Chapter 46 - Four Months Later

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My daughter… the day you were born, the very stones of Oblivion whispered the name Ezdeath. I watched with pride as you came into womanhood, laying waste to your enemies without restraint or reservation. Soon, our armies will pour forth from the red mountain… putting this plane of existence to flame along with all hopes of resistance… the intruders will perish, with us leading the way. We will reclaim these worlds for ourselves and our people, and no others. The weak… are not needed. The strong… shall survive. And you… my daughter… are one of the strongest. I know you can succeed where others have failed, where even I have failed, and I need you to remain the way you are. Do not change your ways or forget my lessons. I tell you this, for when my days come to an end… you shall become queen.

Shaviante Bloodbringer, Commander of the Crimson Legion and Queen of Tarminith

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Name: Trey Bon

Level 28

Class: Infernal Summoner

Name: Jason Foreti

Level 10

Class: Alchemist

Name: Izumi Yoshida

Level 6

Class: Blacksmith

Name: Ashe Landry

Level 24

Class: Rogue

Trey’s heart pounded, and his panic was evident in the quick pace of his breathing.

He didn’t know how he’d gotten here, but he found himself rushing through a dark forest of trees made from corpses… and to his back - an enormous wall of flame roared towards him with the whispers of the dead calling out his name.

“NO!” Trey screamed as he stumbled and fell, picking himself up a moment later as he lunged ahead through the muddied grounds. Each step he took splashed in shallow pools of blood, and he was covered in it from all the missteps he’d taken. “LEAVE ME ALONE!”

The roaring inferno behind him laughed maliciously, and a horned face from the flames protruded forwards amidst the tidal wave of impending, burning doom. Second by second, it was quickly gaining on him. “Come here… little summoner… feed me your soul!”

He rushed by the trees of corpses one by one, getting snagged by a grasping hand that dangled from one of the ‘branches’ before ripping it off and continuing forward. The forest was endless, and he was running out of stamina.

“COME HERE, LITTLE SUMMONER!” cackled the voice from behind him. “I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE! I WILL NOT LET YOU ESCAPE ME! ELEKNAR CANNOT HIDE YOU FOREVER!!!”

Swarms of souls, little lights swirling around him in droves to his front, dispersed as he torpedoed through them. He was too afraid to look back now, but he knew that the wall of flames was catching up.

He had to move faster, but his legs were beginning to give out. He was tiring, he’d been running for so long now... and despite the horror and dread he felt inside… he didn’t have the means to move on.

An icy chill shivered through him and hand shot up from the ground, wrapping around his ankle with dead fleshy fingers to trip him.

Trey went sprawling head over heels, coming to an abrupt stop when he smashed against one of the gruesome trees. He tried to peel himself away from the soft leathery flesh, but limbs that created the trunk quickly wrapped around him and held him there - waiting for the one they called master to finally drink Trey’s life away and extinguish him entirely.

He struggled even harder, hyperventilating as a terror unlike anything he’d ever experienced before gripped his mind. He finally looked back, wide eyed and horror stricken, as the wall of luminous death made a beeline for his location.

And in that instant of panic, in that moment where Trey realized his doom was sealed, as he struggled in vain to get free of those dead hands grasping at his limbs… an unearthly scream echoed from beneath where he lay.

The ground erupted in a shower of blood, stone, and body parts as black mist rocketed skywards into the abyss above him. The souls of the dead dispersed in all directions as fast as they could, and the forest of corpses withered into ash.

Even the wall of flames stopped in its tracks, and the flaming horned face stared out with an angry sneer.

Trey found himself floating amidst the black mist - and it completely enveloped him. It swirled around him like a vortex of darkness, chilling him to the bone and seeping into his skin. His body drank up this… power… as a man dying of thirst would drink from an oasis spring, but the black mist had no end. It was boundless, consuming everything in its path that was not Trey, until it rebounded off the flames.

The resulting explosion was violent, abrupt, and continued to rage on even after the initial confrontation.

