Chapter 7: Chapter 7 The Giantraiders

Nathan followed Vhala through the brush, questions boiling in his mind. Should he ask about the politics of Gemore & Giantsrest first, or basic things about Davrar? Should he tell them he was new to this world? Would they try to pump him for information like Taeol had? What he should probably do was get treatment for his wounds. Now that he wasn’t in a ‘fight’ his [Brawler’s indifference] wasn’t working at full strength, and Nathan was not in great shape. What remained of his left arm had started slowly leaking blood through the cauterization of the disintegration spell, and his right palm was burned from a close encounter with a fireball.

Nathan was interrupted from his introspection by Vhala looking back at him. “Hold on, it seems like you could use a cure. Can I touch you for that?” She was still treating him like a skittish animal, but Nathan felt like a skittish animal, so that was fair. He nodded to her, and the wide, dark woman approached, laying gentle hands on his right arm. His only arm.

[Minor Curing]

Nothing happened. Nathan had thought that was likely, but said nothing. Vhala frowned at him, then changed the subject. “It’ll be dark soon, we’ll stay at the same camp for the night.” She turned back to the game trail, increasing their pace through the wilderness. Nathan was impressed she was able to find clear trails in this difficult terrain. He would quickly have been left scrambling through bushes and up slopes.

Nathan was also flummoxed by her comment about it getting dark soon. The sun was directly overhead, and showed no signs of falling out of the sky. He didn’t want to reveal any ignorance, so he examined his companions.

Vhala was leading the group, and had reclaimed the weapons she’d dropped to first approach Nathan. An engraved bow made of several composited layers was unstrung on her back, and two one-handed axes rested on her hips, both also engraved in flowing patterns. Artha, the buff elk-centaur dude, was carrying a lot of gear on a sort of harness. He also had a metal-capped staff strapped to his side that was nearly eight feet long and looked like it could bar a gate. Emerald was behind Nathan, but he couldn’t see much about them - their armor was pretty heavy for this terrain, and with a helmet covering all but the mouth he hadn’t even been able to figure out if they were human or their gender. But despite the solid, visorless helmet, they moved smoothly and silently over the uneven terrain.

Soon enough they passed over a rise, revealing an empty glade in the trees. A few more steps and a campsite appeared from nowhere. As the mismatched party trooped in, a figure leapt from the top of a tree and glided to land in front of Vhala. It was a bird-person, with a pair of broad wings emerging from their shoulders above a set of humanoid arms ending with clawed fingers. They were covered head-to-foot with reddish brown feathers underneath dark robes and had a birdlike face, complete with a viciously hooked beak. Which seemed capable of normal speech, as the bird-person addressed Vhala. “Yo boss. Whatsup with the tall Gianter? Prisoner?”

Vhala turned back to Nathan, speaking to reassure him “Nathan, this is Wiam, he’s a mage and our best healer.” She looked to Wiam, pointing back to the camp “This is Nathan. As far as I can tell he’s an escapee from the new archmage’s experiments. I’m sure we’ll hear the whole story soon. First, we’ll stay here tonight and plan to head out in the morning. Make sure the spells that hide the camp are in good shape, then get ready for some healing.”

Emerald and Artha set to readying the camp, starting a fire and fetching water from a nearby stream. Meanwhile, Vhala led Nathan to a log, sat him down and handed him some jerky and a rough blanket before she had a quiet conversation with Wiam. As Nathan covered himself with the blanket and devoured the jerky, they came back and Vhala asked if Wiam could try healing him. Nathan acquiesced, but Wiam’s [Moderate Curing] had no more effect than slightly slowing the bleeding from Nathan’s stump.

Vhala looked frustrated, before digging into a pouch for some bandages, which she wrapped around the stump of Nathan’s arm. “Alrighty, I gotta ask you some questions. Y’all, get your stinky feet over here, I don’t think he’ll want to say this twice.” After the four scouts had gathered, Vhala sat on a stump opposite him. “It’s ok if you can’t tell me everything, but we need to know how to help you. There’s something weird going on with magic around you, and anything you can tell us will help us help you.”

Nathan looked down at the remnants of the jerky and sighed. It was time to decide if he was going to trust these people. They certainly made a better first impression than Taeol did, and so far had only been helpful. But he wasn’t going to reveal much unless he knew more about them. He could either keep secrets from them, or try to figure out if he could trust them. And honestly, he wanted somebody who would help. “Vhala, you’ve been nothing but kind to me. I appreciate it, but please, can you describe to me what’s going on between Gemore and Giantsrest? And what is your part in it?”

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She looked at him with surprise. “Really been stuffing your ears, ain’t ya? We’re at war. Have been since Gemore was founded. They’re a big damn empire, but they’ve never been able to take little old Gemore. They raid us for slaves, send harassment armies, but it’s been at least fifty years since they sent a conquering army. We kill the mages we can, free the slaves we can, but don’t push too hard. They could take us, but don’t seem to want to pay the cost. And us? This motley band of adventurers?” She looked fondly around the fire, at her companions. “We call ourselves the Giantraiders. All of us have lost something to Giantsrest, and so we take a lot of these jobs. The ones that involve tromping around hostile wilderness for a few weeks to maybe get a shot at their newest and weakest archmage.”

As she finished speaking, Nathan’s attention was drawn upwards, to the sun. It was still directly overhead and partially hidden by clouds, having not budged at all during their trek to the camp. But it was dimming, eclipsed in front of his eyes. A line of sudden shadow swept across the mountains and engulfed the camp in darkness. Night had fallen, beyond a pale blue-green glow from beyond the clouds. Nathan looked down at the rest of the group. “Is that how the sun always sets?”

He got a round of amused grins and Wiam asked, “Y’ever been outside, or did ya get raised in that tower?”

Screw it. They seem like good people, and I’ve certainly got something in common with anybody who wants to kill Taeol. They have enough hints that anything else would be an obvious deflection, and I need their help. Time to rip the band-aid off.

“As might be obvious, I’m not from 'round here. I'm from a different world Taeol summoned me to Davrar, and tried to get me to tell him about some things from my world. I didn’t want to tell him, so he tried to charm me and mess with my memory. Magic and Talents don't exist where I come from, and I picked up a Talent that lets me resist magic. When I resisted his mind-fuckery, he tried to shove me into a golem core. So I broke his nose, he teleported out and I ran away.” The faces around Nathan were expectant, waiting for a grand end to his tale. “And then the big-ass golems outside the door chased me and I met you.”

There was a moment of silence, then Wiam, the bird-person, fell off his log laughing. “That’s one zombie of a story my dude, I wanna be at the first bar you tell it in. What’d the archmage want you to tell him?” Vhala glared at Wiam, then she glanced at Nathan. “Nevermind that. How’d you lose the arm? Near miss on an acid spray?”

“He tagged me with a [Disintegrate] right before I broke his nose. It’s what pushed my magic resist talent up to max rank.” If the previous faces were surprised, these were astonished.

Emerald’s voice turned out to be high and raspy, with a strong stutter. “Y-you… you s-survived a direct h-hit from a D-d-disintegrate? A-and then broke an a-archmage’s nose with one a-arm?” Everybody else nodded their agreement to the question.

Nathan didn’t know what to say. “Yes? I wish I’d stomped on his neck before he teleported out. Such an asshole.”

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