“Beast men all get a reading at birth, tells them what their bloodline is strongest with. They’re really good al- chemists and healers because they can change one beast’s natural constitution. Changing their classes from war- rior, to mage, or healer and alchemist. If they’re not heal-
ers and alchemists, then they’re farming to feed their massive and ever-growing population or fighting the hu- mans. Their frontline troops are hell to deal with, es- pecially the older warriors with their different tattoos. Shamans use rituals, curses, or buffs to directly affect the battlefield. All beast men can go berserk; they’ve trained so that they won’t attack their own friends, but it’s well, just don’t fight a berserking beast man—it’s not a good time.
“Humans are the physically weakest of all the races. They rely on their familiars to make up for this strength, creat- ing contracts with the familiars in the spirit world. Oth- er races can do the same, but the humans have a greater affinity toward it, like all of the different abilities of the different races really. Anyway, the familiars can augment their user, increase their speed, strength, and so on by consuming their magical power. The alchemy complex of humanity is massive. If you can down Mana potions, you can keep on using your familiars. The stronger the familiar or its user, the greater strength they both gain. They can only have it enhance their bodies at the low- er stages, then the animals can appear and use attacks or special skills for limited times. The devil hunters had to cycle through who was using their hound so that they could recover. Then there are people who can call the fa- miliars out. Beyond that, I didn’t pay that much atten- tion in classes.”
“Well, it sounds like it will be interesting. So, what is the plan?” Anthony asked as they exited one of the caves.
Aila pulled up the hood of her cloak as she looked around and jogged over to a rock. Behind it, there was a pack she had quickly hidden while she was fleeing the hunters.
“We cross the Stoha Mountains into Selenus and then head down to the Deepwood.” She tightened her pack and started to walk.
Anthony touched his chest. He knew that this heart wasn’t his. He also knew that it was giving him life—the magic from it, he felt it was connected to how he hadn’t lost his memories. He also knew that only people at the very pinnacle of the world were able to remove a piece of their body as critical as their heart and keep on living.
He looked out to the east, feeling the connection of the heart to something far away.
First I will help Aila, then I will find out where this heart came from.
“Wait for me!” he called out as he saw Aila was getting farther away.
***
There was a crashing noise as metal hit metal in a ca- cophony of noise.
Claire let out a long-suffering sigh as she held her head. “Damien!” she yelled.
“Sorry!” Damien yelled back.
“Just get out here, will you?”
Damien kept walking, more noise following him.
Just by the noise, Claire could tell he was trying to move slow so he didn’t make so much noise. It’s not really working, just prolonging the torture.
Finally, a large armored man appeared from the armory. Claire tapped her foot as she stood in the main hall, her arms crossed. The large armored man looked down, moving his armored hands around and playing with a nonexistent stone with his boots.
“Weren’t you called the Dancing Wolf ? I remember you clearly using a warhammer with the accuracy of an arrow and the power of a warhammer. Dancing among the en- emy lines.”
“Well, I was just swinging it, and it was easier to do—more room than in there,” Damien said.
Maybe it was the spinning. Maybe if I had him only spin when walking he wouldn’t be such a walking disaster? She then thought of the destruction that he had brought up- on his enemies. Better to have him hit over a pile of armor and undead instead of blast a hole in the damn castle!
She sighed when she felt something change. She put her hand on her chest as she felt moved, as she felt a charge of foreign power.
Necromantic power!
“Who dares!” Claire yelled as the shadows in the room started to move toward her. Her striking beauty was matched with the shadows that moved across the floor, bowing to her.
Her power made the lights flicker and the wind shriek. Her hair flew around her face, her eyes focused on some- thing far away.
Damien grabbed the hammer on his back, no longer a bumbling fool, but a deadly fighter ready for his mis- tress’s orders.
She felt an influx of odd memories and then a weakening of her connection. She took a step backward. “His mem- ories—will he remember, or will he forget them forev- er?” Hope and frustration appeared in her eyes before she relaxed, the power in the castle dying down.
“Make sure that no one finds out about the castle, but go and gather information on what is happening in the outside world.” Claire’s eyes thinned as she remembered parts of the foreign memories.
“It looks like the battle of divine will is returning again,” Claire said.
Damien looked as if he were about to ask a question be- fore he bowed. “Yes, mistress.”
Claire turned, not watching him leave, her mind on new thoughts.
Just where is he? Will he trace my will back? Will he re- member? I’ll need to prepare.
Chapter: New Life, Similar Situations
Krosem pulled his cloak tighter against the wind.
All of this running around for a trade deal. Why couldn’t the gnomes come to Kanwuhr? At least there the forges never stop and the air is always hot! None of this snow and blasted cold wind. He looked around.
