Chapter 61. Rude Awakening

Chapter 61. Rude Awakening AnnouncementWe hit 400k views and nearly 9k likes! Thank you!

Bragge Archomilea the Third

“He is heading into the Forest,” one of his whispers murmured into his ear.

“Is he now? Just walking in, all alone? How daring.” He didn’t even bother to move as he permitted the multitude of hands to comb his hair and massage his body.

The whisper shook her head. “He has a company nearby.”

A low rumbling laugh emerged from his chest. “Are you surprised?”

“No, my Lord. It is as you have predicted.”

“Because I know his kind. Thinkers? Bah!” he scoffed. “They plot and plan in the safety of their homes, thinking themselves to be the chatrang masters of life. Do you know what they really are?”

“Foolish, my Lord?”

“Worse — they are cowards.” He moved a piece on a nearby board. “And in their cowardice, they become predictable. Every piece they move is protected by another piece, every ‘sacrifice’ they make is but a fake one. There is no steel within their hearts — no courage to stand in front of the raging storm and receive it with their chest, broad with pride. A single event that goes awry and they either hole up in their estates or scatter away like a flock of frightened birds.”

He swiped his paw, scattering the pieces on the floor. “And that is why I kick the board away from them and laugh as they whimper on the floor. I mock them when they scramble to put the pieces back in place, not realising that they are grovelling at my feet while doing so.”

Bragge summoned a heap of scrolls from a nearby shelf and thrust them into his whisper’s hands. “Proceed as you were. Open them when instructed and follow to the letter.”

She gripped them tightly with a nod and immediately vanished as soon as he let go. With a rumbling groan of satisfaction, Bragge relaxed once again on his large bed and let his servants continue with their task.

His claws touched the artefact on his neck. He had spent quite a number of expeditions to acquire it but the benefit was well worth the price.

“Not even a heurisk will keep you safe, boy.”

XXX

I was brought awake by a set of hands deftly working on my belt. An action that once made me wake up with a smile on my face now filled me with anger and sadness. I felt the ire that someone was brazen enough to take advantage of me after a night of drinking and revelry, incorrectly assuming that I would permit myself to remain tipsy through the night. And I was equally morose that the sensation that once made me wake up with a brilliant smile on my face now made me contemplate on how I should catch the would-be-rapist in the act.

It felt like I’d lost some innocence I never knew I had.

My planning was cut short by a blade touching my neck. The assailant noticed my alertness.Fiind updated novels at novelhall.com

“Keep your mouth shut,” she whispered into my ear, “and don’t mo-”

My kick wrenched her away from my body and smashed her into a nearby wall. Whatever she wanted to say got interrupted by wheezing gasps and wet coughs. I felt a blade glance against my scales and rolled away from another cloaked figure while desperately trying to grab the kattar that was no longer present on my belt.

Curses.

“Intruders!” I bellowed through the barrack, dodging and blocking the blows raining down on me.

The hooded figure proved to be rather tricky to handle and — if not for my skinsuit — outright deadly. They danced around my fists and made sure to avoid any grabs, swipes, and tackles I was throwing their way, even if it meant stopping their next attack mid-swing. Rather than a wer trying to get close and personal, confident in their strength, or a wermage augmenting their hits with Flow tricks, my opponent relied on their martial skill while assuming to be the weakest between us. Unfortunately for me, that assumption correctly predicted my fighting style.

I gritted my teeth as my fingers grabbed the empty air once again. I knew at least one group of murks that trained to assault wer and wermages, knowing well in advance that they could never overpower them head-on.

Collectors.

I heard the noises of rousing soldiers, but their drunken sluggishness made it feel like they were barely moving. At the same time, the other Collector grew suspiciously silent.

Grunting loudly, I threw myself at my opponent again and again, forcing them to quickly exhaust themselves. There was plenty of stamina in my body and one mistake was all I needed. We were fighting in the scant light of the starry sky and, while I had no trouble seeing in the dark, I had no desire to showcase my skinsuit to everyone around. Especially while fighting two Collectors at the same time.

“Ul-lah, brothers!” Irfan yelled loudly and cursed while grabbing a handful of embers from a fire pit and stuffing them into a torch. “To arms!”

The Collector whistled loudly and threw their cloak into my face. A loud crash of window staves and they disappeared into the night.

I threw the cloak aside and reached for my scabbard just as the barrack started to fill up with light and noise.

The scabbard was empty too.

