Chapter 19 Leap of Desperation

Adrian sat down on the stairs, spear resting on his thighs as he thought about what to do. He hadn’t planned to reveal his predicament to Yrenor at all. And yet here he was.

He could just work on understanding the language himself, kill monsters, and try to figure out his magic, but without all the resources Yrenor had provided, it would be quite the slog. Let alone avoiding the man for however long he stayed in the Faenhold castle.

But I have no clue how he would react. He can do magic but this is something else entirely.

Adrian stood up and walked down the stairs. He figured the worst that could happen was Yrenor killing him. He didn’t want to go to more sinister thoughts, too preoccupied with the idea of losing the only being with potential answers to his situation so quickly after finding him.

He quickly made his way down to the lower area of the town and entered the square where he had first found Yrenor.

The man sat with his back towards Adrian, saying his prayers for each of the undead he had brought. Among them lay a familiar body, wearing burnt and ripped apart leather armor with a barely recognizable face.

Adrian cleared his throat, standing as casually as he could. He didn’t stand a chance in a fight, a non threatening approach was his only chance.

Yrenor finished his prayer and stood up, turning around to face the newcomer. His eyes opened a little wider before he said something that must’ve been a curse. He looked at Adrian for a while before he rubbed his brow.

“Yrenor?” Adrian asked, pointing at his body lying on the ground among the undead. “Found me huh?” he asked and chuckled awkwardly.

The old man pointed at Adrian. “Adrian?” he then pointed at the body. “Adrian?”

Adrian nodded. “Yes,” he said, turning to the side and showing the spear form he had worked on for hours under the man’s watchful eyes. He turned back to see the man actually smiling.

A moment later he burst out laughing, shaking his head before he muttered something to himself. He pointed at the low sun and motioned for Adrian to follow.

That went better than expected, he thought and glanced at his corpse. Is it normal to get back to life here? Or is he just a mad old man?

His old gear did look properly fucked. He still quickly checked, acting like he was saying a prayer to his own body. None of it had survived but worst of all was the smell. He got up again and joined Yrenor on their walk back to the man’s home. He had expected utter disbelief but supposed when you’re a fire magic wielding spear warrior killing undead in an otherwise empty castle town, you might not judge quite as easily.

The least he expected was Yrenor asking questions through pictures or wanting Adrian to somehow explain himself but nothing came up. He just started cooking again when they reached his home.

Adrian would’ve helped but there was still plenty of stew. He would make sure to bring spices to this house, otherwise Yrenor may as well have killed him in the first place.

What followed were days upon days of training, learning letters and words, killing undead, and saying made up prayers. Adrian made sure to keep his Glass magic experimentation to the times when he was left alone to deal with the monsters. His death and subsequent return apparently didn’t suggest that he wasn’t ready for battle. On the contrary, Yrenor seemed to care even less.

The process of learning the language turned out to be just as difficult and annoying as he had expected. Compared to that, fighting undead was downright therapeutic. As long as he kept to the alleys and made sure to run whenever any signs of magic showed. Adrian found more mages than he had hoped for, but his initial run ins had been about as unlucky as they came. Any subsequent encounters were quickly overcome with a good dose of running away as quickly as his legs could carry him.

Gear wise, he found no real upgrades, mostly because the soldiers he needed were somewhat rare in the lower areas of the town. He didn’t particularly mind, growing more confident with his spear and with fighting the creatures by the day. What he found in regards to his magic was quite promising. More Wisdom on his gear allowed him to use it longer before he felt the weird exhaustion again. Intelligence on the other hand seemed to make the magic itself more potent and it helped regenerate whatever resource was at play. Both stats however were exceedingly rare on any pieces he found. They seemed more frequent on civilians than soldiers at least.

For now he couldn’t get a full tank of magic juice from just waiting but whenever he got up in the morning, he was back to whatever his maximum was. It meant that if he increased those stats, he could use his magic more frequently, and better. Just shaping Glass wasn’t particularly useful but the stats themselves were promising. He wondered if Yrenor could teach him fire magic to replace his limiting Soul skill but he would lack the words to explain such a concept for quite some time. And with the man already knowing about his coming back from the dead thing, he didn’t feel comfortable sharing his magic. Not yet.

Four days passed in a flash, the stew finally at its end.

Yrenor cut his vegetables when Adrian stopped his studying and joined the man. He looked at the chosen ingredients and wondered how the man could create something so vile with what he had available to him.

Adrian ignored the stare he received for his obvious intrusion and grabbed a knife, starting to cut onions. He prepared the pot and put the heat on, going to his pack before he returned with a few glass containers he had borrowed from the cleared a few houses in the cleared out section of the town. “Salt,” he said and showed Yrenor the small flask.

The man huffed.

