War Aeternus 2: Sacrifices

by Charles Dean

  “Woah, so that’s the process,” Ling gasped as she walked over and studied the newly-created mouse, firing off a series of questions that Lee didn’t know the answer to. “That is incredibly neat. The light that comes out of you . . . Is it always the same color? That’s the same color as when you heal us. If you used other magic, would it be the same then too?” Unfortunately, since Lee was a Herald and the supposed son of a god, he was expected to know the answers to each of her seemingly-random questions. He knew that they were rooted in the fact that she was just now discovering the world around her after living her entire life as a mindless, prompt-following NPC, but that didn’t make them any less silly or absurd at times. Whenever he tried answering ‘I don’t know,’ she just pestered him to ask Augustus, a figure who was rarely if ever present to respond.

  “I’m sure time will answer that question for you,” Lee responded, brushing off her curiosity without giving a straight answer--which was really the only way to handle Ling’s inquisitiveness.

  “But can’t you--” she pushed, momentarily causing Lee to panic as he realized that his tried and true trick from the last week might not be enough until Amber came over and cut her off mid-sentence.

  “I think between the magic and the fight, he is just a little drained, darling,” Amber added hastily as she interceded, passing Lee a knowing smile as she did.

  That woman knows me better than I do sometimes, he thought as he admired the sight of her lips hooking upward into a lopsided grin.

  “That’s not it at all,” Miller proclaimed boisterously, shaking his head as he walked over to the impromptu huddle. “Our Herald is trying to teach the importance of paying attention and not just taking answers as they are given to you. Have you not read any of the great Book of Lee? Even as our Herald, the deity of our order and the divine beacon of our faith, he is not to be the source of all our answers. He is not telling you that he won’t give you the answer but to use your senses and wit to derive it so that you don’t become dependent on others for your knowledge. It’s as the book says in the earlier chapters: taking information for granted without investigating or thinking or questioning on your own and giving up your skepticism is the way in which a people can be easily--”

  Lee quickly took a step forward and put a hand on the giant man’s shoulder. “I’m sure they’ve read it, Miller, so it’s probably old news. But what’s new news is what just happened there.” Lee motioned over to the first man Miller killed. “Amber was in dire straits. Why did you take your time on that one?”

  “I had to challenge myself, to learn and to test what I could do. I had to study him because”--Miller looked at the Firbolg’s body--“because my justice was too weak.”

  “Huh? Because what?” Lee had heard the words through Ethan’s ears and not his own because they had been spoken too softly for him to pick up. He actually felt bad for calling out Miller like this. His Firbolg companion had saved his life dozens of times in the last week, but the fact still stood that Amber might have died because Miller had been toying around with his opponent.

  Miller clenched his spear tightly and said, “Because nothing. There is no excuse. Justice should be swift, crushing and unapologetic. I won’t allow hesitation or personal feelings to get in the way of battle again.”

  “I’m still curious about what’s going on with these five. Isn’t it illegal to steal the bounty from another group? I’ve never heard of this happening before,” Ling said, crouching down next to one of the bodies. “Even the lowest of the low in Satterfield never once tried to cheat another party out of their bounty from the Hunter’s Guild. That’s like a death sentence there. If even one person reports it, and it’s investigated and confirmed, then the guilty party is almost always guaranteed to be tracked down and assassinated.”

  “Yeah, that is a bit weird,” Amber agreed.

  Miller and Lee, both foreigners to the world, shared a glance with each other before looking back toward the body that Amber was poking at and Ling was hovering over. He didn’t understand how Miller knew he wasn’t from this world at all to begin with, since Miller never actually referred to him as a player, only a Herald, but he did. It was clear from the way he talked to Lee, how he would slip and talk about the metagame by accident more often than one ever should with an NPC, what his view was.

  “Did they say anything to you during the fight?” Lee asked, looking over at Amber. “Or maybe to you?” Lee asked Miller this time.

  Amber shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Same. He just said some stuff about, well . . .” Miller, in a very un-Miller-like way, trailed off and shifted around the truth, leaving it unsaid. It was obvious from his facial expression that he was hiding something and that he wasn’t skilled at deception.

  “Well?” Lee pushed, hoping it would yield something fruitful.

  “Nothing important is all. He was just trying to speak the usual words of a villain,” Miller grumbled. “They’re all the same: the self-righteous, pretending as if they’re divine, yet all the while hurting and ruining the lives of those around them.”

  Easy, buddy. That could describe us if you don’t word that more carefully. Lee cringed at the response. The reason he was in a four-man party right now, even though there were over thirty able-bodied men and women who were training every day and willing to join them on their hunts, was because he didn’t want to get someone hurt because of his actions--but that didn’t mean that someone hadn’t suffered on his account. It had been around six weeks since the events of his first trip to this world, and he still saw the faces of David and those who had died trying to help him when he closed his eyes at night. They haunted him any time he tried to sleep, so when Miller talked about self-righteous people thinking they’re divine and ruining the lives of those around them, the words drove into Lee like a two-inch spike through the chest.

