by J. T. Wright
The kid had a point; Adventurers were a greedy bunch of bastards. You’d think they were all nobles the way they grasped after every coin. Wasn’t Alistern using that very fact to manipulate Kirstin into accepting Trent?
“Listen, Trent,” Alistern recognized the problem, “you’re a Summons. You’re supposed to look out for your master, and that’s what the real issue is here. As a member of your master’s party, it is suspicious of me to have this stone and then to give it away. I need you to get past that. I'm looking out for Kirstin, too, more than she knows.”
Trent stood still for a few moments, and Alistern wondered if he needed to explain more. As he sought for words to convince the Summons he wasn’t out to harm anyone, the need for him to do so disappeared. The Stone crumbled away as Trent learned the Skill.
You have learned Create Traps Level 1. You now have a better understanding of traps. Your traps will be 5% more effective. +100 Experience for learning Class related Skill.
This was a very exciting message for Trent. He was a step closer to usefulness. His suspicion towards Alistern remained, but now it was directed at the man’s identity, not his intentions.
“Good, then we can get started. Cullen’s bringing a shit storm down on us, and he'll expect us to be prepared.” Looking at the opportunities the terrain held, Alistern rubbed his hands together and mentally reviewed the items in his Storage. It wasn’t the best place to set traps, not killing traps at least, but Howlers weren’t a sophisticated enemy. They could slow them down some.
For the next few hours, Alistern kept Trent running. They threw out caltrops and set tripwires. They dug and covered small holes for spike traps, and a few explosive ones. Even an acid trap or two.
Alistern was walking a fine line. His traps couldn’t be too effective, or Kirstin and the others might wonder why he was so well-prepared. This whole trapping-the-field routine was mostly for Trent’s benefit.
Whisper rods had a limited range, but the Duke had other ways to communicate with his agents. Cullen had passed the news that Trent needed Create Traps, and the Duke had told Alistern to teach the Summons. The drawback to the method used to pass this message was that it couldn’t convey detailed reports, and could only be used once or twice a day. The message hadn’t mentioned that Trent was a thrice-damned Survivalist, for instance. Alistern doubted the Duke himself knew.
If Cullen were anyone else, Alistern would have found a quiet moment to instruct him on simple ways to send important information. However, Cullen wasn’t one to accept constructive criticism from a former trainee, even if that trainee technically, publicly, outranked him now. Alistern didn’t know how Michael managed to work with the man.
Alistern was teaching Trent the finer points of concealing a Trap when a sharp whistle informed them it was time to return to the camp. Alistern was pleased with the boy; he learned quickly and listened well. Their efforts wouldn’t do much to stop a howler pack, but that wasn’t much of a worry. This whole mess was probably engineered by Cullen to smooth the rough edges off Trent and the recruits. If all else failed, Cullen, Alistern, and the senior Guardsmen could handle a few Howlers.
Cullen, back in the camp, wasn’t as pleased with the fortifications his Recruits had built. Oh, the trench was a decent size, and the extra dirt had been packed and hardened to form a wall and a fighting platform. That was all good. He would have preferred to see stakes driven in at an angle to keep the enemy back, but time was limited.
What Cullen found unacceptable was that his Guardsmen had done most of the work. The recruits and Adventurers were useless. The Adventurers weren’t his problem, but he would have to see that the recruits got more practice digging, maybe a trench or two a night until they were proficient at it. Right before bed, a little light exercise would help them sleep.
Surprisingly, Tersa had performed the best! The girl was good at simple tasks like digging holes and bashing things. She had a good attitude too. She complained as much as the rest, but she did it while digging, never stopping to lean on her shovel.
Arisa’s hands had blistered so badly Cullen had had to give her a healing salve. Lerner had spent a lot of time muttering about how knights were above such trivial tasks. He shut up when Cullen reminded him that squires had to be alive to become knights.
Geoffen and Bailey threw as much dirt on each other as they did out of the hole. Those two were still rinsing dirt out of their mouths. As for Devon, he did well enough when he wasn’t distracted, but he was distracted by everything.
