A fist collided with his jaw, sending him to the ground. He lay there on his back, heaving for breath. Releasing the blunted longsword, he raised a hand to rub at his aching jaw. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, a faint click accompanying the dull pain.
“What’s this, recruit?” Came a deep voice. “Giving up already? Or are you trying to disguise yourself as a fish?”
He raised his head and looked at his father and captain. The man’s short hair was matted in sweat, but his breathing was even. The same could not be said for him.
“Still some strength in those bones I see, old man,” he replied.
Not once had he managed to break his father’s guard. He was faster and had the advantage of youth, but the big man didn’t seem to make any mistakes. Every time Gase thought he was going to land a hit, the man’s sword would be there, ready to block or deflect the incoming blow. He almost had him that last time though.
“You waste too much energy. You keep moving, trying to create an opening. Not a bad tactic, but sometimes you got to be patient and let the opening come to you. You’ll get there.”
“And how long would that take?” He asked doubtfully.
The man gave a chuckle, the sound more akin to distant thunder than laughter. “Not as long as you’d think, though longer than you’d like. Just one foot in front of the other. That’s how you reach most things in life. Set a path and place one foot in front of the other.”
Gase groaned and opened his eyes to stare up at an unfamiliar ceiling. For a moment, confusion born from sleep and dreams clouded his mind, before the events of the previous day came crashing into it.
His sudden awakening at the hands of the mage. The memories of a life he never lived and the few of the one he knew he did. The body he wore that was not his own.
The revelations settled like a hollow emptiness inside his chest. He closed his eyes and raised his arm to rest a hand on his brow, feeling the slight shaking of the limb. For a moment, he let himself sink into the feeling of powerlessness that threatened to overwhelm him. Then he steeled himself. He took a deep breath. Then another. Slowly he could feel the tremor in his hand subside.
Lying here and feeling sorry for himself wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t bring back whatever he had lost. No, he needed to do something.
Gase shifted his focus to what he knew, looking for something he could use. He found little, except for the name of the town he had lived in. Eriston. If he could reach it, then he might be able to figure out who he was. He might be able to find them.
Having found a course of action, it felt as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. The powerlessness was still there, in the corner of his mind. But now he had something to hold onto, something to beat it back with.
One foot in front of the other. A thin smile found its way onto his lips as he thought of the words from the dream. The words felt right. He had a feeling it had been more than a dream with how real it felt. Perhaps his memories weren’t as lost as he had feared?
Already feeling better, he sat up, another groan escaping him as he did so. The thin mattress had done little to ease the discomfort from the hard wooden frame underneath. His body felt… not sore. Not right, either. He held an arm out in front of him, opening and closing his fist. He could feel it just fine yet, at the same time, it felt… distant. One more problem with wearing another person’s flesh, he supposed.
Shaking his head before he could go deeper down that path and ruin his mood once more, he stood up and began doing some stretches. He did them without any sort of pattern. Merely twisting his body this way and that to relieve some of the discomfort. The movements helped, but not much.
Done with his stretches, he opened the door of his room and paused. In front of the door stood a bucket filled with water. Glancing around, he saw another standing in front of one of the other closed rooms.
Ah.
They were probably dropped off by one of the serving girls. Grabbing the bucket, he closed the door once more and stripped off the ragged shirt he wore. Gase spent a while splashing the cold water over his body and wiping off most of the dried sweat and dirt. It was a struggle until he finally had had enough and ripped off the largest patch on one of his pant legs. It was already hanging on by only a few threads and came off without much effort. Not like the piece of clothing could get much worse anyway.
He dunked it in the water and wrung it out a few times before continuing his cleaning with his makeshift cloth. His hands lingered a moment as he washed his face. It felt strange, feeling the face that he remembered for what felt like his whole life.
His fingers traced over his gaunt cheeks, and he winced as they brushed the over a cheekbone. Ah, yes. The beating Y’rid took from the guards a couple of days ago. He could still feel the swelling, though it had faded quite a bit.
Gase shook his head before dunking it into what remained of the water. He flicked back his head and he exhaled, running his hands through his hair.
Turning, he eyed the rags he had been wearing until now. He would have to get new clothes. Another thing on the list of what to do today. He pulled on the clothes and made his way out of the room and down into the common area.
