Writathon project: Duskbound Chapters 49-52 (Patreon)

Chapter 49

“What the hell is a corrupted seed bearer?” Velik asked.

Torwin frowned, but didn’t answer. They stood over the corpses of three strange monsters, all of which Velik would have said he recognized. One was an enormous mist toad, probably the biggest Velik had ever seen at close to eight feet tall. The other two were a hookpaw bear and a burrow skinder. At least, that’s what they should have been, but the system had other ideas.

“They didn’t [Identify] as that until we killed them,” Torwin finally said. “That means they’ve got some sort of skill to hide what they really are.”

“Which is?”

“Probably some sort of parasitic monster. Maybe they killed the hosts and took over the meat.”

“If so, they had access to the host’s skills. The mist toad was leaving clouds of vapor everywhere.”

Torwin nodded along. “It’s also possible that the hosts were still alive and that the parasites took them over, but I don’t think so. We would have gotten notifications for killing the host monsters in that case. These things must somehow copy their hosts abilities, maybe more.”

“More?” Velik asked.

“Memories,” Torwin clarified. “Monsters that can copy skills usually can copy more than that. Sometimes they’re infiltrators.”

“You’re saying these could get into humans and walk around town?”

‘It’s… possible.”

I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’ve been here killing monsters since the beginning. Are these new, or have they already made it back to the frontier? More importantly, now that we know they’re out there, is there a way to find them that doesn’t involve killing the host?

“What can we do about this?” he asked.

“Well, what would you do if you were by yourself?”

“Put it out of my mind and keep going. I don’t have a way to hunt these things down, so there’s nothing I can do but keep trying to eliminate the source. I wouldn’t even know what they are if not for you.”

“That’s about all we can do. We’d need some sort of specialist investigator to root these things out, someone with some sort of monster detection skill, and there aren’t too many types of classes that can do that. Unless… Can you?”

Velik shook his head. “I had [Intuition] at one point that might have pointed me at a monster in disguise, but I folded it into other skills a while ago. Now it just kind of gives me a vague assessment of relative strength between myself and a monster I’m fighting and helps me spot potential ambushes.”

“Hunter types are the most likely to have the requisite skills, but even most classes don’t get them,” Torwin explained. “I was hoping since yours was unique…”

“I don’t have a free skill slot even if I can find something in my class list,” Velik said. If only I could get [Phalanx] to merge into [Spear Warden], I could change that.

“Probably for the best. No point in ruining your build taking a niche skill that’s situationally useful right now, but which you’ll probably never need again once this job is done. For now, I think you’ve got the right of it. Best thing we can do is keep moving forward until we find the root cause of all these problems.”

Once again, Velik lamented the lack of a distance reader on the mana compass. For all he knew, they could be minutes away from the next target. Or maybe it was hours. He’d messed with the parameters he’d set up a few times, trying to find information to narrow things down, but in the end, the best and easiest way to find large sources of mana was when it manifested as a champion elite.

Not that that’s led us to anything worth finding, but it’s only been a few days. And even if we don’t find the source this way, it’s still good to get rid of these things. If Chalin really is the one making these things, though, this is the only way I can think of to find him.

Torwin seemed insistent on keeping up with Velik now, even to the point of staying up throughout the night and matching his sleeping cycle. The old hunter was powerful enough that Velik knew the dark didn’t really hinder his vision, but he still preferred to work alone. On the other hand, if he was going to be fighting another champion over level 40, he could use some help. It was really a miracle he’d survived the last fight.

They left the three corpses behind and followed the compass west and north toward a small mountain range. Neither of them voiced the fear, but Velik figured Torwin was just as concerned as he was that their next target was behind that natural barrier. It would probably be the work of weeks to circumvent it.

The sun started to rise well before they reached it, and they quickly settled on a location to catch some sleep and worked out a watch rotation. Velik was accustomed to sleeping lightly, but he wasn’t going to turn away some extra security when he was at his most vulnerable, especially with the number of monsters in the upper thirties range of levels in the area.

Torwin settled himself in, leaving Velik to do a circuit around the area. It took him about half an hour to kill all the nearby monsters, a feat he accomplished much more easily thanks to his newly upgraded spear. The remaining champion cores he was holding tempted him greatly, but he held firm by reminding himself that selling those would bring him the riches he needed to buy more pieces of gear, and that once this was all over with, he could travel to a city with craftsmen who could make those pieces at a fraction of the price.

