Chapter Twenty: On the Road Again Part I

The wind tries to yell into my ear as I run, it’s futile though, for try as it might even yelling hard as it can against me I just shrug it off as pleasant whispers and weak cries as for me to abandon my fight against it. But the wind doesn’t just come with whispers and cries, with every cry and whisper it has sent me there also has been a dozen or so, harsh, sharp, and very cold blasts of air been sent at me as I run along the prairie in the darkening evening, those are not so easily shrugged off. But I endure with my body adjusting, getting used to the cold air again not unlike that time in the desert, (Did dad leave me there? Or did I get lost?) and had to journey at night in some of the most brutal, and cold sandstorms... Ahh, I miss eating the Sand Dogs...

My wagon is shaking as it goes over the rough, uneven ground of the prairie… And the occasional animal that couldn’t get out of the way… and all the local plants in my path. Honestly, I’ve been leaving a trail of destruction ever since I got off the main road. I couldn’t help it either, I actually got a little out of control earlier with my speed… George and Julian put a stop to that. So, I got these leather straps attached to my wrist to tell me to slow down or speed up. Because apparently going as fast as the wind is environmentally destructive and life-endangering… pfft, featherweights puffballs.

But in truth, it’s probably for the best since my wagon couldn’t quite handle my max speed, and it’s not like I could keep up that speed for hours on end, especially with all the weight back there. That’s also part of the reason we're not quite at the quest location just yet. I’ve had to lower my speed a lot, just to keep the wagon together, and also to not destroy everything in my path, hey I’ve been trying! And if you’ve got give nature credit for anything, it’s recovery speed! By the time we’re done with the quest I’ll have to crave another path of mayhem, death, and destruction.

Speaking of nature, the quest zone is within sight for me. The rolling hills dot the edge of the prairie like bumps on the toes of giants, that are the rocky mountains towering above us making the shadowy evening almost pitch-black in their ever-expanding shadow. A massive, dense looking forest lines the gaps in between the hills and mountains, and even on them like moss growing on the back of giants and boulders. I could even hear a river rushing over the edge of one the mountains like it needs to take a leak.

Though something caught my attention the darker it got, well two things actually and something tells me this didn’t escape my friend George’s attention either coming from how he’s pulling on my reins.

I come to an also immediate stop and lazily turn around, seeing no need to push myself as I didn’t want to overexcite myself if I was wrong, my wagon didn’t though. It’s charging at me like a wild beast and I grin at it, I hold my hands out for impact and shift a foot forward like a lunge and shift another one back.

It’s going at least as fast as I was, but George who was guiding me and the wagon doesn’t even look worried for me, just excited. Not that I could blame him if I’m right about what’s about to happen. In fact, I think he’s probably hoping for it to come hit me faster if his face has anything to say about him, which it does a lot… Unless it doesn’t and I’ve been wrong about everything I’ve known about him since we met...

The wagon hits my palms full force, but only slightly numbs them and I’m barely even pushed back, the wagon practically bounces off my palms after I’ve absorbed the force and rolls slightly back.

George leaps off my wagon before it’s even stopped moving, with a little flourish and a flip, and lands steadily on the ground. I give him a ten out of twelve scores, he could have done another twirl or flip before landing.

He walks over to me and holds his hand over his eyes as to peer farther ahead, and whispers to me “Hey, Atlas do see those guys ahead?” I give a curt nod, trying to keep myself from grinning.

“So do you think that there…” He says with obvious excitement.

“Definitely, no one is just out here,” I say cutting him off.

I hear a light pair of footsteps on the wagon and look back to see Julian staring down at us curiously, with Damon behind him barely visible in the shadowy light.

“Why have we stopped?” Julian demands. “I was in the middle of a particularly good dream.” He says sadly.

I point my hand forward at the barely visible fire on the edge of the horizon, with faintly human shadows dancing around it.

“What about it? It’s just a fire, I could make one right now if you want.” Julian says confused. And a second later his hands alight with blue magefire... In a dry prairie… full of dry, knee-high grass…

“Put that shit out!”

