Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale

by Alex Oakchest

  I decided to get the data for myself. I just needed to try a couple of things, and compare the results.

  First, I put my medallion back on. I cycled through the stances for Hrr-chare as fast as I could, stopping when I felt it was ready to cast.

  Hmm. Not bad. I was getting quicker, especially after having learned better ways to move from one stance to another.

  Next, I put Siddel’s medallion on and I repeated the cycle.

  Holy hell!

  I felt a rush of energy hit me so fast, so powerful, that my head went dizzy, and my whole body trembled.

  This was insane! I had started in stance one, and all I had to do was think of stance two and before I knew it, I had moved my body into the shape. It happened in a nanosecond, at the speed of thought.

  This was how the mages cast their spells so quickly. How it always seemed like they didn’t have to cycle the same stances as me. They were cycling them, alright, but at an insane speed.

  The truth was that they were doing the stances, but their medallions made it so fast that an observer wouldn’t even register the movements.

  Things had just changed for me. I stuffed my old medallion in my bag. No need to use that again. I had just one more thing left to try, though. The etchings had given me an idea, and I needed to be sure.

  Wearing Siddel’s medallion, I made the movements for hrr-levita, the telekinesis spell. I cycled through each of them as quickly as I could, again stopping when I felt it was ready to cast.

  Okay…

  Just as I’d guessed; the medallion didn’t improve my speed for the levita spell. This could only mean one thing; Siddel’s medallion helped with projectile spells. Fire, arrows, ice, and that kind of thing.

  Item description updated: Projectile Medallion

  A medallion used to boost movement speed and spell quality when casting spells of a projectile nature.

  So, now I had an intermediate spell to learn, with the help of my new medallion. Pity Siddel didn’t have any elementals in his bag, but maybe he’d used them all when the ogres attacked.

  I gave a silent thanks to Siddel, and then I put the spellbook in my bag because I didn’t have time to learn it yet.

  This left Hrr-spee: Un gata fur Novicien. It was a novice spell, so I should be able to learn it when I had some time. But what did spee mean? Speed, maybe? If it was a speed spell, then I was in luck because I had a speed elemental in my bag. Even so, I didn’t want to waste it by learning the spell and casting it just to find out what the spell did. I'd have to ask the others when they'd finished resting.

  I needed more elementals. I needed to hunt. Maybe when we left here and joined with the rest of the guys at the Tallsteep clan’s home I could do that.

  Checking the rest of the items, I saw three metal containers with weird pastes in them. At least these were labeled. Wolfbane, wolflust, and harelust. I hadn’t seen Siddel use these yet so I didn’t know what they would do, but they must have had something to do with hunting.

  Then there were the dried nightwolf eyes. These were flat, oval-shaped pieces of…of what? Meat? I didn’t know. They kinda looked like raisins. They sure as hell didn't look like any eyes I had ever seen. I didn’t know whether you needed to eat them or use them some other way. I’d have to ask someone.

  Finally, my last prize. This was something I’d never seen Siddel use, which was weird, given he was the clan’s chief hunter.

  A shoddy looking bow with 25 wooden arrows. It was kinda small for a bow, and very lightweight. Knowing Siddel had possessed this, I couldn’t work out why he never used it. Why would he spend elementals casting his arrow spells, when he could use the bow and arrows and save his elementals?

  Maybe he couldn’t use it properly. Or maybe he wanted to show off his spells to me. I don’t know why he’d want to do that, and it didn’t seem likely, but I couldn’t figure any other reason.

  Well, I’d learn how to use it. It was another weapon, and more importantly, it was a long-range one that meant I could save elementals and still attack things from a distance. I’d also read the skill book: Fletching: Novicien Gata. If I could learn how to make arrows, I’d never have to worry about running out.

  Lots of things to do, no time to do it. But at least I felt a little more prepared.

  I spent the next hour keeping watch while the guys slept, but for once, nothing happened. Maybe the universe was giving me a break?

  Pity I didn’t take breaks.