  “Should we . . . umm . . . report this?” Amber asked, pulling her knife out and beginning to saw off the head of the dead man. “I mean, if we don’t, what if they think we’re the ones that sniped the bounty? The Hunter’s Office says to report any issue, not just issues still existing.”

  “That’s a good point,” Lee agreed. He hadn’t dealt with the Hunter’s Office as long as the natives of this world had, so he could only nod and pretend that he knew what she was talking about, but he knew that they meant business. He had heard plenty of stories during his short jaunts through other towns. Players broke the rules, and the whole party was killed in their sleep as a result. “Do we need their heads though?”

  “Yeah,” Amber replied as she continued to saw through the man’s bone with her steel dagger. “They might have a bounty on them. If they’re so brazen as to go around trying to snipe our monster hunter bounties, someone might be wanting them dead.”

  “Or they may be very important people,” Lee thought aloud. In his world, people who acted however they wanted usually did so because they had the money to do whatever they wanted--like celebrities that could commit a dozen felonies and end up with less than twenty hours of community service and little more than a slap on the wrist and a word of warning. “Toting these heads around looking for a bounty . . .” Lee trailed off, watching how zealous Amber was in disfiguring the man’s neck.

  Amber was slowly becoming more and more aggressive as she came out of her shell. Despite her efforts during the assault on the Herald of the God of Books and Stories’ fort, she had generally been somewhat reluctant to jump a into violent confrontation. She had been one of the primary voices demanding reason when Miller wanted to storm in and stick a sword into everyone’s gut and be done with it. She had been the first and last person to stand up for the townsfolk and insist upon the value of their lives when Miller accused them of ‘ruining his mood’ with their hesitation

  Now, however, she was slowly beginning to change. It was somewhat inevitable since her days as a prisoner and a sufferer of violence were slowly becoming more and more distant, and it was most readily apparent in th
e way she tackled her role during fights now. As long as Lee’s group was the one initiating the attack, she was calm and collected. She would keep her head down, stay in her lane, and get the job done without a second word or any fuss. Whenever things went wrong, or whenever they ran across a group of thugs who had sought them out, however, she’d quickly lose her temper and fly off the handle. It was when she wasn’t in control that things started to get out of hand. She hadn’t gone as far as Miller yet--that was to say she hadn’t gouged out a man’s eyes, removed his collarbones, or gutted someone yet with quite the same zealous fervor that the Firbolg would--but she was slowly pushing the boundary between necessity and brutality. When one or two stabs would do the job, for example, thirty or forty seemed to do it better, and she considered that perfectly reasonable.

  The thing that worried Lee the most was that she would be sobbing the entire time. Lee thought that it was like some part of her knew she was acting out as a result of her time being imprisoned and equated that loss of control to the time she had spent enslaved. She knew that what she was doing was awful, but she couldn’t stop herself either. It was hard to watch, and no one was brave enough to say or do anything about it. Lee figured that he knew--as much as a bystander could--what she was going through. He knew that she was torn up because of it, but he didn’t know how to help her. The group would simply finish up with whatever they were doing and then step out of the way, wait and watch. Something about what was happening to her echoed against something hollow inside of him--something that he couldn’t put his finger on and didn’t want to deal with himself.

  “Yes?” Ling asked, pulling Lee back to the conversation.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah. “Toting the heads around could bring more trouble than the bounty is worth. I know that we’re desperately short on money at the moment and need to hire more people, but is it worth taking that risk?”

  “He did use the words ‘your kind’ a lot,” Ling mused, ignoring Lee’s concern. “Like he wasn’t the same sort of adventurer we were. That type of pompous talking could definitely be someone from a wealthy family.”

  “Hmm . . .” Lee tried to recall the conversation. It had been blocked out by the fact that Miller had acted like he was going to kill everyone on the spot no more than three sentences in. No, that’s not right. This one wasn’t all on Miller. They threatened my people. Miller didn’t push me. I did this because I wanted them dead. The more he thought about it, the more he was not only glad he killed them but kind of wished that he had taken the time to kill each one of them individually, especially their leader. Maybe Amber’s right. Maybe their bodies need to be desecrated, Lee thought as he pulled out a knife and went to the one who made the threats. “I guess that we might as well carry them all if we’re going to carry one head for a bounty.”

  “I’d really rather not,” Ling protested. “I think . . . I think I’ll leave that to you three.”

  “And if we get a reward?”

  “I’ll expect you to buy me and my dad some fried chicken with it, of course.” Ling grinned for half a second, but as soon as her eyes made contact with the sight of Lee roughly hacking the dead man’s head off, she grimaced and turned away.

  Out of all the things you’ve seen, this is what grosses you out? Lee just shook his head and kept working. “Doesn’t our church own the largest chicken vendor in Satterfield? Pretty sure we’re taking over the entire town with sales of just chicken and fries.”

  “Yeah, but it’s always running out. I feel bad taking from the kitchen when the wait can be nearly thirty minutes at dinner time,” Ling said, tilting her head and watching Amber with a strange expression.

  “So, you’re saying you want to save us effort and money and help the church by spending our hard-earned loot on other people’s inferior chicken?” Lee gave her a quizzical look. How does that even make sense?