“Onions,” Adrian said and pointed to the ingredient before he chucked them into the pot. There was no oil so he had to keep the heat low and use the liquid from the onions themselves. He did add a little salt to start and continued from there. Garlic, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, two weird looking vegetables he didn’t know, and a bunch of herb water later, he left everything to cook. His confidence must’ve convinced the old man to let him continue. Or perhaps it was a continuously growing fragrance of glazed onions, slightly fried vegetables, and cooking herbs he actually chose based on how they smelled and tasted, but that was just another theory.

He closed the pot and let it cook, sitting back down with his notebook and continuing his studying.

Yrenor remained frozen in place, having watched the whole process. He finally said a few words and grunted, going back to his rocking chair and lighting his pipe.

Good food will convince him that I’m not some kind of demon coming back from the dead. It’s the only weapon I have against you, old man, Adrian thought, glancing at Yrenor quickly before he focused back on his reading.

He soon closed the door as the sun was quickly reaching the lower part of the horizon. Adrian stood in front of the entrance and looked to Yrenor. He pointed at the door and then tried imitating one of the ghostly figures he had seen on the night he went to the wall for the first time. He gestured as if to scratch something and then pointed at himself. “What am I?” he asked, in English of course. He lacked the words to ask something that complex.

“Wyrd,” Yrenor said the single word.

“Wyrd?” Adrian asked, pointing at the general outside.

The old man nodded.

“Wyrd… fire?” he asked, having learned that word two days ago.

Yrenor nodded, smoking from his pipe before he talked. “Wyrd, fire,” then he pointed at Adrian, then at himself.

So they want me and him too? Living creatures maybe? But they didn’t seem to care once the fire was out. Maybe they just have shit eyes, he thought and chuckled to himself. Surely there was more to it, but right now he didn’t much care as long as the creatures didn’t come in to kill him at night. More importantly, they’d kill Yrenor too, which might just be more of a loss for him.

Adrian tried to work as quickly as he could. His hand touched the glass window of a cleared house in the lower section of the city. Yrenor had never bothered or followed him to his knowledge but he still checked to make sure.

The man had happily taught him a few forms to throw daggers when he gestured and asked with the steel ones he owned. Though it didn’t seem like Yrenor was quite as confident in the art as he was in his spear, but nonetheless he could throw a dagger that dug deep into a wooden door.

This time, Adrian didn’t siphon the glass into a sphere first but instead formed it directly into a simple dagger. He added a usable grip and a guard for additional weight and balance before repeating the process another five times. Adrian already felt the exhaustion creep up on him but finished the last dagger nonetheless. He knew he had enough for another few but five would be fine.

He went up through the town and quickly found the spot he had used before. A small back yard to a rather large stone mansion. The earth would help with his glass. He grabbed the first dagger from the bag he had added to his belt and felt the weight in his hand.

They were getting more uniform. He smiled to himself and flung the blade at his chosen target, a decrepit wooden wagon standing lonesome in the yard. The weapon flew and hit the wood, bouncing off with a dull sound before it landed on the ground. Adrian grabbed the next dagger and repeated the process. He more or less hit the area he aimed for at least. That hadn’t been the case a few days ago.

More Skill helped immensely but he tried to work on his own ability, knowing he could’ve learned this skill back home just as well as he could do here. It just hadn’t ever made sense to pick up knife throwing. Even now he questioned the usefulness considering he had a crossbow but he wouldn’t accept that his shaping glass magic just sat there useless and unused. And so he practiced. Every day he practiced, between training with the spear, fighting undead, praying, and cooking.

As time went on, Yrenor taught him how to tend to the garden, watering and ripping out weeds. Besides the fact that the two mostly lived from whatever the old man managed to grow, Adrian found the process calming. There was something about tending to a garden that his previous work never quite managed to instill. It felt right. Felt like there was a purpose. Well they needed the food as well but he found that wasn’t the only reason.

He continued to learn the language, now able to refer to most items in Yrenor’s home. Questions and sentence structure still eluded him without a direct translation to work off of but he was making progress. The old man didn’t seem bothered either way, not one to talk much.

Adrian was certainly glad for the company and he thought Yrenor may just feel the same. He did seem a little less grumpy, but that may have just been the actually seasoned food. The garden expanded slowly, as did the pyre in the town. Days and weeks went by quickly, a routine settling in as they worked together to clear Faenhold castle of undead creatures.

The back yard where Adrian trained his dagger throwing now held entire stacks of daggers, made from dozens of windows in the surrounding area, shards and splinters laying below the cart from the blades that landed unfortunately. He had gotten better too, but didn’t feel confident enough to use the somewhat improvised weapons against actual undead.

One morning when he made new knives, he noticed a change. The glass from the window flowed into the dagger shape more easily. He found he could make the edges sharper, the glass itself more compressed. With the same size he now had a dagger that felt heavier, sturdier, and sharper.