All he had to do was think of Torwin’s apprentice, a guy who was fairly mediocre as far as his talents went with a similarly unimpressive class to pair with it. But his father had more money than the gods and Jensen was kitted out in all sorts of trinkets that let him hit far above his level. Velik wanted some of those toys for himself.

He was up to just over two thousand decarmas, and if he had to grind the rest of the money out this way, it’d be the work of years. Every champion he killed represented weeks or months of work. From what Velik understood about how champions normally only appeared in dungeons, and that when they died, they didn’t leave seeds behind, it was extremely rare to get even a single one, let alone multiples.

There was some way to claim the seeds from a dungeon once its core was destroyed, but that only resulted in one or two, depending on the dungeon’s size. A harvest of a dozen or more champion seeds was unheard of. At least, that was what Torwin had told him when he’d asked why they were so valuable.

With his lap around the new camp complete, Velik returned and settled down to do his few hours of watch through the dawn. His spear rested against his shoulder, waiting for the next monster to make the mistake of getting too close to would-be prey.

  *

Sildra’s chest heaved from the exertion of running. No less than seven people had descended on her seconds after she’d killed Vickers, three of them part of the town watch. She’d tried to stammer out an explanation, but they hadn’t bothered to talk. As one, they’d advanced on her with pitiless, blank expressions on their face and logging axes or defender’s spears held in their hands.

She’d done the only thing she could: she’d run for her life. [Lunar Flare] took something out of her each time she used it, and she was already tired from a night’s hunting. Fighting off the flash maw hare and whatever the hell that thing pretending to be Vickers was had taken the rest of her energy. When she’d been immediately confronted with another battle, there’d only been one option.

Unfortunately, her pursuers weren’t content to let her go. They’d started a game of cat-and-mouse in the woods, except there were seven cats working cooperatively against her, and she wasn’t sure if she could fight back without hurting them. Without any understanding of what had happened to Vickers, she had no clue if she’d killed the man she’d known her whole life or just some monster pretending to be him.

She was half a mile into the forest, hiding in a tree that loomed over a thicket and hoping no one would spot her. The town watch would be the highest level, and thus the most likely to sniff out her hiding place, but she needed a few minutes to recover before she started running again. If nothing else, she wanted her reserves of magic fortified enough to handle three or four casts of [Lunar Flare]. It wasn’t that she was planning on killing anyone else, but if it came down to them or her, she knew what her choice would be.

Morgus, tell me what’s going on here. Please, I don’t know what happened. How do I save these people?

[You have been granted a new quest: Purge the town of Deshir of the corrupted seed bearers.]

With the quest came the knowledge of what her patron deity wanted of her. The system said it in words, but Morgus imparted his directives directly into her mind. Without hesitation, she went into her system menus and found her class skills. It was easy to locate the one she needed.

[You have gained the skill: Eye of the Moon.]

Its description was simple enough. The light of the moon revealed monsters, even if she couldn’t see them. Instantly, the location of dozens of monsters in the forest appeared in her mind, including seven human-shaped ones all nearby.

Monsters they are, then. Thank you for marking my path for me. I know what to do from here.

Chapter 50

The first thing to do was kill the monsters chasing her. Sildra didn’t have it in her to [Lunar Flare] all of them, but she was still armed with Vickers’s cane. The watch were the most dangerous of her pursuers, so she used her new skill to turn the tables on her would-be stalkers.

The first watchman went down quickly and easily. He never even saw Sildra lurking behind a bush just off the trail. The pale light of the skill engulfed him, eliciting a brief scream of pain before he was consumed.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 16).]

She could only hope that these monsters were copies of people and not the people themselves. Morgus willing, she’d find the real townsfolk tied up somewhere, alive. Either way, she needed to do this in the next hour before [Lunar Flare] lost all its impact. Not being able to utilize it during the day was a huge drawback, but the extra power it received at night was the only reason she could reliably kill monsters above her own level.

One of the guys on the local logging crew came charging at her, ax raised over his head to split her skull open. He didn’t make it within ten feet before he succumbed to a burst of pale white light and collapsed into the dirt.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 13).]

