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After a long and painful journey, we finally arrived home. Grumbsy was as vibrant as any day I’d ever seen. Hundreds of people were out and about. Residents, travelers, neighboring settlers, and tribesmen of all kinds.
Normally I’d hop right into the fun, but Yarrick was about to die. I was pretty sure he was already dead. He hadn’t made any noise the whole way home, not so much as a moan. He wasn’t breathing at all, and his body never warmed to the touch. All the symptoms of a dead person.
Yet my more magically inclined friends insisted his soul was in his body, he was simply in a “Necrotic State.” I don’t know what the fuck that means. It sounded made up to me. But they’re the experts and I’m an advocate in trusting experts.
Vergusson barrelled straight through a decent sized crowd of people, holding our small friend on his back, with our even tinier companion shouting, “Out the way folks we got a thing here.”
As we burst through the door of the Titan’s Trap, Syrielle shouted out, “Medic.” She shoved her way through a crowd of people dragging the tiny ninja. “We need a medic.”
“We need a healer in this bitch!” when I saw people just standing around doing nothing despite our clear and considerably important requests I shouted, “Now would be preferable.”
Busty Betty came sprinting over to us, being the only person showing the slightest level of concern. “What’s going on? How… Is he okay?”
“I’m guessing no,” I told her. “Where is the nearest healer?”
“Uhm…”
Blondos stepped forth, with a great deal of confidence. “Ms. Betty. May you please tell us where those priests of Hades are? We are in great need of their help.”
“I huh…” She thought for a moment before she replied. “I’m guessing they’re in their room,” She pointed upstairs.
“Thank you,” He took the busty one by the hand and kissed it.
She swooned, he ascended upstairs. I didn’t know where we were going, but the demon with a blonde glamor led us straight to the appropriate door we needed to go. Before he even knocked, it swung open to reveal Father Jacob.
“Hello my friends. Have you completed the task we have asked of you?”
“Hades Priest!” Blondos shouted and reverted back to his true form. “I need answers.”
Feeling the need to insert myself I yelled, “Our friend is dying. And we need to make him not dying,” I pointed to the unconscious stranger being carried by the samurai.
“Oh well that’s certainly concerning,” Father Jacob didn’t appear concerned.
Zorthos ripped off the rags covering his upper torso, “Why does my flesh rot like the walking dead we vanquished?” Half of his left abdomen appeared brown and black. There was a gross white puss oozing out of several spots.
“When in Hades did that happen?” Having walked a very long way back to Grumbsy, I figured I would have noticed at some point his body was falling apart.
“When we fought the dead people,” He explained.
“Oh goodness,” With just the slightest amount of concern, Father Jacob had leaned forward inspecting the wounds even closer. His facial expression never altered even in the slightest. “That does not look good. Come in,” He gestured for all of us to join.
Zorthos described the magical attacks that hit both him and Yarrick. The dark fog struck them each of them multiple times, as well as the pointy end of the necromancer’s staff. Looking pretty grumpy after explaining, Zorthos asked, “What can we do?”
The priest stood back to his feet. “We must perform rituals. Immediately. First things first. We’re going to need several buckets of water. And wood for a fire.”
Nydorri hopped to her feet. “I’ll go ask Betty for some wood.”
“Wait!” Zorthos shouted before she left, “Tell Betty I have some wood for her.”
I shook my head. “Don’t tell her that.”
The elf looked me dead in the eye, “I’m gonna tell her that.”
Father Jacob addressed his two silent comrades, “When they give us the supplies we’ll need two piles of wood. The fires need to be the size of their bodies.”
Not liking at all what I heard, I felt a strong need to interject. “Huh…”
“Can I help you?”
“Did you just say two piles of wood the size of their bodies for fires?”
“Yes,” He nodded as if that wasn’t weird or suspicious. “For the ritual.”
A little off put I had to ask, “Just, for my own peace of mind. He’s gonna be alive at the end right?” Yarrick was not immune to fire. It sounded like a sponge bath for Zorthos.