“Julian stop with the fire!” George and I say in tandem, with me almost screaming at him in panic.

His face goes blank for a second looking at us in more confusion, before looking around him and the realization hitting him, and the blue flames go out.

“So, If you don’t want a fire what’s the problem?” He asks again.

I give a sigh and hoping I don’t have to spell it out for him.

I get ready to just say it flat out, but George comes to the rescue…. My hero.

“Julian, my dude, think about it for a moment. In those adventure books you read, what is one of the most common things the heroes have to fight on the road? What is one of the top cliches that appear in every adventure story that heroes have to defeat to continue on there way, to show how strong they are?”

Julian stares contemplatively at the fire ahead contemplatively for about a second before a sinister smile comes to play on his lips.

Damon slinks out of the wagon, and asks seriously “So, what are we going to do about them? If we could go around them, it might be for the best.” Then he pauses and corrects himself. “No nevermind, that would get us killed later.” A feral grin mounted on my face and I got ready to voice my idea.

But, before I could George beat me to it by leaping onto the carriage and gathering all of our attention before I could say anything.

“My friends! Listen closely for I have a cunning plan! So here’s how it goes…”

I walk slowly down the plains, the grass slithering pass my legs as I move through them… And other things like plain snakes, and rock crawlers… They tickle.

As I move closer and closer to where the fire is, the more I can make out the motion ahead of me. They’ve already noticed us, and several dozen shadows have slinked off towards the woods. Leaving a scant few around the dying fire, maybe three or four left.

I continue forward towards them nonchalantly and calmly, trying my best to not give away my excitement, which I’d say I’m doing a pretty damn good job of.

When I get within shitting distance of them, with the shadows of the flames of the fire dancing around me they leap to attention, and one says in a commanding tone. “Halt!" And I came to stop, and we stare each other down. “Stranger, come any closer or I’ll have to have you stuck through!” He said, with a quick gesture towards his guards that stood at the ready with spears and shields, that they handle with proficiency.

Though they looked fairly strong, It takes a quite a bit of might to keep from rolling my eyes. And tried to my best to look slightly intimidated… Which didn’t work, and they took a step towards me.

“Stranger, I implore you to raise your hands into the air and state your motives or leave, otherwise I will have you run through, by these fellows here! So, choose your next step carefully for these men are veteran soldiers from the Frontlines! And I myself, am a Warrior!” The man said with pride and much arrogance. I have to chew on my cheek, to keep myself from killing them then and there.

But I raise my hands up, I want this plan to go well don’t I?

“I beg your pardon, soldiers! I am but a mercenary working on a quest for the Guild! I am escorting my employer to gather some resources! And saw a possible place to rest for the night!” I say, with mock intimidation.

The Warrior gives me an investigative glare and looks me over that one type of glare that I’ve seen time and again. He’s sizing me up, then I feel a subtle probe of Aura. So I retract mine as soon as he enters my zone. The probe moves over me uncomfortably, and I have to refrain from tearing it apart. But as soon as he’s done, he gives me a slimy smile that says all that it needs to. Haha, the fool.

He motions for his soldiers to stand at ease, and I begin to lower my arms. But he barks out an order at me. “No, you don't! You stand at attention till I say otherwise! I still don’t know if your story checks out.” He walks over to me, letting me get a better view of him in the dark.

He’s a relatively tall man, only about a head shorter than me, being thick and stout, built with muscle that would cripple a normal man from the weight alone. His face though is plain with a bald head. Not ugly or handsome, just your average well-built warrior, definitely not a Mars level opponent though.

He walks over to me and gives me an uncomfortable pat down. Lingering on my back a little too long though, and I swear I heard him say “ Perfect size, the boss is gonna love it…” Then he moved onto my sword, and I tried my best to suppress a growl at that. It didn’t work, he jumped back a little and gave a scowl as I heard some snickering from the fireside.

“Easy boy, just checking to make sure your what ya say you are,” My eyes twitch slightly, but I don’t think he noticed in the dark. But to get his hands off me, before I ripped them off, I brought out my leaf-shaped blade in a sharp, fluid motion, that surprised him. I let him get close and look at it, but I’ll be damned if he took the first weapon that didn’t break on me after a week.

