The ground in front of the defenses was barren, cleared with magical attacks so nothing could grow there and the enemy wouldn’t be able to pass easily. People walked the walls and the earth works, scanning that grass sea and staring at those opposing fortresses.
53
Although Sonis was on their way, they needed to go south but the road from Usi to Sonis curved to the east.
“Do the Ancestors proud,” Anthony said in Dwarvish. “Try to stay safe,” Aila said in common.
Krosem nodded as he smiled and headed back to the trader caravan. The children were on top of the carriages or hanging out of the windows, waving to Anthony and Aila.
Anthony waved to them until they disappeared. “To the south!” Anthony said.
“You’re going west.” Aila sighed as she started walking to the south. The beast men watched them from their fortress as they headed south.
“How are you whistling?” Aila asked after a few hours.
“I ’unno. Magic?” Anthony shrugged and then went on whistling.
“What did I do so wrong in my past life to get this pun- ishment?” she asked the sky as they walked.
“Guess they’re not home, or awake. They’re always sleep- ing or wandering around, doing random things. Really annoying to have a conversation with,” Anthony said.
“What are you talking about?” “The gods,” Anthony said.
“Like you talked to the gods.” Aila scoffed. “Wait, did you?”
Anthony just kept on whistling.
***
They continued to go south toward the Deepwood until one night they veered to the east.
“Border hopping. Been some time since I did this. Want to go a bit faster?” Anthony asked.
“What do you mean?” Aila forced herself to stay quiet even as she ran full tilt.
“Bit slow, you know. Thought you were elven—don’t you got feet of sprite, to make you faster?”
“Well, show me how you’re so fast.”
Anthony grabbed the back of her shirt and her belt loop, raising her up into the air.
“What are you doing?” She stopped her legs and arms from moving in the air.
Anthony suddenly accelerated. “Dave!” he yelled. Dave appeared in a flash. Anthony jumped and landed on Dave, his balance perfect as he continued to hold Aila above his head.
“You idioooooooooooooot!”
Her scream echoed across the plains as Dave accelerated.
Aila was screaming into the wind, her hair being turned into a tattered mess as Dave shot through the night, a golden blur.
“Annnnnnnnnnnnnnthooooooooo—!”
***
“Getting colder. Winter be coming,” a man said with a grim look on his face as he drank from his flask.
“Do you think the north will hold?”
“Stoha Mountains have been an impossible mountain range for both sides. Only barbarians move freely there,” the first man said.
The second man nodded and pulled up his black cloak against the wind. “What is that?” he said a moment lat- er, seeing a light.
“Just some firefly,” the first man said. “Keep your eyes peeled. There are many things that move between the borders in the warlands.”
The firefly was getting larger, at incredible speed.
“Commander!” The second man stood up as he heard a noise coming from the light. It whipped past faster than he could recognize, crossing between their fortress and the next in a flash of light.
“—oooonnnnnnyyyyyyy!”
The second man looked at the fading streak that quickly disappeared. He didn’t feel any need to fight; instead, he kind of felt sorry for the voice.
He and the other man looked at each other.
The first man took a heavy drink from his flask. “I’m not doing the paperwork.” He cleared his throat and looked back to the border.
The second man coughed and put his sword away. “See all kinds of things on the wall.” He laughed awkwardly.
“Mhmm,” the first man said.
“Isn’t the winter season coming and it’s turning into spring?”
“What month is it again?” the first asked.
***
Dave discovered a town on the border of the Deepwood, Laisa. He quickly took them to a nearby clearing, out of sight of anyone.
Dave turned into a flash of light, once again wrapping around Anthony’s arm as he put down the shell-shocked Aila.
She was on her feet, a blank look on her face. She swayed around as if she had a few too many dwarven beers.
“You okay?” Anthony asked.
Aila muttered something. Her face was plump from be- ing battered by the wind, her regal hair was done up like an eccentric bird’s nest, and her clothes stuck out at odd angles from being forced into new forms.
“Must be some of that Elvish slang,” Anthony said. “All right, Dave said that we should reach the road by walk- ing through these trees, then it is just a short walk to Laisa! Let’s go.” Anthony put his thumbs up.
Aila raised her thumb, a twitchy smile on her face.
“That’s the spirit!” Anthony turned around. Some people are horrible fliers. Dave doesn’t do saddles, though, and I wouldn’t let her go. I only dropped three—or was it four?—people while we were flying. They were okay, except that guy calling himself Lord Hector the Underlord. Though I guess that was on purpose. That guy was twisted.
Anthony paused his thoughts as he heard something hit the ground.
He looked back to see Aila on the ground, her hand still raised in a thumbs-up expression.