In an unconvincing and confused tone, Father Jacob replied, “Ye… Yes…” there was an unnerving eerie smile on his face.
“Are you sure?” Syrielle was also unconvinced.
“Well I’m not very skilled with the living…” Arguably the most terrifying response.
“Okay,” I waved my hand in front of his face and then clicked my fingers pointing at my eyes. “I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. Our goal is to make sure he’s alive at the end? We are purging evil from this world without guiding him to hades right?”
“We must save his life,” The priest sounded rather confused, but also sympathetic. It was hard to read, it was like he’d never experienced an actual emotion before and the concept was new to him. “He’s not bound for the River Styx just yet.”
“Alright, that’s more convincing,” I nodded.
“We want the same thing,” Syrielle added in a comforting tone.
“They’re just bad doctors,” I clarified. “But they want what’s best.”
As we smiled at each other, appreciating our own banter, a familiar voice interrupted us. “Elrin, Are you busy?” Trant was standing in the doorway sweaty and exhausted.
“My comrades are dying,” I replied. “What’s up?”
He looked concerned for their well being, then he smiled, then he was concerned again, then he just spoke, “Okay so I’m sure you saw outside that there’s a huge crowd. Well, we got visitors, big time visitors. Straight from Eurome. I scrambled together a last minute festival. I need you.”
The assignment was easy to understand. Put on a performance unlike any they’d see on the continent. There was only one problem. “So as I said, my comrades are dying.”
“Yeah I know,” He tensed up and rubbed the back of his head. “Are you like… Qualified to help them?” After he asked he realized it was a disrespectful request.
Knowing a thing or two about rituals I figured I could actually be quite helpful at a time like this. I looked to Father Jacob with a smile, “I’m sure I could be of some assistance.”
He continued to smile back and nodded to me. “No.”
Trant definitely grew uncomfortable standing there looking at Yarrick’s cold body, but also had a lot going on. “Well, if this is like a feelings thing just say that. I won’t be pushy.”
“Yarrick needs you,” Roan smiled. I waited for him to explain, but as if I knew what he was talking about he said, “When he wakes up. He’ll want some good news. Go get em tiger.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Trant however, did, and was very excited to explain. “Yarrick has investments in the town. The better the town does the more money for the man himself. If you can’t do anything for his current condition. As Roan put it…”
Syrielle nudged me, “Put a smile on his face.”
For a second I thought about it, but the whole time I knew what I was gonna do. “Okay, I’ll neglect Yarrick’s condition and go put on the performance of a lifetime. But only for Yarrick. ” Before I left I added, “Also Zorthos, this one’s for him too.”
Straight out the door I went. Trant led me to his friend Clarence, a very effeminate male hafflin, slightly taller than Glish. With the whiniest of tones the short man shouted, “Where have you been? We’ve been waiting for you.”
“It’s nice to meet you too Clarence.”
He began walking away loudly explaining, “We have the stage all set up with a variety of equipment. Some other musicians are out there now, but if I’m honest, there really isn’t a whole lot of talent out here on Kayos. From what they say, you’re it.”
“I’m told the same.”
“Right,” He waved back to me. “I’m sure you’re wonderful. And if you’re not. I’ll kill myself. This show is it for me. This is the end of my career. If I can’t make this work, what else is there? I’ll have to go back to smoking and drinking tea on my porch like the rest of my people.”
He was about to go on, but as the performer, I felt no problem being selfish about my feelings, “Hey man I kinda got a whole lot of my own stuff going on with my friends being zombies and all so like I’m sure your story is interesting, but like…”
“Oh yes of course,” He said impolitely. “How dare I have feelings too?”
Clarence continued to ramble on and I just didn’t stop him. As I suspected, his story wasn’t interesting at all. Even in retrospect I can’t think of a clever way to make fun of how boring it really was.
He led me right to the stage, where different musicians were playing in front of a very unnattentive crowd. Clarence jumped up on a stool so he could stare me directly in the eye. “So… You lookin rather moody here. You ready for this?”
“My comrades are dying, but it’s time to perform.”
