Darren smiled wide at me, a wicked, devious thing, which sent shivers to crawl over my skin like ants.
He leaned over to whisper to me. “How much?”
I stared him down. “Excuse me?”
“Do you know how rare demi-humans are?” Darren asked, “I’ve seen plenty over the years, but never one like her.”
Darren was practically leaning over me at this point.
“I’ll give you ten thousand gold for her right now.”
He was right about one thing. Demi-humans were rare, and nobles paid handsomely for them. Actual fortunes for rabbitmen and wolfmen, not to mention the fae. His offer was enough to set a commoner up for life. It was nothing to me. No amount of money would be enough to hand her over.
I scoffed at him. “So, you’re slavers?”
If he was willing to shell out that much gold for her, I bet he had a client who paid well for demis like Eris. No way he would drop that much coin just for a lay. Though Eris was unique, I could see why he was so desperate.
It was Darren’s turn to scoff. “I wouldn’t call us slavers; we’re simply merchants who specialize in select merchandise," he equivocated.
“So...slavers.”
He slammed his fist on the table, knocking over one of the empty glasses of ale and sloshing the nearly full one. I quickly glanced around the room. The rest of the patrons were painfully oblivious to the exchange between Darren and me. Even Ruff was busy pretending to wash a glass, though I saw him glance our way.
“Look, my employer pays handsomely for rare creatures and artifacts. I know he would pay whatever you wanted for her. So why don’t we be gentlemen about this and work out a deal.”
“No. She’s not for sale. Not now, not ever, and you’ve ruined what was a pleasant evening, so we’re leaving.”
I stood up, just as Darren lunged forward and grabbed the collar of my shirt, anger clear across his face. Here was a man not used to being denied.
“I refuse to walk away from this, not when we could make enough money to live like kings in the Noble District. So, hand her over before I lose my temper.”
“Bad move.”
Before he could blink, I took hold of his arm that was currently gripping my shirt, stopping him from going anywhere. I pulled him off balance, grabbed the empty mug of ale from the table, and smashed it into his face.
Shards of glass and blood flew into the air, raining down to fill the cracks in the flagstone floor. The glass shredded half of Darren’s face, but I was just getting started. The magic inside me oozed out of my heart to stain my fury while my vision filled with swirling shadows.
Letting go of Darren’s arm, I kneed him in the groin hard enough that he doubled over. Taking his bloodstained face in my hands, I slammed it onto the corner of the heavy wooden table, cracking the wood and sending the table to the ground.
Darren slid off the table onto the floor, his face leaving a trail of blood on the wood. He hit the stone with a soft thud and groaned.
His three cohorts decided to stand up from their table and join in the fight. Their eyes glared daggers at me, staring in disbelief that I had taken out their boss so quickly. They moved as one to intercept me.
Perfect.
As soon as they moved from their chairs, I kicked the table at them hard enough that the thick wood splintered in two. The shattered pieces hit them like a freight train, taking their legs out from under them.
With them out of the fight for a second, I turned my attention back to Darren, who was still lying in a slowly growing pool of his own blood. The wounds I’d dealt were painful and very messy, but he wasn’t out of commission yet.
I reached down, taking hold of his right arm, his sword arm, and twisted. His bones cracked and shattered under my fingers, and I savored the sound his bones made as I broke them into little pieces. Broken and jagged edges tore through his thin skin to reveal bone and yellowed marrow. Blood streamed down his arm to join the pool on the floor.
Good thing he’s unconscious. Otherwise, he’d be screaming bloody murder right now.
With Darren out of the fight, and the threat of a sword in the back removed. I focused on the others. Who were just now painfully picking themselves off the floor. They stared in horror at what I’d done. Darren’s hand twisted at an impossible angle and spurting blood like a fountain.
“You monster!” Mikhail shouted and rushed me.
“Fool.”
In the close confines of the bar, the three of them could have surrounded me easily. Mikhail had obviously never been in a bar fight before as he unstrapped his halberd from his back. In such confined space, his weapon would be a hindrance at best and fatal at worst.
