Mist wardens, p.3
Mist Wardens, page 3
part #3 of Beastborne Series
Hal stopped his train of thought, looked into the grinning face of Besal reflected in that dark mirror, and smiled back at him. It was weird seeing their faces overlaid like that but there was a deep familiarity to it. He knew Besal’s face as well as he knew his own.
Like being able to talk to your soul, Hal found he had a deep fondness for Besal. And even more surprising was that Besal felt the same.
As one, they turned away and looked toward the city of combined ideals and compromises. No city would ever live up to this idealized version, but it was never a bad thing to constantly reach toward perfection.
Together, they could make that idealized version of their home into reality.
Hal and Besal strode into the city of their dreams, walking its wide avenues and verdant lawns until the moment they awoke.
3
Promises.
It always comes down to what we owe each other, Hal thought. He sat on the makeshift cot, staring at his hands and feeling numb. Noth’s words washed over him, he didn’t really hear them anymore.
He had promised to help Ashera. And he failed her. He failed all of them.
Ashera, Elora, Durvin, Athagan, Vorax, Buffrix, Komachi, and the list went on and on. Nearly a dozen people - friends - just… gone.
It was his duty to keep them safe! He should have done more.
“And how would you have done that?” Besal asked, his voice was as weary as Hal felt. Sleep had done little to rid the fatigue that had settled deep in his bones. He had a mile-long list of notifications and prompts to sort through as well.
Normally he’d enjoy looking through all the improvements and choosing new perks or skills. But their safety was bought with too high a price.
And now they were weaker than ever with a huge gaping breach in the wall to the south. If the Shiverglades decided it wanted another scrap, they’d be ill-pressed to hold what they already had.
As much as he wanted to sulk and retreat into himself, he couldn’t. There were repairs that needed to be done and a host of Settlement and Manatree work that only Hal could do.
He didn’t have time to grieve or berate himself. Once they were safe and the walls rebuilt, then he could collapse. But until then, he had to put the people who were still here first.
I owe it to them, he thought.
“We owe it to them,” Besal corrected, reminding Hal of their shared vision and that Besal now considered the protection of the Settlement part of his duty as well.
“Hal?” Noth asked, and by the tone of her voice and worried expression she wore, it wasn’t the first time she had said his name.
He did his best to focus, looking into her brilliant golden eyes. “Sorry,” he said, taking a pause to straighten his spine and square his shoulders. There was work to be done. “I spaced out a little there. Could you repeat that last bit, about the… list of repairs I think it was?” He didn’t need to hear about his friends and family going missing in a flash of light again.
Once was enough.
Noth hadn’t told him exactly what state they were in when they just up and disappeared. But from her tone, it didn’t seem like any of them would have survived the night in their condition.
Noth clearly did not hold out much hope.
She looked like she wanted to say something more but Noth decided against it. After a few seconds, she seemed to take the cue from Hal, and her rounded shoulder’s straightened before she spoke. “Without… their leadership, the dwarves are looking to you to tell them what to do. I’ve got some experience talking to Bardan Burlybrawn, but I don’t know if he wants to step in as leader.”
“Interim leader,” Hal interjected.
Noth bit her lip and nodded. Hal didn’t need his Deception skill to know that she didn’t agree.
“I’ll talk to him,” Hal said, moving the conversation along. “What else?”
“The wall is severely damaged,” she said, running down a list she clearly had prepared. “We don’t know what you did with the crystal, but it seems to be holding. Nobody knows how long it’ll last, however.
“Most of our accomplished builders are wounded. Buffrix is gone and the few people skilled in traditional healing are either missing or too wounded to help anybody. Our entire stock of potions and antidotes is exhausted, as well as bandages and various healing supplies. Ashera was….”
Hal nodded, clenching his jaw. She had been in charge of that. “Right, we’ll need to find somebody else to step in and take stock of what we have and what we need.”
