Spectres & Skin: Exodus

by RJ Creed

  “Where’s Ryken?” I asked, daring to glance behind him, only to see the two young kids drawing little grimy daggers and advancing to flank the older kid and stare me down. “The hell is happening?”

  I inspected the older kid as he pulled his arm back and flicked his eyes over me, deciding on a new tactic. I could have turned to run, but they would catch me with little trouble.

  Jerold Rook

  Level 8 Human

  Rookery Pickpocket

  Neutral

  “How rich?” the kid asked them.

  “He has loadsa coins!”

  “I don’t,” I said through gritted teeth as I leapt to the left to avoid another jab. The kid, Jerold, narrowed his eyes and threw all of his weight into the next thrust. I stumbled backwards and fell on the ground. Again. I swallowed and held up my hands as the kids laughed at me. “I only have like, a hundred.”

  They all gasped, and then looked at each other. “Get him, pin him!” Jerold ordered, and the two kids scrambled to my side and sat on my flailing arms.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Where’s the purse, Kirby?” he asked.

  “Kirby?”

  “In the bag! Quick!” The kid giggled as I struggled and slapped my cheeks to make the other little kid laugh.

  “Get off me, I’m the fucking chosen one!” I yelled.

  “I’m the fuggin’ chosen one!” Kirby squealed. Jerold rooted around and found some food I had packed for later, and pocketed that. He pulled out the coinpurse and emptied some of the coins into his hand with a delighted gasp.

  “Gonna have to get his legs, boys, so he can’t run after us.”

  The two kids brandished their daggers, which looked far bigger than they actually were, and eyed my frantically kicking legs. “No, no, don’t get my legs!” I cried. What did that even mean? I wanted to keep my legs. My legs were mine! I had grown very attached to my legs.

  Moro leapt from the balcony at that point and curled back her lips in a silent snarl. Jerold looked at her with big eyes and then at me, and then back at her.

  I could get Moro to attack. When they were distracted, I could use Draw Strike on one of the kids, and Disarm on the other. I wouldn’t use all of my mana or stamina. I wouldn’t lose the feeling in my legs.

  But, hell, could I stab an eight-year-old kid with a knife? Could I order an animal to maul a twelve-year-old?

  “Fuck!” I yelled, arching my head back as the first dagger found its way to my thigh. The first blow from a weak, young arm didn’t even pierce fully through the armour, but a second one in the same place had me grunting in pain. Hot, slick blood pooled on my thigh and stuck my skin to the black material. I couldn’t let them peel away my HP before my life was put on the line in my first ever dungeon.

  “Moro,” I spat. The wolf’s muscles tensed.

  “Hey!” someone shouted.

  There was a scrambling noise just as the second knife dug its way through the armour and found my skin on my other thigh. Warm liquid slid down and coated my upper leg and I growled and struggled with all my strength.

  I heard the clash of Jerold’s rapier against something else, and the kid yelling out in his own defence. Kirby, the kid, yanked his dagger from my leg and looked up, and I took that split second to twist my body and slam my heel into his shin with all my strength. The kid squealed in pain and I yanked my arm away. I grabbed his dominant wrist and unnaturally turned it until he screamed and his fingers went slack. The other kid stabbed at my existing thigh wound again and again as I disarmed Kirby and then shoved him away.

  With a usable arm, I punched the other kid in the side and scrabbled away before pushing myself to my feet. The pain of being repeatedly stabbed was almost blinding, and my face was wet with sweat.

  “You need to … stop getting into these … fucking idiot situations!” Ryken roared at me, twisting Jerold’s arm behind his back until the kid hiccuped out a sob. The two eight-year-olds had fled, crying.

  “Jesus,” I muttered, rotating my right arm and figuring it was probably sprained. I couldn’t even limp, since my two legs hurt equally. I lurched forward and made a motion for Ryken to let the kid go.

  “He has your money!”

  “He can keep it, dude, I’m going to die tonight.” I spat bitterly on the floor as Ryken let the kid go, who turned to me with huge eyes, and then took off like a shot in the opposite direction.

