Killstreak Book One

by Stuart Thaman

  “There’s a drawing on the back,” the assassin said, indicating the other side of the parchment with a point of his dagger.

  Syzak flipped the sheet over. The back of it had a drawing of some sort of siege contraption next to one of the standard jackal altars, but something was different. Several creatures that vaguely looked like the Gar’kesh were coming out of the altar. Even more curious than the drawing’s overt imagery were the straight lines, each labeled with a number, extending from the machine. “It looks like… mining equipment? A siege engine of sorts? Whatever it is, it seems complex,” the shaman said. He grabbed Kadorax by the shoulder and held the scroll in front of his face to capture his attention.

  “Something new to summon more than one of their gods,” he said after a quick glance.

  The assassin took back the scroll and tucked it into his belt. “Jackals don’t build siege engines. Jackals don’t build anything that even remotely resembles machinery.”

  Both Syzak and Kadorax nodded in agreement. “Let’s get her back to the camp,” the bastion said, bending over to lift Brinna from the ground. “There’s only one group I know of that would sell machinery to jackals.”

  Syzak lifted Brinna’s legs, and then they set off, hoping the majority of the fighting would be concluded by the time they reached the camp.

  One of the assassins sheathed his weapons and spat on the ground in disgust. “Bastards probably sold us out,” he said. “Elise needs to be told.”

  Kadorax wasn’t sure if the unconscious woman in his arms was going to make it. The knights guarding the perimeter were still holding quite well by the time they arrived in view of the camp, but the fighting had not concluded. A group of twenty or more jackal warriors augmented by several spell casters was busy assaulting the front, and the other entrances to the camp were either too far away or heavily barricaded with sharpened palisades. There simply wasn’t any way to gain quick, easy access to the camp without being seen by the jackals and possibly picked out as targets.

  The two assassins had slipped through the barricades a ways down the camp line in search of help, but that had been minutes ago, and Brinna was continuing to bleed.

  “I need a field medicine talent,” Kadorax said with frustration.

  “The first thing we’re buying when this is all over is a bandage kit, a proper one. And I guess I should be more conservative with Cure Minor Ailments so I don’t waste it,” Syzak replied.

  Kadorax readjusted the makeshift bandage across Brinna’s scalp. If he was being honest with himself, he knew the bandage did nothing. “No, you didn’t waste the spell,” he said. “We were unprepared. We should have known better.”

  Syzak caught a glimpse of something dark moving in the shadows. “They’re back,” he said, pointing at the figures.

  One of the assassins returned with a Priorate Knight healer, a chaplain as they were called, jogging to keep up behind him. The chaplain clinked and rattled in his heavy battle armor, and the man looked close to complete exhaustion.

  “Can you heal her?” Kadorax peeled back the bloody bandage and tossed it aside.

  The chaplain rubbed a hand across his sweat-covered brow as he inspected the horizontal gash above Brinna’s eyes. “Probably,” he said after a moment.

  “Probably is good enough,” Kadorax told him. He stepped away, as did the others, to let the chaplain work.

  “Stitch Together,” the healer cast, holding his hands over the wound with his thumbs laced together. A gleam of white magic emanated from his palms and seeped into Brinna’s head. Fortunately, none of the jackals attacking the shield wall seemed to notice the bright flash, and the small group of adventurers remained undiscovered.

  Brinna’s forehead closed, and the chaplain fainted to the ground, completely drained.

  “Great, now we have to carry both of them,” Kadorax mused.

  Syzak grabbed the chaplain’s legs and looked over his shoulder before beginning to pull the man back toward the palisades. “He’s wearing armor. Dragging him won’t hurt.”

  The rogue balanced on their shoulders between them, Kadorax and the assassin made slow progress toward the nearest opening in the camp’s defenses. By the time they finally found themselves on the safe side of the barricade, the fighting at the front had concluded, and a good chunk of experience flashed across everyone’s vision. Kadorax had been either directly involved in or near enough to major battles to have seen the peculiar phenomenon of the winning side reaping a bounty of experience before. Since every combatant and support caster received their experience at the same time, the battlefield took on an eerie, unsettling quiet for a few moments as every other activity ground to halt.

