Chapter Nine
The conversation had shifted the ground beneath them. There were no more secrets, just a suicide pact, and a ledger stained with blood.
They moved north, the trees growing gnarled and gray as they crossed the threshold into the Deadwoods. The canopy here was thick, choking out the late afternoon sun and plunging the path into a premature twilight.
Yona didn't lead him down the main road. She took him through deer trails and dry creek beds, moving with a silence that Siurad now knew was supernatural.
"So," Yona whispered, sliding over a fallen log without making a sound. "Your world. No magic?"
"None," Siurad replied, his boots crunching softly on dead leaves. "Just machines. And a lot of people."
"Boring," she assessed. "No wonder you picked up the boogeyman gig. A guy your size needs a hobby."
She stopped, holding up a fist.
They had reached a ridge. Below them, nestled in a bowl-shaped depression of the forest, was a clearing. It was ugly, mud churned into a slurry by heavy boots, trees hacked down to form a crude palisade wall. Smoke rose from a central bonfire, carrying the scent of roasting meat and body odor.
Siurad crouched behind the ridge, his eyes scanning the layout. He counted. And then he counted again.
Twelve men by the fire. Two at the gate. Two on the makeshift palisade. And he could hear more voices inside the large main tent.
"Twenty," Siurad whispered, the blood draining from his face. "Maybe twenty-five. Plus a boss."
He pulled back behind the tree line, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
Three bandits in the woods was one thing, he thought. A giant bug with a predictable attack pattern was another. But twenty-five armed men in a fortified position? That’s not a fight. That’s a raid wipe.
He looked at his hands. They were shaking slightly.
Obi, Siurad projected, his thought frantic. We need to rethink this. This isn't a skirmish. This is an army.
'...AN ARMY?' Obi’s voice was dismissive, bordering on insulted. '...IT IS A GATHERING OF RODENTS.'
Rodents with bows, Siurad countered. Rodents with spears. I have limited mana. If I walk in there, logic says I’m dead in six seconds.
'...YOU ARE THE VESSEL. YOU HAVE THE AUTHORITY.'
I have a sword I bought three hours ago and a ring that drains my battery if I use it too hard! Siurad snapped back internally. Remember the bug? I almost passed out after one spell. If I am low on mana, I can't cast a spike. If I teleport, I can't fight. The math doesn't work, Obi.
He looked back at the camp. He saw the gleam of steel in the firelight. He saw the heavy timber of the gate.
We should retreat, Siurad thought, the survival instinct screaming at him. We go back to town. We get the guards. We get Zeus. We get help.
'...THE GUARDS ARE CORRUPT. ZEUS IS BROKEN. AND BY TOMORROW.'
Obi paused. He directed Siurad’s gaze away from the armed men and toward the shadows on the far side of the camp.
Toward the cages.
'...BY TOMORROW, THE CARGO IS GONE.'
Siurad saw them. Small hands gripping rusted iron bars. Huddled shapes under dirty tarps. He saw a guard walk by and kick the cage, laughing as the children flinched.
The hesitation in Siurad’s chest didn't vanish, but it hardened. It turned from the flighty panic of a prey animal into the cold, heavy weight of a decision.
"The math is bad," Siurad whispered aloud.
"Terrible," Yona agreed, crouching beside him. She was checking the edge of her daggers, her face grim. "If they rush us all at once, we're paste. Pure and simple."
She looked at him. She saw the sweat on his forehead. She saw the way he was gripping his sword hilt like a lifeline.
"You scaring yourself, big guy?" she asked quietly.
"I'm doing the calculations," Siurad muttered. "And the probability of survival is... low."
"Single digits," Yona confirmed cheerfully. "But that's why we don't fight fair."
She pointed to the east side of the palisade, where the logs looked uneven.
"I slip in there. I circle around to the cages, make sure they are alive, and pick the locks if I can. If all goes well, I get the kids into the woods. But if I can't, then I'll secure the perimeter. The problem is I can't do that if twenty eyes are watching me the whole time."
