Chapter 173: Roadkill
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The morning came alive with the sounds of battle!

An especially loud gust hit the windowpane, rattling the entire bedroom. Nyx groaned awake and realized that in their sleep, they’d wrapped all their limbs around Ethel like some sort of backpack. They didn’t know whether to be concerned or amused by this.

Ethel quietly rolled out from the tangle of limbs and hit the floor. She’d been awake for several minutes now, listening to the muffled cries and blasts of...battle!

“How’d you sleep?” said Ethel, invisible beyond the edge of the bed.

“Okay,” said Nyx, rubbing Athalie’s eyes. “I did have another bad dream, but it didn’t keep me up. And I’ve forgotten it all by this point.”

“Is that good?”

Another shock of wind, even louder than the last, shook the room. It had come from a battle!!

“Oh, shit,” said Nyx suddenly. “It’s happening, finally?”

They both stepped up to the window (at a reasonable distance, to keep from getting knocked out by a glass pane to the face).

Outside, the adventuring party was tangoing with Dulcen. He seemed to be dealing with it handily, striding between dagger blows from the rogue and archer, heavy axe blows from the warrior, and carnivorous trees raised up by the mage. Either Dulcen was dead tired while he did it, not at his best, or he did so well because he’d gone ecstatic off the all-nighter fumes. Either way

A well-made blow from Sopbread’s ax caught his abdomen, cleaving through just where the armor parted. The spray of blood made it visible even to Nyx and Ethel. The air seemed to freeze. At last Ethel wondered if Dulcen had as much of a fighting chance as he’d claim.

But Nyx was thinking, Nah. A wound like that is nothing if you don’t, or can’t, follow it up.

Buck and Forsythe kept their distance, but at the same moment as Sopbread’s blow, Helda pointed her staff toward the earth beneath Dulcen’s feet. Sand began to break.

Dulcen countered not with escape or freeing himself from the axe still set in his core, but by leaning forward with his swordset apart. With one hand only.

The heel of his hand struck Sopbread in the chest. It bumped against armor, but that didn’t matter as long as the magic itself echoed through. Physically, it had little power and hurt Dulcen much more than it hurt Sopbread, tearing the skin. Magically, it hit the soul. Then Dulcen’s hand slipped down and away. Sopbread, stunned, fell to his knees, then on his side.

A full tree evolved beneath and around Dulcen, its wood condensed into so many teeth. Soon it eclipsed him. He wouldn’t have let himself be devoured by it if he hadn’t known he could break out.

Up in the Daffodil, Ethel said, “Did I see what I think I saw?”

“Him pocketing that guy’s gold?”

Ethel squinted. “That goes some way toward explaining why he’s even bothering with this. Scaring off rookies and calling it mercy. Still...ew.”

“As a demon, I have to respect it.”

“On that subject,” said Ethel as, below, wood exploded apart and dissolved, dead, into pure magic aether. “What did he do with his hand?”

Nyx smirked. “You’re thinking he absorbed Sopbread’s soul or something, right? No, he just kept his soul magic secret until now.”

“Ah. Yeah, that makes sense.”

Then came the disarmingly loud sound of a rogue and an archer both hitting the ground at once. The battle was more or less done.

***

The door of the Daffodil drifted open. First the waitress emerged. Apparently she wasn’t there to tell him off, just to stand against the wall and watch, nervously. Then came Athalie and Ethel, both in full armor and with hands at their belts. They shimmered in the sun.

Dulcen and the defeated bodies were just far enough to be shrouded in heat devil. He looked like a mirage ready to trick another visitor.

He didn’t move, and he’d sheathed his sword about a minute ago. Athalie and Ethel kept theirs sheathed too.

“What are you really after, Mr. Drieze?” Athalie called out, loud and clear. “We have golda pittance of itand we have armorreplaceableand will readily surrender it all, if it’s to protect this good lady behind us from any harm.”

Now Dulcen was walking closer, step by slow step. “I said I didn’t wanna harm her,” he replied. “I just don’t like cocky adventurers.”

“Hypocrite,” Ethel whispered.

“I was a mercenary a few years back. People like that, they never survive.”

“Like what?”

He stopped two meters from them and tapped his heart silently. He didn’t mean anything like a lack of valiance. He meant a more literal “nothing here,” insufficient magic.

Ethel tapped Athalie on the forearm. The halfling turned, and the two whispered.

“What are you thinking of, NAthalie? Taking his soul?”

“That is a decent idea. I just wish I could pull it off unsuspiciously.”

“Well, if you can’t...we can just move on.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey,” Dulcen spoke upthey faced him again. “I’m going straight to Farander, you coming with?”

“No,” said Ethel instantaneously.

“Yes,” said Athalie.

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