  Kadorax advanced to level eight, unsurprising considering the sheer size and implications of the battle compared to his relatively low level, but he quickly pushed the notifications from his vision and sought out the Blackened Blades’ barracks. He was too tired to worry about talents. Beyond that simple fact, Brinna needed further medical attention sooner rather than later, and the three adventurers weren’t exactly sure where they were supposed to take the passed-out chaplain snoring at their feet.

  Finally, perhaps only an hour or so before dawn broke, Kadorax and Syzak managed to stumble into a pair of cots at the rear of the barracks, where sleep quickly overcame them both.

  Chapter 10

  Kadorax was the first to rise. The sun was several hours into its descent beyond midday, and the rest of the camp was alive with activity. He decided to let Syzak continue to sleep and made his way to the center, spotting a few cookfires burning underneath several racks of meat. A handful of the soldiers, men and women from both the Priorate Knights and the Blackened Blades, sat on low stools around the fires as they finished what was left of their lunches. Kadorax joined them, eager to fill his stomach and clear his head.

  “Any news on the rogue we left in the priory?” he asked the nearest knight.

  The woman, glittering in her polished mail hauberk, didn’t have an answer. More than one rogue had been brought to the priorate healers, and most of them had not recovered enough to have left yet.

  Kadorax made his way to the priory when he had finished his meal. There were knights all around it, though none of them tried to prevent his entry, so he pushed through the wooden door and headed in the direction of a few groans, not that the building was terribly large to begin with. There were only three rooms, and the wounded were being tended to in the second one.

  A chaplain, dressed in blue and gold robes, knelt over one of the cots against the far wall as he applied a cloth to a wounded man’s chest. Near the door, Brinna was asleep on a cot of her own. A fair amount of dried blood coated the white linen bandages around her head, but she looked otherwise stable and recovering. Her chest moved up and down with a steady rhythm.

  Placing a hand on her shoulder, Kadorax gently shook her awake.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  Brinna ventured a hand up to her forehead, felt the bandages, then closed her eyes again. “I’ll make it,” she said. “Just a headache now.”

  “That’ll take some time, I think,” Kadorax said. A wounded knight in the next cot called out for the chaplain with an upraised arm, his wrist jutting out at an unnatural angle.

  Kadorax was never one for hospitals. He didn’t like large congregations of the sick, either on Earth or Agglor, as they always made him feel a little too close to death himself. Offering Brinna a meager pat on the shoulder, he stood and turned to leave. He had to wait a moment as the chaplain carried a large, cumbersome bag to the wounded knight and blocked his path, and then Kadorax left the building quickly. Standing once more in fresh air, he crossed the camp again to reach the forges and the Blackened Blades.

  Elise and her cohort were standing in a half-circle around a pile of looted weaponry and scavenged armor from the fight. Most of the pieces were too dented and poorly made to be of any use, and two of the assassins were actively sorting them into piles to be smelt
ed down and recast later. Next to the pile, occasionally picking through it to inspect something that caught his eye, was the assassin who had found the strange schematic on the dead jackal leader.

  “Anything new with the scroll?” Kadorax asked. Behind the assassin, Syzak emerged from the building, rubbing his tired eyes.

  The assassin shook his head and stepped to the side. “I think you were right,” he said in a low whisper. “Elise agrees, though we’re to limit those who know.”

  “Certainly. What’s the plan?” Kadorax asked.

  Both of them had turned and were looking at the forges across from the loot where the Miners’ Union had set up their workshops. “One of them is selling secrets to the enemy,” the assassin said.

  “Do miners ever actually have any enemies?” Kadorax asked. “The group doesn’t necessarily swear allegiance to anyone. Not even to Kingsgate.”

  The assassin smiled in agreement. “Could be any of them.”

  Syzak spotted a few things in the scavenged equipment and pulled them out, brushing some of the blood from one of the pieces on the grass.