She turned to him.
"I need them looking at you, Siurad. I need them terrified. I need them to think an entire legion is knocking at the front door so they forget to watch the back door."
Siurad looked at the gate guards. He looked at the twenty-five killers inside. He looked at the cages.
He took a deep breath. He stopped thinking about the odds. He started thinking about the objective.
"I'm the aggro," Siurad said.
"You're the distraction," Yona corrected. "But yeah. Aggro works."
She stood up, keeping low. "Give me five minutes. When you hear the owl scream... bring the pain. And Siurad?"
He looked up.
"Don't die," she said. "I hate looting partners."
She melted into the underbrush, vanishing like smoke.
Siurad sat alone in the darkening woods. He checked his mana; it felt full, a deep well of cold water in his chest. But he knew how shallow that well really was.
Five minutes.
'...MATH IS IRRELEVANT,' Obi whispered, sensing the shift in Siurad's resolve. '...FEAR IS A VARIABLE CONTROL IT.'
"Easy for you to say," Siurad muttered, standing up and adjusting his cloak. "You're the jewelry. I'm the meat shield."
He stepped onto the path. The hesitation was still there, buzzing in his ear like a fly, but he pushed it down.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
He began the walk toward the gate.
The rhythmic thump of Siurad’s heart felt less like a drum and more like a countdown timer ticking toward zero.
The plan was simple: Pull aggro. survive.
The execution, however, was something entirely different.
He stood in the shadows, waiting for the signal, running through strategies in his mind like a player cycling through hotkeys. Spike the leader? Maybe. Crowd control is the priority.
'...THE VOID STIRS.'
The Ring pulsed against his finger, pulling Siurad’s attention away from his panic.
"The fuck does that mean?" Siurad hissed under his breath. "Now isn't the time to be cryptic, O Great One."
'...THE DARKNESS IS OUR ADVANTAGE.'
A tremor ran through Siurad’s hand, fear, anticipation, and a heavy side-order of regret cocktailing in his stomach. He looked at the twenty armed men by the fire.
"Tell me how that's going to help us get out of this alive," Siurad whispered.
The Ring grew cold, stabilizing his shaking hand.
'...THE FOX WITCH IS STRONG. CHAOTIC.'
'...AND YOU, YOU WIELD THE VOID.'
The truth struck Siurad as he neared the gate.
For days, he had been lamenting that this wasn't a game. But as he looked at the guards, he realized the inverse was also true: This wasn't a game.
There were no admins to ban him for glitching through walls. There were no patch notes to nerf his build.
Which meant there was nothing stopping him from using every dirty exploit he could think of.
He felt the connection to the Void hum in his blood. The nerves faded, replaced by the cold steel of resolve. He thought of the cages. He thought of the cargo."
'...IF VARIABLES TURN CRITICAL, WE ABANDON THE CARGO AND THE FOX.'
"Class act, Obi," Siurad muttered under his breath. "Real class act."
Mike Tyson once said, " Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Tonight, the proverbial mouth-punch came in two forms: Mother Nature and terrible acting.
Hoo-hoo-hoot.
A perfect owl cry echoed through the night sky.
Siurad took this as the sign. Go.
Pop.
He Void Stepped from the tree line, reappearing directly behind the first guard. There was no hesitation. He drove the black steel sword through the man's leather armor. It penetrated with a wet shink, quick, efficient, and silent.
The second guard turned, eyes widening as his partner slumped. He opened his mouth to scream.
Siurad raised his free left hand.
"Shadow Spike."
Thwip.
A jagged lance of darkness erupted from his palm, catching the second guard through the throat. The scream died before it was born.
"Kobe," Siurad mused to himself.
Then, gravity took over.
The shadow-spiked guard dropped from the gate, hitting the packed dirt with a loud, armor-rattling THUD. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the quiet camp.
Heads turned by the bonfire. Shouts began to rise.
And then, just as the chaos started, a second sound drifted from the east woods.
Hrr-rr-awk-wheeze.