The two sides, fire and darkness, repelled one another with a ferocity that caused Trey’s mind to boggle. The air shook with the vibrations from the colliding powers, and the landscape in all directions was blasted apart. The face from the flames screamed in rage and tried to push forward, but the darkness just… laughed?

Four neon-green eyes appeared directly to Trey’s back, slits in the darkness, only yards away from where he floated amidst the writhing mass of anti-light. Trey’s hair stood on end as he looked up into those gazing eyes, but could do nothing but stare.

“Foolish one… He does not belong to the hells…” the voice came as a deep, alien, and sinister hiss amidst the screams of rage from within the flames. The four green eyes narrowed as they shifted from the flames to focus on Trey, and a thin demonic smile of green light etched into the black abyss appeared underneath. “He belongs to the void…”

A second later and the dream ended - and that next morning… Trey had completely forgotten everything about it. Instead all he had was a killer headache, and a subtle icy mark around his ankle in the shape of a handprint... that began to quickly fade away...

***

Four months had passed since leaving the eastern continent of Rumbra. Four months had passed since they’d found passage to what the rest of the world called the Lawless Lands. A haven for cutthroats, pirates, slavers, practitioners of the black magics, treasure hunters, drug smugglers, and a variety of other lowlife scum pulled from the dregs of society.

Trey’s group hadn’t expected a tropical paradise though. It came as a big surprise when the ship they’d bought passage on had finally docked at the place called Teretog. Islands were in abundance, ranging from many dozens of small islands about one mile across built up from old coral reefs to bigger islands like the one Teretog was located on. Teretog’s island was quite large, having another smaller settlement on the opposite end. A dormant volcano lay in the center, with flocks of beautiful tropical birds and forest in abundance. It was a drastic change of weather too, always being warm even in the early winter months they had spent there before spring rolled around. It was also often muggy. The tradeoff for the beauty of these rolling green forests and abundant wildlife was above all else the insects though, many of them being ruthless little blood suckers or even parasitic.

Being one of the largest settlements here in the Lawless Lands, Teretog was a hotspot for black market trading. The city was built from the old ruins of an ancient Ornthas outpost from before the old Ornthas empire had fallen into ruin. Legend had it that an experimental plague, created from an overzealous magician hell bent on achieving immortality, had run rampant and had killed people by the millions. Overnight, the greatest civilization known to their world had collapsed in a self destructive spiral. Some said that they’d all become undead, while others said they’d just become crazed before a lich had turned them into ghouls. It wasn’t really known what had happened in reality, but whatever the reason for the fall - their massive ruined cities still held unimaginable amounts of treasures yet to be discovered. So despite the dangers of hordes of undead, of a plague that could turn you into a ravenous ghoul if you contracted it, or the demon and dragon clans that resided here… people still came in flocks seeking riches.

There were five rules to living in Teretog, some of them Trey and his friends had learned the hard way.

The first rule was to never go anywhere alone.

The second rule was to always be on the lookout for pickpockets, muggers, and cheats.

The third rule was that if anyone was found to have contracted the plague, they were to either be treated, quarantined until you were treated, or killed immediately so that it would not spread. If the plague got you and turned you into a ghoul, it didn’t 100% mean you’d go insane and start eating people… but the ravenous urges you’d get were bad, and you were from then on a ‘contagious’ undead unlike ghouls created from regular necromantic methods.

The fourth rule was to be respectful, but not to let people roll over you. If you let people push you around: you’d end up dead, robbed or enslaved soon enough.

The last and fifth rule was to never trust anyone, because the bastards living here were all out for themselves and most would kill you before thinking twice if it suited them.

Teretog’s island didn’t really have a name, though many people called it by different names from time to time it wasn’t ever anything set in stone. Teretog itself was the trading hub and the island’s name was less important. By boat, and depending on where you wanted to go, Teretog was also only two days of sailing from the mainland of Ornthas. ‘The Deadlands’, or ‘The Deadlands of Ornthas’ was the name most people called the mainland by, but Trey preferred to just call it Ornthas.