  I stood up. “Okay, nafurts. Let’s get moving."

  CHAPTER 24 - Hellgre

  Tosvig explained, in a much more convoluted way given our language barrier, that since the Tallsteep clan weren’t mages, they didn’t have any fancy spells to hide their camp. This gave them two choices; stick in one spot and defend their camp against any ogres who found them, or keep moving on every so often. They’d picked the second option, and this made their lives completely different from the Lonehills.

  You can argue the pluses and minuses of both clans’ strategies all day. If you keep moving, you don’t have time to grow your own crops or plunder the area around you for resources.

  If you stay in one place but hide your camp using a spell, you’re relying on your elder mage not dying of a heart attack, and your second-eldest mage not getting killed by ogres.

  But one thing united both approaches; there was no single, safe place for these people. The Lonehills had paid the ultimate price for this lesson having been almost decimated.

  How long until the Tallsteeps fell? And would they welcome the Lonehill refugees, or tell them to get their asses far, far away?

  As well as wandering the wilds always searching for a better home for the clan, Tosvig had also kept tabs on the various other peoples in the world, and he knew where the Tallsteeps were currently settled. Good thing, too. If he hadn’t been able to mark their location on Mardak’s map, the Lonehills wouldn’t know where to go.

  Now, Tosvig led us north from camp. Knowing there were ogres around, we didn’t walk together.

  Tosvig was twenty feet ahead, since he knew the lands better than the rest of us and was better at going unnoticed. Harrien and Milan walked in the middle, with Harrien having the job of keeping watch on our east flank, Milan on our west.

  My role was to look behind me every few minutes. Just a glance, to make sure nothing was trailing us. I wished Roddie was with us because, let’s face it, who likes being the guy at the back? But he was with Mardak and the others.

  Whenever Tosvig saw or heard even a hint of another presence, he stopped. When Tosvig stopped, we stopped. Then, we waited.

  One gloved hand raised in the air meant we were okay. Two meant possible danger. If Tosvig hit the ground…we all dropped our asses onto the snow. It meant we sometimes had to wait on the snow for ten minutes while Tosvig traced a sound he’d heard to a squirrel climbing a tree, but caution was worth it. Anything to avoid ending up like Siddel.

  We headed through the wintry forest, making a wide berth of the rune where the mage teenager had died. This was at Harrien and Malin’s insistence; the boys had become superstitious of the place. Can’t say I blamed them.

  Tosvig didn’t say much as he guided us. Only stuff like:

  “This way, bastards.”

  “Don’t eat green berry, bastards.”

  “You’re overusing the word,” I told him.

  “Huh?”

  “Bastard has left tongue too many times.”

  “Then teach other.”

  “Another swear word? No, Tosvig. You will turn the air blue.”

  “Blue? Air cannot change at tongue, fool. Just one swear, no-color.”

  “Teach me sword, I teach you swear.”

  “Scales do not balance.”

  I shrugged.

  “Fine, bastard” he said. “When this done, I teach.”

  And that’s how you negotiate.

  Just why Tosvig was so enamored with English I had no idea. Something to do with being born in one clan
and raised in another? Because he spent most of his life traveling? I didn’t know.

  We traveled north for a day, then cut east to avoid a river, then headed north again for another day and night. On the morning of the third day, we hit trouble.

  Well, not quite hit. Thanks to taking precautions in how we traveled, we spotted it way in advance. Still, this wasn’t good.

  Tosvig held two gloved hands in the air.

  Harrien and I hit the ground silently, Malin kneeled onto a twig. To my ears, ears that had become pretty ogre-sensitive, the snap sounded like a sonic boom.

  Even twenty feet ahead, Tosvig’s glare back at Malin was an inferno, but he said nothing, and we waited.

  Finally, Tosvig put his finger to his lips, then beckoned us over.

  Siddel had taught me how to move through a forest in the quietest way possible, ducking my head and walking with bent knees, never placing the whole weight of my feet down. I wasn’t perfect, but I was getting better. Before all my spell-learning induced yoga, walking like that for more than a minute would have made my thighs and knees throb.