How about that? Some kind of revelation?

He looked within and smiled.

Soulbound:

Essence – 2658

Level – 6

Vitality – 16 [23]

Endurance – 10

Strength – 9 [12]

Skill – 8 [12]

Intelligence – 12

Wisdom – 11

Soul skill – Shaping Glass Magic – level 2

“There you go… practice does pay off,” he murmured to himself, ignoring the high amount of Essence that was piling up from all the undead he had laid to rest in the past weeks. It just amounted to three levels and he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with them for the time being.

Vitality was useful but he only really needed more against the mage types, not that three more would help. All the other stats had their use for either his spear, running away efficiently, his throwing, or his magic. He really wanted to invest in his magic but couldn’t justify it. Not yet. With a new level in the skill and better daggers to throw, he already considered it. But he waited nonetheless, unsure what the next days would bring.

If he could continue his training and slow advancement while living with Yrenor, investing in his magic seemed feasible. More stats would surely help with fire magic or whatever else he could learn in the future too. He longed for the day where he could put down his spear and take out most of the undead from a distance. He felt it would be much more efficient too.

The dagger he made that morning dug deeper into the wooden cart than any had before, it neither fell out nor did its weight drag it down. He threw it a few more times to make sure the result wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t. The dagger didn’t chip as easily either, Adrian able to throw it several times before it showed signs of wear. Nowhere close to metal of course but he had plenty of glass to work with in the town. Plus with his magic, he could reattach splinters or could even the blades out again, fixing cracks or fusing two broken blades into one.

For weeks after, he didn’t make new blades but instead worked on improving his massive stack of low quality ones.

It was getting warmer. Adrian pushed his cart towards the square, pausing for a moment to drink and eat something. He had six undead stacked on the cart, the smell barely bothering him anymore. He found the blood to be the worst of it, their skin and clothes mostly dried out. The worst days were when it rained. Both because the stone alleys and steps were slippery but more so because of the smells. At least it would wash off the blood more quickly but that benefit didn’t outweigh anything.

He glanced to a nearby store, trying to read the words written on the wooden sign. It held on with dear life, the letters somewhat faded too. He knew them, even had an idea how to say the words but he had no idea what it actually meant.

Adrian had mostly avoided going into homes and shops after he had gotten the spices he needed to cook, just in case a nasty surprise waited within. He was quite content with his current schedule of practicing with Yrenor, his magic, knife throwing, and killing undead in the alleys of the town. A single mage or even just a lucky soldier could cause him to die again if he got trapped in a house.

This time however, he felt somewhat confident. Yrenor had cleared out most of this area, likely long ago. And he had cleared out plenty of rooms in his first weeks here. He packed his things and grabbed his spear, opening the door before he tapped the old wood. Nothing reacted to the sounds. And so he went inside.

Adrian made sure the exit would remain open, going so far as to put a chair next to the door. Inside he found a counter and several work benches covered in dried up ingredients. Dozens of glasses remained with things inside he couldn’t place. He found a few small pouches with coins below the counter, as well as something quite interesting.

Potions. The containers didn’t look nearly as fancy as the ones he had found in the servant’s quarters near his bedchamber but they had remained sealed, corks still set into the dust covered bottles, various liquids sitting within. Some looked chunky, others entirely solidified, but there were many that seemed fine still.

None of them had labels but Adrian found a few books in the back room that contained what looked like recipes, just based on the written format used and the many numbers he could spot.

If I could make my own health potions, he thought, leafing through the largest book until he found something quite intriguing. The word Fire and Defense written close to each other, a bunch of ingredients he didn’t know mentioned below. Maybe, he thought with a grin and placed the book into his pack.

He had learned enough. It was time to have a conversation.

Soulbound:

Essence – 4886

Level – 6

Vitality – 16 [23]

Endurance – 10

Strength – 9 [12]

Skill – 8 [12]

Intelligence – 12

Wisdom – 11

Soul skill – Shaping Glass Magic – level 2

Equipment:

Helmet – Faenhold Soldier Helmet [Adequate]

Vitality +2

Chest – Faenhold Soldier Leather Armor [High]

Vitality +2

Warrior Soul Skill Damage +1

Arms – Faenhold Soldier Bracers [Adequate]

Skill +2

Hands – Faenhold Soldier Gloves [Adequate]

Strength +1

Belt – Faenhold Soldier Belt [Adequate]

Vitality +2

Legs – Faenhold Soldier Pants [Adequate]

Strength +1

Boots – Faenhold Soldier Boots [Adequate]

Strength +1

1h Weapon – Faenhold Spear [Adequate]

Skill +2

Off hand – Wooden Shield [Adequate]

Vitality +1