by Deck Davis
Two of the guys on the stage followed Kenny’s movements and pulled knives of their own. They were both taller than Kenny. One of them was out of shape. The other, a man in a tight shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow, had a nasty looking scar on his cheek that suggested he partaken in the occasional bar fight over the years.
This should have been enough to worry Ash; he was a self-confessed city boy, yet Kenny and his friends were gritty men of Pasture Downs who spent their free time hunting and skinning animals in the woodland. He was on their turf, and they were going to fight by their rules.
He was outnumbered, out-muscled, and pretty much screwed, since his only ally was an apocalyptic wizard who probably hated his guts.
That was why he was surprised when Tony stepped in for him.
“Come on now fellas,” said Tony, his voice the epitome of calm. “Let’s talk this out.”
“Only talking I’m gonna do is on city boy’s ass,” said Kenny.
Don’t rise to it, Ash told himself. Keep your mouth shut…
Nope. Can’t do that.
“Again, I don’t think…”
But he didn’t have chance to finish his sentence. The guy to Kenny’s right, a heavy man with a shaved head and neck tattoos, advanced.
The poorly-constructed wooden stage shook under each step. Ash wondered if there was some lever he could pull to open a secret trap door. That would have been handy.
He thought about backing out, but he doubted the townsfolk behind him would sit on their asses and let him leave. This was going to have to be a fight. That was the only way he was getting out of there.
Damn it. Killing goblins had been hard enough to get used to, but people? He didn’t feel guilty about the guys near the van after he’d seen the woman they’d tied up, but the people in the hall were innocent. If anything, Ash was the ass here, considering what he’d done.
Could he do it? And what if he did manage to kill Kenny and the boys? There was still a room full of people who’d love to stick a knife in his gut and twist it until he screamed.
No. Better fire a warning shot, he decided. Make them back off a little.
With that in mind, he waited until the heavyset man advanced to the edge of the stage. He took a deep breath.
As the man leapt off the stage, Ash aimed an Ignis flame ball at his legs. That should have been enough to hurt him a little.
A purple flame ball left his palm and fizzed through the air. It cast a glow in the darkened room.
That’s when Ash realized that he had misjudged it.
Badly.
His flame ball hit the man in his chest mid-leap. The force of it was magnified by the man’s trajectory. When it hit him, it sent him flying twenty feet into the air.
The man screamed as he hurled toward the roof. He flailed his arms.
He was impaled in the stomach by a metal light fitting. The screaming stopped, his arms went limp. The metal fitting stabbed through his chest and held him in place.
Blood rained down from above like a crimson fountain, showering everyone underneath.
One woman screamed, while a man grabbed his children and fled from the hall.
“Oh shit,” said Ash. “Sorry.”
Ignis 60%
25% EXP
Pandemonium broke out. People screamed, shouted, panicked. Some ran out of the hall, while others drew their weapons.
Ash took a quick count and saw eight knife-wielding Pasture Downs folks coming for him; two on the stage, including Kenny, and six on the floor. Bad odds, blood mage or not.
Better think carefully about this, said FF.
He was right. Even if Ash hit each one with a perfect critical hit, using 8 Ignis flames would cost him 200 HP, leaving him just 30 to spare. That discounted having to use more when he missed, and the damage he’d take during the fight. He was going to have to be clever about this. Again, not his strongpoint.
Blood rained on his face. Drips touched his lips, and he could smell the iron. People shrieked around him, doors opened and then slammed.
Two beefy guys advanced on him, and they’d already gotten too close. Ash tried to move out of the way. The man flashed a blade and dug it into his thigh.
Ash gasped in pain. He felt hot blood dribble down his skin. A flinch of agony as the man withdrew his knife. I need to Life Drain something, but there’s no time.
To his left, one man punched another so hard that he clattered into a row of chairs, tipping them over. He groaned, then got back to his feet. They weren’t just fighting Ash; this was like a god damn cowboy whiskey joint. They were beating the hell out of each other as well.
He grew a level 2 Ignis and aimed it at both of them, knocking them clean off their feet and into a row of now-empty chairs. The men didn’t get up. The fire licking their bodies started to catch on the wood of the chairs. He could smell it burn.
Ignis 10%!
12 EXP gained!
8 EXP gained!
So, one man had earned him 12, while the other only 8.
“Guess all men aren’t created equal after all,” said Ash.
Kenny advanced on him now.
“What the hell are you?” he said. His eyes were wide and he looked scared, yet he still walked forward. It was as if he was acting on instinct, his fight or flight response revved up into suicidal overdrive.
“Me? I’m a blood mage bastard,” said Ash.
He shot an Ignis bolt at the hick’s chest., knocking him off his feet. Evidently he was a tough S.O.B, since he groaned in agony but still got to his feet. He had the presence of mind to take a water bottle from his hunting jacket, unscrew the lid and douse the flames on his chest.