“That fucker!” I hissed at the window in anger. That was my own sword that I was fighting against! I was damn lucky that Albin took the sharp one and I didn’t bother to resharpen the other. My eyes darted to the side where I remembered the first Collector to be.

She was still there. Dead.

“What in the Three Horns happened here!?” Irfan walked closer with a brightly lit torch above his head, his eyes on my body. “A lover’s squabble? Fuck, boy, your eyes glow in the dark!”

His blade was naked and ready for battle, however.

I glanced down at the shredded tunic, barely hanging on my body. The sword blows and rapid deployment of the skinsuit weren’t gentle with it. “We got a Collector’s attack. Lend me your sword, Irfan.”

“A Collector!?” He gripped the sword tighter, only to sigh in relief when he saw the corpse in the corner. “You are damn lucky that you managed to overpower her without a sword. Something that you wouldn’t have to do if you didn’t lose it to begin with!”

“I didn’t. Lose it, that is.” I nodded at the open window and the cloak at my feet. “The other one pulled it out from my scabbard as I slept.”

“Crafty little buggers.” He spat. “I will introduce you to a smith in the morning — she will get you a good blade for a reasonable price.”

I shook my head. “I need a blade now, Irfan. Before it is too late.” The oils covering my blade were both special and unique. They also had a rather faint odour so if I was planning to chase the thief using my sense of smell, I had no time to waste.

“What? Are you going to chase a Collector by yourself?” he asked incredulously.

I nodded. “Yes. That sword is important.”

“You will certainly not!” The First Spear roared as she entered our barrack. Compared to all of us, she was fully dressed in her armour, just her unkempt hair telling me that she was in her bed mere minutes ago. “I will not have my spears lurking through the fort in the middle of the night, looking for Goddess knows what! Or worse — spilling blood at their discretion!”

A gust of wind howled outside as if mocking me and I sighed in resignation. Arguing now would be futile. Even if I could change her mind, it would take too long to do so. If I could do it at all.

She walked over to the body and turned it over, uncovering my kattar underneath. “Who fought with her?”

“The mule boy, it’s his kattar,” someone murmured from the crowd.

The First Spear twitched her ears and threw me a glance. “She stabbed herself. Probably because you folded her in half.”

I shrugged with a sigh. “I woke up with someone crawling under my tunic only to feel my own kattar, turned against me. There was no time to think about it.”

“You hear that, Sassan?” someone snickered behind us. “Don’t go crawling into the mule boy’s hay or he will kick your balls too!”

“Go fuck a spear, Roshan!”

“I am not questioning your response,” The First Spear growled while glaring at the commentators. “You were attacked and you defended yourself. Do you know why they were here?”

I grimaced. “Someone’s jealous, probably? It isn’t the first time I was attacked.” Unfortunately, my baggage grew large enough that I couldn’t even name a specific group that wished me dead this time around. That was a sobering thought.

She shook her head. “You are still alive, so they weren’t after you.”

I gave her a look but she wasn’t impressed. “No one trains Collectors to fail and run away. They would either take you with them or die trying.” The First Spear nodded at the first Collector. “Or they would kill themselves to avoid interrogation.”

I blinked. “My sword.”

Perhaps I should’ve ignored her initial demand to stand down and left to capture the thief instead. I would’ve been whipped for insubordination but that felt like the least of my concerns at this moment. Even if I needed to fake my back being black and bloody for a week or so. “I would need to inform my sadaq about this.”

She frowned. “You think they came here to steal a weapon?”

“They came here to steal a Secret of the Kiymetl. There are only a handful of those swords in existence and many Manors are eager to get their hands on one.”

“Why?”

I gave her another look. “Mine was fortunately a murk version. It was merely sharp and strong, possibly rivalling fulad swords of the Hsaca. If not in flexibility but at least in strength. My sadaq holds the runed blades. They are so sharp that they can cut steel and wermage flesh alike as if they were air.”

The First Spear rubbed her temples. “Why did you bring something like this into the arm?”

“A weapon’s place is on a battlefield. It wasn’t a decorative blade.”

“Then you should know that weapons can easily get lost or broken. We are departing toward the Border Wall tomorrow and the arm will not stay idle because you have to look for your weapon. The Manipular will be informed in the morning and she would spread the word to the merchants. So if one of them finds your blade, you will be able to retrieve it. Otherwise, it will be a lesson for you not to bring things you cannot afford to lose. Or you can stay behind — if what you say is true about your sword, it is unlikely to follow the arm into the Forest. Taqi! Bring some straw to soak up the blood!”