“Come on, we have to—is she asleep or unconscious?” He put his finger underneath her nose.
“Crap, undead—can’t feel anything. Well then, umm...” He tried grabbing some grass, but with his gauntlets, he either broke it all off, or he grabbed a handful of dirt.
“Shit! Ahh, I can’t get grass—I can get a leaf !”
He ran at a tree and tried to get a branch. He slammed into it, his armor striking it with a clang. There was a cracking noise as he looked to the side. “Too much force!”
He trudged back from his episode with the tree with a leaf as large as him, made up of fine-looking hairs.
“Wait, was that a bear?” someone asked as they ap- proached.
“A bear? What bear sounds like a metal frying pan?” an- other shot back.
Anthony was focused on the end of the leaf he had put under Aila’s nose, seeing it move faintly with each breath.
“Shii—uh, what?”
***
Katrine was a travelling adventurer. She had just finished a quest in the northern plains when the leader of her ad- venturer group, Gunnar, heard that there was a number of good jobs to be found in Laisa. So he’d roped Katrine and Sofie into agreeing and they’d headed off.
The night had fallen a few hours ago, but they were so close to Laisa and it was rated as a F-class danger area. Being a D-class adventuring group, they didn’t feel threatened. With just a little bit more walking, they could sleep in a real bed.
They heard a clanging noise come from the forest like metal hitting something.
“The hell was that?” Sofie asked.
“We should investigate!” Gunnar struck a power pose, pushed his shield out and held his sword.
“We should ignore!” Katrine said, with just the same en- ergy and gestures.
“You both look like idiots,” Sofie said with a bored ex- pression.
“It’s probably just a bear,” Katrine reasoned.
“Bears sell for good money,” Gunnar said in a way that seemed like a thought. But they all knew he was actually trying to make his argument.
“I am not getting covered in bear blood,” Sofie said. “Agreed,” Katrine said.
“Come on. We can get a better hotel room and maybe even a warm bath.” Gunnar pulled off the helmet on his belt and put it on his head as he waggled his eyebrows.
He fortunately, or unfortunately for Sofie an
d Katrine, knew his audience.
They groaned, but of course Sofie checked her potions and Katrine pulled out her long bow and strung it.
They headed off the road and quickly saw a clearing through the trees and saw a tree that had fallen down.
“Wait, was that a bear?” Gunnar asked as they ap- proached.
“A bear? What bear sounds like a metal frying pan?” Sofie shot back.
“Shii—uh, what?” Katrine lowered her bow as she looked at a knight with a branch nearly four times his own size, holding it over someone’s face.
“Oh, that’s good.” The knight tossed the branch away. It shot through the clearing and exploded as it hit a tree.
The skeleton winced, his fists up by his head as he raised one leg.
“Crap.” He looked around to check whether anyone had seen him.
Even through the helmet, the adventurers could feel
their eyes meeting.
He put his hands and his foot down, looking up at the moons. “Ah, it is a nice night out tonight. Just, uh, checking on my companion here,” he said awkwardly.
“What’s wrong with her?” Sofie asked, her power gath- ering in her body.
“Air sickness?”
“Air sickness? She got sick from the air?” Gunnar asked.
Katrine forcefully restrained herself from instinctually banging on Gunnar’s helmeted head to determine whether there was anything going on in there.
The knight tilted his head to the side, looking at Gunnar as if finding an especially interesting specimen and then looking at Sofie and Katrine.
Gunnar coughed as he realized that his statement was possibly wrong under the stares and probably feeling his party’s restrained reactions.
“When you’re on a boat, you can get sea sick, right?” the knight said, making sure to slow down his words.
“Yes, of course. Air sickness is when you are going in the air and feel sick,” Gunnar said, trying to redeem himself.
“Eh, well, yeah, close enough.” It seemed as though the knight really didn’t want to put in the time it might re- quire to educate Gunnar.
It’s a failed plan—look at how far he’s come so far and he’s thirty-five this year! Katrine thought.
“So the half of a tree in her face?” Sofie asked.
“Well, she just fell backward, wanted to check if she was okay or not,” the knight said.
“So, the half of the tree?” Sofie tried again.
“Check she was breathing. You know, breath moves leaves like air,” the knight said.
“Why didn’t you use grass?” Katrine asked. They were in a clearing filled with grass.
“I tried,” the knight muttered as he tried to toe down some of the holes in the ground.
“What is your purpose here?” Gunnar said, trying to take control of the situation.
“We’re heading to Laisa, but then she passed out, so I guess, staying here till she’s okay. Then we’re seeing if we can get a guide from Laisa into the Deepwood. Need to go to Thelsedorei,” the knight said.
