by Deck Davis
As soon as they took the last step that meant they had left the mountain range, Chad pumped a fist in the air and gave a weak cheer.
“Take that, crows!”
“Really?” said Tony. “Escaping a bunch of crows is something to cheer about?”
“Humans fight well,” said Verto.
Tony patted Verto on the head. Strangely, it seemed the bearded old man had taken a liking to their new changeling companion. Ash himself had to admit that he was kinda thankful for her being there, in a weird way. If she hadn’t changed into a giant magpie, they wouldn’t have made it off the mountain.
After a few hours of walking they came to a field full of sheep. A wooden fence ran along the sides of it, and the grass beyond was an unhealthy yellow color.
Ash was going to reach for his bow and snag a couple of the animals so they could eat, when he saw something strange. The animals’ white wool had begun to turn green in places, almost as if a moss had spread over them.
“What’s going on, FF?”
It’s sept-moss. It affects some of the livestock back in Rapto. Harmless to humans, but it can spread through herds of sheep and cows like wildfire. Usually if they find a sheep with septo, they kill it and burn the body.
“And it definitely can’t hurt me?”
A hundred percent not. Why?
He focused on the sheep in the centre of the field and fired an Ignis at it. The arcane flame became a chain, spreading from sheep to sheep and killing them on the spot.
“Kindest thing for ‘em,” said Tony.
Ash Life Drained one of the sheep and topped up some of his HP. With a dozen of the animals now dead it was a pretty good supply, but there was no way they could lug sheep corpses around with them.
“Who’s got a good punch?” said Ash.
Tony and Chad looked at each other, then at Ash.
“Wanna explain why?”
“I want you to punch me.”
“It would be my pleasure,” said Ellie.
“Enough games, lad,” said Tony. “We don’t have time to fuck around.”
“Seriously. This’ll take ten minutes, but it’ll be worth it. Just hit me.”
Tony rolled up his sleeves and shrugged.
Ash cast Durus and felt arcane blood armor form around him, melding against his skin.
“You sure about this?” said Tony.
“Positive.”
For the next ten minutes, he let Tony punch his blood armor again and again, stopping only to heal Tony when his knuckles hurt, or to Life Drain a sheep to top up the HP Durus had drained from him. By the time he’d drained eight sheep, FF gave him the news he’d been waiting for.
Durus levelled up to level 2!
- Durus costs less HP, allowing it to be cast for longer periods
Blood Mage tier 2 increased to 75%
“Job done. Let’s go,” said Ash.
“Human very strange,” said Verto, shaking her head.
They carried on walking, and soon they needed a rest again. Ash leant against a signpost that welcomed them to ‘Green Gross County.’ There was a chilly wind in the air that was so strong it seemed to slap his cheeks. It felt strange to be faced with open land after being hemmed in by cliff edges and forests for so long.
They were on the crest of a hill. Ash knew that they needed to walk around eight miles south and they would come to the city. From there, he knew that his body would run on adrenaline and it wouldn’t take him long to get home. First, though, they had to find the mage.
“How far, Verto?”
“Humans walk half a day by Verto’s strides. Then you find mage.”
“Ash,” said Chad from behind him.
“What’s up?”
“My aunt and uncle live a couple of miles away. Think we can call in on them? I know we’re pressed for time and all, but I gotta check they’re okay.”
Ash was desperate to get this over with so that he could check in on his parents, and he knew Ellie was desperate to help Jake. Still, it would have been selfish to say no to Chad. He was worried about his family just like the rest of them.
“I mean,” said Chad, “I can always go by myself.”
“After the shit we’ve seen, nobody goes anywhere alone,” said Tony.
Ash faced Ellie. “I don’t wanna hold this up, but I won’t stop Chad seeing his uncle and aunt. If you want, I’ll go with him and then we’ll join up with you guys after.”
“No,” said Ellie. “By my count, Marg still has more than enough potions to see Jake through. You guys are risking your necks helping me. We’ll go together.”
When they reached Chad’s uncle’s house, Ash started to get excited about the idea of resting on their couch for ten minutes and getting something good to eat.
Their house was a two-story log cabin that was cut off from everything else. The nearest neighbor, Chad informed them, was a senile old farmer a mile and a half away, whose sheep always escaped his fences and ended up chewing grass outside Chad’s uncle’s house.
“I could really go for some lamb right now,” said Ellie. “Hey, don’t suppose your uncle smokes?”
Chad shook his head. “He drinks, but doesn’t smoke. He used to be a track runner when he was younger.”
“Glad to be back?” said Ash.
Chad smiled. “You know what? Now that we’re here, I missed the pair of them more than I realized.”