Mikhail crouched into his fighting stance, which because of the length of his weapon, cut Wolf and Slip off from reaching me. I didn’t want to fight the halberd emptyhanded, and my sword was in my inventory, so I cast my eyes around the room and quickly settled on my prize.
Stepping back, my heel connected with the lip of the fireplace and ignoring the heat, I grabbed the iron poker Ruff had left in the center of the fire.
It seared into my palm, but I bit down on the pain and yanked it free amid a shower of smoke and embers. The sharp tip glowed cherry red, and waves of heat rose off it as I shifted into a fencing stance. Damn, I’m awful with a rapier, and the poker is a poor facsimile, but it’ll have to do.
Though, since the poker wasn’t considered a martial weapon, it wouldn’t affect my battle fatigue. And since I was unarmed facing an armed opponent, I was at a significant advantage.
Mikhail opened with a straight thrust, aimed at my heart. I sidestepped and parried with the poker, charring a line down the length of his wooden shaft. A quick lunge forward, and I stabbed the searing tip of the poker into Mikhail’s right hand.
The acrid tinge of sizzling flesh filled my nose, and I fought down the urge to gag. Mikhail howled in pain and let go of his weapon on reflex. I took hold of it as soon as he released it and jabbed the butt of the halberd into his gut, taking the wind out of him.
He doubled over in pain and I tossed the halberd aside. It slid across the floor to rest under the table of a couple of farmers too busy watching the show to notice.
Disarmed and in pain, Mikhail stood up, only to have a red-hot poker whip across his face. He stumbled back and fell on his ass, at which point Slip tried to intervene, but I saw him go for his dagger and changed my grip on the poker and threw it like a spear. My aim was off, and instead of hitting his hand, I nailed him in the thigh.
It cut through his flesh with ease and stuck in the bone. He screamed in pain as the burning metal cauterized the wound with the poker still entrenched inside him. Slip dropped to the floor and clutched at his leg while trying to go for a health potion.
“Wait your fucking turn,” I growled.
Mikhail wasn’t looking so hot. I’d seared a deep groove across his face with the poker and taken out one of his eyes in the process. One of his hands clutched at his ruined face while the other came up and swung at me. I slipped his punch and caught him on the chin with an uppercut, slamming him back to crash into a table.
The couple who were eating dinner at the time, shrieked and stood up quickly before running away, shouting their heads off.
Mikhail cursed in Old Russian as he stood up, the translator in my interface flashing what he said across my vision. Well, fuck you, too.
He was bloody and enraged and snarled as he charged me, disregarding any kind of form or technique. His wild swings went wide of me as I ducked and stepped back before snapping a low side kick to his knee, dislocating it as he put most of his weight on it attempting to grab me. With an ear-splitting shriek of pain, he collapsed to the stone, and I curb stomped his face, shattering through the cartilage in his nose and sending blood spilling out to stain his lips and slither down his chin.
He was broken and bleeding, but he was still conscious, and he tried to shakily stand back up. At this point, even I knew he’d had
enough, but my anger was too strong, and I wanted to keep hurting him.
“More, hurt him more!”
Before he could stand, I kicked his head, catching him just below his cheek and dislocating his jaw with a twisted pop. Mikhail somehow stumbled to his feet and swung wide. I caught his hook, dazed him with a jab, and flung him over my shoulder.
Mikhail hit the ground headfirst, smashing the base of his skull on the stone, cracking loudly as he landed, blood smeared the floor from a deep gash on the base of his head.
My anger still wasn’t satiated, and I wanted to kill him. I raised my foot to shatter his skull.
“Stop!” a frantic voice shouted.
I turned to see Wolf, arms raised in a non-threatening manner, trying to keep me from killing his dim-witted friend.
“Why should I?” I growled at him, my vision thick and dark with shadows. I wanted to keep hurting. I wanted to kill them all for what they were planning on doing to my queen.