Cullen had worked with worse. He probably would again after these few were full Guardsmen. He’d also worked with better, a fact he was very fond of saying out loud.
The Recruits were put into position. They would face the brunt of the attack, not that they were told that. Spears and bows were handed out. Even to Arisa, though she complained loudly. She shut up after the Sergeant asked her how many Mana potions she had prepared, and what she was going to do when she ran out and the Howlers cleared the trench. Mages always forgot that Mana could be depleted.
Trent stood at the center of the Recruit’s line, with Tersa on his left and Devon on his right. He was the only one without a spear since he had not been trained in the weapon’s use yet. He was a little disgruntled over this; he knew that he had the strength to use a longer weapon now.
Cullen said his short bow would be fine even up close. He didn’t provide him with extra arrows, either. Trent borrowed Tersa’s longbow just long enough to discover he couldn’t draw it and then settled back, glad his mask covered his sullen face.
It wasn’t long before the first howls could be heard. Deep and piercing like a thousand wolves on the night of a full moon, the sound had the recruits starting to doubt the Sergeant’s estimate of “about" a hundred beasts.
“Stop your quivering,” Cullen shouted, “it’s just Howlers! Farmers beat them off with brooms!” A soft titter at the Sergeant’s exaggeration, but their hands still shook. Nervously they nocked arrows.
The Howlers crested a hill in the distance. Leaping and loping, long legs propelling them forward, the creatures screamed in mindless hate and hunger. They were too distant for details to be seen, but the Recruits could imagine mouths full of teeth and beady eyes barely visible amongst matted hair.
Bows were drawn as the Howlers came over the next hill. “Hold, damn you, they aren’t within range! The first one to fire without the command fills in the trench by himself!” That put the Recruits’ focus firmly on the task at hand. They hadn’t been aware the trench was going to be filled back in.
Hands ceased their trembling, nerves steeled. The first Howler entered the killing zone and tripped over a concealed wire. Trent grinned, that had been one of his, all the simplest ones had been.
“Hold! Let more of them enter the zone! If you miss one, you might hit the one next to it. In battle, a hit is more important than perfect accuracy. Hold… hold…fire!”
At the Sergeant’s command, arrows leaped from bows and plunged toward the enemy. Six of the pack fell and tumbled, tripping the beasts behind them. Howlers bit at one another in frustration but kept coming. Another volley of six, and six more fell. None of the recruits had hit their actual targets at that range, but the Sergeant’s was right; a hit was a hit.
The next six arrows missed; they were loosed into the ground only a few feet past the edge of the trench. The recruits had fumbled their shots in the face of a sudden explosion. Fire and furious sound erupted when one of the Howlers set off one of Alistern’s advanced traps.
“Damn you, Alistern, who told you to set a fire trap!” Cullen shot a glare at the smirking Scout whose blast had eliminated ten of the Howlers. Alistern’s smirk fell, and he matched the Sergeant glare for glare. Cullen just loved those little ‘slips' with Alistern’s real name.
Disaster struck the Howlers’ advance. The beasts caught in the fire blast weren’t all dead yet, and they ran amongst their kin, spreading the flames. Howlers, with their greasy, matted fur, were h
ighly flammable. Arisa’s eyes widened at the discovery.
The young Guard mage cast her bow aside and grabbed up her staff. The tier-one Spell, Fireball, formed on the end of her staff as Arisa chanted. Soon her own fiery death flew forth to wreak havoc on the disorganized pack. Free to use her weapon of choice, Arista was much more satisfied with the results of this attack.
Cullen’s furious eyes found Alistern again. The Scout’s smirk was firmly back in place. Alistern was spared the Sergeant’s wrath as Mathias, the Fire Elementalist Adventurer, stepped up to join the fun. Flammable and low leveled, the Howlers were exactly the kind of opponent he preferred.
“Who invited you to my party, Mage? You mess up my training exercise, and I'll see you buried with the vermin!”
Bowstrings paused at this. Was the Sergeant implying that not only would they have to fill in the trench, they would also have to bury the Howlers? The evening did not promise to be a pleasant one.
“Frank, get a Fire Quenching scroll ready; the Duke will have our heads if we burn the entirety of the grasslands!”