He stumbled back, gasping. “You’re gonna die for this,” he said in between breaths.
Tony, it seemed, had watched this for long enough. He raised his magic-charged rifle to the ceiling and fired. The gunshot echoed across the hall.
He obviously hadn’t thought about where he was stood, because his bullet hit the guy impaled on the roof. The heavy man slipped off his impalement and fell down and crashed on the floor. He slapped against it like wet meat. Blood sprayed out everywhere.
“Stop this fighting, for god’s sake,” said Tony.
Kenny still had some of his boys with him. He was the ringleader, it seemed, and his friends were so goddamn stupid that they didn’t flee in terror at the sight of a blood mage.
Ash’s heart was racing. He had used too much HP already, and still had four men to kill. With his adrenaline flooding around his system so fast that it felt like he was high, he didn’t know if he’d even be able to aim his Ignis straight.
He held his hand up. “Think we got off to a bad start, Kenny,” he said.
“Shove it up your ass,” groaned Kenny, still moving forward.
He had to do something other than shoot fire at his chest. The way this was going, everyone in here was going to die. That wasn’t gonna help anybody. He didn’t like it, but he knew what action he had to take.
“Hold still a second,” he said.
Ash focused on Kenny and cast Transfusion, healing him with 30 of his own HP. The burns on Kenny’s chest, visible through his melted shirt, started to heal over.
Transfusion 50%
“Feel better?” said Ash. “Think of that as a peace offering.”
“Fuck you,” said Kenny. His voice had recovered, and he stood straighter.
“I bet you wish you could. But let’s stop this. It’s time to stop worrying about who’s in here, and think about what fucking things are out there. I’m sure you’ve noticed that Pasture Downs ain’t the beautiful place it used to be. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather work together with human assholes, than die by getting crapped on by a goblin asshole.”
“Goddamn it,” said Kenny, still gripping his knife. “What the hell do you want?”
“That your mustang parked outside the hall?” asked Ash.
“Yeah.”
He held his hand out. �
�Then I need the keys.”
Kenny seemed to wrestle with the decision. Ash thought about growing an Ignis flame in his hand to help him make his mind up, but he didn’t want to risk more violence.
“Fine,” grunted Kenny.
With the cold metal keys in his hands, Ash faced the corpses on the hall floor. He used Life Drain to top up his HP to 285, and then walked out of the halls while the wide-eyed Pasture folks watched.
As he neared the exit, he was surprised to hear boots walking behind him.
“Ash, hang on a sec.”
It was Tony Fucking Shore.
“What do you need, Tony?”
“You’re an asshole,” said Tony, “But I’m not gonna see the town suffer. You’re going to the nuclear plant, right?”
Ash nodded. “I said I’d go if I got a ride, and I’m gonna keep my word. It’s about time I stopped being an ass and started helping people.”
“First time for that.”
“I’m not such a bad guy, Tony. I’m just a blood mage bastard.”
“And I’m coming with you. Feel like you need a babysitter, anyway.”
Chapter Ten
The Roads Are a Bitch Outside of Pasture
He got the feeling that there would be worse things than goblins and orcs out on the road, so he had a few things he needed to do before leaving Pasture Downs. As he walked through town, he saw that in the thirty minutes he’d spent in the town hall, things had already changed on the streets.
More of the shop signs had begun to transform. A DIY store sign now read “Bolts and Arrows,” and what was once a hair salon now sported a sign that read ‘Polden’s Small Arms.” Whether that was a weapons shop or a boutique for short prosthetic limbs, he had no idea. As of yet, he couldn’t see any sign of stock on the shelves, nor of the proprietors of these new shops.
“What’s going on, FF? Why are things changing around here?”
Need me to spell out everything to you? Clear some of the sludge from your brain and think about it.
“Well, I’m fairly sure that goblins aren’t resident creatures in this neck of the woods, and you already told me about the dark matter portals.”
This is like trying to illuminate a cave with a matchstick. Go on…
“The two worlds are merging, aren’t they? Stuff from Rapto is crossing into our world. I mean, obviously that’s happening since there are goblins prowling around, but the buildings are changing too.”
Ding Ding! Here’s today’s winner! A dicknose dimwit who can’t tie his own laces!
Ash glared at him.
Sorry, that was kinda mean, wasn’t it?
“A little.”
I apologize. Let’s make a deal; if you’re less of a jerk to me, I’ll be nicer to you.
Since he was going to be spending quite a lot of time with FF from here on out, Ash guessed that he didn’t have much of a choice.
“Deal,” he said.
The goblins are just the start of it, Ash. The Umbra messed with the portal too much, is my guess.