She snuck up on another logger, this one barely fourteen. If not for the certainty that [Eye of the Moon] granted her, she would have struggled to attack him. But the skill told her the boy in front of her was a monster, and she believed it. Her stolen cane came down on his head, causing him to drop bonelessly to the ground.

To an outside observer, it would have looked like she gave a merciless, fatal beating to a teenager. The whole time she was doing it, she kept an eye out for the other four monsters nearby, and never had she been happier to see a notification confirming the boy was another seed bearer once she struck the final blow.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 7).]

I need to take this ax if I’m going to be killing them like this, she thought to herself. Using a cane is way too much work.

Sildra was by no means weak, but she’d invested all of her free points into mystic, and every logger and watchman knew the value of a high physical stat. She was left with only her natural gains from a rugged frontier life, which put her at a solid 9 physical. That was good enough to chop wood, but maybe not so great against a logger whose physical would be 20 or higher.

This was likely the only opportunity she was going to get, as [Lunar Flare] didn’t spare its victims’ weapons. She killed off both of the other watchmen in quick succession, but in doing so, ran herself completely dry and was left to face the last two loggers. They worked together, and despite her efforts to isolate them, caught sight of her at the same time.

Sildra retreated behind a tree, readied the ax, and waited. Thanks to [Eye of the Moon], she knew exactly where both monsters were, which meant she could time her swing perfectly. The first logger came barreling around the curve in the trail just in time to take an ax to the chest. He grunted in pain and toppled sideways, jerking the weapon out of her hand and taking it with him as he collapsed.

There was no kill notification, and worse, now she was unarmed and facing the second logger. He let out a wordless bellow, raised his ax up, and jerked in place. With a groan, he staggered forward, the ax going slack in his grip. It wasn’t until he started to turn that Sildra saw the arrow sticking out of his back, and even as she noticed it, a second joined it.

“You… can’t… stop this,” he coughed out as he dropped.

“Okay,” Jensen said as he strode forward, bow in hand. “I’m going to assume things have gone crazy here, as well?”

“Jensen? What are you doing here? Wait, what do you mean ‘crazy here, as well?’ What happened?”

  *

“At least thirty,” Sildra reported. “Most of them are in the middle of town.”

“At least?” Jensen echoed. “You’re not sure.”

“The skill only lets me know about monsters that are illuminated by the moon. If they’re indoors or underground, I don’t think it’ll work.”

“And whatever is going on, it’s affecting at least two towns. Damn it, we don’t have time to deal with this tonight. Okay, I figure at best we’ve got an hour before you lose the ability to tell the monsters from the humans, and even that’s stretching it. The sun’s going to be up in a few minutes. That might degrade the skill’s effectiveness faster than I’m anticipating.”

“Then we’d better hurry.”

They were standing at the edge of the fields, a quarter mile or less from the still open gate. The town was dark behind it, all silhouettes against the pre-dawn light that was rapidly erasing any advantage the duo had against the strange monster invasion. Together, they rushed forward, Sildra relying on [Eye of the Moon] to make sure nothing snuck up on them and Jensen using whatever it was he always used. He hadn’t been forthcoming about his skills, and she hadn’t pried.

The first monster they spotted wasn’t a corrupted seed bearer disguised as a person, but a big rat-looking thing that came up to Sildra’s hip and had a tail as long as she was tall. It hissed at them, but Jensen silenced the monster with a flurry of arrows to the face.

“Can you tell which monster is which?” he asked.

“No.”

“Damn. Better hope we get lucky then. Let’s hurry.”

They found the first seed bearer shortly after that, and Jensen put the woman down with ruthless efficiency the moment Sildra confirmed she was a monster.

“That was the server at the tavern,” Sildra muttered. “Why would anyone want to control her?”

“Figure it out later,” Jensen urged.

Watching him scythe through every monster they found was somewhat daunting. Worse, it came with the realization that he’d been holding back immensely during their joint outings, letting her take the lead and get the kills she needed to raise her level. She’d thought she had his measure, but this Jensen was nothing like the man she’d worked with.

He didn’t make jokes now. He didn’t meander, or do that thing where he got all cocky and lazily raised his bow up before letting off a half-hearted shot. Every arrow formed with speed and instantly leapt off the bow string. Every shot found its target, and most enemies couldn’t survive more than one or two.

