Twilight Templar (The Eternal Journey Book 1)

by C. J. Carella

  What are you telling my girlfriend, Saturnyx?

 

  “Oh, shit.” Yeah, a terrible mistake.

  “You,” Tava finally said. “And her!”

  Worst freaking mistake of my life. Out loud: “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  Hawke didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘It was a mistake’ would not only be horribly unfair to Saturnyx, it would be a lie. He wasn’t sorry. He had loved every minute of it, and he only had second thoughts afterwards. Guess we can try to be friends, he thought as he waited for Tava to say something.

  “I must be your first.”

  He’d expected a few choice words, but those weren’t it. “First what?”

  “Wife. I must be your first wife. Saturnyx would be a terrible first wife. She agrees, by the say.”

 

  “You are a lovely spirit,” Tava told her. “And so beautiful. Your tale moved me, and I would be honored to call you my friend. Fierce in war and in love, like the heroine of a song!”

  You showed her…

 

  Tava smiled at him. “We might be getting ahead of ourselves, since you haven’t proposed yet, my darling Paladin. But I do hope we are betrothed soon.” Her voice dropped into a sensual whisper as she leaned against him and kissed his lips. “I have not had a lover before, and I can see, from what Saturnyx has shown me, that I have a lot to learn.”

  “I see.”

  Was this Heaven or Hell? He’d find out.

  Forty-Three

  The Woodling attack came right on schedule.

  The rest of the night had passed peacefully. Thanks to Saturnyx, Hawke and Tava could speak telepathically, which was a godsend, particularly when it came to discussing marriage customs in Gallia Nova. Polygamy was a thing, legally speaking. It wasn’t common – large households were expensive to maintain, and not that many women wanted to be in second or third place – but it wasn’t forbidden. The legalities were complicated, but they boiled down to the first wife having the most rights and biggest share of any inheritance, with her children having priority as well. Polyandry existed as well, although that was even less common, usually the sort of thing noble widows did. In their case, only the first husband had any rights; the others got very few privileges and didn’t inherit, although all their children were treated equally. There were also legal rules for concubines and mistresses. They had rights and obligations as well, but fewer than a spouse.

  The locals had a joke about it: ‘Two husbands, four times as much. Two wives, eight times.’

  Eight times as much what? Hawke had asked.

  Eight times as much of everything, Tava had answered through Saturnyx. Eight times as much joy and pain, sorrow and peace, pleasure and strife.

  “Well, at least they don’t sugarcoat things around here,” he muttered to himself the next day.

  After leaving the campsite, the group had continued to follow the Legion’s Highway as it wound its way northeast. A day later, as Kinto had told the group, the road began to show signs of decay, growing worse the further away they got from Orom. From the looks of it, there wasn’t enough trade between the town and the big city to justify paying for the road’s upkeep. Five days to reach the nearest other town did seem like a lot, although Hawke wasn’t sure. That was the sort of thing he usually snoozed through during history class.

 

  Hawke nodded and kept his eyes flickering back and forth between both sides of the road, as well as casting a few glances to the rear. Sections of the ditch were filled with dirt or even covered by undergrowth, and entire stretches of road had been washed away by seasonal floods. Their pace slowed down as they maneuvered through obstacles: a pond that filled a dip in the road, an overgrown stretch that would turn into part of the surrounding woods in the not-too-distant future, and, finally, a large log that blocked the road.

  “That wasn’t there the last time I passed by,” Kinto said, looking around suspiciously. He spotted something and shouted. “Ambush!”

  Hawke drew his blades and looked for a target on the left side of the road while he started casting Hammer of Light, cursing himself for not having his defensive buffs up. He’d thought about constantly maintaining them the next day, thinking they would be safe until then. He hoped his laziness wouldn’t cost him.

  Off to the right, Hawke heard Tava’s bow go twang as it sent a shaft downrange. He couldn’t look in that direction, however, because a couple of bushes off the side of the road rose up, revealing they were a lot more than bushes, and shot their bows at him. The critters looked like children-sized people with pale brown bark covering their slender bodies and leaves instead of hair. His True Sight identified them:

  Woodling (Minor Fae)

  Level 4 Hunter

  Health 60 Mana 30/40 Endurance 60

  One arrow missed him clean. The other struck his arm and exploded in a flash of green light. Even though the arrowhead didn’t penetrate his plate armor, he still took five points of damage. He threw the energy hammer at the closest critter and landed a 52-point hit, enough to make it yelp in pain without killing it. Two others jumped from behind cover and sent more shafts hissing towards him. Hawke found himself missing his shield; he batted one of the arrows away with a swift swing of his left sword, but got hit a second time. Once again, the arrow itself did no damage but whatever magic caused it to explode did. Three points this time. Not a lot, but it was going to add up.