Getting closer to my sword, he lets out a low and piercing whistle. “Well, ain’t she a beaut, where did you get that from? What is it? Type 104 metal or 105? Looks sturdy as fuck. My men only have 103.”

I give a shrug but inwardly blister with pride about my sword. I give him a stout look and say curtly “105, a family friend made it for me.” Taking a moment to remember what Mark said it was.

That gave him pause, and he looks me up and down again. As though reassuring his priorities before shrugging helplessly. “So, you said your boss is with you? Where is he, in the back?” I give a nod, and then a low whistle, and George pops out without encouragement.

The Warrior barks out an order at George when he puts his head out, "You! Get out here now, with your hands in the air and no funny business!" In what he probably thought was an intimidating way. Pfft, newbie.

George, unbothered, struts forward to the Warrior, with his hands up in the air, and offers him a barefoot. “Mr. Poppy, me and my associate are looking to get some skins in the forest.” The Warrior looks at George nonplussed and shakes his foot and gestures for us to sit by the fire.

The Warrior goes to sit by his soldiers and eats some bread they offer. “Sorry, about the rough treatment, but you never know who to trust on the roads. And there have been rumors of bandits in these parts, ya know?” He says with a sly smile.

George gives out a slight laugh and waves his hand, and says in a friendly tone. “Aw, no problem mate, I understand and in fact, I might be more unnerved if you didn’t molest my friend here! Aha!” That got a laugh out of them… Must not engage kill mode…

George sent me an apologetic wink and got back to talking. “So, what would bandits be doing out here anyway? I mean what’s there to rob, anyway, well aside from us, but I can’t imagine that caravans are that frequent out here.”

The Warrior and the soldiers gave a collective sigh, “Yeah, there really isn’t but we got sent out here anyway to make sure that weren’t any hiding out here, to ambush the caravan trail in the mountains over there.” He says gesturing to the lumbering mountains out here.

George gives them a sympathetic look, and breaths out a long and exaggerated sigh. “Damn, talk about grunt work. Why you guys must have been patrolling these woods for days. Can’t imagine how boring that is, but I got a boss with a stick up their ass that’s also stuck in the mud too. Says we need some dozen Woodjumper furs by the first of next week, and only told me yesterday, so I have three days to hunt a dozen of the little bastards. And I have to pay for it all by myself. I’m barely going to make anything off this at all… But then again, what else would wives have you do, besides work even when you don’t need too?”

The men all fell over laughing maniacally, and George sent me another wink. After a minute the men got up, and George spoke again. “Well, I say that I’ve taken up enough you fine gentlemen's time, my guard and I here need to go find a place to lay our head tonight.” He got up and started to dust himself up, and I follow suit. But I keep an I eye on the men and see something dark flash behind the Warriors eyes.

He jumps up and says quickly, but not in a rush. “Now wait here, I do believe I have a solution to your problem.”

George looks back at them as he climbs onto the wagon. “Hmm?”

“You said you need a place to lay your head tonight right? Well, I must warn you against sleeping out here on the grasslands, for recently it’s entered Roc breeding season, and they’ve been known to hunt down here on the grasslands.”

George lets out a false gasp. “Oh, my! What if they stumble upon my wagon will I sleep, and as mighty as my guard is, I don’t think that even he can fend off a Roc, or worse two! And what if the bandits come as we sleep!” George says in a false panic.

The Warrior chuckles once George says mighty, but quickly erases any traces of that, and raises his hands in a placating motion, and says calmly. “Now, no need to panic friend, since we know a safe place where you can camp out tonight. If you would just follow us to our base, Y'all can rest there tonight.”

George practically leaped out of my wagon, and rushed over the Warrior and grabbing and shaping his hand fiercely. “Thank you, thank you, my friend! I may not look it, but I’ve been quite worried ever since you mentioned bandits! And it’ll put my poor merchant mind at ease if I knew I was near such strong and noble, warriors! Please lead the way men, and I will reward you nicely!” George said at breakneck speed.