“Captain.” The young dwarven driver held out a flask.
“Remember—no ranks,” Krosem grumbled, his tone lighter as he got his hands on the flask.
The younger dwarf shrunk backward and nodded as Krosem took a big draw from the flask. The heated and spiced alcohol brought some warmth back to his body, tickling his throat on the way down.
He let out a slight gasp of appreciation and sealed it back up. “Good stuff.” He passed it back.
“Do you know how long negotiations will take?” the young dwarf asked.
“However long it takes the traders, young Krazzack.” Krosem wrapped himself up again and sat back in his seat, looking out from his frozen helmet.
He could tell the young dwarf was starving for conver- sation and without anyone around and the next stop be- ing the gnome city where they were supposed to con- duct the trade, he lightened up a bit.
31
“Have you heard about those steam engines?” Krosem asked.
“Machines that heat up, use water to move? I thought that they were just another strange gnome machine.”
Krosem snorted, automatically replacing Krazzack’s
strange for dumb.
“Well, it looks like the gnomes have had another flash of brilliance. The steam engine only needs to be heated and then it can move things like mining carts, or it can lower and pull up heavy items, replace the working beasts and they only take metal to make and heat to function, un- like the beasts that have to be rested and fed regularly. If we can get the gnomes to work with us, then we can sell this steam engine to others.”
“Why don’t they just make more of them?” Krazzack asked.
“The creator is a bit strange and she is hard to talk to. She doesn’t have the backing from the gnomes, who think that she’s odd—don’t even believe in her steam en- gine.”
“And we trust her?” Krazzack asked.
“We wouldn’t but Raelynn, the lord’s daughter, is friends with the gnome and she was able to bring back a smaller working model. She got accolades for making a powerful tool; we take on production and build them for the rest of the world,” Krosem said.
Krazzack grunted in acknowledgement, impressed. Krazzack’s voice dropped low, into an almost whisper. “Why all the secrecy?”
“We don’t want the gnomes to find out about t
he steam engine and if someone else was able to get the design, then they could get ahead of us and we would have di- rect competition as soon as we start,” Krosem said.
There was a cracking noise ahead as the caravan started to slow.
Krosem looked at the front of the caravan. A tree crashed down right in front of the lead carriage. The towing beasts let out scared growls as they forced the carriage to stop. The others behind braked and moved to either side so they didn’t run into their rear.
Another tree crashed down behind the group as Krosem grabbed his blunderbuss tighter.
“Defensive formation!” he yelled. Moments later, he heard war cries coming from the snow-covered forest on the left side, and from the boulder-covered right side as bandits crested the hill and charged forward.
Human mountain bandits, Krosem thought in anger as he saw familiars running among the humans, who wore war paint on their faces.
“Move it!” Krosem yelled as he stood up, pulling out a pistol from his belt. It went off in an explosion of smoke and noise.
A barbarian was struck and flew back; their familiar, a gray bird, let out a cry and rushed forward. Its body be- came more ethereal as the power that had sustained it slowly leaked away with the death of its contractor.
“Begone, apparition!” Krosem yelled, storing away his empty pistol and drawing out another from his belt. A blade with fine runescript lay under the barrel, meeting the familiar. It let out a cry as it ran into Krosem’s blade, making him stumble back as it disappeared into a gray fog.
“Pesky smoke!” Krosem fired his second pistol, and put it away, drawing another with his right again, a cloud of smoke around him as he fired.
Long rifles that were as long as a dwarf was tall, cracked. Blunderbusses fired into the sky, cutting down familiars.
Krazzack was guiding the carriage-mounted break-buss, firing it as he went. The box-like four-barrel gun shred- ded whatever lay in its path.
“Down!” Krosem bellowed as he smacked his forearm. A spring-loaded shield spiraled out from his arm. He covered Krazzack and himself with the shield as arrows pinged off the shield.
Krosem jammed his pistol through the opening in the shield. Using a small eye slit, he fired at the closing ban- dits.
The powder must have shocked them; their people are al- ready here. Unless they want to hit their own people, they won’t be able to fire their useless arrows.
Krosem put the pistol away. The smoke from it made him cough as he slid it into its empty loop and drew an- other from the second loop, still holding his shield up.
A bandit got too close to the carriage; a blunderbuss went off, tearing them and their familiar apart, striking several others with shards of metal.
“Want a bit of old Raldras, do yah! It’ll take till the forges go cold in Hirn before that!”
Krosem couldn’t help but grin at the old dwarf ’s fighting spirit as the carriage driver got them into a box-like for- mation. Krosem found himself close to the middle, with three carriages to the front, then two on either side of his carriage, then six more lined up in two rows of three.