About a moment later, the musician on the stage ended his song, loudly introduced me and the next thing you know I was in front of the whole crowd. Most had been talking amongst each other, but many of them noticed a new person approaching center stage so they paid attention. Some up front knew me and were extremely excited already. The gathering was well into the hundreds, but probably not peaking a thousand. Still pretty damn big and hard to speak to with my bare mouth. Not that I had any intentions of turning down.
“Hello people of Grumbsy and Beyond!” I shouted, causing maybe three people to clap. “My apologies for being late this evening. My friends and I were fighting an army of the undead.”
Not everyone, but many more took a second look, noticing that I was indeed still covered in blood and guts. With my rapier at my side, and my bow on my back. “Oh you don’t believe me. You never heard the tales of Elrin Daun and the Grumbsy Gang?”
We Were Sitting In The Titan’s Trap
Drinking Our Merry Heads Off
Just like Any Other Day
And Out of Nowhere
Just As It Always Did
Aventure Came Our Way
A Priest Of Hades
An Agent of The Styx
Had A Problem With the Dead
He Said You Can’t Kill Em
I Asked What To Do
And He Said Remove The Head
And after that melody bombed I put on some more of the hits. People’s booty’s were indeed rocking everywhere. Roan’s more than anyone’s. Giving me the impression that our friends were taken care of.
Sooner or later I saw some of the others from the Hades trip show up as well.
The two happiest men I could see were Trant and Clarence. After a few hours of playing, I finally exited the stage. Both swarmed me with a series of compliments. Along with the pair, was a massive muscular man dressed in highborn clothing who was almost nearly as happy they were. He had guards with him but they looked grumpy.
Simon Carpin, was an incredibly wealthy trader from Halwell, a powerful nation just to the south of Gladland. He was magnificently impressed by the performance as well as the festival as a whole. “At least for a shit hole on Kayos that is. As long as you keep things secure around here. I’m sure we could do business.”
I’m confident there was a whole lot more that went into the negotiations than my performance, but I’m just gonna take absolute full credit all the way through for any success Trant has. It was my singing that did it. That’s why whatever was happening was happening. I’m the best.
Before I walked away, Simon pulled over a burly man he called Robert the Construction worker. At first glance I thought he was a small mountain dwarf, but he insisted he was just a large man. They started talking about the town infrastructure; I realized I wasn’t actually necessary anymore and walked away.
Clarence’s workers attached stereo to some speakers. The man had a reasonable collection of music at his disposal so I hadn’t much to complain about. And neither did the crowd, which stayed very much alive, even if it was slowly dwindling down. But when gatherings are this large it is often that many have too much fun to turn away.
My buddies Barney and Todd were talking to a pair of women who didn’t appear to have a third friend. I thought about walking over and trying to out charm either of them, but remembered that’d be exceptionally douchey behavior.
So I rolled over to Roan, Vergusson and Glish who were sitting by one of the bars.
“How’d the ritual go?” I asked as a greeting.
“Pretty well thanks to us,” Roan quipped proudly as if I had somehow sinned. “You know… Some people care about their friends’ lives more than festivals.”
“The priorities of peasants,” I snipped as he handed me a drink.
In poor detail, they quickly explained what happened after that.
Zorthos apparently started screaming in pain during the ritual then jumped in the ocean nearby, which began to steam. Then he passed out and Vergusson carried him home. Yarrick’s ritual took much longer, and in fact it’s still going on. But he’s done soaking in the holy flames, which were apparently purple for magic reasons. Now Father Jacob and his men are gathered around him in prayer to help him awaken sooner.
It sounded interesting. I was sad I missed it. We chatted about other things for a few minutes until I asked about the crowd. Roan claimed to have already had sex with a woman there, she allegedly had a friend for me but he lost track of them.
Vergusson asked if I knew anyone who wanted to brawl. I didn’t.
Glish told me my music sucked.
We immediately began reminiscing over the battle we had just fought a day ago. After being bloodied and exhausted we spent the entire journey home in silence. Yet I had pondered many things on that walk. “So?” I pointed to the gloves on Roan’s hands. “How many tattoos do you have?”