Finding work here hadn’t been hard, with warm bodies needed for every outgoing treasure hunt and people willing to pay you for it. Trey and his minions were all pretty capable, and Ashe was a damn good rogue surprisingly enough. Their party was valued as mercs within small social circles here in the Lawless Lands, and their reputation, though not well known, was a positive one after just two runs into the Ornthas ruins. Jason would always tag along too to gather herbs for potion making, which he was becoming rather proficient at, and Izumi was always fascinated by the sightseeing of all things - especially in the ancient ruins of the larger cities they’d visit.

That being said, you always had to watch who you were hired on by... as many of the successful expeditions mysteriously came back with only a handful of people after leaving with many. They’d cut your throat in your sleep just to take your share of the riches or magical items, and there was no one to care about it after you died. Many more expeditions came back empty-handed than not, and they still usually had a couple of casualties unless they were one of the elite groups on the island. The Chekz, the Worvan, and the Ralabasta were just some of the more famous guilds that Trey knew to keep from angering if he wanted to remain alive.

They’d all gained a good amount of levels and experience though. Ashe in particular was showing herself to be a good addition to the team, being quite good with dual wielded crossbows and surprisingly accurate. Needless to say: she didn't fire both crossbows at once because she needed to reload her weapons, which required two hands - but she did keep that second crossbow locked and loaded with a safety mechanism on her hip in case she ever needed it for emergencies. Her rogue skill tree had allowed her to develop a stealth technique that allowed her to pickpocket people too, which was actually the original reason for ending up in Yosemar’s prisons where Trey’d first met her. She’d insisted being caught was a fluke though, and with a warped robin-hood mentality she continued to rob people who she thought deserved it. There were a lot of assholes here in the Lawless Lands and her skill with thievery had saved their asses more than once when trying to procure remedies for the plague before Jason could make it himself.

Jason now had a small list of potions he was able to create reliably, while still experimenting with other recipes he’d buy off people and trying his best to find the ingredients to test them out. He could make minor health potions, minor stamina potions, minor mana potions, a bleed poison that could be applied to weapons to increase bleeding rate, and his last accomplishment was finally understanding how to create an Ornthas plague remedy. He’d bought a small potion set with the money they’d made from small expeditions to the mainland, and he’d ever-since been making a small profit with people they knew buying from him regularly.

Izumi had the hardest time adjusting out of all of them. She didn’t like to fight and was a little bit of a chicken, lacking the enthusiasm for violence Trey or Ashe displayed. She was a kind, sweet girl and was always making the others smile. However, she’d become quite excited recently when she’d been enrolled into an apprenticeship for blacksmithing. The master blacksmith she worked under was an old awnry dwarf who kept to himself most of the time, but worked under the protection of the Fost guild. They’d all put their money together and paid the dwarf to take her under his wing for a couple months to show her the ropes, and just two weeks ago Izumi had been given the class of ‘Blacksmith’ by the All Spirit. She was still brand new to it and didn’t have many of its features unlocked, but merely having the class allowed her to create things of greater quality in a similar way that being an alchemist allowed Jason to use ascended alchemy for better potions. It was quite evident to all of them that these crafting classes would come in quite handy, being able to create items with All Spirit bonuses that literally could not be done without being registered as that crafting class.

Meanwhile, Trey had just summoned his fourth minion three weeks ago. Fifth minion, if you included Talsh’Noc’Un. The lesser summoning circle had been able to draw out a minotaur too dumb to know what was happening, and it had promptly been subjugated and forced into a contract. Naming it ‘Big Cow Daddy’ and outfitting it with some customized low tier iron armor that Izumi had made under her master’s supervision, Trey had put it to use as a frontline tank. It used an iron kite shield as well, with a slightly better-quality one-handed axe made out of steel. Big Cow Daddy stood much taller than he was and even slightly taller than Atharost, with rippling muscles and a slightly darker brown coat of hair than most of his kind had. It was hard to hold a conversation with the thick muscles the creature had for a brain, and the only good thing about the minotaur was his ability to take a hit or draw attention to itself. Trey hoped that eventually it would grow and learn to fight tactfully instead of just running into lines of enemies though, as it had done such a thing many times in his most recent adventure to Ornthas under merc contract.