He smacked his shield, but it didn’t go back. It had been dented by the attacks. “Damn useless shield,” he com- plained, sliding it off his arm and dropping it.
He looked to Krazzack. The young dwarf cracked his smoking break-buss and was loading more of the shiny brass shells into the still-smoking gun.
He nodded to Krosem, his face pale but resolute.
Krosem only had time to pat him on the back as he pulled off his cloak and started moving to the other car- avans, jumping on the beasts, having a hard time keeping
his balance. But his low center of gravity, with his pow- erful legs, made it a bit easier. He balanced with a blun- derbuss in one hand and a satchel of ammunition in the other as he clambered up a carriage and jumped down beside another, where a dwarf had one leg on her car- riage, the other braced on another right beside it as she tracked something.
The rifle went off in her hands. A wave of smoke covered her as she dropped to the ground, smacking on the mas- sive bolt on the rifle.
Another explosion sounded out somewhere in the forest a moment later.
“How’s it going, Millie?” He slung the ammunition satchel over his armor as he tried to see through the stinging clouds of gun smoke.
“Set up well. Most coming from the forest—more cover there, harder to run fast on the side of the Stoha range,” she said in clipped tones as she took out a bronze round the size of her hand, putting it into the breech and slam- ming the bolt forward and locking it.
“You find the commander yet?” Krosem looked be- tween carriages. He fired his blunderbuss, causing sever- al to drop to the ground and others cry out. The moun- tain barbarians barely had enough to eat and their armor was made from weak animal hide, usually pieced togeth- er from multiple small animals.
Against dwarven weapons, it’s as if they aren’t even wear- ing armor.
He put the blunderbuss on the ground, putting his feet on the end of the barrel as he heaved on the underbarrel foregrip.
“Come-on-you-bastard!” he yelled as the foregrip clicked backward, sending a bronze shell casing flying out.
He kicked the foregrip forward as it grabbed a new shell from the side-mounted magazine, only stopping when he heard a clicking noise. He raised the blunderbuss again, finding a new area where the barbarians looked as if they were grouped together.
Another wave disappeared in a cloud of smoke as he re- peated the process of reloading his blunderbuss.
“There are too many of them and not enough of us,” Mil- lie said in her cold, detached tone.
“Krazzack, you there?” Krosem yelled.
There was a loud noise from where Krosem had been, where Krosem left him.
“What!?” Krazzack yelled.
“Protect the center!” Krosem yelled. “Doing it!” Krazzack yelled back.
A barbarian yelled at them wordlessly; it had gotten on top of the carriage they were fighting behind.
Millie’s pistol silenced them, causing them to drop be- tween the carriages into the snow below.
“Lift?” Millie asked.
Krosem slung his blunderbuss and squatted, cupping his hands.
She ran at him, a pistol in each hand and her rifle run- ning up her spine. She stepped into his hand as he grunt- ed, tossing her up. She jumped forward, arcing up and onto the top of a carriage. He heard her pistols going off as Krosem grabbed a pistol and started to climb the lad- der of the nearest carriage to look out over the fight.
A human head greeted him, climbing the other side of the carriage.
His expression changed and he could see the urgency in their eyes as they increased the speed that they climbed.
Krosem’s pistol went off, blowing the barbarian clean off the carriage.
“Barbarians these days, no hey, how are you—just raghh, scream, shout!” Krosem complained as he got onto the carriage. The guys and gals were fighting on the carriages or between them, using their small stature to make it hard for the human barbarians to get at them easily.
Krosem fired his blunderbuss, knocking several humans off the roofs of the carriages.
He grunted, using his hand to crank on the foregrip. Thankfully, it was just like a hammer and, dwarves, al- though short, had incredible brute strength, allowing him to eject a smoking shell and fire again in a matter of seconds, clearing a cone space ten meters long.
“The hell?” he muttered. He saw something black falling from a cliff. It slammed into the ground, smacking boul- ders along the way and being sent airborne again, actual- ly passing confused-looking barbarians as it got closer.
“What kind of idiot rolls off a cliff ?” Krosem muttered, wondering whether he was losing his mind as the hu- man-looking black object continued to bounce and roll its way forward, its arms flailing around.
Krosem fired again, unable to look away as he could now see that it was a set of black armor with som
e colorful design on its back.
It smacked three bandits in the back, and came to rest on top of them.
They were groaning as the armor started to move and shake as if possessed.
“Ants! Damn ants! Get out of my armor!”
Krosem about curled his toes up and fell over as his eyes went as big as the business end of his smoking blunder- buss.
Death Knight Box Set Books 1-5: A humorous power fantasy series Page 3