Once Erin and Jack returned… quite some time later… the four conferred about their plan for the next day. They ultimately decided to follow Jack’s plan to cut northwest into the grasslands and search for a trail or river leading to the coast. After they finished cleaning up the camp and making ready to leave with first light, Rory approached Jack with a bundle of cloth in his hands.

“Here mate. I picked this up for Layla back in Isenmar, but it seems like it would be better for you,” he smiled and offered the grey package.

“Thanks, Rory,” Jack smiled and started to unfold the gift. “What is it?”

“A hooded cloak, to hide your mug when we get to the next town,” he chuckled.

“Less thankful, pal,” Jack made a face. “You think it’s that bad?”

“I think if Seiger Weiss had seen that face in Nafsbirg, we’d have had the shortest adventure in history,” Rory grimaced. “Don’t get me wrong, you look wicked mate, but that’s sort of the problem, idn’t it?”

Jack just nodded, packing the cloak into his rucksack.

Rory’s face scrunched up again, “I know you’ll be hot as hell in that get-up, but it’s better than the alternative, yeah?”

“Actually, I can’t really tell that it’s hot anymore,” Jack winced.

“Well, fuck you then, bloody lich” Rory grinned and fanned himself in the humid night air, pulling the collar of his tunic away from his neck.

“Love you too, buddy,” he smirked.

“You gonna turn in?” Rory asked.

Jack looked up at the night sky, then back at Rory, his expression odd and unreadable.

“I don’t sleep anymore, Rory,” he replied.

“Oh, bollocks. Sorry,” Rory rubbed the back of his head.

“Nah, it’s alright. I knew what I was getting into. It turned out better than I could’ve hoped for. I can eat and drink, taste, and… well… I have Erin,” he smiled wistfully.

Rory’s expression darkened for a moment before he put on his poker face and gave Jack a professional smile.

“Sorry, bud. We’re gonna get you back, ok?” Jack offered.

“Yeah,” Rory turned away and went to his bedroll without another word.

Jack finished putting away the mess kit and walked the leavings from dinner to the tree line, where he poured the remains into their current latrine and filled in the pit, then dug another for the morning. When he finished, he stood at the edge of the clearing and listened to Rory’s uneven breathing and the soft, hopeless sounds of his friend trying to hide his tears.

“Fuck.”

-----

Layla stood next to Rory, hunched over with her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. The slender man next to her collapsed to one knee as the kill notifications continued to pop up in the corner of his vision. A dozen yards ahead, Erin was kneeling, eyes wide, holding her bloodied calf, staring at Jack as he danced deftly between a trio of vaguely humanoid creatures armed with crude spears, his massive longsword burning with black flame. One stabbed out at him with the stone spearhead, and in retort, he slammed his vambrace against the wooden pole and brutally reversed the flow of his longsword to artfully jam the deadly blade through the creature’s eye socket and out the back of its head. He savagely tore the longsword to the side with a burst of nearly inhuman strength and drove the middle of the blade into the elbow of the next creature, nearly amputating the arm.

"What the fuck has gotten into him?” Layla gasped between breaths. “He’s a fucking machine.”

Rory said nothing, instead watching as Jack reversed the longsword’s direction again and wheeled on the third raider with a roar. He batted the creature’s spear to the left, swinging the longsword in a tight circle around his left shoulder, then brought it in a sweeping arc over his head, recovering his two-handed grip and ramming the blade down into its unguarded skull. The massive swing was devastating, bisecting its head down to the collar bone in a fountain of gore. The dead creature collapsed, sliding off the blade, and without a moment’s delay, he turned to the second and now last attacker. Writhing shadows rippled off his left forearm and hand, slashing out at the small greenish creature as it tried desperately to fend off the razored tendrils of darkness with its remaining arm. The creature misstepped slightly and Jack suddenly rushed it down, his blade both collapsing the creature’s feeble guard and destroying the equally pitiful spear. The blade continued through the spear into the creature’s neck, opening its throat with a spray of crimson. The shadow tendrils finished Jack’s bloody work, stabbing and puncturing the last raider until it collapsed to one knee and finally fell over.