The smell of food reached him before he cleared the stairs, making his stomach growl. Several people sat at the tables of the room, most busy eating what looked like the same meal that had been served the night before.
He saw the large innkeeper standing behind the counter at the end of the room. He was looking over the two serving girls scrubbing the floor and wiping the unoccupied tables, disapproving of their work speed if his scowling face was any indication. Gase walked over to the innkeeper, who turned to him with a flat expression.
“Enjoyed your stay?” The man asked.
“I was thinking of staying a little longer actually,” Gase replied, remembering the man’s actions the previous night.
A flash of surprise was quickly covered up as the innkeeper smiled and nodded. He looked Gase over. “I’m always happy to help a man get back on his feet. You know what? You seem like a nice lad. I’ll give you a good deal. One of those gold marks of yours and you can keep the room for the rest of the cycle. Along with two meals a day, of course, so you don’t have to worry about that. You can just focus on your things. I’ll even through in some ale as well, to clear the mind, eh?”
Gase’s mouth twitched. From Y’rid’s memories, he knew there were forty days in the moon’s cycle. Some twenty were left in this one, given that the moon was almost full. He might not have been entirely sure as to the value of the gold coins he got from the mage, but given their size and weight, he could guess they were worth more than that.
“I’ll just take the meal and the room for a night, for now. A silver and twenty was it?” Gase said as he took out one of the thin silvers and twenty of the coppers the innkeeper had given him before.
Seeing the man’s smile turn sour almost brought one of his own to Gase’s face.
Bastard.
The innkeeper grunted and took the coins before waving to the tables. A whistle from the man drew the attention of one of the girls, who hurried over. Gase sat down at the table she had just cleaned. As he waited for the food to arrive, he went over what he needed to do today.
Above all, he would need to see if he could locate the town from his memory. He could try to find a map. Y’rid knew of a scrollhouse near the Hunter’s Hall on the southern street. While the youth had never been in there himself, as entrance required payment, he knew the building housed a wealth of scrolls and books. He could probably look there first, as that was the most likely place he’d find maps.
Failing that, he could also try to check with any of the travelling merchants in the market. See if any of them had heard of the town. Might also be worth checking with some of the mercenaries too, as the most significant part of their work came from guarding people between cities. Perhaps one of them had been to Eriston before?
A change of clothes was next on the list, not as important but much easier to get. Being properly clothed would help people to take him more seriously. People had no time for beggars and, as he looked now, he was just as likely to be chased away as to gain information.
Gase moved getting new clothes to the top of the list.
Then there was also the matter of coin. While Y’rid had estimated that the gold provided by the mage might last him a good while, Gase had no intention of living the way the youth had. Already he was down at least a couple of silver. More, if his suspicion about the innkeeper was correct. And after today he was bound to be down a couple more.
His first thought was to get the other half of the promised payment from the mage. The mage might also be able to help him regain some of the memories of his lost life. It might even reveal to him exactly where Eriston was, to begin with.
Yet, he was hesitant to revisit the mage. Could he get the man to help him without revealing to the mage that his spell had failed? If not, Gase got the feeling that the man would spare no effort in finding out precisely what went wrong.
That could be either very good or very bad for him. He didn’t know the mage but, if the rumours were to be believed, the man had no hesitation in killing his ‘test subjects’ in the pursuit of whatever he hoped to achieve.
The man had seemed calm for the most part, but Gase had caught a hint of fanaticism from him. Especially when he had spoken of the significance of his work. That worried him. Gase could see him trying the spell on him again, and who is to say he would survive the event. Maybe he would end up sharing the same fate Y’rid did, and someone else would wake up in this body, just as lost as he was.
It didn’t help that he didn’t know much about magic. Well, he did know some things, but they mostly came from what Y’rid was taught at the temple of Tella’nash. The few memories he had of those teachings, revolved around how the god had gifted magic to humanity. There were some other bits of information on magic in his head as well, pieces he could only guess were picked up as common knowledge.
The people who used magic seemed to be divided into two categories; mages and partial-mages. Or, as the priests called them, the blessed and the favoured.