They were walking past the butcher shop when a motion in the shadow of the open door caught her eye. Loun the butcher was running at her, a cleaver raised in his hand and a feral snarl on his lips. Jensen was already twenty feet ahead down the road, heading toward the large knot of monsters in the middle of town, leaving her to deal with the ambush on her own.

[Lunar Flare] sparked over the man, but it was weak now. Pale flickers of flame washed across his arms and chest, eliciting a few curls of smoke and nothing else. Loun was fifty years old, his face covered with gray stubble and his hair thin and wispy on the sides of his head. He’d always been kind to Sildra’s family when she’d been a child. More than once, he’d given them the hide from a butchered animal for her mother to work on.

The apron he wore was her work. So was the sheath a carving knife was resting in on her hip. Sildra still remembered one day, when she was six, he’d given her a sweet he’d picked up from a caravan that had come through the week earlier.

Loun didn’t seem to care about their shared history. He bounded down the two steps leading from his butcher shop to the street and swung the cleaver viciously. The instant he set foot beyond his shop, [Eye of the Moon] confirmed the horrible truth she’d already guessed.

Not him, too. What about Mom? Did this corruption take everyone I care about?

[Lunar Flare] hadn’t slowed him down, but she still had a logger’s ax in hand. With a tear in her eye, she swung it into Loun’s hip. He roared in pain, drawing Jensen’s attention, but for once, Sildra was the faster of the two. She jerked the ax back out and swung again, this time taking half his hand and sending the cleaver flying along with the fingers.

Loun jerked in place as feathered arrow shafts bloomed between his ribs. He took a single, faltering step forward, then dropped to his knees. “Sildra,” he hissed. “You can’t stop us all, not now. You should join us instead.”

[You have helped slay a corrupted seed bearer (level 23).]

[You have been awarded 1 decarma.]

“Are you alright?” Jensen asked. He jogged back down the street and scanned the inside of the butcher shop, but there was no one else there. Loun had been a life-long bachelor. However, the corruption had made its way inside his shop, he’d been its only victim.

“He was like family,” she said simply. “I’ve known him my whole life. Him and my mother worked closely. I’m going to find the bastard who did this, and I’m going to burn him to ashes.”

“Better do it quickly. The sun’s fully up now.”

Chapter 51

Town hall was the biggest building in Deshir by far. The mayor lived there and all governance business was conducted from inside it. There wasn’t any single place that could hold the entire town’s population, not normally, but for holding prisoners, it was more than big enough.

There were both people and monsters standing guard outside the building. Even with [Eye of the Moon] ceasing to function, it wasn’t hard to guess that any person who was working with the obvious monsters must be one themselves. Unfortunately, with the sun fully risen, Sildra was about as weak as she could be.

Jensen was more confident, but not by much. The monsters had already shown that they could work together, not just the corrupted seed bearers, but the normal monsters from the forest with them. That was unusual and probably meant they’d gathered under an elite, and with the seed bearers showing at least near-human levels of intelligence, he was wary of the idea of taking on a crowd like that.

“Four or five is one thing,” he grumbled. “I could kill half of them before they even get close. But thirty or forty? No. Even if I killed half, the other half would rip us apart. We’re going to need to rethink this and come up with a better plan, especially now that you’re out of tricks.”

“I can’t leave this alone,” Sildra told him. “Morgus himself granted me a quest to liberate this town from this corruption.”

I need to find Mom. After what happened with Loun…

“Can Morgus make it so your skills function during the day? Because that would make this all a whole lot easier.”

They were crouched on the roof of a house one street over, just behind the peak. As far as Sildra could tell, there wasn’t a person left in the town anywhere but right in front of town hall. Maybe a few holdouts had barricaded themselves in their homes, but there was nobody and nothing but monsters outside and almost all of them were concentrated right in front of them.

“I think there are some behind the building,” she said. “At least, there were back when I could still track their locations. Maybe we can hit them from the other side, thin out some numbers. If we’re quick and quiet enough, we might even be able to get inside and rescue any prisoners.”

“Do you really think there are prisoners? Monsters don’t usually keep humans alive.”

“Why else would they be guarding town hall? It’s not like they care about tax records, right?”

“I have no idea what they care about. Monsters that look like people are new to me. Monsters don’t talk. They rarely work together. They never have plots or schemes.”

“Well, these ones do. I’m going to circle around and see if there’s an opening from the back. You can stay or go,” she said. Before Jensen could argue, she slid down the roof and started climbing back to the street.