The Warrior has a brief uncomfortable look flash over his face, but that disappears under a friendly smile before clasping Georges' shoulder and say friendly “Well, that unnecessary but we’ll gladly accept it! Now come on men let's show these boys the way!”

As the men turn their backs on us and put out the fire, George slips back into the wagon, and they turn back around gestures for me to move forward, before turning around and I let out a whistle and begin to pull the wagon towards the woods.

I follow the men out of the prairie, and they guide me onto a dirt road that happens to lead through the woods. They say that it leads into the mountains and onto the caravan trail. I don’t believe it for a second.

The lead me into the woods and go very, very silent, only walking slightly ahead of me at oddly slow pace, barely keeping ahead of me. Occasionally, looking at me with subtle sidelong glances. I notice wagon tracks on the soft earth, and what looks like triangular holes every so often, with dark wet patches of earth near them that have a strong smell of iron.

I grin as we get further down the road, and the smell grows stronger, and the glances become near second nature for the men. Then, I heard the heartbeats, or should I say all twenty of them. Slow, fast, slow, fast, trying their best to be silent, but I could still hear them.

The men come to an abrupt stop and I raise a suspicious brow and ask “Sooo, we here?” The men laugh eerily, “I guess you could say that…” He took a second to look me in the eyes then lets out a smile that's ready for carnage and made a fist in the air. “Let them rip boys, and Aim for the head! The boss is gonna want a new jacket!”

Then came the screaming of dozens of arrows, and the painful thrum of the Warbows strings. The soldiers next to me spun on me in an instant spearing through my legs and one of my hands, while the Warrior struck his sword through my neck.

I was dead in an instant, as the arrows sailed through my head turning me into mincemeat, the arrows bigger than some men's thumbs. And fell to the ground in a bloody slush.

Or would have, had I actually been there.

Julian’s illusion evaporated immediately after ‘I’ died, and we appeared from under the cloak of invisibility ten yards behind them.

George behind me yelled, “Let ‘em rip Julian!” As a glow came from my wagon, that could be seen through the heavy canvas, and heat that burned me from behind. So I ducked under the wagon to where Damon is hiding.

A scream of power tears through the air as Julian's mega-sized fireball is launched through the air, a technicolor array of heat and power the size of a wagon wheel, which then splits in two right as it meets where the fake wagon was, hitting both sides of the road.

The power the fireball emits is breathtaking destroying everything in or on either side of the road. Blowing up the forest in a booming, screech of air, followed by a brutal shockwave that shreds rocks, trees, and dirt, sending shrapnel everywhere and then setting it on fire and, burning everything down. And knocking down the men in the middle of the road, and setting them on fire.

Damon and I don’t waste a second, as soon as the fireball launches and explode, and the screams of the bandits light the night air, we each take a side of the road and launch down it to kill the stragglers. He takes the left and I take the right.

I summon my Aura in a steady blaze of honey-colored power. And form it forms into a protective sheen around my body, and I compress it down and let it flow down my sword. Extending its reach by ten or so feet.

I see my first victim, a bandit running out of the trees on fire screaming in pure agony, ahh, my heart thrums with pleasure at the sight. He catches sight of me and runs away but I give a quick slash and a snicker-snack, and his head rolls from his shoulders. One down, there were at about ten on each side. So maybe nine more.

I see two bandits, one carrying the other by the shoulders trying to drag him out of the fire. He doesn’t get a chance to scream, as I swing once and they topple down bisected.

I feel a flash of danger, and dodge forward as a man with an ax tries to cleave my skull in twain from behind me. Tsk, couldn’t even be bothered to give a war cry.

He’s still in a downward swing by the time I turn around, and I give him a pommel strike to the solar plexus and with a painfully sweet crack, his outsides cave into his insides. Four.

I see one man crawling out of a fire, and his skin blackened, but he stops breathing after a second. A double tap later, he’s gone.

