by Jez Cajiao
“How did we do?” I asked her.
“We lost Cam.” She shook her head in sorrow. “One of the Drow got him. I…I’m sorry, Lord, I should have been there. I should have protected him better, I…”
“No.” I said, shoving myself upright and gripping her shoulder, forcing her to look into my eyes. “Cam’s death was not your fault, you hear me? There’s only one dickbag who’s responsible for his death, and that’s that Drow. Also… maybe me. I led you all down here. I made you come with me. The buck stops here,” I said, tapping my chest.
“He died doing what he wanted to,” Barrett said, crouching down next to me and passing over a weak mana potion, which I greedily downed.
“Thanks, man.” I said, feeling the mana migraine dissipate. I drew a deep breath and looked around, checking to see if anyone else was injured, but Oracle hit me with a healing spell before I got the chance to do anything else.
I gritted my teeth, then sighed in relief as the last of my broken bones realigned and bound themselves together, beginning the long slow healing process.
“I’m going to go check on the prisoners…” Lydia said, pushing herself to her feet wearily.
“So, what do you mean ‘he died doing what he wanted to do’?” I asked Barrett when I could get my breath again.
“He was sick of being pushed around, of being a big man, but not being able to look after those he cared about. You took him into the team, taught him to fight…”
“I didn’t pick him, you did…” I said. “And Lydia taught him…”
“Look, do you want me to try to make you feel better, or not?” Barrett sighed, frowning tiredly.
“Sorry, dude.”
“Yeah, well, look, he wanted to protect people. He wanted to feel that his life mattered, and that he wasn’t weak anymore. Thanks to you, he got that. He fought Drow and spiders, goblins and fucking weird lizards underground. He died as well as he could, and while he was alive, he felt valued. There not much more you can ask for.”
“Yeah that…kinda makes me feel better. Thanks, Barrett.” I said, shrugging and examining the cave we were in.
It was about thirty meters on a side, roughly square, with a load of supplies, boxes, and other random shit piled up everywhere. In the middle of the cave was a huge pile of rubble, the remains of the structure the Drow had been building. It had been a bit rough when we arrived, but me dropping their giant fucking Spider-Drow hybrid thingy leader through the roof kind of fucked it up.
I’d been on the roof at the time, and had been buried along with her, so I felt I had a right to be a bit worn out right now.
“You know, I think I’m gonna have a little res…”
“Jax!” came a shout from my right, and Lydia started over, her shout cutting me off, mid mutter.
“Feck,” I whispered, and Barrett snorted in laughter.
“Hey, you wanted to be in charge…” He said, and I glared at him.
“No, I fucking didn’t!” I snapped back. “I was literally kidnapped, forced to fight in an arena, then kicked through a portal to this shithole of a realm. I had to fight a monster that made you crap yourself when I got here, and…”
“Yadda yadda yadda…” Barrett said, waving his hand and cutting me off. “We get it, ‘oh, woe is you’, yadda yadda. Do you want to quit, make someone else the Lord?”
“Well… no…” I grumbled.
“Then shut the fuck up and deal with it. Put your big girl pants on. You can’t have it both ways…my lord…”
“I hate you.”
“Jax!” Lydia repeated, coming to a halt and looking down at me, catching both Barrett and I trying to hide grins.
“Yeah, what’s up, Lydia?” I asked, and she gestured over her shoulder at the last major feature of the room, besides the tunnels that led in and out… the prisoners in their cage.
I reached up a hand and Lydia pulled me to my feet, drawing a groan from me as newly healed bones creaked in protest.
“They’re the smugglers that led the last caravan, Jax, and the one they were skinning…I think she’s still alive.”
“What?” I asked, looking over at the flayed body. It was laid across a table, wrists and ankles secured by straps, and the skin from the back of the neck had been peeled down to the waist in one long single sheet.