 

  Saturnyx clearly meant ‘dumbass’ and she was right. He started walking towards the attackers while he cast Aura of Light. He got hit three more times for a total of fifteen points, but he started recovering six Health per second. He was still down another eight points by the time he got Shield of Light up, after which he stopped taking damage from the exploding arrows. There was no time to cast another spell; the Woodlings dropped their bows when he got too close, and grabbed spears from the ground. Brave little bastards; he had to give them that.

  In close combat, it was almost as one-sided as when he fought those poor level-0 human assassins. He parried a spear attack and countered it with quick thrust to the Woodling’s neck that generated a big ‘73’ critical number and left a corpse with a loot bag over its head behind. He killed the wounded critter next, after which the two survivors decided it was time to leave. Hawke took out one of them with another Hammer of Light, on the grounds that he wasn’t giving enemies second chances. Not anymore. As it turned out, hitting someone from behind was an automatic critical, more than enough to drive the third Woodling from sixty to zero.

  All the while, he had kept an eye on the Party Interface. Kinto’s Health had dipped by a good forty points, but it was rising up, thanks to Gosto’s healing. Tava was unharmed. When the fourth Woodling he’d been fighting ran into the nearby forest and disappeared, Hawke looked around and saw six more loot bags, marking the spots where more forest people had died. Losing nine members in less than a minute had to be demoralizing.

  For Slaying Your Foes, you have earned 90 XP. Current XP/Next Level: 6,664/10,000

  “You think this fight will convince them to leave us alone?” Hawke asked Kinto while he sent a Bolt of Life his way.

  The Hunter nodded; his body relaxed as the pain from the last of his wounds faded away. “Their bands are never more than thirty, forty strong, and a third of them are their young. We’ve killed half of this
band’s warriors.” He walked over to where his thrown spear had nailed one of the Woodlings to a tree. He yanked it loose with a jerk, and the small body dropped to the ground.

  “They look like children,” Tava said, looking slightly shaken. Monsters and Undead were one thing, but the Woodlings were people, even if they belonged to a different species.

  “I know,” Hawke said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She put her fingers over his. “It’s not easy, but they were going to kill us.”

  “Kill us if we were lucky,” Kinto added. “Woodlings like to take some of their victims alive, to feed to their god.”

  “They don’t worship Cerunnos, but Akaton Blood-Drinker, when they worship at all,” Gosto said. “They war against all those who use fire and eat meat.”

  Hawke thought about making a Vegan joke, but nobody would get it. Besides, Tava was still upset at the killings. So was he, although not as much as he would have been a few days ago. The world was making him less sensitive to such things; he actually cared more about the fact the critters had yielded a meager ten Experience points apiece and a total of seven silver and eight copper coins. He waited for Saturnyx to jump in with some wise saying like ‘The Realms will make you tougher or they will kill you, Master,’ but the sword stayed silent. Maybe she was softening up.

 

  Forty-Four

  “Okay, I am impressed,” Hawke admitted to himself when they finally saw the outlines of Akila, six days later.

  A city of forty thousand people didn’t sound like much. Not to someone who had grown in a world where a football stadium could easily hold that number. The tall walls rising over the horizon and running for what looked like miles were something else, however. So were the towers that emerged from behind the walls. The most notable among them was bright red, with a golden dome on top; it had to be hundreds of feet tall, a fantasy skyscraper. A couple of the other spires – one white, the other a light blue that blended with the morning sky so well it should be deemed a flight hazard – were nearly the same height. Overlooking the walled city was a fortress on top of a large hill or maybe a small mountain, with two or maybe three more sets of walls around it.

  Tava and Gosto were in awe, having never seen anything larger than their walled town. “Has any army ever taken Akila?” she wondered. “Can any army ever take such a place?”

  “You would have to ask a historian to get the full answer, daughter of mine,” Kinto said with a grin. “But you must have forgotten ‘The Fall of Akila,’ the song I used to mangle many a night when you demanded a bedtime story, not all that many years ago.”

  Tava blushed in embarrassment. “Oh! Of course. I haven’t forgotten, but until just now I didn’t match the song to the place. It has fallen, then, at least the one time.” Her eyes unfocused, maybe as she listened to the song in her mind.

  “Sounds like an interesting story,” Hawke said.

  “And I bet Tava would looove to sing it for you,” Gosto said.

  “Shut up, you.”

  Hawke smiled at the bickering siblings. After week of traveling together, you would think he would have gotten sick of hanging out with them, but he’d actually grown closer to Kinto’s family. And the feeling was mutual. Even Kinto had started to warm up to him and share stories about his misspent youth, often to the scandalized shock of his offspring.

  He was going to miss them all.

  “I guess this is where we part ways,” he said.

  Kinto pointed to the crossroads they had reached. “If you take that road and head east, you will reach the Silver Gate tomorrow by mid-morning. We’ll go straight here and make it to Southgate before evening.”

  “Are you sure you want to go off on your own?” Tava asked, not for the first time.