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Simplified Status Page

Name: Big Cow Daddy

Race: Minotaur, Demon

Class: Warrior

Level: 12

HP: 400/400

MP: 52/52

SP: 236/236

DP: 1/1

Skills: Axes^(lvl. 16), Shields^ (lvl.11), Enrage (lvl. 6)(Sacred Art), Heavy Armor (lvl. 9),

Hand to Hand Combat (lvl. 3)

Traits: Stupid, Tough, Warrior’s Way, Trey Bon’s Minion

Magical Attributes: None

Opinion of you: Neutral

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Otherwise Trey’d learned no new abilities - but he’d seriously improved upon the ones he had. His chaos balls were significantly larger and more powerful, the chaos chains he summoned had spikes on them now for better impaling purposes and were able to home in on moving targets, and he was currently only using 5 of 10 minion slots. He was planning on making a real effort to expand his minion base soon enough but hadn’t gotten around to it yet due to other pressing matters that had popped up.

Rivia, Atharost and Napoleon had all become a good amount stronger too. Rivia in particular had learned the new ritual from Alkir’s First Writ concerning sacrifice to gain stat points and had used it a couple times on poor fuckers who’d gotten in Trey’s way. He’d been sure not to use it on innocent people though, which was a line he didn’t ever want to cross.

Ever since their encounter back at the inn on the western continent, where he’d put a stop to those men gang-raping her, she’d opened up a little bit. She’d become friendlier, actually initiated conversations with him, and seemed to enjoy the sex they now regularly had instead of making it a chore. In turn, he gave her extra time to spend on study of scripture and would occasionally ask her questions about her goddess Alkir - to which Rivia was more than happy to talk about. They definitely had their reservations with one another, and didn’t get along much of the time, but their relationship had seriously improved. So much so, that her attitude towards him was actually now labeled as ‘Subservient’ on her status page. They certainly weren’t the best of friends, but they could at least say they tolerated and sometimes even enjoyed each other’s company; which was a stark contrast from before.

So now, many months after Trey had originally found himself in the infernal realm of Oblivion, he was happy to realize the tropical-wonderland-reality of kill or be killed. Not being able to catch a break, and at the very least having some company while at it, he had decided to try his best to make a better life for the shit hand he’d been dealt. It was a dangerous lifestyle, with the permanence cycle currently being OFF it made it that much more dangerous for him and his friends, but they did what they needed to do to survive.

***

Seagulls called out to one another and ocean spray littered the breeze. It was another beautiful and sunny day in the tropics of this otherwise horrid region, sailing their merry lives away on a ship over crystal-clear waters. Trey wondered at how ironic it was that such a dangerous, unforgiving place could be so pretty. They were on their way back from the ruins of Ozovas, an ancient city a little ways off the coast that was relatively safer than some of the other ruins further inland. The key word in that sentence was ‘relatively’, as there were still enemies in abundance in any of the large ruins, but the further inland you went the more densely packed those enemies became. The ghoul societies that lived here in these lands usually lived that way on purpose to avoid outsiders like himself that wanted to raid the continent for lost relics.

They’d only come back with three relics of interest this round, but they were each pretty valuable. Ironically, all three of them were not only relics in the real sense of the word but were also labeled as item tier “(13) Relic” as well. Each of them would fetch a very pretty penny, and the small group of adventurers that’d hired them were incredibly happy about the findings. Fourteen sailors aside from Trey’s Earthborn group of mercs had set sail, and all fourteen were coming back. It was a rarity to not lose anyone going in - so spirits were upbeat. They’d also hired Trey before on his second-ever trip into the Deadlands, so they trusted him enough to know he wouldn’t go back on his word and try to steal anything. With Izumi being blatantly hit on by a sailor and Ashe preoccupied with seasickness, Jason and Trey sat with their backs against a wooden rail along the ship’s stern as the other sailors bantered with one another.