The curtains on every window were drawn, and they couldn’t see any lights on inside. The front door opened without resistance, and when they stepped into the house they were greeted by darkness and the smell of damp.
The house was silent except for the pounding of their boots as they walked from room to room. They didn’t find anyone, but there were signs that people had been living there, from the discarded food cans on the kitchen counters and muddy footprints on the wooden flooring in the living room.
“This wasn’t my uncle or aunt,” said Chad, looking at the muddy footprints.
“Times like this, people don’t worry about cleaning up,” said Ellie.
Chad shook his head. “It’s not that. They were both small people, and I used to tell them that they had hobbit feet.”
He crouched to the floor and inspected the footprints closely. Then he turned and looked at Ash.
“This is a size twelve. What the hell happened here, Ash? Where are my uncle and aunt?”
Chad stood up straight and walked passed Ash and Ellie and out of the room. They heard his boots thud on the stairs as he ran up them.
A few minutes later, they heard him shout down. It was a horrible sound; one that wasn’t words, but instead a stream of pure fear.
Ash ran up the stairs. He could hear Chad babbling to himself. He reached the landing, took a right into the first bedroom, and then he saw it.
It was a blood bath. Crimson stains covered the walls, the floor and the ceiling. On the king-size bed were two dead people, a man and a woman, their clothes ripped and stab wounds covering their flesh.
The couple on the bed matched the photographs of people in a frame on a dresser near the window, and Ash had the sickening realization about what had happened. The next question was, who had done it, and where were they?
Chad was on his knees beside the bed, his face completely drained of color, his hands covered in blood from touching the corpses.
Chapter Thirty
Burning Retribution
Ellie put her arms around Chad and hugged him. He seemed to be oblivious to her being there, and instead he buried his face in his aunt’s thigh and sobbed.
Ash didn’t know where to put himself. He wanted to do something for Chad, but words mean nothing right now. He couldn’t even imagine what it’d feel like to walk into something as horrific as this. It made him sick enough as it was, and they weren’t even his uncle and aunt.
He looked at the couple on the bed. They were in their late sixties, though they didn’t seem old. The man, especially, had kept himself trim. Death should have been a whil
e away for them, yet someone had broken into their house, ransacked the place, and then murdered them.
Not only had whoever had done this killed Chad’s uncle and aunt, but they’d committed it with such savagery that it chilled Ash. The once-cream colored bedspread was splashed with blood as if it had fallen victim to an artist armed with a pot of crimson paint and a grudge. Their clothes were ripped in places where what looked to be a knife had been driven into their skin. Loss of blood had completely drained the color from their faces, giving them a ghoulish appearance.
Tony leaned in and whispered to him. “Think it was someone from Rapto?”
“Not Rapto,” said Verto, way too loudly.
Chad looked up. His eyes were red. “What did she say?”
“This not Rapto.”
“She’s saying whoever did this wasn’t from Rapto,” explained Ash.
“How does she know?”
“Verto know.”
“Think Verto and me are gonna wait outside,” said Ash.
He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. The bedroom window looked out onto the gravel driveway that led to the house. Now, Ash saw four people walking up it; three men and a woman. Sure enough, there was nothing Rapto-like about their appearance. Two of the men wore hunting vests, while another had a blue denim jacket with the sleeves torn off. The woman was dressed conservatively in a beige jumper with a collar that covered her neck. Her hair was tied back tightly.
They each carried weapons; the men with three varying blades, the woman with a shotgun. One of the men tapped a machete along the wooden fence to his right. Though the open window, Ash heard the black tap along the wood. The group were talking to each other, but Ash had no idea what they were saying. Judging by the way the men smiled, he guessed they didn’t have a care in the world.
“Chad,” said Ash, “I’m really sorry about this, but we’ve got a problem. Whoever did this is coming back.”
Chad got to his feet in a second. He looked out of the window, then crossed the room and opened a wardrobe on the east wall. He rummaged around at the top shelf for a while, before grabbing an old shoe box. He put this on the bed and opened it to reveal a silver revolver with a black handle and long barrel. He loaded it.
“Verto look,” said the changeling.
She scampered along the room and to the window, where she stood on her tip toes and looked out.
“Woman bad…very bad,” she said. “Verto show you.”
“We sure that’s them?” said Tony.
“Pretty big coincidence if not. Has to be.”
Chad gripped his revolver tight. “You guys don’t need to get involved if you don’t want. I just have something I need to do.”
“You think we’d just leave you?” said Ash. “Let’s go.”
“Thanks,” said Chad.
“Let’s not be cryptic about this,” said Ash. “As soon as we know it was them who did this, you can blow a hole in their skulls.”
They walked down the stairs in single file, Tony leading the way with a rectangular mana shield cast in front of him. He left the cramped stairs, took a right turn, and then walked into the living room.