Cullen was not happy with this turn of events. He had pictured a nice hot close encounter, with recruits pissing on themselves but eventually pulling it off. The tide had clearly turned against the Howlers before they halfway cleared the killing field.
“Acid! You set acid traps too, you asshole!” Cullen screamed as another vicious trap took out ten Howlers in an instant. At least the runt would get in on some of the action. The death and fire amidst their ranks didn’t stop the Howlers; they were driven by irrational hunger. Trent hadn’t gotten into the fight yet as his short bow’s range was limited, but now six bows and a fireball flew out almost continuously.
The enemy’s fearsome cries had turned to shrieks, which fueled the Recruits’ bloodlust. Arrows flew, Howlers burned, the grass burned. That last might have been a problem if not for Corporal Francis stepping forward to tear a scroll as the last Howler fell. A wide column of air swept forth from the scroll, and Trent’s eyes widened in horror. He’d helped build enough fires now to know that wind fueled fire. Had the Corporal used the wrong Spell!?
No, as the wind pushed through the flames, the fire stopped. It didn’t die down, but stopped, as if it had never been, leaving scorched earth and bodies as the only sign of its existence. And the wind reached everywhere, within moments the world was still; empty of wind blowing, fire dancing, and the obscene singing of the howlers. Only the charred smell of burned flesh was left.
“There are two lessons in this,” Cullen said as the recruits studied their handy work. “The first is, you might trust a Scout’s word but never trust his actions.”
No one questioned this unfair bit of wisdom, there was only one Scout present after all, and he answered the Sergeant’s words with a smirk. The Sergeant turned to Arisa, “Can you identify the next lesson, Recruit?”
Arisa shook her head. “Ah, no, Sergeant, I… No.”
“Tell me, Recruit, do you know a Spell for putting out a wildfire?” Arisa shook her head again, clutching her staff. “What about you, Scout? Did you know we had Fire Quenching scrolls with us?”
Alistern almost said that he trusted in the Sergeant’s infinite wisdom and power to see them through any emergency but held his tongue. The Sergeant had an important point to make here, and as an instructor himself, Alistern wouldn’t sabotage him. He settled for a simple, “No Sergeant, I did not,” instead.
This put Cullen off his stride for a moment. he was sure the Scout would have something snarky to say. “No, you didn't.
“The lesson, recruits,” he continued, “is that fire, set by flint or by magic, will spread! It would consume all the grass and even the air around us. Unprepared, you would have destroyed your enemy, to die yourself, trapped in your fortifications, gasping for air, choking on smoke. Be aware of the consequences of a tool or Spell before you employ it.”
He let his words sink in. “Still, today you defeated an enemy that had you out-numbered twenty to one. That’s a job well done.” Faces brightened at the unexpected praise. “An unthinking, pathetic, weak enemy, but you did win, so well done.” That was more like it. “Now, clean up!” And the finishing blow.
**********
“What I don’t understand is how did the wind Spell kill the fire?” Trent threw another spade full of dirt onto the mass grave that the trench had become. In death, with most of their fur burned off, the Howlers had looked like grotesque dogs with heads far too big for their bodies. It had been a disgusting few hours getting them all into the dirt.
“That’s what you’re wondering?” Devon said, throwing down his shovel, the job finally complete. “You realize there is a zero percent chance of us resting now, right? No way is the Sergeant letting us make camp here.”
“I predict,” Geoffen said, closing his eyes and placing a hand to his forehead, and announcing in a dramatic voice. ”A two-hour ride, at the end of which we will set up another complete camp. Possibly a camp with a trench.”
“Either tonight or tomorrow,” Lerner said, flopping down. “Sergeant’s eyes get all giddy every time he looks at the damn hole.”
Trent used to jump when the recruits spoke of Cullen like they weren’t afraid of him. Didn’t they realize that the man heard everything? With time, he realized there were some things the Sergeant chose not to hear. Recruits had to vent occasionally.
Surprisingly, it was Tersa who answered his question. “Not wind in the Fire Quenching, mostly, not wind.” Tersa had the highest Constitution of everyone present, but even she was starting to wilt after the day’s events.