I search around and find four charred corpses, in various states of explodedness. That left one. I decompress my Aura for half a second and send it out in search of the last one, he couldn’t have got far. Unfortunately, but fortunately for him, my radius is only about twenty or so feet.

I feel the bodies I killed, all nine of them. But then compress my Aura again and decide to rely on my sense instead.

I take a deep breath, and try to find a heartbeat or a not as charred body. Then I take another one, and another, then quiet my heart and ignore my friends racing pulses.

There! A bows string thrums, and an arrow is launched.

I look to see where arrow soars, it’s going through the air at the wagon, at Julian who’s leaning against the canvas wall! Time seems to slow for a second and I see the arrow soaring slowly at the wagon, with it at least a hundred feet away. I wouldn’t make it on foot, and neither would my Aura, but what would?

Fear wraps my heart, constricting it as the arrow slowly and slowly zoom towards Julian heart. Eternity drags on, and weight of the world is on me...

But then Julian looks toward the arrow and makes a simple gesture and it falls out of the air.

Huh, well that's a good thing to know. And weight off my chest.

I look to where the arrow came from, and I crouch down on all fours and launch myself forward at the bastard that would dare try and kill my companions!

The air breaks behind me, the earth shatters, the fires behind me are put out, and the dead bodies crumble and are gored, time slows down as I’m sent forward like an arrow tearing through everything in my path like Julian’s fireball. Nothing is safe or sturdy, all is gone, and the bastard before me doesn’t even have time to react. He doesn’t even see me, but I plow through him and he goes everywhere. I then tumble ass over end into a tree, which breaks and I eventually slow down. Feeling much better, and much more mulchy.

A minute later, I arrive back at the road where Damon sits next to a sleeping Julian protectively and cleaning his blades. Julian is asleep and looks pale, but otherwise good.

I don’t see George at first, but then I look down the road where there are three dead bodies of the ‘Soldiers’ and one very tied up Warrior.

I walk down to them with my sword dancing and swaying in the air, as I let it hang in my hand. The light of the fires that are left glinting off its blade ominously, and brings an eerie glow to the Bandit Warrior’s face as I come next to him.

He struggles in his bonds, but can’t break through, his bonds though seems to be George’s leather whip and a couple strips of leather on his arms and legs. I take a look at the other bodies, they don’t look burned or cut up, but they're very dead as their necks hang at angles that they shouldn’t hang at, and one with his spine pressing against the skin.

I look at George with a raised brow and some slight pride. “Did you do all this?”

He grins sheepishly with a little blush. “Yeah, I did mate, sorry it’s so messy it’s been awhile since I’ve had any real practice.”

“No, no, you did find I mean, I’m just proud you managed to take them down so easily!”

“Oh, no I couldn’t have done it without your guy's help, I mean otherwise I would have have been slaughtered!”

I smack him on the back, “But, think about where we’d be without your planning, this could have really sucked if you weren’t here!”

He smacks me back and grins pridefully. “Will I guess, you're right! Plus these guys are some pretty shitty bandits! I mean they made it so obvious and easy, that I didn’t even have to try!

Then a snickering voice rose up from the ground, and I turn to look at the Bandit Warrior. “Ah, if that ain’t sweet, two young lovebirds jerking each other off! Get a fucking room! And let me out too, and I might consider giving you each a painless death!”

I snarl and give an inquisitive look at George who moves out of the way with a smile.

I kick the bastard onto his back and stomp down on his chest, hard, with several painful and satisfying cracks coming down there. I look down at him sadistically and then lean down and grab him by the chin. And say lowly, like my throat is full of gravel. “Who said you could talk?”

His eyes go wide and he opens his mouth, but I knock the shit out of him with crack to his jaw. Huh, guess he wasn’t kidding about that warrior class. He gasps in shock and attempts to say. “W-what are you?” I lean down and headbutt him and his head rocks back and forth, and then for the fuck of it, I lean down and bite the tip of his nose off in a sudden violent chomp, he screams and I spit it into his eyes. And then slap him again.

“A Novice, now tell me where your camp is,” I say, ready to beat it out of him.