Partial-mages were simply people who could use items inscribed with runes to somehow cause the magic to occur. How this worked, he wasn’t sure. Partials were supposedly favoured by Tella’nash. They were common compared to their rarer counterparts as this favour could be earned by all who worked hard.
A person could become a partial-mage through meditation, usually with the aid of an inscribed item to practice with. At the temple, he and the other children had been encouraged to seek the favour of Tella’nash. They had also undergone some sort of test to determine whether they were blessed. None were.
Gase frowned, trying to recall this test but couldn’t. In fact, he found he had trouble remembering many events from Y’rid’s life in great detail. The specific scenes that had flooded his mind the previous day were detailed, but the rest was filled in with broad impressions. And whatever had happened yesterday, it seemed to have stopped the inflow of Y’rid’s memories, so he doubted he’d ever fill the gaps.
He could recall the small room he shared with the other boys. He could feel the rough pelt-covered mattresses, the cold stone under his bare feet and the crack in the wooden frame of the doorway. Yet he could remember how many other boys he shared the room with. He could remember how the temple looked from the outside, even though he knew where it was and that Y’rid had passed it a couple of days ago.
There were much more gaps he had noticed yesterday. Not that Gase blamed himself, given the revelations at the time. He shook his head and turned his thoughts back to what he could recall.
None of the memories was his in any case. Perhaps he should just be glad that he still had most of them if indeed he had most.
He knew that the priests had promised the children a place in the temple if they earned the god’s favour. He also knew some of the children succeeded. Two… or was it three? One of them was a girl, that much he knew.
When Y’rid was kicked out of the temple after growing older, he still practised the meditation he had learnt there. For a time, he had done so quite religiously. Each night before falling asleep in some decrepit alleyway, dreaming of one day managing the feat and changing his fate. Many of the other street urchins had done the same.
Eventually, he had simply given up, like almost everyone else. Hope was an easy thing to cling to when it was all you had. But when the terms passed without any hint of success, that hope faded.
What he knew about mages was even less than what he knew of partials. They were able to use magic without inscribed items and were the ones who made those items in the first place. And, unlike partial-mages, you couldn’t gain the ability to become one. The priests said they were blessed at birth by Tella’nash himself. In any case, you were either born with the potential or not.
Gase leaned back in his chair and stared up at the inn’s ceiling.
None of this helped him to decide whether going back to the mage was a good idea. On the one hand, it was a chance at regaining his true past, not this… tattered skin of someone else’s. On the other hand, it would put him at the mercy of someone with, to put it lightly, questionable intent.
The gaps in Y’rid’s memories also didn’t help. Strangely enough, the thought brought him some comfort. After all, if he was ‘less Y’rid’ was he not more himself?
His thoughts were interrupted by the serving girl bringing a heated up bowl of last night’s stew, without the giant mushroom, and a mug of ale. Gase thanked her and gave her a couple of coppers which she quickly took with a smile.
Gase returned the smile and looked at her retreating back. Y’rid wouldn’t have given a coin to the girl, he was sure of it. Circumstances had taught him to cling to everything he could.
A smile, more genuine than the one he had given the girl, stretched across his face. It was a small act, one he had done without thought, but it was his.
One foot in front of the other.
He told himself as he started eating, taking his time to enjoy the meal.
Holin ran through the forest, the screams of the gluts close behind him. Leaping over a fallen tree, he saw Kali crouched down, her massive crossbow pointed in his direction. He dodged to the left, and the loud twang echoed through the area. He could feel the oversized bolt tearing through the air next to him. A pained screech announced it finding its target.
He turned and drew his sword. One of the scaled beasts leapt onto the fallen trunk. Its lower jaw unhinged and split in two, its maw opened wider than his chest as it roared. Its legs coiled and it shot off the log straight towards him. He rolled, his sword lashing out as the creature passed him, drawing an arc of blood.
Another glut sprinted past him, aiming for Kali. It quickly found its path blocked by a mountain of a man. Red brought down his bardiche, the weapon cleaving through scaled flesh before sinking into bone. The sheer force of the blow drove the beast into the ground.
Holin grinned and turned his attention back to his own opponent. He saw the beast struggling to rise. A quick dash brought him up behind the creature. He pushed his will into the sword and felt a tension over his body as the runes on the blade lit up.