“There’s more,” Noth said, wincing slightly. Hal did his best to give her an encouraging smile but from the reaction he got, it clearly fell flat. So much for having high CHR. “We need a plan to deal with the wall once the crystal wears off - if it wears off,” she continued. “As well as a means of securing food, building materials, and restocking our supplies for healing medicines.
“The dead monsters will need to be harvested or cleared from the gap as well. The Boulderguts have been going in shifts clearing the area immediately around the breach but it is hard work. Most of them are still wounded and they risk further injury every moment they are out there.
“But if we don’t and we’re attacked again, all of our traps will remain useless. That is if they are still functional at all. Luckily, most of the karaks made it out of the fighting with only minimal injuries but… much like the Boulderguts the Kweh Gang is currently leaderless.”
Boco Bluefeather was among the missing. Hal made a mental note to talk to Angram about them. The Rangers were closer to the karaks than any other group, and Hal really only had a connection with Boco.
He felt a stab of anguish at imagining the brave karak gone, and he quickly buried it under the list of items Noth continued to rattle off that needed doing.
When she was done, she pulled Hal into a tight and comforting hug. “You needn’t do this all on your own,” she reminded him softly. Through the blood and sweat, he could still smell her and it soothed him. “I’m here, many of our friends are still here and ready to do their part. Don’t take this all on yourself.”
So many thoughts ran through Hal’s head, countless rebuttals, and even a few accusations about how they couldn’t protect their own when he wasn’t there. But that was the grief talking. He let it wash through him and drain away.
Instead, he gave a wan smile and forced himself to squeeze Noth before breaking up the hug. “I’m going to make you regret saying that,” he said.
“As long as I’m with you, I won’t regret anything,” she said with a glint in her eyes.
Despite himself, despite everything, it brought a true smile to Hal’s face.
Everything seemed to move quickly after that. The tent Hal was in quickly filled up with those that needed it more than him. As soon as he had vacated the tent, Noth made sure that it was to be used for any wounded.
There was a bit of irony in that, Hal knew. That the ex-Reaper was now working to help the wounded stay alive. Once nobody was in danger of dying, then he would have a list of things for her to help him with.
Apparently, the tent had been kept reserved for Hal and his friends after the battle so they would have some semblance of privacy. When Hal awoke, it was just him and Noth.
Ten strides away from the tent among the churned-up ground, Hal caught motion between two piles of debris off to his left. The piles of destruction were everywhere. Between the erected tents and hunks of wood broken amid mountains of dirt, it felt like walking through a series of alleyways.
Hal immediately turned and, using Convergence, he lunged into the darkness. He reached out with a hand, worried perhaps that it was a lingering monster.
There was a yelp and a cry of surprise. Calling upon his innate Beastborne powers, Hal Spliced shadow essence, granting himself Shadesight that let him see in the darkness better than Darkvision ever could. The creature he had grabbed with alacrity was none other than a koblin.
Lurklox, to be specific.
He wasn’t sure how he knew it was her, but he did. It was almost instinctual.
“Havior fast-moves, gives Lurklox big-eyes muchly!” she said, and even though Hal still held her by her leather armor, she hugged at his arm entirely unbothered by the aggressive action.
It melted Hal’s mounting sense of guilt that he had treated her like a common enemy and he brought the diminutive little koblin into his arms for a hug. Lurklox squealed like a schoolgirl and squeezed with all her tiny might.
“Havior mercy-give Lurklox? Koblins furrow-brow, monsters flee-foot but some monsters sneaksies about still. Koblins kibosh!”
Hal set Lurklox down gently on a section of the debris nearby so she was at eye-level with him. “It’s okay, Lurklox. I’m sorry for surprising you. I didn’t know you were about… with….”
Lurklox raised a mittened hand. “Buffrix and Lootlox missing, not true-dead. They will return with glory-tales, no furrow-brow Hal! Lurklox see-true. Buffrix and Lootlox are strengthful, they would not go to the big-sky without letting her know!” She shook her head so fiercely her green-furred ears flopped about. “No, never that!”
Patting the air between them to calm her down, Hal said, “All right, all right. Then what are you doing, aren’t you hurt?”
