by J. T. Wright
“Yeah, but once we put them down, they stayed down!” Tersa continued, oblivious to the looks she was gathering. “And I got lots of Experience! Probably level and specialize in here! Sergeant Cullen will have to make me a…”
“Trent,” Kirstin’s voice was soft and melodic, a much different tone than she usually used around her adventuring party, “you did well today."
Tersa stepped to the side. She frowned at the blond noblewoman. Not long ago, Tersa had admired the Lady Kirstin as much as she did Lieutenant Ranchell. That had changed after she got to know Trent. It was hard to admire someone you thought had mistreated your friend.
“Thank you, master,” Trent said bowing.
Tersa’s frown deepened. She makes him call her master?
Kirstin blushed. “You can call me Lady Kirstin, Trent. Master is a little much. When we’re in Trials, Kristin will do.” Her close friends and family usually called her Kris, should she have Trent do that?
“Yes, Lady Kirstin.” Trent was at a loss at this turn of events. He didn’t even know why Kirstin was here. Hadn’t she wanted him gone?
Kirstin was also finding this conversation difficult. She knew next to nothing about this boy who she was so closely connected to. “You did well,” Kirstin repeated. “I suppose you might level soon?” Talking about leveling was always a safe subject amongst Adventurers.
Trent shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. Create Traps is still at Level 1, and I only have six hundred Experience.”
Tersa’s eyebrows knitted. “Six hundred? That should be enough for four levels, or almost three? Something like that.”
“Trent has an Advanced Class,” Kirstin had been shocked when she learned that. She was still shocked as she explained, “They take a lot more to level up.”
Tersa’s jaw dropped. She was about to lay into Trent for keeping this from her, she who was clearly his best and probably only friend in the world. He probably told the damn horse! Before she could find her words, Trent, realizing a storm was headed his way, tried to distract her.
“Lady Kirstin,” he said hurriedly, “I leveled Dash during the fight and got a Point in Agility. Is that normal?”
“You already have Dash?” Kirstin really needed to get around to looking at her Summons’ Status soon, “That’s a good Skill. And it’s not normal to gain an Attribute Point when leveling a Skill, but it happens. That’s the reason why people learn as many Skills as they can, and one of the reasons Skill Stones are so expensive. It won’t happen every Level, but, occasionally, you'll get a bonus to your Attributes.”
“Recruit Tersa, there you are.” Corporal Francis’ tone suggested he’d been searching for her for hours, though she’d been in plain sight the whole time. “So glad to see you rested. What am I saying! I hear on the wind that a little fight like this is nothing to a warrior such as yourself! But I think you’re forgetting something, aren’t you?”
Frank leaned in close to the girl as he spoke. Tersa’s eyes narrowed as she tried to figure out what the Corporal was talking about.
Frank sighed, his voice slowly rising in speed and volume. “After a fight, especially in a Trial, anyone with the Harvesting Skill should immediately get to work and not spend time tempting the Trial to stick its foot up our collective asses! Get moving!”
Tersa jumped and squeaked at the Corporal’s order. Drawing her belt knife, she ran to the nearest charred corpse and started cutting.
Kirstin watched with distaste. “Do Fleshlings even have anything worth Harvesting Corporal?”
Francis shook his head. “Beast Cores, if we’re lucky, but the bodies take longer to disappear if there’s a person with the Harvesting Skill in the party. There’ll be no drops until they’re gone. If we don’t get weapons, armor, and supplies from beast drops, we’ll be in real trouble soon.”
“Trent,” the Corporal continued, “if you would, you and Tersa are our only Harvesters.”
Trent nodded and drew his own belt knife. Cutting into burned Fleshling seemed a lot nastier than cutting up Graks had been, but the Corporal was right. He managed to do the job with only a limited amount of gagging.
**********
When the task was complete and the bodies vanished, leaving their drops, the loot was rather disappointing. Trent used Appraisal on everything and wondered if the Trial was always going to be this stingy.
A handful of copper coins, two weak Health potions, and a mace were the only drops. He and Tersa had managed to Harvest four Level 1 Beast Cores, but all in all, it wasn’t the haul Adventurers dreamed about.