Holin slashed at the beasts wounded leg. His sword cut deep and the inscription pulled the glut’s blood out off the opened veins, sending another arc of crimson spattering across the forest floor.
The beast’s leg gave out. It pushed off with the other as it twisted, snapping at him. Holin jumped back, barely avoiding the bite. The creature’s attack left it open. An invitation Holin gladly accepted. His sword cut across its snout, pulling out another stream of blood.
Holin darted in and out, avoiding the beasts clawed arms while striking out. It didn’t matter where he struck, the inscription on his sword tempting the creature’s lifeblood out of the dark confines of its body. With each strike, the beast grew weaker, until the ground around it was drenched in more blood than remained in the thing itself.
Stepped forward, Holin cut off his connection to the inscription. He grabbed the blade of his sword with his off-hand. Lazily dodging the weakened swipe of the glut, he thrust forward where its head and body met, where he knew its heart lay. The scaled skin tried its best to protect its wearer, but with his full weight behind the thrust, the sword sank deep.
With some effort, Holin ripped out the sword. He threw a glance beyond the fallen tree, to where Rhone had intercepted the last two of the beasts. He saw the man extracting his spear from a glut’s corpse. The second lay only a few feet away, with a bolt buried deep in its chest and a hole where an eye had been.
That’s all of them.
A pained screech sounded behind him.
Almost all of them.
He turned to see Red rip out his axe from the one he had engaged. Its body was a mess of gore. Deep gashes covered it, laying bare broken bone. He raised the bardiche above his head before bringing it down onto the glut’s head. The blade forced its way in and Holin could hear the skull crack underneath the pressure. That seemed to be more than it could take, and the beast finally fell still.
“Any more?” Came Rhone’s voice.
“Nope,” Holin said, looking around. A faint numbness weighed on his body form the use of magic. He ignored it. It wasn’t enough to become a problem, though, and he knew it would fade soon. He had lured the four gluts he found here, and all of them now lay dead.
Rhone nodded and gave a sharp whistle, calling the other members of their group who were watching their back and flanks.
Unnecessary, in his opinion. Especially considering he would have heard anything approach, but the man’s name spoke for itself.
Holin looked down at the dead glut at his feet. It had scaled skin and a neckless body that ran parallel to the ground and ended in a stubby tail. A dangerous creature with a penchant for swallowing things whole. The gluts were already their second encounter of beasts, and the day was just getting started.
It was a good sign. It meant they were getting close. They already knew that, but getting confirmation never hurt. In fact, it just heightened the excitement in his chest.
Holin lightly kicked the corpse with his boot, looking at its scaled hide. Would be a shame to leave it here.
“You sure we don’t have time to skin them?” He asked.
“We came out early to find the behemoth, now you want to spend the morning skinning?” Kali asked.
Holin turned to see her trying to pull out the oversised bolt from the dead glut.
“Fine, I’ll just skin them later. For now, we can just strap the corpses to Red, I’m sure he won’t mind the weight.”
“Your bones not up to the task of carrying them, paleskin?” The man in question asked, his voice slightly muffled by the visored steel helm he wore.
Holin grinned. “I’m just wondering what they fed you down south. Is that why you’re here? Your people exiled you after they stared starving? Or perhaps your god took pity on you for being born in the ass-end of the world and decided to at least give you strength. You know… to keep the balance.”
Red laughed, the sound echoing through the trees. He walked over to where Kali was still struggling and grabbed onto the blot with one hand, placing his other against the beast.
“Perhaps Uldar brought me here so my strength could balance out your…” - He paused, looking at Holin as he ripped out the bolt in one motion along with a few pieces of flesh that clung to the barbed head. - “contrasting qualities.”
Holin smiled and thought of the carnage Red could sow with some type of edge inscription on that axe of his. Unfortunately, the man preferred to focus on his armour, the runes on the breastplate and helm making it clear. A clear indication of misplaced priorities.
Such a shame.
Holin shook his head and turned to Rhone. “That’s a no on the skinning then?”