Wolf gestured around the room, at the broken and bleeding bodies of Darren and Mikhail. Slip had managed to pull the poker from his leg and downed half a health potion before climbing to his feet. Both walked toward me, and both had their hands raised. They knew who the strongest one here was.
“You don’t need to continue this. You've won, there is no need to hurt them any further.”
I pointed at them and roared, “You fuckers are the ones who started this.”
Wolf shook his head as he motioned to the ragged body of Darren.
“No, he is the one that started this foolishness, and Mikhail got dragged into it trying to defend Darren. They both paid the price for their actions tonight. Let it end here.”
I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to keep fighting. To keep causing pain and suffering to those who had sought to subjugate and harm Eris. They would suffer agonizing deaths.
“No, I’ll end this here and now!”
Both moved into their combat stances, and I was a second away from charging them when Eris grabbed my arm. Her eyes were hazy and unfocused, but there were tears in them, and that stopped me cold.
“Stop this, Duran. Please, let them go.”
“They’re our enemies, and they need to die,” I said through gritted teeth.
“For me, please,” she begged, tugging on my arm.
I didn’t want to listen, but I wasn’t acting in my right mind. My anger was so intense and overwhelming that it hurt, and I wanted to hurt in return. One look at Eris, and it was plain that she could tell how I was feeling and that she was trying to save me from myself. Her concern for me bled through my darkness, if only a little, but it was enough.
Now that I wasn’t in combat anymore, the twisted magic’s hold lessened enough to allow Eris’s words to reach me, to let me regain a small piece of myself.
“Fine. Take them, and never let me see your faces again.”
Wolf nodded his head, and he and Slip went and retrieved their unconscious and dripping comrades off the blood-soaked floor. Slip poured the rest of the health potion down Mikhail’s gullet and dragged the men out of the inn and into the night, shutting the door with a heavy thud.
I sat back into my chair and tried to let the anger fade completely. I need a drink.
“Hey Ruff, can I get another ale?”
***
Eris passed out in the chair after the fight. She was right to stop me, but she’s also too soft. That’s going to bite us in the ass, I just know it.
If Darren and his cronies weren’t already a threat before the fight, they were now. Letting them go was a foolish move. But Eris couldn’t handle my brutality, and I wasn’t going to kill them in front of her while she wept and begged me not to.
As I drained the last of my ale and waited on Ruff to bring another, I glanced at the notifications tab in my interface to see that I had several of them waiting for me.
Combat Results
Three Downed (Human): 4500 Exp
Mercy Penalty: -1500 Exp
Total Exp Gain: 3000
Level: 45
Exp: 4500/4500
Level Up!
10 Stat Points Available!
Level: 46
Exp: 100/4600
The notifications stunned me. I’d never seen so much Exp awarded for a simple bar fight before, let alone one that hadn’t even ended in death. Never seen the system grant Exp without killing something before…never seen a mercy penalty either, so this is all new territory.
The mercy penalty scared me. It felt like something was pushing me to be more violent and ruthless—that and the strange magic that was ever-present in my heart. I’m being molded for something. Whatever took over Eris and made me this way has plans for me, but what can I do about it?
Even with the mercy penalty, I’d still earned a considerable chunk of experience. Joke’s on them. That was still far more Exp than I should have earned for such a fight. I was okay with the system taking a little off the top. I came out ahead, regardless.
Ruff was busy dealing with another patron at the bar, so I walked over and waited till the farmer left with a tray of drinks. Ruff nodded at me as I approached.
“What can I do for you, Duran?”
I reached into my coin purse and pulled out another two gold coins. I slid them across the bar—much to Ruff's confusion. His eyes asked why I was giving him more money.
“For the damages and another ale,” I said with a grin.
He shook his head and pushed the coins back towards me. “No need. You’ve already paid your insurance.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think I would actually get into a fight. Consider the money a stupidity tax on my part.”
Ruff laughed deeply at that, but still tried to give the money back.
“You can either keep the money, or it’s staying on your bar, but I’m not taking it back.”