The amount of blood on the floor and lack of any sound or movements from the victim had meant we’d just ignored them so far, assuming they were already dead… It didn’t help that we’d taken a lot of injuries ourselves, which meant we’d not had time to look to the prisoners yet.
I hurried over, Oracle still sitting on my shoulder. Since she’d been freed, she’d barely moved away from me, and then only to check on our people. Bane had been laid out next to me, his injuries and Barrett’s being the worst of the group’s, besides my own, and Oracle took turns steadily using my mana on each of us, healing us all as quickly as she could.
Jian stood guard over the prisoners, his scythes sheathed on his back, and the twin swords on either hip, which made him look like either an utter ninja badass, or an idiot, depending on how smooth the drawing of weapons went.
Despite the fight scenes in movies I’d seen, using two swords, or scythes, wasn’t easy. Neither was drawing them from your back. I’d spent hours practicing, and I still occasionally caught the tip of my short swords when I tried it, making me look a right dick.
“You’ve got to let us out!” called out one of the prisoners, and Jian growled at him.
“Be silent! Our lord nearly died to rescue you; the least you can do is show some respect!” Jian snapped at the speaker, an older, grey haired man who gripped the bars of the cage weakly.
“You’re letting her die!” he snapped back at Jian, before switching to gaze pleadingly at us as we examined the woman strapped down on the table. “Please! She’s my granddaughter!”
I waved a hand at him absently to be quiet, as I continued to examine her, speaking only to Oracle.
“Do you think we can put the skin back and heal it?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not; we can make it regrow, so…”
“But what if it regrows the skin fully? Then she’d end up with the flap of skin; it’d hang off her…”
“Cut it away, maybe? No, if we could smooth it back into place, it might heal properly, and it’d use a lot less mana…”
“Why isn’t she moving?” I asked suddenly, crouching down, and brushing her hair away from her face. She hung there, completely limp, but her eyes glared forward, staring at the ground fixedly. I waved a hand in front of her eyes, but there was no reaction, just a slow run of tears down her cheeks.
I checked my mana; it was sitting at seven points, far too low to heal her, and not even high enough to enable me to use my ‘Examine’ spell.
“Maybe she’s been poisoned? Or paralyzed?” Oracle guessed, and I straightened up, moving over to the cage to look into the eyes of the grey-haired man.
“I’ll make this quick, as seconds could count here. I don’t have the mana to heal her, or even to examine her properly. What happened to her?”
“One of the two with the spider legs on their back bit her. That’s what they did to all of us. It makes you stop resisting, you can’t move or speak. When it wore off, we were all in here, and they’d take us out one by one, skinning us.”
“How long until it wears off?” I asked and he shook his head.
“I don’t know. They did it to all of us, then we woke up here. Each time they take someone to skin, they kill them after, so nobody ever wakes up…”
“Great. Okay…” I said, looking around the room for inspiration. My eyes alighted on a box full of silks, and I spun back to him. “Healing potions!” I snapped, gesturing to the stacked boxes. “Did you have any?”
“We had a few, but… I don’t know what happened to them! We didn’t have a lot to sell anyway, it was just the couple we always took in case we needed them. For all I know, someone used them.”
“There were a few, but I don’t know…”
“Everyone!” I called out, smacking my hands together hard, getting the attention of the entire cavern. “I need this place searched. we’re looking for healing or mana potions, any herbs or plants, bandages, or anything else we can find. Get looking!”
“Ummm, we were already looking to use them on you and the others, Jax.” Lydia whispered, and I grimaced, shaking my head.
“Well, keep looking, I guess.” I said, and I turned back to the people in the cage. There were four of them, three men and a woman, all naked, filthy, and starving. I looked them over and wished I had the mana for a fountain for them, but I needed all I could get. “Okay, I need my people searching the cavern, not watching over you, so for now, until it’s safe and sorted, you’re staying in there. Sorry,” I said, and I turned away, walking over to the remnants of the fire. The meat they’d had there was pretty messed up, having been hit by my spell, but maybe…
“The meat’s human,” the older man called out, and I looked at him. “The meat, the stuff that they had roasting…apart from that spider they found, all the meat they ate was…us.”