“That’s a no,” the man confirmed. He stood up and turned to Holin. “Right now, we need to lay eyes on the behemoth. I’d like us to be the first to do so. Before one of the other teams gets blinded by greed and overconfidence.”
Holin nodded. It was clear which team he talked about. They had visited the Hunter’s Hall this morning. After relaying their belief that a behemoth was in the area, along with some rumour mongering form Meera, three other teams of hunters agreed to join the hunt.
Were they still in the north, they’d have had the whole city’s hunters at their beck and call. To make matters worse; only one of the teams seemed like veterans. At least another was well equipped and had a decent amount of caution. As for the third… if anyone was going to fuck up, it would be them.
Holin heard the approach of their companions long before they appeared through the trees.
“You got them then,” Holin heard Adler say as he stepped into the small clearing, the first to arrive.
“Sharp eyes you got there,” Holin remarked offhandedly as he went about cutting off the curving claws of the beast as proof for the Hall. No point in leaving coin on the forest floor.
“Everyone alright?” Another voice asked, and Holin turned to see Meera approaching from the other direction.
She scanned over the area, taking in the others in the area.
“We’re fine,” Kali added.
Meera’s eyes landed on the bloodless corpse beneath Holin. “That’s one for you then? Still leaves me ahead, doesn’t it?”
Holin snorted. “Please. A glut is worth at least three times as much as those springers you got. Besides, the only reason you got the second is because I took out its legs.”
“Your help wasn’t required and thus doesn’t count.” She replied with a smile.
“If you two could stop your quibbling, maybe we could focus on the task at hand?” Adler asked. “It would seem the southerners’ claims of increased beast activity have some merits. The beast couldn’t have been in the area for more than a few days. It shouldn’t have had this effect, right?”
The last question was directed at Rhone, who looked back at Adler. “Maybe. The increase in activity doesn’t necessarily have to come from the behemoth. It could have been drawn here as well.”
“Red,” Rhone continued and pointed to one of the corpses. “Open it up for me. Bottom of the chest.”
Red nodded and went to work, his axe cleaving through the creatures breastbone in a few strikes. Rhone signalled for him to stop and knelt down to pull open its flesh. After a quick examination, he grunted and gestured to another corpse. This continued until all of them were checked.
“Nothing,” Rhone announced as he wiped the blood off his hands with some shrubbery.
Holin frowned. Gluts could take days to digest whatever they swallowed. An empty stomach to a Glut is near starvation. Finding all four of them in such a state was unlikely. He said as much to the others.
Rhone nodded. “More than enough food in the area. The most likely thing I can think of is that they just got here. Probably travelled a couple of days without stopping to hunt, following the pull.”
“That’s some distance,” Holin muttered. “Do behemoths usually have such a pull?”
“It’s… exceptionally strong. We had little trouble tracking it, after all.”
Holin noticed the faint hesitation in the man’s voice. That was concerning. Rhone certainly wasn’t prone to hesitation.
“We should take it down as soon as possible then,” he said.
“Agreed,” Meera said quickly, probably having picked up on it as well. She was scarily perceptive when it came to such things.
Rhone nodded. “Impossible to know where the tipping point lies. Would have been best if we could spot it and use the other teams as witnesses to get more support. But, as it stands, we might have to make do.”
Rhone looked around. “Where’s Jerick?”
“He was still grumbling about having to carry the box,” Meera said. “Kept complaining about not bringing one of the d’yari.”
She had just finished speaking when a horn sounded through the air. Its sound was clear to Holin though he could see some of the others listening intently.
“Seems one of the other teams found the trail.” He said.
“Red,” Rhone spoke, “go and help Jerick with the supplies and catch up to us. Maybe now he’ll stop his ‘grumbling’.”
“One could only hope,” Adler muttered.
Holin handed the claw he had severed to Red. “Take this with you.”
“Holin,” Rhone continued before Red could reply, “Take the front and keep an ear open. We don’t want to walk into an ambush because we rushed.”
Holin gave a nod and moved off at a trot, hearing the others follow after a few more words from Rhone.
A smile found its way onto his face as anticipation set in. Taking on a behemoth with a single team of Order hunters. Inadvisable. Very much so, even with the other three random groups acting as support.
He felt his smile turning into a grin.