  Harrien and Malin were the clan dogsbodies and hadn’t hunted much, so they didn’t have Siddel’s technique. I was probably just exaggerating, but they sounded way too loud as they walked.

  We reached Tosvig. We had been walking up an incline for the last day, and it seemed we’d reached the top of it.

  “Difficulty,” said Tosvig. “We must go this way, or face dragon.”

  My heart momentarily took a vacation and stopped beating when I heard the word dragon, before my brains said get it together asshole. Vacations don’t exist now.

  Dragon was the name for the river that flowed for five hundred miles from a place way beyond this, cutting through the wilds, and carrying on into the west. It was a mile wide in some places, and filled with fish that loved the taste of flesh. Why?

  Well, because why not? That’s the kinda place this is.

  Not only that. They called it Dragon, Tosvig told me, because one clan member had climbed the great mountain in the east and looked down upon it, and saw that the river was shaped like the lizard creatures who were said lived in the deep south.

  But the river was like a dragon in other ways. Get too close, and it’d scorch the hell out of you. It wasn’t hot, but corrosive. That was why the clan never drank from it.

  If someone ever ranked rivers in terms of assholery, this one would be at the top.

  So, the route Tosvig had guided us on was the only way to get to the Tallsteeps without crossing the Dragon.

  And now there was a problem. Sweet.

  “Nature of difficulty?” I asked him.

  He pointed to the hillcrest ten feet ahead. “Below. There is a hellgre.”

  “Hellgre?” I said.

  “Hellgre?” repeated Harrien, his tone considerably more scared.

  “Go. Taste with eyes,” said Tosvig. “Only no-color. Slow, quiet.”

  I got on my belly and crawled up the crest and to the top. Every incline has its decline, and this was a little steeper than most. For the first part, anyway. It’d involve some delicate climbing for the first twenty feet, and then it was a gentler drop.

  But waiting all the way down at the bottom was…well, some strange goddamn creature I had never seen before.

  It would have been hard to tell its true size from so far away. Luckily, the hellgre came with a handy size comparison guide; he had four humans with him.

  Were they naked?

  You bet. Why not?

  This immediately brought the word ogre to mind, and indeed hellgre sounded like a bastardization of it. But the monster below was smaller than most ogres. Taller than the humans by a little, but still smaller than the giants I’d seen before now.

  His skin was red, darker in some places and light in others, giving him the same skin tone as raw minced beef.

  I could tell he was waiting for something. It didn’t take much detective work to realize that; the hellgre was reading a book.

  I left the crest and joined the others.

  “How big problem is hellgre?” I asked.

  “Big bastard problem,” said Tosvig. “Breath of fire. Turn trees to cinders. Melt flesh.”

  “And hands of death,” said Harrien. “Yap, Tosvig? When hellgre touch, flesh dies.”

  “Corruption,” agreed Tosvig.

  “Is ogre?” I asked.

  “In way that wolf is like dog.”

  So there was a weird fire ogre kinda, waiting in the forest, with a book and four humans. A couple of questions here.

  One, just how many humans do these guys have??

  Two, would an hellgre guy just happen to be chilling out in the area of the wilds we needed to pass through?

  “Ogres sent him here?”

  Tosvig nodded. “When Tosvig travel, sometimes see hellgres. They like Tosvig; no live in tent. They look. Sometimes for food. Now, for us.”

  “So the ogres have sent red-skinned scouts out. Can we kill this guy?”

  “Tosvig can kill anything.”

  “Right. Is kill hellgre a path that wise man would take?”

  “…no.”

  “Then other direction?”

  Malin shook his head. The teenager had the start of a beard on his green cheeks, but it was patchy. I always thought he and Harrien looked like brothers, even if the accepted story was that they weren’t, and Malin’s father had never strayed from his own tent.

  “No direction,” said Malin. “There only two way to find Tallsteeps. Through Dragon, or this way.”

  “And the ogres must know that. Can pass Dragon other means?”