  Ryken stared at me for a moment, anger in his eyes, and said nothing for a while. I caught my breath and allowed my stamina gauge to fully refill. My health bar continued to tick downwards at a fairly steady rate, though, and I felt pretty woozy. He looked down at my legs, the black doing its best to hide the dark red stains pooling outwards, especially on my left thigh. Thick blood was trickling into my shoe on that side.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, sounding kind of scared for the first time since I’d met him.

  “I’m fine, they were kids.”

  “They’re not just kids,” he said. “They’re people who have had to work harder to survive every single day than you’ve ever worked for anything in your life.”

  “Uh huh,” I agreed, staggering a little. Ryken quickly grabbed onto my arm and leaned me against the wall. “Was that dagger cursed, or..?”

  “I think the brat caught an artery,” he muttered. I blinked slowly.

  “Oh, shit,” I mumbled.

  “Sit down … OK, yeah, like that. Stay there.”

  I opened my eyes — hadn’t realised they were closed — and saw that I was sitting against the wall now. Ryken pulled out all the bandages from his pack and set about tightly tying them to my leg.

  After a couple of minutes and a few of his favourite cursewords, he stepped back to squint at his handiwork. I opened my eyes, already feeling a little better, to see that my HP was no longer spilling away like lifeblood. It was beginning to slowly tick back upwards again.

  “Thanks,” I said. My mouth was dry. I fumbled for my water skin and sucked down a couple of gulps, soon feeling a lot less like I was a handful of painful minutes from death.

  “You got unlucky,” he said, which was pretty close to nice, and honestly kind of freaked me out. “But, fuck, Matt, you should have been able to get a couple good hits in. And why did you give them all your coins? How are you going to get supplies?”

  I took a few deep breaths and sat up straighter against the wall. “I don’t know. What supplies do we even need?”

  “Bandages now, thanks to your stupidity. You followed street urchins into an alleyway in their home territory. Idiot.”

  “They said they were bringing me to you.”

  Ryken shook his head at me, and got to his feet. “You’re a lost fucking cause.”

  I ignored him. Mostly because I kind of felt like agreeing. I stood up and tested out my legs. They still really ached but it felt like they had skipped a few days of the healing process — that was something I really did appreciate about this world.

  “We have to go meet Roark now. The dungeon … we have to complete it before they get there and set up traps or something. We have to try to get the girl back by force without letting them get the treasure. Or, you know, everything …. explodes. I don’t even know anymore.”

  “Hey, cockend. If there’s anything you can do to save Dawnspire, and you don’t do it, I’m going to kill you myself,” Ryken said, striding off back in the direction of the spire. “That’s not an idle fucking threat, Matthew.”

  “Alright, alright,” I said, following after him with my hands thrust in my pockets. If there had been a rock lying nearby, I would have kicked it.

  “The Falchion would make it clean. I wouldn’t. I’ll go for the eyes.”

  “I said I get it.”

  “With a rusty fuckin’...”

  “Enough!”

  We stormed the rest of the way back to Roark in silence. Why was in the habit of letting this teenage edgelord get in my head?

  The leathersmith was sitting nearby a
nd people-watching, looking impatient and irritated, until he saw us and stood up with that wide trademark smile on his face again. He nodded at Ryken, and then frowned at the bloody bandage around my left leg.

  “Seriously, Matthew?” he asked. “Should I have gone with you?”

  Yes. “Nah,” I said.

  “He ran into a couple of preteens,” Ryken explained, jerking his thumb in my direction.

  “Right. It happens to … the best of us?”

  I let out an exaggerated sigh. “They— It doesn’t really matter. Have we done everything? Shall we go?”

  “We’re going to meet them, yeah? Where is it?”

  Roark turned to him. “The dungeon,” he said. “Artur told me they didn’t trust us enough. They’re not handing over the girl until they have the treasure in their hands.”

  “So we’re going to get the treasure anyway, right? You said the girl was…” He leaned into me. “...immortal, right? So we just go for the loot.”