“If stuff from their world is coming here, does that mean that somewhere in a town in Rapto, a new hairdresser shop just opened up?”
That’s actually a good question.
For the next few hours, he and Tony spent time just outside of town after one of the townsfolk had asked for their assistance. It turned out that a dark hole had opened in the ground, and at first Ash thought it was some kind of mole den.
He soon discovered that this was a goblin home, which made it a good place to grind levels for a short while. With his Ignis flames and Tony’s rifle, they cleared out the goblin’s dank nest.
He was just about done, when he saw another hole on the horizon. They cleared that out, and then saw another. On and on these went, until soon he’d spent the whole day lighting goblins up with his Ignis and then draining the life from them. It took longer than he’d planned, but it was worth it. Not only did it keep the town a little safer, which Ash felt was the least he could do, but the skill gains were tremendous.
He levelled all the way up to level 7. With this, added to the attribute points he spent on endurance, he managed to increase his HP to 595. He also got Ignis level up to 90%, Life Drain (LVL2) to 55% and, by using Transfusion on Tony whenever he got injured, his Transfusion skill to 85%.
This put him close to levelling all 3 spells, which would have been enough to get him to tier 2. He would have stayed longer, but the more time they spent grinding, the more anxious Tony got about the nuclear plant. Ash knew that he wanted to get back to his ranch, and the fact that he wouldn’t leave until they were sure the plant was okay made him respect the guy.
“Come on, Ash. There’s no more holes, no more green-assed goblins. Let’s go.”
Ash nodded. “Okay, big guy. Just one more thing.”
He walked back into town and went to a shop called ‘Al’s Hunting Supplies.’ There, he found himself a nice hunting knife with a green hilt, one that had a longer blade than the dagger he already had. It seemed that at some point he was going to have to resort to melee combat, and he wanted better weaponry when that happened.
Next, he went to a clothes shop and found himself a black leather jacket with a red eagle printed on the back. It was a snug fit but it was padded, and he felt a little safer with his new battle leathers. He grabbed a pen from the counter and wrote on the white jacket label near the collar, ‘Property of the BMB.’ He strutted out of the shop with the leather crinkling under his armpits.
With that done, he found Tony on the edge of town. He was stood over Kenny’s mustang, with his rifle and crossbow propped up against it. He was messing with something, but Ash couldn’t see what.
The mustang must have been at least thirty years old, but Kenny had paid an almost obsessive level of attention to the red paint job and metal framework. Sat in the afternoon sun, it was so red that it gleamed. It looked like it had rolled straight off the lot. Ash had never given much of a shit about cars, but he had to admit that this one was a beauty.
“Check the liquids,” said Tony.
“Check the what, now?” said Ash.
“Pop the bonnet and make sure it’s got enough oil. Last thing we need is to break down. The roads are a bitch outside of Pasture.”
Ash lifted the bonnet and hooked the latch to make it stand on its own. He didn’t want to have to ask Tony questions and seem like he was a complete dickhead, so through trial and error he found and checked the coolant, oil and brake fluid.
“Brake fluid needs topping up,” he said, feeling prouder of himself than he had any right to. But what did anyone expect? Ash was a conman Blood Mage, not a mechanic.
“There’s some fluid in the back,” said Tony as he crouched against a rear tire and checked how worn it was. “People round here are usually prepared for anything. Any situation can happen, even the most unlikely”
“Is that why you don’t seem the least bit surprised that goblins are chopping people’s cocks off?”
“I don’t go to the shop for milk without having an alternative route in case I hit trouble. Panic solves nothing. And that reminds me; the route to the plant. We’ve got two choices, and I want you to think carefully before you answer me. One route is on the 54 out of town. Takes around twenty minutes on a good day. The other is over a rocky plain that stretches far outside of Pasture Downs. It’s full of boulders and pits where they dig for lime.”
“Seems obvious,” says Ash. “We take the road.”
“You need to get your survival skills tuned, for God’s sake. Think about it. The first thing some people will do when they realise the power is never coming back is leave town. Add to that the fact that some folks would have been driving on the road when their car died, and I’d hazard that the simple route is blocked by fancy-ass cars with fried electric circuits.”
Ash topped up the brake fluid and then screwed the cap back onto the bottle. Tony stood away from the tire and folded his arms. Ash handed him the brake fluid.
> “I ain’t your fucking butler,” said Tony. “Put it in the back.”
The rear of the pick-up was full of enough gear to survive four Armageddon’s. It seemed like the entire space was crammed with whatever Kenny had thought he might need at some point in his life; a big box of strike-anywhere matches with white phosphorus tips, a box stuffed with curled up maps, piles of energy bars and military rations that he had procured from somewhere. There was duct tape, rope, knives and so much more stuff that Ash was surprised that the vehicle could still run under the weight of it.