“Pssh-koh!” she said through her mask, the obsidian lenses glinting in the wan midday light that filtered in through the cloud cover. “Lurklox life-force strengthful too! She safe-guard Hal. She will be Havior’s Shadow!”
“Are you sure?” he asked her, knowing well enough not to dismiss a koblin - especially Lurklox - out of hand. “I’m going to be doing a lot of boring stuff.”
Lurklox nodded enthusiastically. “Lurklox self-makes into Havior Shadow! Block-harm from Hal, cease tongue-flaps and open-ears all times.”
“Very well, then I accept,” Hal said, turning and heading toward the wall and the first order of business in getting everything back on track.
4
True to Lurklox’s word - spoken in the unique koblin manner, of course - the sneaky koblin kept out of the way and remained silent as he wound his way toward the breach.
Anybody who could still stand without the threat of bleeding out was being put to work. Just because they won the battle didn’t mean that any opportunistic monsters were going to leave them alone.
Even if the malignant Shiverglades retreated, the sundry horrors that lived within the sheltering frigid boughs of the various swamps and forests were not likely to ignore a free meal.
After all, they were the equivalent of a bleeding animal. Their wall was breached and the gap was choked with dead or dying monsters. If the prospect of that opening didn’t tempt some monsters, the stench of death certainly would.
Bardan found Hal at the moment he came around a pile of insectile corpses. It was strange their bodies didn’t disappear like normal. A pair of bandaged workers, one a dwarf the other an elf Ranger, were stacking the bodies into great mounds.
The stocky dwarf, one arm in a bloody sling, marched toward Hal as soon as their eyes met. “With me, lad!” He didn’t wait for Hal to respond before he grasped his forearm with his one good hand and led him a distance from the reek of death.
Behind another pile of chitinous plates - loot from the various monsters - was a small tent. More of a lean-to made out of scraps from the palisade spikes that had been blasted to flinders when the wall was finally breached.
As Noth had told him, if not for Ashera’s timely intervention, dozens of men and women would be dead. She had saved them because he hadn’t been there to help.
Before his mind could begin its downward spiral, Hal felt a soft hand on his shoulder. He looked, only to find a faint bit of shadow and starlight clinging to his ruined armor. “You cannot be everywhere,” Besal said into his mind. “Take the victory. They look to you now. There is no time for your self-doubt, Hal.”
Hal took a deep breath, a nearby brazier filled with incense of some kind masked the odor of battle, but not enough. His sense of smell seemed… heightened. He could easily pick out the offal, the blood, the sweat, and all the dark realities of war’s aftermath.
“Lad?” Bardan said. He had let go of him once they approached the little command lean-to. A pair of dwarves too bandaged to be much use in the clean-up were standing guard. One of them had their spear bound to their hand with bandages.
Though denizens of Aldim had a high passive health regeneration compared to Hal’s home world, significant injuries still mended slowly and often inhibited that natural regeneration.
Through his conversation with Noth, Hal learned that they couldn’t just dump EXP into their class to Level Up and restore their injuries at present. Not that anybody had much EXP to spare in any event.
During the night of the attack, the Bravers Guild set their EXP to instantly funnel into their Focused Class in order to Level Up as much as possible throughout the long night, fully recovering their resources multiple times during the protracted battle.
It had saved the defenders’ lives and allowed them to keep fighting when their HP, SP, and MP would have otherwise long since run out.
“Yes?” Hal asked. Noth had said Bardan was a good sort, a bit more subdued than Durvin but similar enough.
“Ye got a bit o’ the rattle-brain?”
“I’m sorry?”
Bardan pointed a stubby finger at his bandaged temple. “Some o’ the lads get a little… funny after battle. Sometimes it passes, sometimes not. Seein’ so much death… it ain’t fer everybody. Ain’t no shame if ye need some time fer yerself. Can’t very well have ye leadin’ us if ye got the yips.”
Hal’s brow furrowed. He had never been one for sports, but even he understood that reference. “The yips?”