  *

This woman is going to get me killed. Maybe if Torwin were here, it’d be easy. He’s gold-ranked. He could just stand there and blow the whole horde away before they even started moving. Why am I even still here? If she’s so determined to throw her life away, the smart thing for me to do is get as far away as possible.

Despite his musings, he found himself following Sildra in a wide loop around the town anyway. He tried to tell himself it was curiosity, or that finding out what these monsters were up to was important to the security of the whole country. An infestation like this could spread, and the last thing they needed were thousands of monsters infiltrating cities disguised as humans.

Those were certainly valid reasons, but if he were being honest with himself, the truth was simpler than that. He liked Sildra. She was brash and headstrong and uneducated, exactly the sort of person he’d been raised to steer well clear of. She was also honest and straightforward and remarkably strong in the right circumstances. They hadn’t known each other long, but she was almost a friend. Maybe more like an annoying little sister.

So, he strode along after her, bow at the ready and eyes peeled for any monsters that might come bursting out of the shadows. They were going off Sildra’s memories of where the monsters had been fifteen minutes ago, but those things had a tendency to move, so he was being extra careful. Really, unless they came at him in numbers, his biggest concern was that he’d accidentally shoot a person he mistook for a monster.

The trip was surprisingly quiet and only took about ten minutes. They soon found themselves perched on a different roof, this time looking at the back of the building. Sildra’s mouth hung open as she stared in horror, and even though he wasn’t personally invested in this whole thing, Jensen found himself silently agreeing with her.

The grass was stained with blood, and not just in one spot. It looked like a dozen people had been murdered, then strung up and left to bleed out. It splattered the walls of the town hall and stained the edge of the streets where the grass ended. That would have been disturbing enough on its own, but piles of organs and meat decorated the yard, macabre little mounds that he could smell from a hundred feet away.

“What were they doing back here?” Sildra whispered, her eyes wild. “There are no bodies, but…”

“Hollowing out people,” Jensen said. “Think about it. These monsters… they’re not random bodies. They’re your neighbors. You know these people. Each one is a skin suit with something sitting inside it. That’s why the system notifications don’t say we’re killing humans. They’re already dead. The only thing left is the monster controlling their corpse.”

“We have to get in there and save whoever’s still alive.”

Easy to say, but not to do. Who’s to say there’s even anybody left?

He kept his mouth shut, though. This was personal to Sildra. She wasn’t going to let it go, which meant he needed to decide if he was going to leave her to die or try to help her.  He wanted to stay, but the sad truth of the matter was that the most likely outcome was that they both died instead of just her.

The only ways this works is if it’s a running battle where I pick them off one by one while they chase me, or if we manage to sneak inside without the ones out front knowing about it. I can’t see either plan working. Maybe… both? If I act as a decoy, kill some at the front, get the rest to run off, Sildra could get inside.

While he was mulling over his options, the back door opened. Two men came out, both covered in dried blood. Both had the hardy frames of loggers, though neither carried the axes he’d seen other corrupted humans carrying. Instead, they dragged a third man who looked to be about the same age as Jensen and Sildra between them.

“That’s Demos,” she said. “The ones holding him are Jak and Tevy.”

Demos hung limp in their grip, possibly unconscious. His heels dragged across the ground, limp and unresisting as they flung him into a relatively clean spot in the yard. Seemingly uncaring, the two loggers turned and disappeared back into the town hall.

“What was that about?” Jensen whispered.

“No idea.”

A few seconds later, Demos started convulsing. Blood bubbled up between his lips and spilled across his face. His eyes flew open and, with a choked, coughing gasp, he clutched at his chest. Even from so far away, Jensen could see his throat bulge as if something were stuck inside it. A moment later, he hacked out a blob of tissue soaked in blood. Immediately, the process started over and a second blob joined the pile.

“Are… are those his lungs?” Jensen asked. “Morgus’s great hairy balls, what is happening here?”

He thought better of the curse the moment he uttered it, but the druid dedicated to Morgus sitting right next to him was too preoccupied to say anything. She just stared, horrified, as the young man lying in the lawn hacked up organ after organ, almost like something was inside his chest, forcing them out. A minute later, there was another pile of shredded meat in the yard to match the many others.