  “She could just be trying to help businesses out. After all, does not the good Book of Lee say--”

  Lee cut Miller off right away by saying, “I know what the good book says.”

  Ever since Lee had brought back his book, Miller would continuously quote it at him like it was the end of all arguments and Lee had never read it. In less than three days, Miller had transformed from going around spouting ‘Justice, Justice, Justice!’ to quoting ‘The Book of Lee’ whenever he could in an argument. If Lee hadn’t known Miller before he started reading the Book of Lee, he’d have thought that Miller was some sort of philosophy professor who specialized in religious text.

  “But helping people aside, I’d still rather cook for you myself than pay someone else to do it for me,” Lee said.

  “Well, then, if you insist on being so sweet and hand making my dinners . . .” Ling paused, putting a finger to her lips as she contemplated something. “Then buy the ingredients and make me something I’ve never tried before. Otherwise, I’m going to take all of my reward money and spend it at Bankey’s hole in the wall food joint on those vegetables you seem to hate with such a passion.”

  “Fine, fine. If I can find the right ingredients, I’ll make you something new,” Lee conceded. Truth be told, it was what he wanted to do anyway. He desperately needed to raise his cooking skill if he was going to ever unroll the next part of his plan.

  “Well, I’m done here,” Miller announced, holding up two freshly-severed heads. “I can’t wait to see how much fried chicken and beer these bounties might get me.”

  “There might not necessarily be a bounty,” Ling reminded him. “You guys might just show up at the town looking like a pack of murder-happy vagabonds for nothing.”

  “Vagabonds? What vagabonds look as sharp as we do?” Amber asked as she finished wrapping the head in a green cloth. “I don’t care what you say about us looking bad, I think the uniforms Lee assigned us look great.”

  “I like them too,” Miller agreed, tugging on his chest armor with his free arm. He didn’t seem to care at all about tidiness and easily gripped the two heads by their hair. The whole group was dressed in camouflage. It wasn’t proper camo, as he had no idea how to get that effect without the Book of Augustus’ help, and he didn’t have a tailoring level, so applying dyes through the book even with his Intelligence was currently not possible. He had considered devoting some effort to making clothes at first but then decided that he didn’t feel like spending a ton of time picking up a variety of skills that would each require large segments of his time, especially considering how each progressive tier of the skills he was focusing on had so far yielded exponentially better rewards. It made much more sense to focus on just one or two crafts and one fighting style and max them out as quickly as possible.

  “Well, we’ll find out when we get there,” Lee said, giving his usual shrug as he started heading toward town.

  “Wait!” Miller said, stopping him.

  “What’s up?” Lee asked.

  “You think we could take the long way back? I used my resources to map us out a route that should take us through a dozen Dire Troll camps.” Miller pointed off in a direction that was far to the left of the town. “Won’t add more than three hours to our trip.”

  Lee thought about it for a moment then looked up at the sun to confirm the time. “Yeah, that’s good thinking,” he said. That’s good . . . thinking. He mentally said the words again, pausing at the word thinking. Something about the way Miller asked, the way he worded things, felt off to Lee. It didn’t sit well with him. Is it just because it was out of character? he wondered as he stared at his bloodthirsty companion.

  Chapter 2

  Name: Lee

  Race: Human

  Class: Herald - None

  Level: 17

  Health: 270/270

  EXP: 6200/10500

  Primary Stats:

  Power 27 (28)

  Toughness 27 (28)

  Spirit 27 (28)

  Secondary Stats:

  Charisma 20

  Courage 20

  Deceit 14

  Intelligence
123 (129)

  Honor 5

  Faith 622

  Personal Faith 213

  Skills:

  Unarmed Combat Initiate Level 7

  Swordplay Novice Level 6

  Sneak Novice Level 9

  Cooking Initiate Level 7

  Trap Detection Initiate Level 6

  Knife Combat Initiate Level 8

  Mental Fortitude Initiate Level 1

  Divine Skills:

  Golem Sculpting Novice Level 10

  Appreciative Drunk Novice Level 8

  Faith Healing

  Divinity Powers:

  Life in Death

  Unlike Satterfield, which was basically a small, close-knit hamlet comprised of thatch-roofed stone buildings, Kirshtein was actually large enough to contain the seas of people that swelled through its gates every morning and night. The buildings were constructed from red brick and capped with dark-grey slate roofs, and they sprouted up as if they were trees competing for sunlight in a forest, towering unevenly between three and six stories tall and casting shade on narrow alleyways that slithered and crooked like tiny streams between them. The main roads were also much larger than Satterfield's, and they were easily able to contain the multitudes of people and carriages with ease, one only ever rarely bumping into the other as they diffused into the heart of the town.

  Lee couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable as he walked back into the city with his friends. The malaise stemmed from how chaotic the place was. Between the size of the city and the uneven layout, it was hard to keep track of where he was mentally in relation to everything else. He had constantly gotten lost as he tried to find his way around on his first visit, and he had even gone so far as to pay a beggar to show him around. He had done his best to take note of landmarks that would help him find his way back again if needed, but it was still a challenge to find his way from one side of the city to the next.