“Stubborn, aren’t ya?” Ruff asked.
“To a fault.”
He took the money and poured me another ale. I drained it before moving and went to grab Eris and head off to our room. I gently picked her up from the chair she was snoring in. She woke up for a moment when I lifted her out of the chair, even in her drunken state, she smiled at me and kissed my neck as I held her in my arms, my brutality moments before already forgotten in her eyes.
I made sure to hold her tightly as I climbed the wooden stairs, but fumbled trying to get the key in the lock only to find out that Eris had never locked the door after she had taken a bath.
Pushing the door closed behind me, I found the room quaint and exceptionally clean. The dark wooden walls were fresh with wood stain, and the bed was new; the gray sheets were clean. The room felt fake; that’s how new it was. I hadn’t asked, but I doubted the inn was more than a month old.
The window was larger than average, and the panes of glass seemed cheap and easy to replace. I unlatched the casement window and pushed it open, letting the soft breeze in almost immediately. I sat there staring out of the window for a few minutes, watching the sleeping town. It was just after eight at night, but most farmers were up at the crack of dawn. I ducked my head to go back inside when I noticed a large pile of hay underneath the window.
Chuckling, I went back in. Ruff it seemed, had prepared for all eventualities, and it was comforting to have an easy escape route in case I needed it.
I left Eris snoring softly on the bed and went to take a bath. After I was squeaky clean, I patted myself dry with one of the fluffiest towels I'd ever seen and tied my hair up. Throwing on a clean shirt, I crawled into bed next to Eris, who wasn’t as asleep as I’d thought because she immediately wrapped herself around my body and pressed her lips to mine.
She kissed me hungrily and with abandon but was still completely drunk; her eyes were utterly unfocused as she clumsily fumbled to undress. She managed to get her burgundy tunic stuck halfway over her face, baring her naked body to me in the process.
The sight of her struggling to remove her clothes was probably one of the cutest thin
gs I'd ever seen in my life, and I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Eris wailed in frustration, and at that point, I couldn’t let her continue her losing battle against her greatest enemy: clothing.
I placed my arm on her bare waist to calm her, and then I helped get her shirt the rest of the way over her head. When Eris could see again, she gave me a look of such adoration that it made my heart hurt.
Completely nude, she flung her arms around me in delight. At this point, my libido was gone, and our first time wasn’t going to be while she was drunk out of her mind. I just wrapped my arms around her and held her tight as she tried to get frisky with me, but I didn’t let go of her enough to do much damage.
After a few frustrating attempts, she got the hint and settled into my arms, cuddling into me and kissing my cheek.
“I love you, Sam,” she said as she drifted to sleep.
My throat tightened as I tried to speak but couldn’t. Couldn’t say the words on the tip of my tongue.
“…me too.”
I awoke when the early morning light hit my face, and I blinked my watery eyes open, pushing myself out of reach of the sun’s unrelenting gaze before settling into the sublime comfort of the darkness. I leaned my head back onto the pillow and found Eris beside me, sleeping deeply.
She was cute while she slept, and I had no intention of waking her yet, so I lay there, enjoying the comforting weight of her beside me. This was the first time I'd woken up before her, and it was nice to relax in bed for a few moments. I checked the time. It was just after seven in the morning. We had the time to enjoy this for a few minutes. We still had a little ways to go before we reached the East Kingdom, but we were close.
I lay in bed, enjoying the simplicity of the act for about half an hour before necessity forced me to get up. I went into the bathroom and relieved my screaming bladder, only to have my stomach demand attention. It growled as I washed my hands.
I called out to Eris, as I walked back into the bedroom. “Wake up, sleepy.”
Her ears twitched at my voice, but the only response I received was a loud groan. As she forced her eyes open, they were bloodshot, which on a normal person would be fine after a night spent drinking, but with her obsidian eyes, it was a strange sight—small tendrils of green shot through her compound eyes.
Hive Knight: A Dark Fantasy LitRPG (Trinity of the Hive Book 1) Page 23