I sighed. “It is as you say, First Spear. I would still like to inform my sadaq about the incident. I do not wish for them to remain unaware, especially if the perpetrator might target their swords next.”

The First Spear nodded. “You have between the sunrise and first marching horns. Make sure your tasks are done beforehand.”

XXX

I spent the rest of the night doing stuff. Others quickly returned to sleep — the incident was over and there was a half-day march to the Border Wall in the morning and many more full-day marches for days afterwards. The alcohol also played a role — this was the last day of our stay in civilised lands and arm officers were willing to cut soldiers some slack one last time.

So I let them sleep as I dragged the body to the local mortuary. Technically this was the task fit for the servants of my finger but Collectors were here because of me and I felt obligated to clean up my mess. Not that I had to do much. By Emanai law, this was the body of a murk criminal. There would be no rites offered to her and she would be buried in the earth rather than burned in a pyre like wer and wermages. The only reason she would be offered that much was because people were smart enough to understand that leaving bodies to rot away close to populated areas was a bad thing to do.

The mortuary was deserted in the middle of the night so I left the body on a nearby stone slab, built for this exact reason. There was nothing on her body that could give any hints about her masters. Just a plain, forgettable face and the well-trained body of an assassin. And not much else. I paused for a moment then started to dig through my purse.

There was a belief in Emanai that murks had to go through the underworld and be reborn again and again, living different lives to earn their Spark. Until then, the star fields above were barred for them.

“A mighty beast, indeed.” I nodded and turned around. “Who pulled me away?”

All four lifted their hands.

I coughed. “You have good friends, Lita’af Hikmat. If it wasn’t for them, the Beast would have likely lost an arm in that exchange.”

Her previously genial smile froze on her face. “I thought you were wise.”

I glanced at my wives. “Let me do this.”

The red tail froze mid-swing. “Do what?”

Without answering, I stepped forward and opened my arms wide. “Why don’t we trade punches, Lita’af Hikmat.”

Anaise slapped her forehead, hard.

A silver ear flicked. “What?”

“A punch for a punch. We are warriors, are we not? Let our fists talk heart to heart. I know that time is pressing but I am sure that you can tell and learn a lot even with a single punch.” I slapped my chest. “What say you?”

“Should we stop him?” one of the Kausar sisters whispered behind my back.

“He should be fine,” Irje replied. “...I think.”

I stood still, my arms wide. Underneath my clothes, my skinsuit whirred with power. Underneath my skin, my muscles coiled with strength.

Underneath the ground, my roots tied me in place.

“I say we speak.” The silver blur smashed into my chest, only to slam into the immovable armour plates with a dull thud. Her punch was powerful, but I could feel the restraint within. It was a punch of a wermage hitting an armoured murk. Something that should force me to lose my lunch but not my guts. Devastating, yet not outright deadly. It fit her character well — a calm persona that expertly constrained the raging beast within.

“Good answer.” I grinned at her surprised expression. “Listen to mine!”

I answered in kind. With a punch of a Navigator, hitting an unprepared wermage. I slowed down my thrust enough not to ruin her armour and angled it upward not to uproot myself in the process. My feet sunk into the ground as I sent Lita’af flying backwards.

Somewhere behind me, Kirana swore.

“Why now, Erf?” Anaise sighed.

“The Collector survived after fighting me,” I quietly answered back. “I am certain that the knowledge of my strength and resilience will spread quickly among the perpetrators. It would be unwise to keep her unaware now, especially if she is intentionally being kept this way.”

“You are the daimon of the Kiymetl.” Lita’af coughed, getting up.

“I have been called by that name, yes. I usually prefer being called Erf.” I gave her my hand.

She took it. “Your punch was slow.”

“Your punch was weak.”

Her hand gripped mine. “You have power. Why do you run away?”

I gripped hers in kind. “I do not. I pursue what isn’t here. I walk a path that is different from others and I wish to do so in peace. Do not confuse my reluctance with fear.”

“You seem to be trying to confuse others, I would say.”

“Something that a warrior could say to a farmer. Staying in one place all year long. Storing their harvest as if trying to get plundered.”

“A barbarian, you mean,” she said, letting go of my hand.

I spread my arms wide again. “You said it. Not me.”

Lita’af huffed. “I will make inquiries. If I find your sword I will return it, and when I find who was responsible I will punish them myself. And if this had nothing to do with me or mine, then I would expect a proper apology from you, personally. Now, if you excuse me — I have a lot more things to do than I previously anticipated.”

“Do you think she is innocent?” I asked Anaise when she left.