“It’s earth and water carried by wind,” Tersa sighed and leaned on her shovel for the first time that day. “Water to quench, earth to smother, wind to carry. It’s a pretty high-tiered Spell, but Sergeant makes sure it’s around, mostly.”
“Oh, she's right,” Arisa said, staring at Tersa like she was a particularly fascinating form of ugly insect. “Not sure how she knew that, but she is right. About the, uh, Spell. I didn’t know Sergeant Cullen kept it on hand.”
Tersa flushed in embarrassment and annoyance. “I can read! Just because I can’t cast magic, doesn’t mean I can’t read about it!”
Arisa hurriedly apologized, she’d spoken unthinkingly, something she sometimes did. Everyone knew Tersa wanted magic; no one without some magic ever got an Advanced Class. Tersa was sure the reason she hadn’t been able to specialize at Level 5 was her lack of magic. She was also a little sensitive about it.
Trent wanted to reassure his friend, but before he could, Cullen broke in with the words they were dreading.
“Listen up, Recruits,” he said, walking over, hand on the hilt of his sword. “You’ve managed to accomplish your task with your usual lack of grace and precision! Congratulations! Now, as the caring Sergeant I know you know me to be, I cannot ask you to bed down on a grave.”
The Sergeant broke off as the recruits cringed. A look of horror spread across his face, and the Recruits wondered what fresh hell he was about to spring on them. But the Sergeant wasn’t looking at them. His eyes were fixed on the area near where the first Howler had fallen.
To Cullen’s absolute disbelief, a small black ball had formed at that location, and Cullen fervently hoped it wasn’t what he thought it was. A sound like a crack of lightning split the air making the recruits jump. Cullen stood still; he’d been expecting the sound. He'd heard it many times before.
A Trial. An Instant Trial formed on a scene of fire and death. This was bad! This was very bad! They weren’t ready for this! The Trial’s gateway expanded rapidly, rushing at extreme speed in all directions. Expanding and looking. Looking for challengers.
Cullen spun on his heels, bellowing at the top of his lungs, “Trial! Everyone grab weapons, supplies, anything nearby, anything that can be useful, anything!”
Whatever else he might have said was lost as the Trial gateway enveloped the recruits, and then him. The black ball spread until it covered the Advent
urers and Senior Guardsmen, then with a second crack, it collapsed in on itself. Challengers had been found.
You have entered a Trial. Trial of Survival, Lands of the Undying Lord.
Chapter 19
The pleasant summer sky was gone. In its place, billowing black clouds stretched into the horizon. The air was humid and heavy. Lightning flashed, occasionally reaching down to strike against the earth.
All that separated the group from this environment was a translucent dome of white light. The boundary of this dome could be seen roughly a mile away, marking the edge of the Safe Zone. All challengers of an Instant Trail started out in a place like this. It wouldn’t last long, a few hours at best, just long enough for the group to get their bearings. It would have to do.
Sergeant Cullen looked out at the vast wasteland. Nothing living could be seen. Dead trees and crumbling ruins dotted the landscape. Ravines and canyons, stone and dirt; all browns, blacks, and greys with no bright colors to light the atmosphere. Oppressive was the only word that came to the Sergeant’s mind.
He took a deep breath. Inside he screamed in rage; they were not prepared for this. Outwardly he kept his face impassive. The recruits were looking around bewildered, any hint of unease from him would send them into a panic. Only Trent seemed… not calm exactly. The boy had a distant look on his face as if he were studying his Status.
Another breath, and then the Sergeant spoke in a loud booming voice. “Everyone, here, now.”
The recruits formed a line in front of him; the senior Guardsmen and Adventurers hurried over. Everyone had been caught by the Trial’s opening. Whether that was a good thing remained to be seen. For now, the group took solace in the Sergeant’s confident voice and authority.
Cullen maintained his impassive demeanor as everyone gathered around. He looked at what he had to work with. The Guardsmen would stand, the recruits would obey, the Adventurers… hard to say, but at least they were new to their trade. More experienced Adventurers could be hard to lead.