  “So, are the Blackened Blades going on a little hunt?” the bastion asked with a sly grin.

  His eyes watching Elise not far away, the assassin whispered, “You know the plan more thoroughly than I do, my lord.”

  Kadorax had to turn to hide his surprise. “You know better than to use that title with me,” he stated flatly. “Don’t get yourself killed. Elise runs the show now.”

  “There are still a few who disagree.”

  “No,” Kadorax said, putting on his most serious tone. “I’m not your man. I’m not even an assassin or a rogue in this life. Hell, I haven’t even officially joined back up.”

  The assassin shrugged. “Just know that we’re ready for you, sir, should you choose to come back. In the meantime, have any interest in catching a miner and ripping a few secrets from his flesh?”

  “Now you have my attention,” Kadorax replied. “The Miners’ Union isn’t known for tactical genius, but they aren’t flagrant idiots, either. Whoever it is will need to check in with their jackal masters. It’ll probably go down tonight. You in?”

  The assassin extended his hand. “The name’s Pennywise. Happy to make your acquaintance.”

  “Pennywise… Pennywise…” Kadorax mused, trying to remember where he had heard the name before. “Shit, are you Earth-born?”

  The man’s smile lit up and blanketed his whole face. “Never thought I’d meet another. Been here almost twenty years now. Yourself?”

  “Thirty,” he replied. “And you really renamed yourself Pennywise?” He finally located the memory in his mind, and images of a gruesome dancing clown floated to the surface.

  Pennywise laughed. “Not exactly. My last name was Penn, and that’s what everyone called me in college. It just didn’t really fit well with the vibe here, you know?”

  “Ha, I couldn’t agree more. My name was Kasper—a stupid hipster name, I know—but that’s who I was. Kasper Ansel. And Syzak, the snake-man rummaging through all the broken armor, he’s Earth-born too; my pet snake, actually,” Kadorax explained.

  “We’ve a lot to discuss, I imagine,” Pennywise said. He followed one of the miners as the stout goblin gathered some pieces of iron in his arms and dumped them into a wooden barrel. “Meet me here at dusk. We’ll find our miner with his hand in more than one pocket.”

  Smiling to himself at having found another Earth-born citizen of Agglor, Kadorax left Penn to investigate the loot for himself.

  “Judging by the whispers, I’d say you learned something of the scroll,” Syzak said, glancing up from his small stash. He had a dagger, a short sword, two sets of battered metal bracers, and a bent-up piece of iron that could have once been a breastplate if it weren’t for being shorn off at the top.

  Kadorax nodded, but he said nothing in response. They were too close to the forges for him to risk even hinting at collusion against the Miners’ Union. “Find anything useful for Brinna?”

  From their years working silently together in the bowels, undercrofts, and rafters of nearly every kind of building on the continent, Syzak understood the full weight of Kadorax’s refusal to address his question. “Nothing here is that good,” he said. “Just a bunch of doghead junk. I’ll take it back to Skarm’s Reif, and if the Grim Sleeper hasn’t left port yet, I’ll let Ayers make what he can. Any requests?”

  “I wonder if Brinna could use a shield. Never seen a rogue with a heater before,” Kadorax jested.

  “Armor for the rogue,” the snake-man happily agreed. “She certainly needs it.”

  “You should probably take her with you back to Skarm’s Reif. She needs to stretch her legs and get some fresh air as soon as possible. Lying on a bed in a priory is a great way to wake up as a knight or a chaplain. Their proselytizing knows no bounds. I don’t want her there any longer than she has to be.” Kadorax angled himself to get a better view of the forge while still not looking at them directly.

  “We’ll leave once she’s ready. Just don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” Syzak told him. When the shaman had all the metal scraps gathered under his arms, he left for the priory, keeping an eye on the workers busy in the small forge as he went.

  Sitting near some of the other Blackened Blades and with his back pointedly turned toward the forges to reduce any potential suspicion, Kadorax settled in to look at his eighth-level talent choices:

  Chaos Shock: Rank 2 - The bastion pulls two slivers of chaotic energy into the world and thrusts them forward, creating a random magical effect augmented by a second impact quickly following the first. Effect: minor. Cooldown: 28 minutes.