She chewed her lip. “I don’t know. Lita’af is honourable, but she is also a filial daughter of her House. And the Kamshad were quite impressed by my sword.”

Horns blared across the fort, making the already noisy rumble of soldiers getting ready even louder.

“You should go,” Irje sighed. “That was the first horn — as the first maniple, we should be ready to march after the second and march through the gates after the third. Hopefully, we can meet and discuss this in detail tonight.”

I nodded, gave both of them a quick kiss and took off. It took me less than a handful of steps before I realised something was wrong.

“What are you doing?” I asked the Enoch wermage that effortlessly kept up with my pace.

“I am walking you to your barracks. To make sure you will make it in a timely manner. And I have another question.”

I rolled my eyes. “I am sure that you do. Huare, right?”

She nodded. “Where does your path lead you?”

“You don’t ask easy questions, do you... Let us take a farmer for example — why does he work in the fields?”

“So he has something to eat by the end of the day.”

“Well, yes. Technically. What I was trying to say is that he knows how to turn ‘less’ into ‘more’. How to turn a handful of seeds into a field full of wheat.”

“Is that what you are doing? Turning less into more? Like your strength?”

“You could say that too, but that is not the endpoint. Let us look at a smith — would you say that he also turns ‘less’ into ‘more’? Like a chunk of steel into a tool?”

“That makes sense, yes.”

“Now — who do you think will make more of that ‘more’? A farmer that needs to rip wheat with their hands or a farmer with a tool from a smith?”

“The second one, obviously.” Huare frowned. “Emanai works like this already.”

“Yes, Emanai has plenty of such chains, which is why you are complaining about the variety of spices and not whether you will have something to eat at all today.”

She coughed and looked away, her cheeks pink.

“What is missing is a chain that you can bend into a loop. A chain where the last ‘more’ is the first ‘less’. A chain that can feed itself again and again and grow with each revolution like a lump of snow grows as it rolls down a snowy hill. My path is through such loops.”

“And Isra Haleh is a piece of such a chain?”

“She is quickly becoming one, yes. A very good one at that.”

Huare hummed to herself. “What makes her that good?”

“A certain level of loyalty is definitely at the top — it is rather tricky to build something so complex so fast and outright impossible if future ‘chain links’ come and go as they please. Our plans coincide — she is eager to further her craft and I need her to know more about it. To have better tools so she can do what she loves even better. Sounds like a loop, does it not?”

“What about construction?”

“What about it?”

“Well, we are good with earth magic, yes? I mean you know that already — Enoch is well-known for it. While Kirana and I aren’t like the Samat with their detailed buildings and walls,” her hand gently brushed her velvet horn, “we have a few tricks ourselves.”

I glanced at her. “Isra Haleh came to me, expecting to craft swords and other items of great value. Right now, she is likely making gears, shafts, and cast iron frames. Things that require little art and a lot of precision and perfection. Our swords and armour were a mere fraction of a fraction of what she makes and the only reason she did it was out of necessity. Do I want earth mages with a desire to erect buildings? Yes, but expect a lot of mundane tasks, especially early on. This is the main reason why I want people who are passionate about what they do — if I were to ask someone to make me a hundred identical gears I want to be sure they won’t hate every moment of it. I don’t demand loyalty — I create-”

“So, we can join, yes?”

I blinked. “I have a feeling that you weren’t listening to me just now.”

“A lot of earth magic is rather mundane, Erf. Move this hill, build that ramp, carve a road. Besides, I am not blind — I can see that you do not need our immediate support from the way you’ve dealt with Lita’af Hikmat. So, rather than struggle to find something to offer right now, it is more worthwhile to work toward the future.” She rubbed her chin. “Especially if we could get something in advance as well.”

“Just...” I sighed and rubbed my temples, “talk to Anaise. Come up with an oath or something and we can send a message back to Samat. And then we can work from there-”

“Hey, mule boy! First Spear was-mmph!”

Huare nodded at the pile of dirt that was once Roshan. “You know him?”

“Yes, please release my tent-mate, Huare.”

“There you are! I believe that I allowed you to send a message to your wives — not fuck them until the first horn!” The First Spear stomped toward us. “You are?”

“Huare Kausar. The earth oar of the right palm. First maniple. I share the tent with his wives.”

She nodded. “Thank you for returning one of my spears. I hope he didn’t cause you too much distress.”

“Not at all — he was too busy trading punches with the future Kamshad Matriarch. It was rather entertaining to watch.”

“He what!!?”