Demos stood up, covered in his own blood, and casually walked back into the town hall like nothing had happened. He didn’t even bother to wipe his face, not that there was any clean spot left on his shirt to use in the first place.

“I know your skill isn’t working so well with the sun being up now,” Jensen said, “but is there any chance you can tell whether that guy just turned into a monster? Because I’m pretty sure we just saw someone become a corrupted seed bearer.”

Sildra wasn’t listening to him though. “…fourteen, fifteen, sixteen… twenty-two, twenty-three. Gods… at least that many people they put through this.”

Jensen thought back to the people standing on the street in front of the town hall, to the butcher Sildra had known personally, and the ones out in the woods just outside of town. None of them had been covered in blood like Demos. They weren’t new converts. And this town wasn’t the only place that was infested. He’d already killed two dozen corrupted seed bearers when he’d encountered a logging team out in the woods on his way back to the inn.

 How long has this been going on? How widespread is it already? Will there even be anyone left alive in the other towns now?

Chapter 52

Velik didn’t get a lot of sleep, but then again, he didn’t need much anymore. The higher his physical stat got, the less he seemed to even get tired, and the quicker he woke back up. Four to six hours had been his average a few years ago, with that inching closer to three the higher his level grew. In the last six months, he'd seen a huge leap in his stats, and now even three hours felt like overkill.

Torwin must have been in a similar position, or maybe it was some sort of skill, in his case. The old man probably had thirty or more skills rolled up into however many slots he had open. Whatever the reason was, they both got about two hours of sleep and were up shortly after dawn.

What actually woke Velik was the smell of cooking meat, which sent a brief surge of panic through him before he remembered he was sharing a camp with someone else. “You’ll draw in monsters cooking out here like that,” he said.

“Good morning to you, too,” Torwin replied. “And what’s wrong with baiting the monsters in? The whole point is to kill them.”

“Preferably not while I’m asleep,” Velik said.

“Some things are worth it for a good breakfast.”

Hard to argue with that logic. That smells delicious. He must have picked up a cooking skill at some point.

As much of a hurry as they were in, Velik gave in to temptation and had a leisurely morning. Half an hour wouldn’t change things one way or another, and it wasn’t like Torwin’s lazy apprentice was hard at work. If that guy could sleep ten hours a day, Velik could take half an hour to enjoy a well-cooked campfire meal.

  *

“Worst. Morning. Ever,” Jensen panted as he sprinted away from the horde of monsters.

He’d explained his plan to Sildra, emphasizing the danger she’d be in going into the building alone. They’d both agreed that it was their best shot at rescuing anyone who might still be alive, and that was that. An hour past dawn, an ungodly hour during which he shouldn’t have even been awake, saw him running full speed down the unfamiliar streets of an unimportant town tucked away at the back edge of civilization, two dozen monsters in pursuit.

He'd targeted the monsters he knew were fastest for his ambush. As far as he could tell, the main ability of the seed bearers was to take over a host and blend in, which left them with whatever stats the body they’d moved into had. That meant he could outrun any of them. It was some of the faster monsters that he was concerned about – that and how well they’d coordinate to box him in. He couldn’t just make a break for the open gate; he had to keep them chasing him or else they might return to the town hall and find Sildra.

He juked left around a corner and silently cursed when a pair of worgs cut out in front of him. This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen! There was nothing for it but to bring his bow up and attempt a shot on the run, a feat made even more difficult by the fact that the worgs didn’t just stand there and wait for him to get things lined up. Both of them came at him at a full run, teeth flashing in the morning light as they lunged.

The closest worg ate an arrow, a shot Jensen was more than pleased with, even if he did suspect it was more a combination of luck and the aiming enchantments than through any personal growth in his skill. He darted to the side before the second worg could catch him, then spun on his heel and fired two shots into its flank as it went by.

The worg he’d shot in the mouth died, but its partner was up for another round. Unfortunately, Jensen was out of time. With a bit of luck, its injuries would slow it down enough that it wouldn’t catch up again. He ran off, his feet moving so fast that they were almost a blur to his pursuers.

I’ve probably killed seven or eight of them, I think. No time to check the notifications and count them all up now, but it’s a start.

A glance over his shoulder showed him only a dozen corrupted seed bearers chasing him, along with the one remaining worg. That was a problem, as it meant the group had split up and he didn’t know if they were trying to pincer him or returning to the town hall. Now he had to find them without running into them and getting caught.