“Where’d your demon friends go off ta?” the ship’s captain, a tall muscular guy by the name of Brae asked pleasantly. He’d seen many fights in his life and had the scars to prove it, especially noticeable with the clean shaven head he had. He wasn’t too much older than Trey was but had him by at least a couple years.

Jason was too preoccupied to reply. He continued to count through all of the herbs he’d taken from the mainland as he organized them into leaf wrappings and stuffed them back into his large satchel. He’d made quite a haul this time, and the crew had already paid him a good amount of money for the plague remedies he’d sold them.

Trey on the other hand yawned and motioned for the captain to join them. He turned to look out at the small continent of Ornthas one more time and huffed. “I sent them back to their nether realms for some rest. Big Cow Daddy was especially injured with the beating he took from those worm mutants going in, I’ll be sure to summon them all back to us before we get to Teretog.”

Jason loudly scoffed at the minotaur’s name, and it only made Trey think it funnier after choosing such a ridiculous option.

Brae slid back against the rail and watched the wind kick up to blow against the sails again. The sound of the sea brushing up against their medium sized cog was calming to both of them and Brae couldn’t help but chuckle at the fortune the gods had blessed him with.

“Are you sure you don’t want more of a cut?” Brae asked again for the third time. He furrowed his brows in genuine concern. “You and your demons were the primary muscle here. I’d feel bad if you didn’t take more, especially considering our haul and what it’ll bring in.”

Trey shook his head adamantly with a sideways grin. “No man. We agreed on a price and I took it. It’s more than enough to feed us for a while anyways, and I’d rather buy your friendship than demand a bigger check. Friends are a rare thing here in the Lawless Lands.”

Brae nodded in acknowledgement and appreciation. “That is a certain truth, but why? What would my friendship mean to you?”

Trey gave him yet another sideways glance. “Well I want you to hire us again of course. We need to make a living too, and I know how frequently you dumbasses keep trying for treasure runs.”

Brae exploded with laughter, the scarred man slapped his knee a couple times and ginned back. Then he held out a hand, and Trey took it.

“To our friendship, and to our continued business deals.”

“Agreed.” Trey replied frankly with a low chuckle. “It’ll be nice going with a regular instead of all the other fuckheads who keep trying to kill me after we take in a haul.”

Brae raised an eyebrow. “They’re probably trying to kill you for the women you bring with you rather than the share you retain.”

Ashe was still busy puking but she still managed to hear them and gave them a deep scowl before hanging her head back over the railing.

Trey blinked, trying to figure out why he’d deserved the look but then gave up. “Perhaps… but I wouldn’t come within ten feet of that blonde over there if I was them. She’s one crazy bitch and would put a bolt through my crotch if the idea ever passed my mind.”

Brae eyed the two crossbows and sets of daggers along either of Ashe’s hips, then the quiver along her back. “Aye. But the leather she wears is rather nice, aint it?”

He narrowly dodged a smoke bomb that Ashe hurled at his head, but it didn’t matter too much because it landed right next to him and exploded into a dark cloud. The men began coughing while Jason started swearing at the rogue, cursing Ashe for potentially ruining the last hour of his organizing after he’d accidentally kicked open a folded leaf full of Jasmine Mushrooms when startled.

“GOD DAMN IT ASHE! CAN’T YOU SEE I’M WORKING?!” Jason tried to clear his lungs of the smoke and re-entered the smoke cloud to collect the spilled herbs, glaring at her as he did.

Trey gave another half-cough half-laugh and shook his head, brushing his hair back behind his horns for a moment and letting in the fresh air of the sea. Blue horizons off to the right and left, with a maze of small islands far out in front.

And… another ship, coming their way.

The other crew members had seen it just then as well. Yells and shouts of alarm began to sound as they began taking up weapons and preparing themselves for a fight. The ship was twice the size of the one they were on and bore no signature flag of any sort. It was quite normal to see other ships in the area, with thousands of them docked at Teretog at any one given time, but simply seeing the ship wasn’t the problem.

It was the trajectory.