by Deck Davis
There was movement in the trees to Ash’s right. He saw men wearing army khakis walking out of the forest. This must have Beele’s men, which meant that at some point, Beele had regained control of their minds. It was strange, because they had seemed fine back in Pasture Downs after Ash’s fight with Beele. Maybe it was something that only came into effect when he got into close proximity with them.
Whatever the reason, it was obvious they had a fight on their hands. There was something strange about the soldiers. They walked slower than usual, and their eyes had a glassy look to them. They took shambling steps out of the forest and toward the vehicle.
They’re corrupted, said FF. It must be one of Beele’s powers. They’ll be harder to kill.
That gave him an idea. He focused on one of the soldiers and cast Transfusion lvl 2, a spell that could cure debuffs. The blood spell hit the soldier and then washed off him.
Your intelligence is too low for the spell to be effective, said FF.
“I’ve been levelling my intelligence steadily for a while now.”
Let’s be honest, Ash. You started out at a major intelligence disadvantage, even before you became a blood mage.
Ash cast Durus to protect himself, and then blasted one of them with an Ignis ball. The flames scorched the soldier’s clothes and burned them away. Despite having been turned into a human torch, the soldier kept on walking, showing no sign that the arcane power had hurt him. Similarly, Tony popped one in the heart with a mana charged bullet. The soldiers lurched back a step, then carried on going.
Ash grew a level 2 Ignis flame. He gathered it in his hands as large as he could make it, then swept his hands out. The flamers scorched a pack of three soldiers who walked close together. The first, who he’d already hit, dropped the floor. Two of them walked on as the flames singed their faces and hair, and the forest air filled with the smell of them burning.
Ellie let loose with her pistol, Chad with his new crossbow. Bullets and bolts lodged into the corrupted soldiers.
“Go for headshots,” said Ash.
The blasts of Ignis balls mixed with the bangs of gunshots and thwacks of Chad’s crossbow. Tony’s aim was good once he knew where to shoot. Ellie was a little better, though Chad wasn’t great with his crossbow. Frustrated, he threw it to one side and picked up the rifle he borrowed from Tony.
It was a hard-fought battle, but when the second-to-last soldier fell at one of Ash’s level 2 Ignis flames, he leaned against the truck. Tony lined a shot on the last one.
“Wait,” said Ash. “Don’t kill it yet. Shoot it in both knee caps.”
“What?”
“Just trust me.”
Tony raised his rifle and with two bangs shattered the soldier’s kneecaps.
The fight had cost Ash more HP than he’d wanted, and he found himself left with 502 out of 827.
Don’t use Life Drain on them, said FF.
“Why not?”
They’re corrupted, there’s a chance you could drain the corruption along with HP.
Instead, Ash life drained a couple of the hares that he’d killed earlier, topping his HP up to 600. It seemed like the journey through the mountain was going to take a hell of a lot longer than he planned, so he was going to need a better way of healing.
“Chad,” he said. “Think we could catch a couple of hares and keep them alive? They’re more use to me that way.”
“We can try,” said the soldier, catching his breath.
Stat time? said FF, eagerly.
“Sure buddy.”
Level 12 EXP increased to 60%
Durus level 1 increased to 40%
Blood Concentrate Level 1 increased to 55%
“What are we doing with this guy?” said Tony, gesturing with his rifle at the corrupted soldier crawling along the floor and straining to reach his boots. He stepped back.
Ash focused on the soldier and cast Transfusion Level 2. He guessed that since the soldier was injured, his spell would work better. This time, the blood spell seeped into the soldier’s mouth. His eyes began to change, and the glassy look left him. With his corruption status gone, the pain from his shattered knee caps hit him at once, and he started groaning in a way Ash had never heard before. He kneeled beside the soldier and cast Transfusion to rid him of his pain.
The soldier’s knee caps healed, and the color returned to his face. He looked around at the corpses of his corrupted unit.
“What the hell happened?”
“Do you remember how you got here?” asked Ash.
“Did you do this?” said the soldier.
“I need you to answer my questions, and then I’ll explain. Do you remember how you got here and where you came from?”
“You killed everyone. Jesus Christ, what the hell are you?”
“My questions first.”
“Fuck you,” said the soldier, and spat in his face.
This was no good. With Jake in a coma back at the ranch and with only a limited amount of fortitude potions, they couldn’t waste time.
Ash grew and Ignis ball in his palms. He held it up so that the soldier could see it, then moved it close to his face. The soldier grunted in pain when the ball of flame was just an inch away. The arcane flames burned the stubble of his beard.
“I’m sorry I have to do this, but I need you to talk.”
“I’m not telling you…Christ!…anything.”
