Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale

by Alex Oakchest

  Gesture-casting unlocked

  Wow, this was great! I knew all too well how difficult it was to get elementals, so to learn I could now cast twice as many spells was insane. But more important was the casting time effect. The precious seconds it gained me could be all the difference.

  I was aware that everyone was watching now, so I didn’t want to spend too much time on the platform.

  “Gesture casting? What’s that?” I asked Mardak.

  He held up his hand, making a backward C with his index finger and thumb. “All stances can be made with your hands if you have a strong enough medallion,” he explained. “If you can practice and train your brain to think differently, you can create two sets of movements with each hand.”

  “Cast two spells at once, you mean?”

  He nodded. “But takes a long time to be able to think of two spells at once.”

  “Thank you, Chiefs Fergus and Mardak.”

  “Our pleasure,” said Fergus.

  As I left the stage, I heard all the clan cheer. Some shouted my name, others shouted the various nicknames I had picked up in my travels. Hearing this sent a tingle up my spine, and emotion overwhelmed me for a minute, before I mastered myself and blended back in with the swell of people.

  Fergus addressed the crowd. “Now, my people, Mardak and I have news. Chief Mardak?”

  “Why Thankie, Chief Fergus. As you will have noticed, neither Fergus nor I will relinquish our role as chiefs.”

  “That is the first point,” added Fergus. “As our clans are joined, so will we be a joint chiefdom.”

  Mardak nodded. “I believed Fergus has some news, too.”

  The younger chief gave a great, beaming smile now. “I am pleased to tell you, my friends, my family, my people…that I have made an heir!”

  Ripples of applause broke out among the Tallsteeps now. They clapped their hands, their thighs, and patted the arms of the people around them. Although the Lonehills smiled at the news, they weren’t yet so familiar with their new way of life and new clan that they would celebrate this.

  “Secondly,” said Mardak. “We are going to fortify the Mines of Light. Although the buds there will take generations to grow, we will guard them. Tend them, if there is a way. Most importantly, we will make sure that nobody with hostile intent can enter them again.”

  Nobody with hostile intent. No prizes for guessing who that was.

  “And speaking of hostile intent,” said Fergus. “We have received a message from the ogres. With the Runenmer gone, they approach us with cowardly tails hanging between cowardly legs. They want to cease hostilities. Their ally is gone, and I am told that a disease has stricken their various camps.”

  Mardak nodded. “Our scouts have reported their fall in numbers. The ogres are not the threat they once were. Let this be a lesson, clanfolks. Fate is a fickle wind, and it can change direction in an instant.”

  “And now,” said Fergus, “the wind that blows upon them will become a storm. For, Mardak and I have decided that we will not accept their offer of peace. Instead, with our united clan and our new weapons and medallions, we will destroy the ogres for good. Yes, they are still strong. Still dangerous. But together, we will be too much for them.”

  This announcement brought a medley of reactions. Joy, excitement, fear. Some clanfolks were looking forward to an end to hostilities, to finding somewhere to settle as one people. Others were buoyed by their new weaponry, by the comfort of a bigger population, and they thirsted for blood.

  Me? The news didn’t sit well with me.

  I left the crowd now, needing a little time alone. Roddie stayed back with a Lonehill boy who he had bonded with. The boy was the younger brother of the Lonehill teen who had been crushed by a boulder, and the two seemed to have become best friends in my absence. I didn’t have the heart to part them. No matter where I went now, I think Roddie would have to stay here. He had found a home, and he found a young boy who had lost his brother and needed him.

  So I threaded my way out of the crowd, walking through the babble of chatter and questions and pronouncements of how many ogres each Tallsteep would kill.

  I walked through the camp and beyond the last line of tents until I was outside of its boundaries.

  There, I was alone. I was used to this; back when I stayed with the Lonehills, I had always left camp to be alone and practice my spells. So now, I settled on the grass.

  First, I took the giant book out of my new bag. The book was so thick that I could barely hold it with one hand. I opened it, and as I flicked through the pages, I felt a surge of excitement begin in my stomach and then spread through me.

  It was a compendium of spells. Spells of all kinds, ones that used different elementals. Transfiguration spells, corruption spells, all kinds of magic that I had already collected elementals for but had nothing to cast.

  This, together with the medallion and added to increasing my fire rank and earning a sliver of color in my forehead circle…

  It was time.

  I knew it then. After all of this, I was finally ready to leave on my own. Not only that, but the Lonehills and Tallsteeps, or the Lonesteeps as they were now known, had given me a perfect reason to go.

  See, they were going to invade the ogre camps. With their added numbers, new weapons, as well as the ogres’ own problems, I had no doubt they would win.

  But it wouldn’t stop there.

  The clan would flourish. They would expand and perhaps would start looking toward Agnartis and wondering if it was time for the gnomes to fall. I had no complaints about that.

  But I saw a different time, years from now, perhaps generations from now.

  I pictured a band of surviving ogres, ones that somehow escaped the Lonesteeps’ attack. Ones who fled and found somewhere safe to hide, just as the Lonehills had done.

  These ogres would carve out their own sliver of survival, and they would have children.

  They would tell these ogre children stories about the evil warriors and mages who once invaded them. How these men and women used great violence to slaughter them. The children would grow up with revenge burning in their hearts.

  And who knew? Perhaps they would have children, too. The ogres’ numbers would grow again, and with each successive generation, their hate would get stronger.

  This would never end, and it was a circle of history that I didn’t see a part for myself in.

  “Isaac,” said a voice.

  I turned around to find Tosvig, Harrien, and Judah standing there. I wondered what to say to them.

  “You are not staying with us, are you?” said Judah.