He fired off a few arrows into the mob and rounded another corner, desperately trying to figure out where the rest of the monsters had gone. On a quiet morning, he might have been able to track them by ear alone, but over the sound of shouting and his own labored breathing, he had a little trouble hearing anything else.

Oh, shit!

Three men jumped out in front of him, forcing him to veer to the right and duck under a swinging ax. Jensen dove into a roll and came back up, an arrow materialized and knocked on the string. He only had a split second to make a decision – the closest one was still recovering from a swing, but the monster next to him was already stepping forward. Which one recovers first?

He didn’t know the answer, but the man recovering from his missed attack wasn’t in a position to defend himself. Jensen released the arrow and saw it appear in the monster’s throat as if by magic. He caught the flash of a system notification, but ignored it to focus on the immediate threat. The second monster’s ax flashed down and struck the paving stones right where Jensen had been a fraction of a second ago. He rolled, summoned another arrow, and fired point-blank into the man’s chest.

The third man wasn’t content to sit idly by, but he was the worst positioned of the three, and his advance had been blocked by the middle man. By the time he was close enough to strike, Jensen was already back on his feet and running. He leaped into the air, pirouetted, and fired off another arrow. The shot went wide, barely scratching his target’s hip and not doing much to slow it down.

Jensen wasn’t a melee fighter. He turned and ran, only to stumble when he saw six more seed bearers spilling out from between the houses. Shit. I guess it’s good that they’re all still here, but they’ve got me surrounded. What do I do now?

Much as he detested the idea of wasting it on a fight he shouldn’t even have been involved in, it looked like he was going to have to use his most powerful ability: money.

  *

The smell was so much worse up close, and the squelch of the wet ground underfoot was nauseating. Sildra crossed the human offal as quickly as she could, the stolen woodsman’s ax clutched tightly in her hands. With every step, she expected the door to bang open and another of the corrupted seed bearers to rush out.

That didn’t happen. She stopped at the door without any sign that a single person—or monster—had noticed her approach. Everything was silent. Even listening with her ear to the door revealed nothing, so Sildra screwed up her courage and eased it open.

The inside of the town hall looked much as she’d remembered it, except for the fact that there were thirty or forty people laid out in rows on the floor of the main assembly hall. Demos was at the far end of the room, covered in blood just like everyone else. Without [Eye of the Moon] to confirm it, she couldn’t be sure that they were all monsters, but it seemed likely.

Sildra spied on them from an adjoining hallway, careful to make sure no one was looking in her direction. That caution was probably the only reason she noticed Jak crossing the room in her direction with a small, thumb-sized piece of what looked like fruit held in one hand.

If he’d spotted her, he’d have made more noise, so she slipped back away from the assembly hall and ducked into one of the nearby rooms. With her ear pressed to the door, she listened for the sound of him passing by, but his footsteps stopped right in front of her. Keep walking, she mentally begged him. There’s nothing interesting in here.

That thought spurred her to glance around, where she was horrified to see her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Coru, tied to a table. The old woman was wide-eyed and gagged, staring back at Sildra but unable to move or make a sound. Both of their gazes shifted simultaneously to the doorknob as it started to turn.

No choice. I’ve got to take him out in one hit so he can’t raise the alarm.

She took a single long step into the corner behind the door, raised her ax, and held her breath. A second later, the door swung open and Jak stepped through. “See? Your host is ready,” he said, holding up the piece of fruit to Mrs. Coru.

Is that what’s killing people? They are called corrupted seed bearers, after all.

Jak took two more steps in, clearing the door completely, and Sildra made her move. Maybe it was movement caught out of the corner of his eye, or maybe it was the sound of her foot on the floor, but either way, Jak started to turn toward her.

The ax bit deeply into his neck, spraying the room and Sildra both with blood. With a heave, she jerked it free and swung again. Jak ignored the wound and reached up a hand to grab the ax, but she was too quick. This time, his head flew clean off and his body dropped where he’d stood.

[You have slain a corrupted seed bearer (level 16).]

The little red fruit rolled out of his slack grasp. Sildra watched it wobble, almost like it was alive, then stomped hard on it.

[You have slain a seed of corruption (level 1).]

“Come on,” Sildra said, approaching Mrs. Coru with the bloody ax. “Let’s get these ropes off you and get you out of here.”