Stroking his graying beard still streaked with bits of fiery red, Bardan eyed Hal up and down with his sharp green eyes. Despite being quite old, his eyes were as bright and clear as ever. “They said ye might be a little off after yer performance. The yips is when ye suddenly can’t hold yer own in battle.
“Yer knees quake, palms sweat, can’t grip yer axe right. Ye ken? That’s the yips. Happens to the best o’ us lad.” As Bardan spoke he subtly tilted his head to indicate the two guards. They were streaked with sweat. Somehow, Hal understood it wasn’t precisely fear that wafted off them, but shock.
So the yips here is a term for shellshocked or PTSD? Hal nodded his understanding. Bardan was allowing the dwarves to save face by giving them a task they could perform easily. Hal’s Perception helped to pick out that most of the bandages were rough strips of cloth that were unbloodied.
“Their damage is more mental than physical,” Besal said.
“Will they be okay?” Hal asked.
“I do not know. Even a hardy dwarf’s resolve can be shaken so fully that they lose their footing. Who is to say if they will ever get it back?”
Hal reached toward his hip, only to realize [Emissary] was gone. Instead, he clenched his hands in white-knuckled anger. No shaking, no tremors. Bardan watched and with a curt nod spoke no more on the matter.
“Durvin spoke highly o’ yer keen mind and desire to lead properly,” Bardan said, putting one hand on his hip. The pose was only mildly ruined by his wounded arm in a sling. “Ye ain’t fer knowin’ just how mighty a compliment that is, lad.
“But that’s Durvin’s tale to tell, I ain’t about to be flappin’ me lips about what ain’t mine-”
“So you think Durvin is alive too,” Hal said, obvious relief in his voice that somebody else held out some semblance of hope.
Bardan’s green eyes sparkled as he glared at Hal. “O’ course he is, lad! Ye daft troll-kisser! By Dagdamora’s hairy cheeks, it’ll take more’n what the Shiverglades threw at us to see Durvin sixty feet under, don’t ye doubt!”
Hal couldn’t help but smile.
“But we ain’t here to discuss that. We got ourself a mighty list that needs doin’ and I ain’t a king or leader, despite what the dunderheads got to say. All’s I’m doing is keepin’ the seat warm fer Durvin! Ain’t nothin’ else!” Bardan said defiantly as if he expected somebody to argue.
And that’s when Hal saw it. The fear. The grief and pain. Bardan put up a wall of anger and gruffness to shield himself. Hal couldn’t blame him.
Hal extended a hand to Bardan’s good arm. “You’ll get no arguments from me. Durvin will be back bellowing and barking out orders along with the rest of our friends and family.”
Bardan’s grip was phenomenally strong. Hal could tell that, with hardly any effort, the older dwarf could easily crush every bone in his hand. Instead, he shook it with firm resolve and something approaching gratitude in his green eyes. The barest hint of an agreeing smile peeked out beneath his bushy beard.
“Ye got some choices to make, lad,” Bardan said, motioning Hal over to a barrel with a flat hunk of wood laid across it to serve as a makeshift table. Several rocks weighed down maps and various papers. “A hunnerd things to do, and we got enough time to get less than half of ‘em done.
“I’ll do all I can to get me boys to help ye out, but its yerself that has to make the tough choices, lad. We got ourself a nasty hole in our defenses and a load o’ stinking corpses that will attract all sorts o’ creepy-crawlies.
“Won’t hardly matter if we survive the battle if we’re picked apart by the carrion-eaters, ye ken? Yer pointy-eared friends have already reported - them that can still stand - that there are monsters catchin’ the… delicate bouquet of aromas we made.”
Hal bent down to look at the documents and map. The map was simple but effectively showed the sections of the wall that were destroyed or damaged. Many questions were written in the margins about the crystallization effect Hal had cast upon most of the walls.
He didn’t know how long they would hold, and if they failed suddenly they would have many more breaches in short order. Most of the walls Hal braced had already been in the process of crumbling.
The other documents were hastily scrawled estimations of fighting strength, how many people were able to do work, and the general state of the Settlement.