“You mean the capital city of the wood elves that moves?” Sofie snorted.
“Yeah, don’t you find Thelsedorei is a weird name for a city? Not many people know it literally means green elves home, though they accent the hell out of it. All about presentation. I remember a time I asked for a meal; they gave me this beautiful plant-based something or other and it looked like a leaf but tasted like strawber- ries. Took them three hours to make it. Took them three hours to make a leaf ! A tasty leaf, but a leaf ! By that time I had the leaf, I’d gone into my meeting, come out of it, taken a nap and was on the edge of starvation. Just went into the kitchen and drank a bowl of the glazing—took me days to digest that. How was I supposed to know it was made with Mana? Right?”
Katrine and Gunnar looked at each other and then Sofie, who shrugged.
“Well, we need to sleep somewhere. This is as good as any.” Sofie looked at Katrine, who nodded. Girls out in the wild needed to look after each other and seeing the woman passed out on the ground and the knight alone in a clearing, their intuition was telling them that just letting things be wouldn’t turn out that well.
Gunnar slumped and sighed.
They pulled off their bags and started to make camp as Anthony looked at the girl.
Sofie went and checked on her. The knight shrugged and went off to the side.
“She’s an elf,” Sofie said in a shocked voice. “Though her skin isn’t pearly white but gray.”
“Dark elf ?” Gunnar grabbed his sword.
“Don’t they practice the dark arts and copulate with Sa- tan?” Katrine asked.
“You’re a pervert.” The knight carried a boulder on one shoulder and dragged a dead tree with his other hand.
“What?”
“He says dark elf and you’re right in there with the sex—you need five minutes in the forest?” the knight asked.
Katrine blushed, too flustered to talk.
“Think of dark elves like the shut-in cousins of the high elves. Why do you call them wood elves? Is it because of the green city naming stuff ?” He waved his hand, dis- missing those thoughts. “You know how humans get a tan, right?”
“Yeah,” Gunnar said.
“Elves get a shade. More time they’re in the dark, the darker their skin becomes. They’ve even got dark beds to sleep in so their skin is darker in the morning. A one-hundred-year elf who’s only spent their days in the sun—let’s just say there is a reason that the elven cities glow,” Anthony said. “Walking, pointy-eared flashlights. Also, the high elves are usually all about jewels and finely crafted stuff. Dark elves like their peace and quiet, being in the mountains, working on their different things. Both of them study magic, earth element or water—they can be dark or high.”
“Aren’t the dark elves weaker though?” Sofie asked.
“Weaker? You know how elven magic works, right? I’m seeing all of these potions—familiar mage, right?” The knight waved at Sofie and set down his boulder.
“Yeah,” she said, with a hint of pride.
“That’s a nice boulder.” The knight tapped the boulder a few times and went to the dead tree.
Both Katrine and Gunnar, who were putting together their tents, stopped what they were doing as the knight pulled out a sword. They hadn’t noticed it before but
there was a large tree engraved into his armor. The work- manship made it look like the tree was swaying in a light night breeze as he used his sword to cut the tree in half.
“What is your name?” Katrine interjected. “Anthony—that’s Aila. You guys?” “Gunnar.”
“Katrine.” “Sofie.”
“Nice to meet you. Oh and mages! So elves, well, the more they use their magic, the stronger they be- come—that is a part of it. They have two ways to in- crease their power: one, Mana cultivating, or having a breakthrough. So, Mana breakthrough, drain your Mana system, push yourself to your limits. Don’t burn your life-force, though—important, that.” Anthony took the time to point his sword at them before he went back to chopping the tree.
Gunnar shuddered with each hit, unconsciously patting his blade, comforting it.
“Though you also need to counter balance that with fill- ing your system up. Kind of like how when you want to get strong, you push yourself, but then you eat every- thing in sight afterward to get energy to do it again. Rinse, repeat. Though if you pick a magical path and fol- low that, then instead of just flinging spells around, pick out certain spells, master those and then move on. Get-
ting to know a spell, you need to do the chanting, wav- ing your hands all about, and the dancing mess, but if you master it completely, you can insta cast and it’ll cost a lot less magical power. Spells are like guides: there’s a good way to do it, and another way to really mess it up.” Anthony took some of the cut wood, tossed it into a rough fire and held up his hand.
Nothing happened and he looked at his arm.
“Penelope? Hey?�
� He tapped his arm again and there was a slight glow.
A spurt of flame plopped out of his hand and landed on the wood. It went up with a wump, lighting the area and heating it.
Death Knight Box Set Books 1-5: A humorous power fantasy series Page 5