Ash heard a shot fire. In such a small house, the noise of gunfire was deafening, and he felt his ears ringing.
“What the fuck?” shouted a voice.
He ran down the staircase and turned into the living room. Tony had his mana shield cast in front of him, and there was a black gunpowder stain on the front of it. The three men and the woman were in the living room. The woman held a sawn-off shotgun, though the cut of the barrel indicated it had been a poor-quality job. Smoke drifted from the barrel.
The rest of the crew joined Ash and Tony in the room now. One of the men saw Verto, and he pointed.
“It’s one of the damn…goblins or whatever the hell they are!”
“Ain’t goblins,” growled the woman with the shotgun. “Something else.”
Verto’s skin began to bubble and become gooey, and soon her appearance changed. Her height stayed as it was, but rather than being a little green creature, she was now a young human boy with chestnut-colored hair parted at the side. So far Ash had seen her be a gorgeous redhead, a giant magpie, and a little boy. It seemed there were no limits to her talents.
The woman’s eye widened. She was so shocked she almost stumbled back.
“Ben?” she said.
She held the shotgun limply at her side now. Whoever this boy was, he had meant something to her.
“You let me die,” said Verto, as the boy.
The woman’s face turned pale. “Is that really you, Ben?”
“It’s the god-damn little creature. Can’t you see that?” said one of the men.
Chad raised his revolver and walked toward the group. The woman was so transfixed with the appearance of this ‘Ben’ that she raised her shogun only at the last second.
Before she even got chance to aim, Chad held the revolver against her skull, pulled the trigger and blew her head apart. Blood and brains splattered out on to the walls and covered his aunt’s wallpaper.
The men gripped their blades now. One had a machete, two had long, silver kitchen knives. Ash grew an Ignis ball in his hands.
“Think carefully about what you wanna do from here,” he said. “We outnumber you, we’re armed, and my friend is so pissed that you’re lucky he hasn’t blown your cocks off yet.”
One by one, the men dropped their knives and held their hands in the air.
Chad put the revolver against the chin of the man nearest to him. He was a tall guy with a cleft lip.
“The couple upstairs,” said Chad. “What happened?”
The man shrugged. Chad pressed the gun harder against his chin.
“Not good enough. Did you kill them?”
One of the other guys, a shorter man with stocky shoulders, nodded.
“Came here for a place to crash,” he said, “and they wouldn’t open their doors. It was pouring down with rain and a bunch of weird little creatures were prowling’ around. We asked them nicely, but they wouldn’t open up, so we busted in.”
“Yeah,” said a man to his right. “Then the old fella tried grabbing Suzie’s gun from her. Had to step in and gut him.”
Chad’s face began to redden. Ash looked at the recruit’s hand and saw that he gripped his revolver so tight that his knuckles were white.
Ash could understand why. He didn’t even know Chad’s uncle and aunt, he’d never met them, yet the idea of these thugs breaking into their house and murdering them made him want to blast their faces with the hottest Ignis he could muster.
“Tony,” said Ash. “Grab the shotgun.”
“Got it. Verto, what was all that with the boy?” Tony asked.
“Woman let her son die. Woman drunk and let him play with gun.”
“Chad, do you want to do something that might make you feel a little better?” said Ash.
The recruit didn’t say anything.
“Guys,” said Ash, facing Ellie and tony. “Can you find something to tie these bastards up with?”
They marched the three men out of the house and down to the field where they’d seen the dead sheep. There, they tied them to a fence, wrapping ropes they’d found Chad’s uncle’s shed around their wrists and then around the wooden post. Ash had tied the tightest knots he could, and was glad to see that the rough material was digging into their wrists.
The men begged for their lives, but neither Chad nor Ash were in the kind of mental place where they could show mercy. Ash had taken this to heart; every time he thought about Chad’s uncle and aunt and their bloodstained sheets, he gritted his teeth in anger.
“Just so you know,” said Tony, “I’m not gonna stop you guys. I won’t pretend that I like whatever this is, but I won’t stop you.”
“Screw ‘em. Make them scream,”! said Ellie.
Verto clapped her hands. “Scream! Scream!” she said.
Ash started on the first man. He lashed hi
s legs with an Ignis bolt, then watched as the flames burned away his jeans. Some of the denim melted against his skin, and the purple flames burned away all his leg hairs and bubbled his flesh. The man shrieked in agony, so Ash used Blood Share, draining HP from a nearby sheep to heal the man.
When that was done, he lashed him again and again, healing him each time. The man screamed with each blast, and Ash watched his arcane flames devour freshly-healed skin and turn it into burn tissue, only to heal it once again to start the process anew. If anyone had been passing within a mile of the place, they would have wondered what the hell was going on.