  Well, I wouldn’t need to say much after all. They had already guessed.

  “You’re plenty strong enough without me.”

  “We are,” agreed Tosvig.

  “You are one of us,” said Harrien, stepping forward.

  “Not quite. I’ll never be one of you. You are my friends, but we aren’t the same.”

  “Stay for a while,” said Harrien.

  “Only for a few days. Then I’ll have to leave.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I have places to visit. Places where there might be others like me. I suppose I’ll have to watch the sky. Because sooner or later someone else is going to find themselves here, just like I did. Alone, lost, and wondering what the hell to do and where to go.”

  Harrien rushed at me, and before I knew it, he had pulled me into a hug. Tosvig was next, slapping his one hand on my back. Finally, Judah and I exchanged handshakes, and then we were done.

  CHAPTER 50 – Agmame Isaac

  So, this was weird.

  She woke up with her face in the mud. She sat up and wiped it from her eyes, tasting the dirt on her lips and breathing in its stink from where it was smeared all over her nose.

  Looking around, she didn’t recognize where she was. She was in the middle of a vast field of dirt and grass, with a forest to her east, the tree branches completely bare, and a mountain to
her west.

  Had she gotten lost?

  Wait, no. To be lost, you had to know where you’d been in the first place. She tried to think about how she’d ended up here, but she couldn’t even think of where she started from.

  And this sent all kinds of crap swirling around her head. Who was she? Where did she live? Why was none of this stuff coming back to her?

  “Excuse me, madam,” said a voice.

  A man was standing beside her. He was short, rotund, and had a weird question mark-shaped birthmark on his cheek. His eyes were blackened and his face and neck were bruised. If he’d been in a fight recently, then this guy had been on the losing side. Not only that, but his shirt and trousers were ripped in places, smeared with mud in others.

  The first thing she felt was an overwhelming urge to kick this guy in the nuts.

  Seriously, what was with him? She’d just woken up in some god damn meadow, no clue where she was, and here was this guy. Smiling at her from behind a bruised face.

  Had he slipped her something? Maybe she’d been at a bar and gotten wasted or something…

  The man stuck his hand out. “I’m Hank Woldstone. They used to call me the duke.”

  “Huh?”

  “Forget it. You seem to be in trouble.”

  “What happened to your face?” she asked.

  “A disagreement with some folks in a place I used to live. Ran me out of town. Double-crossed me.”

  His face clouded over then, and his smiled faded. Whoever ran this dude outta town, they must have had a good reason.

  Seconds later his smile was back, but it was too late for this bozo. He wasn’t going to fool her with his Rohypnol eyes and leering grin. She knew how to deal with people like this. She couldn’t say how she knew, she couldn’t remember a god damn thing, but she knew.

  You had to stare them in the eyes and tell them to hit the road. Be firm. Otherwise, they wouldn’t get the message, and they’d think you were easy pickings.

  “Listen, I don’t know what your deal is, but if you think those folks busted you up good, you’ve seen nothing yet. Tell me where I am, then get the hell away from me,” she said.

  “You want to know where you are?”

  “Did I stutter?”

  “You’re in a place where people will pay a pretty penny for a girl like you. A girl with a circle on her head.”

  “Circle on my…what?”

  He was staring at her forehead. She touched it, and she felt something gouged into her skin.

  She felt her legs were gonna fall from under her now. Just what the hell was going on?

  Hank reached to his jacket, and he pulled out a knife. A big, long blade with blood smeared on it.

  A knife?

  People would pay for a girl like her? What?

  Hank advanced on her, and her brain flickered between fighting back or running. If she ran, he might catch her. She felt pretty beat. But if she fought…well, the dude had a knife.

  “Don’t worry,” said Hank. “You can struggle if you like. It doesn’t matter what condition you’re in, they’ll buy you all the same. I’ll just make sure I don’t cut your forehead. Everything else is fair game.”

  He tensed his arm and ran at her.

  She was just about to take off in another direction when a ball of flames shot through the air, smashing into Hank and spreading over him so quickly it was as if he’d been dripping with oil.

  He screamed as the flames tore over him, and the air filled with the stink of his clothes and his hair and his skin.

  She’d never heard shrieks like that before. She’d never seen a man on fire before. But there was no time to process it because Hank the human torch ran at her again, with the licks of red and yellow covering his face so she couldn’t see his expression as he madly sprinted in her direction.

  As he reached her, she stepped aside and let him run past, and then she backed away before snagging her foot on something and falling on her ass.

  Hank took another few steps and then sank to his knees, the flames rising above him and reaching to the sky. He flopped forward, smashing his face into the ground. After that, he was still. No sounds, no movement.

  She caught her breath. Or she tried to, but it kept running away from her.

  Thoughts swam in her mind. Questions, worries, even fears, though somehow, she got the sense she wasn’t a fearful person.

  And then, she felt a presence close by.

  Turning to her left, she saw another dude. Tall, and wearing thick robes. He had a circle on his forehead, with a little sliver of red in it. She couldn’t say why, but she didn’t sense the same danger coming from him as she did with Hank. She sensed danger, sure, but not to her. Somehow, she knew that.

  The man stepped forward. She saw tiny plumes of smoke rising from his hand.

  The fire…was it…

  The man walked over to Hank and reached toward his corpse. He took something, then opened up a shoulder bag and dropped it in.

  She got to her feet as the guy approached. No sense in running from this dude; that hadn’t gotten Hank very far, had it?

  “Ma agmame Isaac,” he said.

  Was that French?

  When she didn’t answer, he carried on. “You speak English, or Kartum? Your choice. I don’t mind.”

  The end of volume one

  Thank you for reading