“Can’t expect much from Fleshlings,” Frank muttered. Louder, he said, “Cores and coins will be collected and distributed equally when we get out of here. Equipment and potions will be given out according to need, if no one can use it, it will also be distributed equally. Anyone have an Appraisal Skill?”
A series of head shakes followed before Trent coughed and nodded. He already Appraised the mace. A simple metal ball a little bigger than two fists on a leather-wrapped metal shaft, the mace was a common weapon that only did +4 damage. He told the Corporal.
“You’re just a bundle of Skills and surprises, aren’t you, Trent,” the Corporal said. Kirstin nodded in agreement to this. “Well, anyone need it?”
Tersa’s hand raised slowly. “I have four levels in blunt weapons, Corporal.”
The weapon went to Tersa, much to her delight. As Tersa examined her new toy, the others checked their own gear and prepared to move out. Trent looked around one last time.
His eyes caught sight of a piece of paper. It had obviously gone unnoticed or been dismissed as garbage, but Trent found it curious. There was an almost constant, unpleasantly warm breeze flowing through the Lands of the Undying Lord. The slight wind blew up swirls of dust and tugged at hair and clothing. However, it did not move that small scrap of paper.
He walked over and picked it up. It was a drawing. A drawing of a road? Canyons? A map! This was a map, not garbage, a drop from the Fleshlings that had been overlooked.
Trent turned it over and around, trying to make sense of it. It could be of anywhere, but he was sure it was of the Trial. He opened his Map Ability to compare the two. Maybe there was a landmark they’d passed that could be compared to the scrap.
Two things surprised Trent when he opened his Map. The first was it was small. No matter how he concentrated, it would not zoom out to show Al’drossford or the Burning Lake. Would the Map only show the Trial if they were in it?
The second thing that set him back was that about twenty-five percent of the Map was filled in. The rest was still dark as it should be. The Map only showed places he’d been before, but that twenty-five percent was bewildering.
He could clearly see his location on the Map. He could see the area they had started walking from. He could also see miles and miles worth of area that he'd never set foot on!
He compared his Map to the scrap in his hand. There were definite similarities, the road, the cliff face ahead, the canyon on the right. Had his Map copied the scrap?
Caught up in his questions, Trent failed to notice Kirstin and the Corporal approach until Frank spoke up, “We need to move out, Scout. What have you got there?”
Trent handed the scrap of paper over, and it didn’t take long for Frank to figure out what it was. “For the love of… stupid, lazy, good for nothing…the Trial drops a map, and we almost miss it!”
The Corporal was pissed. He had specifically told the men to watch out for things like this! Did they want to die here? Kirstin peered over his shoulder to study the map.
“Good eyes, Trent,” she complimented. “Details are hard to make out, though, it’s so small. You see anything we should head for, Corporal?”
“If we keep following the road, it looks like there’s a village or something ahead. Not sure how far,” Trent offered. Direction was easy, but distance was still something he struggled with.
“You sure?” Frank turned the paper around much the
same way Trent had. “I can’t even pick out our location on this.”
Trent nodded. “The detail is much clearer on my Map.” Two sets of eyes focused on him.
“You have the Map Ability as well?” Kirstin asked slowly. Another nod from Trent. “You think the Sergeant would have mentioned that.”
“It would have been nice to know,” Frank agreed.
“But can we trust it?” Kirstin looked at Trent. “Nothing against you, Trent, but we don’t know how accurate this thing is."
Frank folded the scrap and stuck it in his belt pouch. “I might be wary of trusting the paper, but we can trust the Map Ability. It can only copy accurate information. A false map won’t register with it.”
“You’ve got a point, Trent, we need to get moving.”
Frank called for the rest to form it up. “This village might have supplies or a defendable position where we can rest. It’s as good a destination as anywhere else."
Chapter 21
The Leadership Skill did have some significant drawbacks. Alistern was currently in the process of relearning what those drawbacks were. The first was that once you had the Skill, you could never be in a party if the leader of that party had a Skill Level less than your own. This hadn’t been a problem before.