  “Na. Nino try build boat once. Boat melt when touch Dragon. No spell yet protects.”

  So we couldn’t take a different route to get to the Tallsteeps, or we’d have to find a way to cross a river of acid. This was the only route, and there was a red-assed bastard blocking it.

  Maybe there was a third way.

  “We could go back. Na find the clan.”

  “Leave them?”

  I shrugged. “They safe, na? We na safe. Should we risk selves to find?”

  “Isaac, wa? Leave clan?” said Malin. “Na. My mother needs.”

  “I na enjoy wilds,” said Harrien. “Four, survive wilds alone for many suns? Na.”

  Tosvig shrugged. “Tosvig survive wilds. See him die? Never.”

  “Tosvig different from clan. Sorry; no mean insult,” said Malin.

  Harrien crossed his arms, his stare sharp as a dagger. “If Isaac and Tosvig leave, I stay. Fight hellgre alone.”

  “Na alone; with Malin,” said his best friend.

  “Boys die a fiery death,” said Tosvig.

  “And clan will say words of nice when hear. But Harrien die a death of glory.”

  “But with Tosvig,” said Malin, “We kill hellgre. Send to land beyond.”

  I was a little hurt that it was only with Tosvig that Malin thought killing the hellgre was a certainty, but I couldn’t blame him.

  “Send him to land of bastards,” growled Tosvig. “Fine. I do. No-color?”

  Did I leave these guys now and go it alone, try to cross a river of acid, or take on this red dude and his naked humans?

  Pretty easy decision when I thought of it that way. It might not have been red-skinned and have a corruptive touch, but the wilds was more dangerous to me as a loner right now. Cold weather, starvation, pitfalls, hidden acid pools, snowdrifts covering sheer drops. All of those were more likely to kill a guy who didn’t know the area. It would be stupid to leave Tosvig for now.

  As odds went, taking on this thing seemed slightly better than walking into the wilderness before I had gotten a chance to learn more about it.

  Besides…think of the elemental I’d get from this hunk of red meat.

  I decided where I was flicking my poker chip.

  “We talk weapons and spells,” I said.

  CHAPTER 25 – Cool Off

  “We need to deal with this big
red bad boy,” I said. “He has fire breath, so part of him is a fire elemental.”

  “And corrupt touch,” said Tosvig. “Make flesh that of corpse.”

  “Yap, some kind of undead, corpse element. Know any spells that would counter it? Spells opposite of corrupt?”

  Harrien and Malin both shook their heads. Tosvig said, “Have no need of wispy wizard words. Talk with sword.”

  It was going to take both his sword and wispy wizard words, judging from the size of the hellgre. Squat, with a hunched back and its body rippling with muscle, this thing was one coating of massage oil away from winning a bodybuilding contest.

  It looked strong enough to tear me apart like a fortune cookie, then read my entrails as the fortune. Or maybe it would arrange my guts in the shape of the fortune you got from said cookies.

  You will meet the love of your life while shopping for clothes

  All your hard work will soon pay off.

  Follow your dreams.

  You know, something like that.

  And if it didn’t kill us with brute strength, then it could melt us to cinders with its fire breath, or corrupt our flesh with its corruptive touch. Lovely!

  I guessed that if this monster had two kinds of elementals in him – fire and corruption – his weakness would be diluted. Unlike if he was solely a fire elemental creature, where his sole weakness would be cold-based.

  Even so, he’d be weak to ice spells. That was something.

  What else? I needed every advantage I could glean.

  Well, the first thing that stuck out was the chained-up humans with him. He had four of them, with no sign of any other ogres. They were butt-naked and pretty weedy. They were being fed enough to live, but still not enough to meet their calorie requirements.

  They were unarmed, and not much of a threat at all. So why bother having them around? For the company?

  “Something isn’t right,” I said. “Look at humans.”

  “Huh?” said Harrien. “Ugly. But so wa?”

  Things were clicking into place. The more I looked, the more I realized.

  “Humans are standing around hellgre,” I said. “Looking in different directions.”