Ash moved his palms closer. He could smell skin burning.
“Fine! Fine, god damn it! Beele sent us, okay? I overheard him say that he needs to find the others who got the blue balls, whatever the hell that means. Said there was four people with blue balls.”
Behind him, Ash heard Chad let out a laugh.
The soldier reached to his side, and with a second produced a knife. Ash pressed the Ignis ball against his palm, scorching his skin. The soldier screamed and dropped the knife.
“What do we do with him?” said Chad. “Let him go?”
“So, he can go straight back to Beele?” said Ash. “No way.”
“We can’t just kill him.”
“Sure we can,” said Ash.
And with that he put his Ignis flame-covered hand against the soldier’s throat and held it there while he screamed.
After that was done, he stood up, drained the last of the hares and the fox.
“Did you really have to do it like that?” said Chad. “Couldn’t you just have shot him in the head?”
“Beele’s watching. I know he is. I want him to see what happens if he comes for us.”
Level 12 EXP increased to 72%
**Life Drain levelled up to level 3!**
Drain HP from creatures you have wounded while they are still alive.
Blood Mage Tier 2 increased to 50%!
“Let’s get moving,” said Ash. “I’m sure I can hear more damn crows.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Let’s Get Drunk
With the fallen tree reduced to cinders on the ground, they drove on through the mountains. Tony took the wheel this time, and he seemed to relish driving his vehicle, almost as if it was an old friend and it had pained him to watch others in the driver’s seat.
As they went, Ash decided it was time to take a look at his skills and see where he was up to. He had gained so many since becoming a blood mage that it was getting hard to keep track.
Blood Mage Tier 2 – 50%
Ignis – LVL 3
Lvl 1 – Target one creature with an arcane flame attack
Lvl 2 – Donate double blood for a more powerful flame
Lvl 3 - Target multiple creatures
Life Drain – LVL 3
Lvl 1 – Drain life from a creature you have killed
Lvl 2 – Drain life from multiple corpses at once
Lvl 3 - Drain life from wounds on creatures still alive
Transfusion – LVL 3
Lvl 1 – Heal someone using your own HP
Lvl 2 – Heal poison and other debuffs
Lvl 3 – mass transfusion – multiple people can be healed for the price of one
Blood Concentrate – LVL 1
Lvl 1 – Casting spells costs 10% less HP
Durus – LVL 1
Lvl 1 – Blood Armor protection
Blood Share – Lvl 1
Lvl 1 – Heal an ally using an enemies blood
He was getting somewhere, but he couldn’t help but think that his blood mage tiers were weighted way too heavily toward the support side of things. He needed more offensive spells. Ignis was great, but it wasn’t good for everything. What if he came up against something with arcane or fire resistance? Hopefully, tier 3 would fix that.
By the time night fell Tony was getting drowsy, and Ash needed a rest too. They pulled up by a large cave cut into a cliff face on their left. They made sure that nothing big and nasty lived inside it, finding only the remnants of an old campfire and a few tin cans on the stone ground.
Tony got out of the vehicle and stretched his legs.
“Well, we’ve lost the light, and as much as I want to get there and back for the boy, we need the rest.”
“If we’re stopping, then I’m getting really god damn drunk,” said Chad. “After seeing corrupted soldiers and everything else, I need to obliterate my mind a little.”
“Never a truer word fucking said. Ash?”
“Sure. We could all do with relaxing before the morning, and I’m certain there’s another bottle of whiskey in the back. Just don’t complain when your heads are throbbing in the morning.”
An hour later, all four of them were well on their way to drunkenness. It might not have been the wisest idea, but in times like that, everyone needed to take whatever escape they could. In the morning, they’d get up and travel all day regardless. Might as well try and take their mind off it for a bit.
“Why did you want to come along?” said Ash, looking at Chad. “You’d have been safer at Tony’s ranch.”
“I’ve never been a homebody,” said Chad. “I’ve always been travelling. When I enlisted I thought the travelling bug would calm down, but my feet got even itchier.”
“Do you have family?”
“An aunt and uncle, like I said. That’s it, really.”
“Must be hard.”
Chad picked a twig from the floor and started to snap it.
“I’m used to it. My parents died when my older brother, Dirk, and I were kids. The state put us in separate homes, for some damn reason. I didn’t see him for years, so long that I even started to forget what he looked like. When I was fourteen I put a request through the adoption agency for me and Dirk to write letters to each other, but Dirk said no.”
“Any reason why?” said Ash.
Chad looked at the floor and shook his head.
“Jeez. That’s tough. Why didn’t your aunt and uncle take you both in?”
Chad threw the twig to the floor. His fists were clenched now.