Kirsten didn’t have the Leadership Skill. She had the Commanding Aura Skill. Less useful than Leadership, Kristin’s presence in the group provided a certain amount of direction, but until her Commanding Aura reached Level 10, she was unable to form a true party. Now with Cullen, it still wasn’t a problem; the Sergeant’s Skill Level was far above Alistern’s.
Rather, it hadn’t been a problem at first. Alistern didn’t know what the Sergeant’s actual Skill Level was, but he knew it was high enough that Cullen had the Right of Command bonus. Orders that Cullen gave to his party were obeyed, reasonable orders at least. He couldn’t force someone to act against their nature or do things that might be harmful to themselves, but a group member would find it hard to resist a justified request.
It was what the Sergeant found justified that was the problem. He’d trained Guardsmen long enough to know how far to push his Skill, and he delighted in pushing Alistern.
When he shouted, “Quit prancing about like a sissy and run like a man!” Alistern had immediately stopped his elegant loping stride and adopted the Sergeant’s pounding, stomping gait. It had taken him a mile of running before he even realized what he’d done.
The next time it happened was when they came across a group of a hundred Fleshlings. Alistern had stopped and retrieved his bow. He had lots of Archery Skills like Flame Arrow and Dispelling Shot that would be useful against the creatures, but he didn’t have a chance to use them before Cullen’s next reasonable request was issued.
“Put that away! You'll probably shoot me in the back by accident!” Cullen huffed. “Or do you carry that sword because you think it makes you look pretty while you’re flouncing through the flowers?”
The Sergeant plowed into the Fleshlings, his axe striking left and right, cutting the beasts in half or splitting them down the middle. Alistern was right behind him, sword lashing out to sever heads or send limbs flying.
The fight took no more than ten minutes. Fleshlings, even high leveled ones, were no true obstruction to the seasoned warriors. The monsters’ grasping hands and biting teeth found only steel and death, as the pair of soldiers mowed them down.
Alistern sheathed his sword after the last Fleshling fell. His tongue wet his lips and scrubbed at his teeth, as he tried to find the proper way to tell Cullen where he could stick his orders. It was Cullen who spoke first, though.
“Get to it, Lieutenant!” the Sergeant ordered, grounding the butt of his axe and removing his helm. “I want to be moving soon.”
“What?” Alistern stared at the Sergeant blankly.
“You have the Harvesting Skill, right?” Cullen replied, ever so patiently. “Bodies won’t drop their loot till you do your thing.”
Alistern looked at the hundred or so corpses. Yes, he had the Harvesting Skill. He understood that valuable supplies, tools, and information wouldn’t appear until the Cores were removed, but…
“It sounds like you expect me to do all the work by myself!”
“Love to help Lieutenant,” Cullen took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco. “Never did learn Harvesting. It’s all up to you. Be quick about it, please.”
Alistern’s eyes bulged. That had to be a lie. Cullen had been a soldier and an Adventurer much longer than Alistern had been alive. He had to have picked up such an essential Skill at some point.
He said nothing. He drew his knife and got to work. There were few men powerful enough, or unwise enough, to call Cullen a liar. Alistern wasn’t one of them.
He was quick about it, but it still took time to clear the field of corpses. Cullen puffed away at his pipe and pretended to enjoy the hot, moist breeze while Alistern worked. The Lieutenant ignored him and settled for muttering uncomplimentary things under his breath, while he cut out Beast Cores. By the time he'd gathered all the Cores and all the drops, Cullen had finished his smoke.
“Anything useful?” The Sergeant asked.
Alistern shrugged. “No information on what the Trial expects, and some equipment that neither of us needs. Dried meat, a few Health potions, some small coins. About what you'd expect from Fleshlings.”
Alistern divided the spoils, and the two men put their shares into Storage. Alistern was tempted to throw out the dried meat. There was no description on what kind of meat it was when he appraised it. Alistern was loath to trust meat dropped by an Undead. He ended up keeping it, though. It wasn’t poisoned and rations were scarce. Beggars and choosing and all that.