He stood in the ruin of the attackers, completely still, staring toward the field they had rushed out of to assault the four. He could smell the rest of the creatures’ raiding party, the stench of their fear strong on the hot wind.

“Hey, you ok? Did they hit you?” Erin stood and limped toward him.

His head snapped toward her and he opened his mouth to speak, then realized there wasn’t enough air in his lungs to form words. He hung his head and drew in a deep breath as he picked his way through the corpses at his feet.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” his face scrunched into a frown.

“What was that?” Rory asked.

“I’m used to exhaling with every strike, but my body doesn’t tell me to inhale anymore. I didn’t have enough air to talk,” he grimaced.

“Not that, you wanker. I mean you turning into the bloody terminator over there,” Rory wave his hand at the pile of corpses behind Jack.

Jack turned and looked at the half-dozen dead bodies strewn across the wagon trail they had found that morning.

“I’ve wasted enough time in this place playing adventure and having fun. You need to get home, and I need to keep us alive long enough to make it there,” his face hardened as he spoke.

Erin made it to him, and he pulled her arm over his shoulder to support her bleeding leg.

“I was really good at the longsword, Rory. Really, really good. I won a couple tournaments. But we used blunted blades and heavy padding and armor. It was for fun. This is real. Enough fucking around. If butchering every monster and bandit we come across is what I have to do to get strong enough that the next Seiger Weiss is nothing more than a fucking grease spot in my rearview, then that’s how it is,” his eyes burned with black fire as he spoke, his voice almost a growl.

Layla started a slow clap, but almost immediately stopped as Rory’s incredulous face judged her into sheepish silence.

Erin grunted as she put some weight on her leg, then looked up at Rory, “They’re right, you know. Jack and Layla. We’ve been playing around, and it got us captured, almost tortured, and actually nuked in Isenmar. Ouroboros gave us all these advantages, and we’ve been dicking around like we get some kind of tutorial stage in this place.”

Jack and Layla simultaneously blazed with mana as they cast a Shadow Dart and a Firebolt into the long grass, where one of the small green creatures had snuck up to spy on them from the edge of the trail. The creature’s face crumpled into a withered husk and its chest exploded into flames, slaying it instantly. Behind it, they heard the remains of the raiding party scurry away, finally convinced that the four Chosen just weren’t worth it.

-----

The next few days passed in a blur of blood and hot sweat as the four butchered their way across the plains to the west, slaying dozens more Feral Knockers, as the smallish creatures were called by their panels. The bestial humanoids were savagely aggressive in large groups and complete cowards against even odds. Once, the four found a raiding party camped around a wrecked wagon, having eaten their fill of a traveling merchant and his guard. Jack’s rage was vented in spectacular fashion, as his rapidly evolving shadows wreaked havoc among the unprepared knockers. The other three likewise laid waste to the murderous creatures, incensed by the murder of the only other humans they’d seen since the bandits assaulted them at the foot of the mountain.

A thorough search of the unfortunate merchant’s wagon produced enough food and spices to last them for the foreseeable future, a fistful of gold and silver, and a pair of fabric bolts that Rory’s Appraise skill wasn’t high enough to value, but instead simply described as ‘exquisite cloth’.

The most annoying other common inhabitant of the wide grasslands between the Northern Front and the mountain that held the Shrine of the Compass Wind was a breed of bulky hound labeled Grassland Vargr, which was a solid likeness for a cross between a mastiff and a spotted hyena. They were on almost as tough as the Ratite, had powerful crushing jaws, and roamed in packs of ten or more. Fortunately, they were afraid of fire, and the group’s resident pyromaniac had no issue with torching sections of scrub to ward off the larger packs.

Halfway through the fifth day since Jack’s transformation, he stopped at the lead of the group and turned to face the other three.

“The compass just swung north. It’s not pointed back at Alabastris,” his fierce grin was slowly echoed by the rest of the Chosen.