It sounded like a chicken suffering from emphysema.
Siurad froze. The realization washed over him colder than the Void.
The first signal, the perfect one, had been a real owl. The second one, the dying chicken, was whatever the hell Yona was impersonating.
He hadn't timed it perfectly. He had moved too early. And worse, there were two sounds. Two directions. The camp wasn't just looking at the gate anymore.
"Intruder at the gate!" a bandit screamed.
"Something in the east woods!" another shouted.
"Flanking!"
The flap of the main tent threw open. Scrap-Iron Kel stepped out, roaring orders. He read the noise the way a man reads a battlefield, two signals, two threats, the cargo unguarded between them.
"We're being raided! Archers, on the gate!" He spun toward the fire. "You two! Get to the cages! If it looks like we're losing, kill the cargo! They don't take what's ours!"
Siurad’s blood ran cold. The two executioners drew their swords and sprinted toward the back of the camp. They were over a hundred feet away, well beyond the safe range of a precision teleport.
Yona was still in the bushes. She couldn't reach them in time.
'...THE CARGO IS CRITICAL,' Obi warned. '...THE DISTANCE IS TOO GREAT.'
"Distance is just velocity," Siurad muttered.
Obi, he thought. That thing at Limmel's with the candles. can we do it bigger?
'...SCALE,' Obi answered, the Ring pulsing once. '...IS A MATTER OF WILL.'
Siurad fixed his eyes on the bonfire and let the leash slip.
The Void answered. The air around him went still and cold. Shadows peeled away from tents, crates, and stumbling bandits, folding inward around the bonfire like a fist closing around a candle. The firelight bent, guttered, and was swallowed.
WHUMP.
The flames died mid roar.
The camp plunged into lightless dark.
"I can't see!"
"Where is he?!"
In the sudden void, Siurad turned his focus to the far end of the camp, where he had last seen the runners.
He judged the distance. One hundred and twenty feet.
Lesson Two: At one hundred feet, you are a projectile.
"Target acquired," Siurad whispered. "I am the ammunition."
He focused on a spot five feet to the right of the lead runner. He felt the tether snap into place, stretched thin, vibrating with dangerous energy.
He pulled.
BOOM.
The Void launched him. He exited reality with a scream of displaced air. For a microsecond, he was weightless, a ragdoll in a hurricane.
He re-entered reality, not standing, but flying horizontally at the speed of a car crash.
He slammed into the lead executioner like a wrecking ball.
CRUNCH.
The impact was sickening. The bandit didn't even have time to scream; he just folded, bones snapping, and was launched ten feet into the mud, unconscious before he hit the ground.
Siurad tumbled, rolling violently through the dirt to bleed off the momentum. He came to a stop, gasping, his world spinning. He was bruised, dizzy, and wobbly, but he was there.
The second executioner skidded to a halt, staring into the darkness, terrified by the sound of his partner exploding next to him.
"Who's there?!" the bandit screamed, waving his sword blindly. "Show yourself!"
Siurad was on his knees, ten feet away. He was too dizzy to stand. But ten feet?
Ten feet is easy.
'...STEP,' Obi commanded.
Siurad reached out. Void Step.
Pop.
He appeared instantly behind the second man. Before the bandit could turn, Siurad’s arm snaked around his throat.
It wasn't a technique. It was a vice.
Siurad clamped his forearm against the man's windpipe and squeezed. The bandit thrashed wildly, dropping his sword, his fingernails clawing uselessly at Siurad’s armored sleeve.
Siurad could feel it all through the contact. He felt the frantic, rabbit-fast thumping of the man’s pulse against his wrist. He felt the terror vibrating in the man's throat as he tried to scream but could only manage a wet gurgle. He felt the desperate, flailing energy of a living thing realizing it was about to die.
'...FINISH,' Obi pulsed.
Siurad tightened his grip, channeling the unnatural strength of the Vessel.
CRACK.
The sound was dry and brittle, like stepping on a wafer. The struggle stopped instantly. The body went heavy, a dead weight in his arms.