The two fell into a pattern. They ran and fought and ran again. The Trial was still throwing simple enemies at them. By the third fight, Alistern didn’t even draw his sword; he let Cullen do the fighting. While the Sergeant cleared the way, Alistern cleaned the kills. It was only minutes after the last creature fell that they were off again.
Cullen tried but couldn’t find fault with this. Somewhere, his men were probably facing the same kinds of threats, but it was doubtful that they were doing so with ease. Speed was important. He needed to clear this Trial as soon as possible, or men would die. It was likely some would die no matter what. Trials were not kind.
They had to be fast. Unfortunately, Fleshlings were just a warmup. The Trial soon decided that the two soldiers needed a challenge and sent them one.
“Wolves, cursed ones by the look of them, big bastards,” Alistern swore. The two men had stopped at the top of a hill and watched the enemy approach. “And some things that are not Fleshlings running with them!”
“I see them,” Cullen said nervously, watching the approaching threat swarm across the barren lands. “Some type of Infernal Wolves, never seen them so big before! Never seen them run with Wretched Corpses either!"
Alistern grimaced. Wretched Corpses weren’t like Fleshlings. They were fast, vicious, and used poison. Poisoned weapons and claws, mostly, but the stronger ones could emit a miasma that could easily infect a weaker opponent.
Infernal Wolves weren’t any better. They weren’t even a type of Undead. Infernal Wolves were a lesser demonic lifeform. Strong and smart, they had few weaknesses to exploit. Divine magic was best for dealing with any kind of demonic beast. With the Sergeant’s propensity for blaspheming, Alistern didn’t see any gods coming to their rescue.
“You'll need your bow this time, Stern,” Cullen advised. “Fire from cover and Stealth. Try not to take their attention off me.”
Alistern nodded. He had Stealth and Camouflage, both well trained. He wouldn’t be seen, not by the Wolves at least. Undead didn’t use their eyes to see or any other senses to find their prey. Stealth was useless, only distance and distraction would work.
Cullen strolled down the hill as Alistern took out his bow and faded into the landscape. The boy had decent skills. Cullen himself would b
e hard-pressed to spot him without using counter Skills.
Cullen rolled his shoulders and neck, more from habit than a need to stretch. He swung his axe, Peacemaker, with one hand, reveling in the weapons familiar feel. He grinned. Peacemaker did well against the Undead. There were few creatures that found the massive axe easy to deal with. Against the demonic? The axe was practically made to battle the demonic.
Peacemaker was made of a mixture of steel, mithril, and fire ore. Blessed by a high priest of Denamon, the dwarven God of Courage, the demonic would feel uneasy just being in the axe’s presence. Still, with forty Infernal Wolves and at least fifteen Wretched Corpses, the Trial wasn’t playing around anymore.
Judging the distance to the pack of beasts, Cullen broke into a jog. He needed to meet them at just the right distance from the hill. Too close and the Wretched Corpses would be able to feel Alistern’s location. Too far and the Scout would have to move to get into the fight.
He held Peacemaker out to his side in one hand. Normally, he’d approach a group like this with a two-handed grip making sweeping strikes. This time, however, one of the larger wolves was leading the pack by quite a distance, intending to take the Sergeant out itself. Cullen had plans for that one.
The heavily armored soldier and the demonic wolf rushed at one another. A howling broke the air and, in return, was met by a challenging war cry. The distance between the two lessened, and soon the wolf was near enough to leap, soaring through the air with a snarl. Its teeth would puncture the man’s armor, its weight carry him to the ground, where its pack would finish him.
The wolf was fast, too fast for a man to dodge, and yet, Cullen did just that. The Infernal Wolf’s menacing growls cut off with a yelp, as Cullen caught it by the throat. His fingers closed, bones cracked, and the wolf found itself unable to breathe.
It was not a small beast, weighing nearly two hundred pounds, standing chest high on a man. Yet the Sergeant wrestled it easily. Reversing the wolf’s momentum, the man threw the wolf back into the oncoming pack. On the hilltop, Alistern almost forgot his own role in the fight, watching the wolf bowl over four of its pack mates.