I swallowed hard and backed away from the meat I’d been reaching for, my plan of giving it to the prisoners well and truly derailed.
“Okay, thanks for the heads up,” I muttered and turned to the Drow bodies nearby. I started searching them quickly, as did Bane and Barrett, but as Lydia warned us, they didn’t have any potions, and while they had a handful of likely magical rings and gear, I’d need to ‘Examine’ it to work out what it was, so they were out.
Instead we moved on to more bodies and the rest of the cavern, the only one of us to find a potion was Miren, and that was a glowing ruby red, drawing a relieved sigh from us all.
The cavern went quiet as she handed it over to me, my obvious wounds, combined with those of my teams, made the girls grandfather speak up quickly, unaware I was communicating with Oracle already.
“It should help her, if we can smooth the skin back into place and it’s not died yet…I’m sorry, Jax; I just don’t know if it’ll work…”
“We can give it a shot. If it doesn’t work, then we’ll have to cut the skin free again, then heal her up…wait, will she be able to swallow the potion, though?”
“No, as heavily paralyzed as she is, it could drown her…we’d need to wait for her to come around first…”
“Please! Look, I don’t know who you are, but she’s half-skinned, for fuck’s sake…please, she’d my granddaughter, I’ll do anything!” he begged, interrupting my conversation, and I frowned at him before deliberately smoothing away the obvious irritation on my face.
“She’s paralyzed, so she can’t drink it. It’d drown her if we tried…”
“I’ll buy it from you!” he said quickly, cutting me off.
“For…what the hell are you going to pay for it with? You’re in a fucking cage, and you’re naked…anything you managed to keep back is in the ‘prison wallet’, so I don’t fucking want it, pal.” I shook my head, and as I started to explain what we were going to have to do, he cut me off again.
“Look! I’m a wealthy man, okay? In Himnel,” he said, pointing upwards. “Give her the potion, free us, and take us back to the city, it’ll be worth it for you! What do you want? Weapons? Gold? Magical books? I’ve got them, and I can get more, I swear!”
I stopped and stared at him. I’d always planned on giving it to the girl, but fuck it, I did need help up there.
“I give this to the girl, instead of one of my team, and you’ll do what, exactly?”
“What do you want?!” He growled back at me. “She’s my only family, she’s all I have left! Tell me what you want, and it’s yours.”
“I have people I need to get out of Himnel, and I need supplies and manastones.” I said.
“I can arrange it! I can make it happen. I’ve been using the smuggler’s path for years. I can lead you out, I can get you anything. I swear it. Just please, help her!”
I nodded and stepped forward. My mana was nearly high enough for me to make a single Oath, and I felt Oracle’s unhappy approval as she sensed my intent.
“Then you’ll swear to it with an Oath?” I asked him, and he stiffened, before sagging against the bars of the cage.
“I can’t,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “I’m a smuggler, I already swore Oaths to the Guild. I can’t swear another; they’d know, and as soon as they see me, they’ll kill me…”
“Convenient.” I said, stepping away from him and moving to check on the girl strapped to the table.
“No, you don’t understand! You want help up there? You want me to get you gear, smuggle you out of the city? How would I do that if the Smugglers Guild are hunting me? All I’d do is draw a target on both our backs… the Guild will reward you for this anyway… wait… here!”
He got a faraway look on his face and his lips moved soundlessly for a few seconds before my notifications flashed again.
“There! Now you know you can trust me…” he said and gestured to the girl. “Please, whoever you are, she’s all I have left…” I could see the unshed tears standing in his eyes as he waited, and I shook my head, straightening up.
“Fucking hell, now I’ve got to work through these god-damn notific…”
I broke off, the first of the notifications just popping up into my vision, as I saw movement in the tunnel leading out of the cavern. I frantically swiped the notifications away, the resistance caused by there being so many resulting in a feeling like a porn popup in the late nineties. As soon as one began to close, another took its place, then another, as shouts and screams filled the air around me.