Siurad let the corpse drop to the mud.
And then, it hit him.
It wasn't nausea. It wasn't regret.
It was a rush. A sudden, electric jolt of cold satisfaction that started at the base of his spine and shot up to his skull. It felt good. It felt like solving a puzzle. It felt like... power.
Siurad stared at his hands, horrified. What the hell was that?
'...EXCELLENT,' Obi purred, the Ring pulsing with a warm, dark approval. '...THE LATENCY IS GONE. YOU ARE ADAPTING.'
Siurad wheezed, pushing the dark feeling down into the pit of his stomach.
The camp was in chaos. Bandits were shouting, swinging torches wildly, trying to find the intruder.
"Find him!" Kel roared from the center. "He's in the dark!"
Siurad could tell his mana was low. The Cannonball maneuver had drained him. He couldn't fight twenty men head-on.
Then, from the darkness behind the cages, a soft whistle cut through the air.
Hoo-hoo.
A real owl sound this time.
"I can't get to the kids," a voice whispered from the tree line. "Cover your eyes, Partner."
Then the sky turned a blinding green.
"Hey, ugly!" Yona’s voice rang out from the top of the palisade wall.
Kel looked up just in time to see a small figure standing on the logs, her hands wreathed in roaring green flames.
"You forgot the fox," she laughed.
She snapped her fingers.
Hellfire.
It was a thermal bomb. A wave of emerald plasma exploded from her hands, raining down on the clustered bandits in the center of the camp.
The heat was instantaneous and absolute. The mud in the center of the camp flashed into steam. The iron armor of the bandits began to glow cherry-red in seconds.
"ARGH!"
Bandits screamed, diving for cover as the unnatural heat blistered the paint off the tents and turned the night air into a blast furnace. It was the consuming, hungry heat of a star.
"Now, Siurad!" she yelled, her face illuminated by the inferno.
Siurad stepped out of the shadows, the heat washing over him, clashing with the cold Void radiating from his skin.
"Round two," he growled.
As the blazing flames began to recede, Scrap-Iron Kel was the only one left standing.
The Bandit Lord justified his name, he was a walking fortress of mismatched iron plates, riveted together in a chaotic mosaic of rust and steel. In his hands, he swung a massive two-handed flail, the spiked ball whistling a low, deadly note as it cut through the smoke.
He charged through the fading blue flames, roaring like a wounded bear.
"Witch!" Kel screamed, the sound muffled by his bucket helm. He swung the flail at the palisade wall where Yona stood. The iron ball smashed into the timber, sending splinters the size of daggers flying into the night.
"Too slow, rusty!" Yona laughed, backflipping off the wall. She landed lightly in the mud, her eyes gleaming with malice.
She raised her hands, palms glowing with a emerald sheen.
"Let's see how good that iron really is," she whispered.
Hellfire.
She unleashed a concentrated stream of green plasma. It hit Kel dead center in the chest. The Bandit Lord screamed as his breastplate began to glow, dull red, then bright orange. The rivets popped and hissed. He staggered back, the heat radiating off him in shimmering waves that distorted the air.
"Now!" Siurad yelled, stepping out of the shadows to strike.
"Wait!" Yona commanded, holding up a hand.
She cut the fire. Instantly, she snapped her fingers. The air temperature plummeted.
Flash Freeze.
A cone of cold slammed into the superheated metal.
CRACK.
The sound was louder than a gunshot; it was the shriek of physics breaking. Steam exploded off Kel’s chest in a violent cloud. The glowing orange metal turned instantly, chalky grey. The thermal shock had done what a warhammer couldn't, it had ruined the temper of the steel. The armor was no longer solid; it was a spiderweb of microscopic fractures. It was brittle as glass.
Yona stepped back, hopping onto a crate to get a better view. She crossed her arms and grinned.
"I cracked the shell," she called out to Siurad. "You scrape out the meat. Show me what you got, partner."
She was sitting this one out. She wanted to see the Boogeyman fight.