  I gritted my teeth but I wasn’t sure why. He was right, after all, but they hadn’t killed her yet, or let her go, and that freaked me out a little. Why hadn’t they? Were they torturing her, or was something else going on? I had no idea.

  “We’re going for the loot,” I said quietly. Roark nodded along to my words. “We’re going to take the girl by force and only give up the treasure as a last resort.”

  Ryken’s face twisted into a smile at those words. “OK, that sounds great to me. We have the statue, they have the map,” Ryken confirmed. “I have a copy of the map, too, so we should be fine. What’s the plan?”

  “We hurry,” I said simply. “Although, saying that … I have one stop along the way. If that’s alright.”

  Pollux scratched the bald spot on the top of his head as he listened to my garbled, extended explanation.

  “So, you see, I slipped up. That doesn’t mean that I’m a traitor. I know I already failed at doing the thing that you wanted me to do, but … the Falchion are still inside the gates. I’ve been hearing a lot of whispers. And I’ve said nothing.”

  The merchant nodded, his face shining with exertion and lit by the warm glow of his bonfire. He was burning garbage and old rotten crates and the smoke was making my eyes water. “I have heard more rumours,” he conceded. “I’m sure you understand why I don’t really … trust you, though.” He nodded to the wolf. “First, you hang out with an awful lot of Collective members for someone who is planning on betraying them.”

  I glanced at Ryken, who shrugged as if he found that accusation fair.

  “I see that,” I said. “Is there anything else I can do to get you to do this for me? I could have tried to find someone else in this time, I guess … but I’ve had a lot on my plate. And I don’t want these people to die. That’d suck.”

  “I’m going to test you one more time,” Pollux said, running his tongue along his dry lower lip.

  “Lay it on me, Poll.”

  He blew out a breath, glancing first at me and then at Ryken and Roark, and then finally at Moro, who was staring at a nearby dancing ember.

  “There’s a plot,” he said, “by the enemies in the city.”

  “OK.”

  “They plan to kill three of the Brothers in their beds,” Pollux said, his face reddening further with every word he spoke. “I heard this on the grapevine, you see. And I’m doing my civic duty and reporting it to the Collective. It’s your choice whether or not you pass it on to your superiors.”

  “Do you … know which ones?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  Pollux screwed up his face in thought. “It’s Caspian. That b—” He stopped himself from saying whatever terrible word he’d thought up. “Definitely Caspian. The Father’s hand that holds the sword. Also I think it was Greous, the Brother who handles their horses. And Dareth, the blademaster. The three of them gone would put a serious wound in the side of the Collective. I mean, a really serious one. You assure me that you won’t tell the Collective, and I will work for you for a stipend.”

  “That’s…” I felt blood drain from my face.

  Critical Decision!

  You have been faced with a choice that will alter the course of your journey, and the world around you.

  You can either warn your superiors in the Collective of an impending strategic attack, or you can choose not to, in which case Pollux will deliver desperately-needed supplies to Freehill on time to save them all.

  Do you save Caspian, Greous and Dareth, or do you save Alina, Lucius and the other rebels?

  I stared at the text for a while, and then I dismissed it. Fuck. I didn’t realise a decision like that would be so hard. Fuck Caspian, and I had no idea who or what a Greous was, but Dareth had shown me nothing but support and kindness, and asked for nothing in return.

  “Are … you agreeable?” Pollux asked.

  “Yes,” I forced out. “I won’t tell. Leave for Freehill the first moment you’re able to.”

  “I will leave the supplies I gathered somewhere outside your home,” Ryken suggested. “How about in one of those barrels?” He nodded his head in their direction.

  Pollux agreed that that was best. “I’ll leave the moment I receive word,” he said.

  My eyes felt very hot and dry at that moment. I felt like a piece of shit. But I wouldn’t feel any better if I had made the opposite decision either.

