dude, you’re the one here sieging me. You’ve sent soldiers against my gates. Stoop to thievery? The fuck does that mean?”
“We may be at odds, but we are still men of the Empire, and—”
“Fuck you. You bought a foreign army. I ought to get the Legion out here to kick your ass.”
“You dare accuse me of—”
“Come on, man. There’s no one left to believe your shit. I know you’re here to kill me, kill the princess, and take my home. You know I know you know. So you can blow smoke up my ass, but I’m not going to enjoy it, and you’re not that good at it.”
“You wish to die, do you?”
“I mean, at least then I wouldn’t have to see your ugly face any more.”
“I am looking forward to placing your death mask on my wall of fame.”
“Okay, you have a wall of fame full of desk masks? What’s a desk mask?”
“A death mask, you moron.”
“Ah, death mask. Still sounds stupid that you’ve got a wall of death masks. No wonder your wife is sleeping around.”
“You dare speak of my wife in that way?”
“You dare wear those shoes with this tunic?”
He huffed, then said: “I thought we were done with questions.”
“Hey, man, I’m just buying time until you want to bring your pasty ass up here and fight.”
“Oh? The fight can start at any time, your grace.”
He vanished.
Then there was a flash, and suddenly the tunnel was filled with soldiers carrying huge shields and long spears. And they were already advancing as one.
“Shit,” I said.
They lowered their spears, the tips coming out a solid fifteen feet. I was staring into a phalanx.