  “We stick to the plan. Kinto will deliver the letter to the Stern Clan and get the Dwarves’ help. I’ll go the long way around, visit the Nerf Herders’ headquarters, and see if they are willing to help. If they aren’t, they won’t know where I came from.”

  Hawke wished he could disregard Kinto’s warnings, but it was too risky. Too many players belonged to the ‘grab everything that isn’t nailed down’ school of thought. The last thing he wanted was to give some ambitious murder hobo the idea that Orom was ripe for the taking. Better to keep things secret to start with. Kinto had given him the name of a seaside town far to the east: Herona. Hawke would tell anyone who asked that he came from there.

  Am I being too paranoid?

 

  You are a sweetheart.

 

  Love you too, Hawke replied.

 

  What?

 

  Okay. I guess we’re on the same page, then, Hawke told his sword. He wasn’t lying either; he loved the snooty Fury at least as much as he did Tava. It was funny that he’d gone all chick-flick on Saturnyx before the human girl, but he had met the living weapon first.

  “If everything goes well, we will meet at Eagle’s Watch,” he said out loud. “If you get there before me, wait for me. If I’m not there in three days, go on without me.”

  “Be careful,” Tava said. She hugged him goodbye and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek, all under her father’s close supervision.

  I want to become your betrothed soon, she said through their connection to the sword. She has been showing me a lot of things I want to try with you!

  Oh, boy. “You take care too, Tava,” he told her. “I’m going to miss you.”

  And whenever we are less than five miles apart, I’ll call you through Saturnyx. The magic sword provided the equivalent of a cheap phone plan for people linked to her.

  “Are you going to miss me too?” Gosto said in a girlish falsetto.

  Hawke and Tava turned to him and said, “Shut up, you!” at the same time.

  “They echo each other,” the kid said before making disgusted noises. “Kill me now.”

  “I’ll be happy to,” Tava told him.

  “All right, I’m off,” Hawke said. He started walking down the road heading east. When he turned around, they were still looking at him. They waved at each other and he kept going. After a while, he couldn’t see them anymore.

  Hopefully, that wouldn’t be the case for long.

  * * *

  After half a day’s walk on a road that paralleled the city’s walls, Hawke found a roadside inn and paid twelve copper for a meal and a bed – prices were a lot higher even outside the city. The customers were mostly travelers to other places who didn’t want to spend the tolls you had to pay to enter Akila proper. He ate his meal quietly and listened to their gossip. Nothing stood out, other than rumors of war in the west. A Dwarven kingdom was facing a Goblinoid invasion. And pirates were apparently getting frisky in the Sea of Pearls to the east. Hawke figured none of that stuff was his business and tuned it out.

  That night, he spent an hour in his room sitting down in the lotus position and meditating. When he relaxed and let his mind wander, he started to become aware of the flow of magical energies through his body. By the end of the hour, he could see the entire network of lines of light, similar to the pipes in a house. There were drains and pumps, storage areas and waste disposal channels. The seven nodes – the Chakras – glowed brightly with Mana. All the energy ‘pipes’ in his body were connected to one of them. He still didn’t know how to awaken the Chakras, however. After the hour was up, he went to bed feeling exhausted, despite having a full Endurance pool.

  The next morning, he made his way to the Silver Gate and discovered it was indeed a huge silver-plated archway, or maybe mithril-plated; it was easy to confuse the two metals. The archway was open, with no doors in sight, which probably meant magic would be used to block the entrance in an emergency.

  ge of Onyx. The gate’s enchantments have been lost and cannot be replicated, but the Steward of the City can activate them, creating an energy barrier more difficult to knock down than the city walls, which are themselves enchanted and nigh-invulnerable.>

  The walls around the gate were over twenty feet tall and painted white; they looked so pristine that they had to be magical. Guards wearing a red coat of arms over their armor could be seen behind the walls’ crenellations, watching over the hundreds of people lined up in front of the gate, waiting to be let in.

  Another line, Hawke thought as he reached the tail end. Joy. And this one was much longer than the line to Orom, despite the fact he had woken up earlier and headed there as quickly as he could. Luckily, vendors pushing food carts walked alongside the waiting crowd, selling wine by the cup, bags of salted or candied nuts, and meat on a stick, among other delicacies. Hawke had skipped breakfast; ten coppers got him a small wooden cup full of sour wine and a bag of salted cashews. The cup was included in the price, as long as he didn’t mind a chance of getting splinters in his mouth each time he used it. Most people tossed their cups away; he did the same, and grimaced when he saw a couple of young boys who followed the vendor carts picking up the discards.

  Disgusting.

 

  “Huh.” Hawke supposed it made sense that magic did the work that antibiotics and antiseptics handled on Earth. He still made a resolution to be careful what he ate or drank in the city. He might not catch the local version of Montezuma’s Revenge, but spoiled food could become poisonous, and that might kill him or wish he were dead. Dying wasn’t something he wanted to go through again. Two deaths were his limit. Hopefully.