  “Let’s go,” I said to the others. Quickly, before I felt like I needed to change my mind. I had no reason to rescue one faction over the other, if I really thought about it. Did I? I didn’t want to think about it any more than I already had. I had made my choice. I was going to have to live with it.

  Or … maybe I wasn’t.

  Either way.

  We trudged on, and to their credit, neither Ryken nor Roark said a word about my decision.

  This was it. There was nothing left. Like everyone had been saying since I had arrived, and like the prophecy had confirmed for me: I was going to meet with the Falchion, with the wielder of the sword that could cut through spectres. I was going to either sacrifice myself for the Collective so that the Father could summon Titania, right? Or, on the offchance I survived something that seemed completely implausible like this, I was going to have to save the world. That was the summation of all the information I had about my future here.

  I had to think, as we travelled in silence, why the hell I didn’t just walk away from all this. I could go and enjoy my newfound mortality somewhere nearby. I could take up whittling and teach Moro spells to keep people away.

  I would lose everyone I had met here. I would lose everything I recognised. The Falchion would be worse for Dawnspire than the Collective were. The Blight would grow and spread across the land. The Collective may even be out for my blood. A girl I had bonded with, albeit briefly, would be hurt. She might not be able to find her brother. The two guys I was walking with at that moment … their lives would be ruined, too.

  I just couldn’t wrap my head around how I was going to be able to defeat anybody, chosen by Titania or not. My gaze flitted across the long grass, waving in the breeze, and landed on Moro. Her glow reflected on each strand underneath her, and though her paws were large and flat, the ground didn’t give way or bend beneath any step. She was the answer. She was, perhaps — if one random theory was to be believed — a sort of incarnation of the goddess of rebirth herself. And she was stuck to my heel. That was the answer, surely. It wasn’t down to me. All I had to do was try not to die.

  So, I could wait for them to fall asleep and then flee, but I knew the guilt would eat me up eventually, and I couldn’t deal with that. However far down the line that might have cropped up.

  This dungeon was a day and a half to the north, and then a little to the east. The Falchion would be just about mobilising, if Artur was to be believed, and Roark mentioned that though he was a little weasel-ish, he wasn’t willing to directly lie to the White Suns and put a member in danger.

  The sun was beginning to set and a cold wind sw
ept across the grass, chilling my skin wherever it was exposed. In silence we began to set up our roll mats side by side. Our time for chatting seemed to have passed — we had a half-baked plan and we were concentrated on attempting to live through it.

  We had been stupid. That was clear. Exactly which decision had been the stupidest, though, was less clear. Was it offering the map to the Falchion in exchange for Xanthe? Was it trying to get Xanthe back from their clutches at all? I did really hardly know her. But I knew that I couldn’t stand the idea of her being hurt; having been snatched from a bed I’d shared with her, while I slept…

  There was also the fact that the longer they had her, the more information about the metagame itself they would be able to glean, presumably. If she did know anything — and if that was what they were after.

  I lay back on my roll mat with my hands behind my head and listened to the two of them talk about the Rookery in Dawnspire, and the people they knew there. Old Mrs Hawspittle, the fishwife who yelled racial slurs about orcs all day and never seemed to run out of terms for them. Danny Dancastor, the greasy, twitching conman who tried to borrow coinpurses from the rich to ‘perform a trick’ using it. He had never succeeded, apparently, because if he had he would have been banished or worse.

  My eyelids began to flutter shut, listening to them reminisce and laugh together, a smile on my face. I kind of hated the kid, still, but it was nice to hear him get along with somebody.

  I fell asleep to stories of muggers, whores and blades rusty with all sorts of bodily fluids, and I thanked both universes for allowing me to begin my life somewhere safer than this.

  Even if it looked like I was going to be ending it here.

  16

  Pinehaven Redoubt

  Name: Matthew Blake — Level: 6 — Progression: 6%

  Race: Human — Specialization: None

  Faction: Dawnspire Collective — Rank: Initiate

  STR: 14

  DEX: 14 (+3)

  INT: 8 (+2)

  WIS: 5

  FORT: 10 (+3)

  CHA: 9 (+4)