“A bunch.”
Not knowing what else to ask, “Where’d you get them?”
“My Uncle Trick gave me my first one,” He declared proudly. “Helped me figure out how to do the others. Fucking wack that guy. Taught me everything about boats.” After saying that his tone switched to more curious, “You know, if you’re a reader and stuff. You should have probably heard of my Uncle Trick. Pretty famous seaman. People even wrote about him. Then he wrote his own book. One of those horny smutt things. I loved it.”
“I really don’t want to hear more about this.” Though I had no intentions of not looking it up later. I just thought it was weird that Roan wanted to read his uncle’s weird creepy books. Thing is, I’ve heard of several people with the name Trick. Mostly elves.
So I inquired more, and the seaman told me a little bit more about his backstory. I’d known about many of his travels, but it was always fun to pry deeper. Problem was you never really knew what was true when he was talking.
The rest of us just went off on a variety of tangents. Mostly making fun of the crowd. We aren’t always the nicest people, sometimes jokes are pretty mean. Glish was irritated that a few of the other hafflins around didn’t want to be friends with him. At one point Vergusson explained that he was talking to members of the Thunktu clan. Apparently he was comparing scars with them, and they showed off some pretty strange looking marks that all looked identical.
When we inquired further our half-orc friend explained, “They said like a month ago they were all attacked by a few wolf people that started biting all of them. Weird thing was, they weren’t normal beastman. Like the Thunktu killed one of them, and he transformed into a human immediately after. And then the others ran off. Weird right?”
Roan and I gave each other the Did you just hear that? look. My slightly older friend of the sea turned to our very young friend of Kayos, “Vergusson. Buddy, based on the story you just told me. It sounds like you were just talking to a pack of werewolves.”
“Vergusson,” My tone was nurturing, “Were you just talking with a pack of werewolves?”
The half-orc began to calculate in his mind like no other before.
“Yes.”
Glish stood on a stool that brought him up high enough to pat Verg on the shoulder. “It’s okay bud.”
“He said ‘a month ago’ right?” Horrified, I spun around to look up during the death of daylight. Sure enough, up there in the sky, was a full moon. The first one, since the attack Verg literally just described.
Meaning these people shared that information. Meaning they probably don’t know what werewolves are because why would they casually announce it. Meaning we were all about to find the fuck out together.
“Yup!” Roan took a swig of his drink and pointed towards the crowd. “There they are.”
Screams of all kinds, the horrified citizens witnessing a nightmare beyond their dreams. And the howl of demonic wolves. Well over a dozen men and women, scattered throughout the gathering, had dropped to their knees, becoming ever furrier by the moment.
Their mouths slowly protruded into long snouts. Long arms with claws at the end tore into the ground in front of them as they all screeched in pain. Unlike any beastman I’d ever seen, their hind legs bent them forward, much like an actual wolf.
The crowd burst into a frenzy. Most folks sprinted away as fast as they could. Roan turned around to the nearest town worker and said, “Hey, we’re gonna need things to kill them with.”
“Silver!” Glish hopped off his stool. “I got some at the shop.”
Roan finished his drink and slammed his mug on the table near him making for a sharp object. “Get to running, little man.” Then he kicked out the stool and grabbed one of the legs as a club.
Another loud, yet different roar alerted me to the presence of a bear. Standing next to the bear, Syrielle had a very impressed look on her face. I couldn’t hear her over the roars but she clearly mouthed, “Damn bitch.”
The bear charged the nearest werewolf as it came straight for her. Syrielle took off in a full sprint in a weird direction, I realized she was chasing after a couple of wolves sprinting at full speed, much faster than her, deeper into the village. Vergusson hadn’t even gotten to his feet yet. There were a few other town guards and tribal warriors that were stepping up to the task as well.
One of the wolves was charging at a nearby girl I think was named Tina, barely even a teenager if that. I was closer to her, and dashed as fast as I could. Verg dug his battle ax into the back of the beast before I got there. The wolf was clearly in pain, but didn’t quite die the way things usually do when they are hit with his ax.