I finally managed to get rid of them, just in time to see the Drow aiming down his bow at me, and the arrow as it took flight, speeding at my unarmored heart.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I twisted at the hip, with no time to move properly, and turned to take the arrow sideways on, making as small a target as possible. I had one chance, and that was down to my insanely increased Agility. I concentrated, the cavern shrinking down to the three of us: the Drow Archer, his arrow, and myself.
I saw the fletching shudder as the arrow flew towards me, as the silvery metal of the arrowhead glinted with reflected firelight. Time slowed to a crawl as my miniscule amount of mana was forced into my body instinctively, and I felt the time coming closer…
I saw in my peripheral vision as my mana ticked down from four points, to three, to two…and my left hand flashed forward, even as my right yanked the dagger on that hip free, and brought it up behind my back to head height.
The final point of mana vanished, and as time sped back up…my left hand slammed into the arrow, fingers closing tight, and I yanked backwards, the arrow’s tip slicing a thin line across my right pectoral muscle as I caught it.
I saw the look of shock on the Drow’s face as he saw what I’d just done, and I brought my right hand around, straightening my body and snapping my hips to give extra force to the throw as I’d been taught, oh so long ago.
I heard the phantom voice of West shouting at me from my memories…
“Twist and pop! Your hips ain’t just for the ladies, lad! Use them, use the power in them to surprise your target, and it’ll be the last fucking thing they see!”
The dagger blurred across the room, almost to quickly to see, flipping end over end, to hit the Drow in the eye…hilt first.
“Fuuuuuck!” I ground out, running forward, and dipping low to sweep up a silvery Drow sword from the floor on the way, and wincing as my mana migraine flared anew. The goddamn throw had been perfect; the aim, the force…but to land hilt first!
I closed the distance towards the door, glimpsing Jian running ahead of me to engage another Drow, and I blinked, forcing myself to take in the rest of the room.
The
tunnel they’d come from was close to the corner of the room, hemmed in by boxes and stacks of gear from the caravans, which made it hard to surround.
There were four of them…one archer and three melee types. One had a short spear, the other two had swords, and the archer was just starting to straighten up, clutching his face, which was blotchy with fury.
Jian parried the first stab from his Drow, getting to him just ahead of me. The other two had stepped up next to the first, standing shoulder to shoulder and waiting for us to come to them.
Lydia and Barrett came up on my left, while Jian was on my right, and we filled the small space between them and the rest of the cavern.
I could see the Drow Archer behind them as he glared at me, teeth gritted. He pulled back on his bow, aiming and releasing in one sure, smooth movement that cut the air between two of his companions, and I dove to the ground, barely in time, sliding to a halt in front of the entire group.
I heard the others closing in, rushing to us to help, but with the limited room, and their relatively low level of skill, our own archers, Miren and Stephanos, didn’t dare fire.
I rolled across the floor, a clang ringing out next to my head, letting me know just how close I’d come to dying of ‘damn, shiny sword to the face’ poisoning.
I came to a stop, then twisted frantically, lashing out with both feet, and taking the furthest left Drow to the floor, which gave Jian and Barrett time to face the remaining two. The Archer stepped forward and drew back on his bow, aiming at me with a wicked grin as the Drow I’d taken down rolled back to his feet and I scrambled backwards.
Just as the arrow left the bow, a second, smaller dagger sprouted from the Drow Archer’s eye, making him scream and jerk back. The blade sunk up to the hilt in the eye, and I felt Bane’s proud grin as I recognized the blade.
I’d had one thrown at me before, and I knew they were both insanely sharp, and coated with a deadly poison, usually.
I twisted, dodging the arrow that clattered off the stone floor next to me, and rolled back flat onto my back, bringing my legs up as high as I could, before thrusting with my hips and bringing my feet down, hard.