“They have kids of their own, my cousins, and they didn’t want to take two more on. It was only when I turned sixteen that they let me go live with them for a couple of years, but on the condition that I got a job and paid them three hundred dollars a month.”
The sky outside the cave was the color of tarmac, and a wind picked up in the air and ruffled the leaves of the trees. Somewhere deep amongst the trees a bird cried out, and the chirps of insects filled the air like a backing chorus. Ash turned to Chad and squeezed his shoulder.
“We need to figure a way to deal with Beele,” said Ash, taking a shot of whiskey. “The guy’s sending me crazy. Every time I see a bird I feel like scorching it.”
“First thing is to make it off this damn mountain,” said Tony. “It’s too enclosed. Once we’re in open air, his little birds won’t have anywhere to high.”
“Except the sky,” said Chad.
“Well…yeah.”
Ellie reached out for the whiskey bottle. Ash handed it to her. She drained it dry, wiped her lips, then stood up. She held her hand out toward Chad.
“Come on,” she said.
Chad looked confused. “What?”
“You and me in the back of the four by four. Now.”
“Seriously?”
“Do I need to ask you twice?”
“Classy lady,” said tony, with a grin.
“Class can get fucked. I need to de-stress,” said Ellie.
Ash was even more confused than Chad for a second, and then he remembered that he’d given the army recruit the necklace of libido. He didn’t want to stand in the way of Chad having a good time, but it didn’t seem right that Ellie was being swayed by the necklace’s powers.
“Where’s the necklace I gave you?” he said.
Chad felt around his neck. “Damn. Must have lost it.”
Ash laughed. “Okay. You too have fun. I’m just gonna walk far enough away that I don’t hear anything.”
It turned out that he had to walk quite far away for that…
The next morning, the splutter of the engine broke the stillness of the forest around them, and they rolled along the mountain path. Their progress so far had been slower than they hoped, and Ash was worried that they were going to have to cut their calorie intake even further before long.
The cliff edges on both sides fell back after a while, and a large patch of forest greeted them. Every few hours they stopped so that they could have something to eat and then stretch their legs. Ellie would roll herself a smoke, and Chad would destroy the tranquility of the area by strumming the ukulele that he had picked up in Pasture Down. Ash filled up the gas tank with a red metal can with a dent in the side of it.
“Only three cans left,” said Chad.
“Not good, is it?” said Ash, as the gas gulped out of the can.
“Think we’ll get through the pass?”
“I’m hoping it’ll take us most of the way. If we have to walk a mile or two at the end so be it, but we need to clear the mountains as best we can.”
“Son of a bitch,” came a cry at the front of the pick-up.
Ellie had tripped on a root and sprained her ankle. Ash couldn’t help but think that these kinds of things always happened at the worst times.
Chad leaned with his elbows on the hood of the pick-up. His cheeks and chin were covered by three days of beard growth. It seemed that with each passing day his image moved further away from the shaven, crew-cut standard expected of an army recruit.
“We better splint your ankle,” he said. “Or you’re gonna do some serious damage.”
Chad walked around to the trunk, searched through it and then came back to the front of the pick-up holding a roll of duct tape and a pair of scissors. He held them up and grinned.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” said Ash.
He cast transfusion on Ellie, donating 50HP to fix her ankle. He was getting to the point now where he didn’t want to spend any on spells unless he had to, but letting Ellie hobble around would only slow them down. With that done, it was time to get in the truck and set off again.
As they approached it, a giant shape leapt off the cliff to the side of them and landed on the roof of the vehicle, crushing it.
Ash’s heart pounded. It was a goddamn troll!
He’d hoped that the last troll he’d killed would be the only one he’d see in his life. He certainly hadn’t expected adding a second troll meeting to his list of ‘things that really, really sucked.’
This troll didn’t have a crow on its shoulder. That was something to be glad about, at least. Unless…
“FF, Can Beele mind jump into a troll?”
Doubt he’s become that powerful yet.
“Good. Let’s deal with this thing and hope that we can salvage the truck in some way.”
As confident as he’d tried to sound, his heart was racing. At fifteen feet tall it towered over them. Its body was packed with so much tough muscle that it looked like it was a chunk of rock that some crazy mage had breathed life into.
Focus, he told hi
mself. Look for weaknesses. Stay out of reach.
The troll picked up the vehicle and tossed it over the side of the mountain like it was a pebble. Ash heard the crash of metal as the vehicle tumbled into the depths below, along with most of their equipment and all their rations.
Shit.
Ash was the first to react, firing a level 2 Ignis straight at the troll’s face and blinding it with flames. While the beast batted at its own face, Tony, Ellie and Chad peppered it with gunfire.