  Torment: Rank 2 - The bastion’s weapon magically extends to a second target beyond the first, and Torment inflicts slightly more damage than rank 1. Torment has an increased effect when used with a whip. Effect: moderate. Cooldown: 28 minutes.

  Ghostly Strike (Blade Training: Rank 2): Rank 1 - Becoming momentarily incorporeal, the bastion’s weapon slides through the gap between space and time, bypassing armor for a fraction of a second. Effect: moderate. Cooldown: 1 day.

  Kadorax spent a long time reading and rereading the details of Ghostly Strike. Everything about the maneuver, the flashiness and overall intimidating impact it would have, begged him to select it. As an assassin, Kadorax had no doubt it would have been his choice above the others. Still, he couldn’t deny the doubts lingering in his mind. If the ‘fraction of a second’ line meant his sword could get stuck in armor when it rematerialized, the skill would be useless. On top of that, he already had Chaos Step which produced a somewhat similar—perhaps not as viscerally pleasing—effect.

  In the end, he focused his vision on Chaos Shock: Rank 2, confident that the chances of getting two lackluster magical effects when he rolled the dice would be slim. Adding the second effect meant he could use the ability without quite as much trepidation, and that peace of mind was worth more than a flashy sword trick.

  Kadorax spent most of the afternoon training with a handful of Blackened Blades, a few of which remembered and recognized him from his previous life, but his mind wasn’t really focused on the combat practice. Every time he got into a good mental groove, wooden training sword in hand, his mind would wander back to Penn. The man knew him, that much was clear, but they had never spoken before.

  Whenever Kadorax thought of Earth, an old longing inevitably crept into the back of his head and took root there, sometimes requiring several weeks to dislodge and bury itself once more. He didn’t long for his old life or even his family from back home, but rather his spirit yearned for something—someone—more carnal. In his fifth year on Agglor, he had met an Earth-born woman. He had fallen in love with her, or at least that’s what he had thought it had been, though they had traveled together for only a month before she’d died. Kadorax knew she would still be alive somewhere, having respawned in some dreary inn, maybe even looking for him. Estelle—that had been her name. She was from S
pain originally, and she had been terrible at life in a fantasy realm. Kadorax still found a few persistent tears welling up in the corners of his eyes when he thought of her death… at his own hand.

  He had just joined the Blackened Blades as a recruit, and one of his first assignments had been to protect a minor dignitary from some city whose name he couldn’t remember. He had slept in the shadows outside the dignitary’s room with his dagger in his hand, but Estelle had always known his hiding places. She had come to him in the night with a drink and some food, creeping quietly on the balls of her feet so she didn’t make a sound, and then she’d playfully jostled his hair.

  Kadorax had been so terrified of getting his own throat slit that he sank his knife into Estelle’s gut out of pure reaction. He still remembered the look in the beautiful woman’s face as she stared at him. She hadn’t screamed or made a noise. She had only watched as her own life flickered away.

  The Blackened Blades broke for a bit of food toward dusk, concluding the training and asking Kadorax to join them. The bastion waved them off and hung his head, trying his best to hide his emotion. If there was any skill he’d had back on Earth that had stayed with him through the spatial dislocation, it was the profound ability to mask his emotions from the world. A life of video games, filing government paperwork, and studying history from the comfort of his single-bedroom apartment had seen to that.

  An hour later and Kadorax was still standing awkwardly behind the barracks with a wooden sword in his hand and his real weapons resting in a little pile at the edge of the practice circle. He tried to shake the memories of Estelle from his mind, but there they stayed. He heard her laugh echo in his ears, and he saw her smile flickering in the dim light of a Kingsgate tavern.

  “Hey,” came a raspy whisper.

  All Kadorax could see was the wavy amber of Estelle’s hair flowing over the back of his hand, illuminated by nothing more than moonlight filtering through the muddy glass of a rented room in the back of that same Kingsgate tavern.