A furry arm snapped out swatting the half-orc away. He dropped his weapon but regained his composure and slammed his knee into the beasts face as it came at him. I didn’t know what to do to help him, and another one was also charging down after a different helpless villager.
Blasting as fast as I could, I hopped, leapt, and jumped and kicked it in the head.
My attack did nothing but when the monster spun around to tear me apart, Roan stabbed it in the mouth with his broken glass. It barely spit up blood as I rolled away. He smashed it hard several times with the club he’d fashioned probably from a stool, but it just burst into splinters.
Without thinking I snagged a nearby table cloth, and threw it over the werebeast. It was disoriented for only a second, but that was plenty of time for Roan to attack its legs and knock it down.
Verg had thrown the wolf he was fighting through a table and another one dashed from behind. “BEHIND YOU!” My scream was efficient, as he spun around and clobbered it with a back elbow before it could bite him. I grabbed yet another table cloth and tossed it over the wolf Verg just threw. Not knowing what to do next I ran.
It only took the wolf a second to rip the cloth apart to chase after me. I had already dashed towards the stage, diving through a little opening leading me underneath that I could just barely make it through. The wolf crashed into the same opening from behind me, breaking the wooden barrier that he couldn’t make it through right away. After a few thrusts he’d destroyed the barrier entirely.
There wasn’t a whole lot of room to move underneath the stage, which made it better for me. The wolf chasing me simply smashed through all the pillars. And soon it wasn’t better for either of us, as the stage grew more and more unsteady. I made it out of another tiny hole just as the wolf reached me. As he crashed the whole stage collapsed around him. But he didn’t seem to have much of a problem pulling himself out.
I managed to hop over one of the pop up bars so I could throw mugs and other crap at him. His blind rage caused him to leap at me, which was easy to dodge. He crashed into the wall behind me.
So I hopped back over and ran towards the now crumpled stage. The Werewolf had gotten its bearings and came at me again, though this time Verg sucker punched him.
I almost hopped in to help him but noticed the bear was fighting three at a time. Roan was bloodied, injured and preoccupied with one of his own. The other guards and local tribes had their wolves outnumbered and I didn’t have time to check on the details.
The bear tossed one of her foes off with a plop. It scrambled immediately to its feet preparing to jump on her, but I quickly hopped on its back wrapping my arms around its neck. I don’t know what my plan was, but apparently it was stupid. The beast immediately sliced my left arm, dropping me to the dirt behind it.
I managed to kick him away, but just barely, before he lunged at me. Right as he did so, Glish dashed in from its side stabbing it in the ribs with a silver dagger. It screeched in pain, so he stabbed it a few more times until it was motionless. “That’s one,” The hafflin tossed me an identical dagger.
“I fought like three without a dagger bitch.”
“Excuse excuses.” He lunged at another wolf fighting the bear.
I scrambled to my feet to stab the other, coming at it from behind. I was able to get a good jab right into its skull. The silver slipped straight through the beast’s bone like paper.
The moment after Nydorri the elf was there jabbing her staff into the ground. I noticed several wolves being tied up in vines. Another one independent of the rest just knocked down an armored guard and was ripping the weapon and shield out of his hand.
My dagger left my hand right as I realized that was a dumb idea. It stuck into the shoulder of the werewolf. I was already sprinting straight at it before it even saw me, though once it did it pounced before I could react.
His teeth dug into my shoulder as his claws scraped my chest. I threw a punch just as my world faded to black. Though I returned pretty quickly. Nydorri was standing over me rubbing ointment on my neck. She was looking at someone else the whole time, then tossed me a berry and said. “Feed yourself.”
She walked away, and I noticed Syrielle was standing over me holding her bloody sword. “I got three,” She was shouting, holding her fingers up.
“This one.”
“You did not get four?” The samurai was known for being exceptionally petty at times.
Especially since I was so badly injured, “Am I gonna turn into a wolf?”
“I killed the wolf that got you.”
“So that’s a no right?”
“If I have to kill you in a month I’ll let you know.”
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