Chapter 14: Chapter 14. The Redshield, part 3.

Surviving in the Blood Basin necessitated a few things.

Sustenance was important, obviously.

The Basin itself was desolate and barren, a wasteland of crimson sand and skeletons peeking up at you from beneath windswept dunes. No grass grew, no trees, and no vegetables.

Meat was plenty though, if you felt like resorting to cannibalism, but the majority of food and water to be had came in on the backs of hopeful new warriors looking to make a name for themselves in the skirmishes. This meant that newcomers were always targets for looting. By Hadrian’ math, the odds of a newcomer surviving their first month was about one in ten.

Other food and water to be had was either stolen, or acquired from merchants outside of the Basin’s borders. Sometimes a traveler would be stupid enough to attempt to traverse the Basin as a shortcut between nations, only to get robbed and killed for their troubles.

These were the standard means of acquiring food and water for the vast majority of people in the Basin, but in the case of water, there was one exception.

There were a couple of streams that filtered down from upland, but they were all controlled by one of the ever shifting mercenary or criminal factions of the Basin. These groups used the Basin as a place to hide out, or live lawlessly between jobs. They tended to keep to themselves, for the most part, but once in while they would crawl out of their camps for a day of slaughter, or to go head to head with a rival faction. Most of the people who survived the Basin long enough would eventually align themselves with one faction or another out of pure expedience. Though it was a bit of a reach to call it, “the safe choice,” it was at least safer than going it alone or in a small group.

After that came gear.

Weapons quickly dulled as they ground against bone and sinew, and due to being wet with blood all the time, would naturally rust.
Fortunately for Hadrian, his spear, despite its gold emboss, was made from some metal imported from Yinyue, and didn’t have that problem. His mother had bought it for Jakinthus, and she hadn’t spared any expense in its making.

As for armor, most warriors in the Basin would just take what they needed from the dead. If a pauldron had a broken strap, just kill someone about your size and the problem was solved. This was efficient in theory, but it also lead to everyone in the Blood Basin looking pretty homogeneous, everyone’s armor just being a mix of Tel’Avarian and Umbrinese. It wasn’t all that uncommon to get offed by an ally in a fatal case of mistaken identity.

There was also the matter of shelter.

On most nights, if you felt like risking your life with a big blazing fire, you could get away with sleeping under the stars. It was cold, but the fire would keep you warm, right up until it got you killed. This meant that you needed blankets, and preferably a tent. Most warriors opted for heavy canvas, dyed red with blood. They would wrap themselves in a bedroll, and drape the canvas over themself as a kind of makeshift camouflage. It was efficient enough, though it did have the added downside of making it so you couldn’t see anyone, or anything, approach.

There were also the cave systems that ran around and under the Basin. The landscape, or the parts of it that weren’t sand or dust, was littered with a large network of caves and tunnels that formed a labyrinth of sorts beneath the sands. Veterans of the Basin would sometimes familiarize themselves with these tunnels as a means of getting around, but entering into them came with it’s own series of risks.

Wraiths.

Giant lizard dogs with sharp teeth and a taste for human flesh.

Running into a wraith was bad news unless you were particularly skilled, or had access to an arts with a combat focus. Even then there was never any guarantee of survival. Wraiths were quick and surprisingly crafty. They would often use shadows and the element of surprise to get the upper hand.

And they weren’t even the worst thing prowling the cave systems…

There was also, the Great Wolf…

The final thing a person needed to survive, was allies.

Not comrades or friends.

Allies.

The problem with being human, was that humans had to sleep. Typically the more sleep the better, to a point. A lone warrior was as likely to get killed in his bedroll as on the battlefield. The men and women of the basin prowled the night like hyena’s looking for fresh meat. They hunted the unwary, and were accustomed to stealth and night raids. More than once Hadrian had woken to the glint of a blade and more than once he had filled the quiet of the night with the screams of the dying.

Hadrian, as close as he could reckon, had been in the basin for nigh on three and half years now. He had lost count of his kills, and he had never been the type to carve notches to keep track. He was fairly well supplied, and unlike most of the people in the basin, Hadrian preferred to fight alone.

Well, he was mostly alone.

Except for the voices.

Hadrian fought for no particular side, not that there were sides, as such, but would occasional take a job for hire by one of the local factions. He never bothered to stick around though. The factions of the Basin were as temporal as the weather and even less consistent, with the exception of one, and that special exception was best avoided at all costs.

In the Blood Basin, there were things worse than death.

There had been a few occasions when one of Hadrian’s employers had stiffed him. On those occasions, Hadrian opted to for wholesale slaughter. After a few factions got wiped out, the rest chose to honor their terms, or avoid him entirely. A few had even tried to recruit him, but Hadrian wasn’t interested, and no one wanted to press their luck and push the issue.

In his few years in the Basin, the young red shield, less young and with a redder shield now, had earned something of a name for himself as a fighter. This had attracted the interest of one particular group that he would have rather avoided, but it couldn’t be helped. Even with his small degree of fame however, he wasn’t satisfied.

Being in the Basin had taught him one thing.

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He wasn’t strong enough.

He wasn’t anywhere near strong to accomplish his goal.

In the grand scheme of things, he wasn’t even the strongest person in the Basin. He probably wasn’t even in the top ten.

Yet.

Every night he still had the same dream.

Jakinthus standing on a rise, staring at Hadrian from a distance. His face had grown a little blurry with time and recollection, though it was still clearly identifiable. Behind him was a mass of others.

Men.

Women.

A horde of faceless people from whom the shield had drank. Even though Hadrian could not recall their specific features, their gazes bore into him as their mouths moved in unison.

“When?” was all they would say. Over and over again.

Hadrian knew what they wanted to know, but he did not have an answer for them. He had sacrificed them all in the name of his grand ideal, of his goal. Now all they could do was wait for him to accomplish it, and for Hadrian to prove their sacrifice had meant something.

“Soon,” Hadrian would reply. It was the only answer he could muster.

Then Hadrian would wake with a cold sweat beading on his forehead. He would crawl out from beneath his bloody canvas, take a seat, and stare into the sky while he ate his breakfast. For some reason he found this comforting. It had become something of a ritual for him, maybe because looking at the sky meant looking away from the Basin, if only for a short while each day.

This day was no different, and as usual, his thoughts drifted towards Umbrin as he broke fast. This too had become a part of his ritual. Thoughts of genocide over coffee… Not the he had access to coffee in the Basin. He had left luxuries like that back in the capital. Instead he had warm water, stale bread, and Jerky. He wasn’t even sure what the Jerky was made of, he just hoped it wasn’t made of human.

As he chewed on the tough, slightly salted meat, he pictured a city on fire.

Umbrin would burn, eventually, and he would be the one to light the torch. He would peel off it’s mask and spit in it’s face, even if that meant he had to kill every man woman and child to do it…

Hadrian paused, taking a sip of water and trying to help the piece of meat stuck in his throat along its way.

“Damn,” he coughed, pounding his fist into his chest. After a moment, he felt the meat slide begrudgingly down his esophagus.

Burning Umbrin was a nice thought, but Hadrian understood that he did not have the ability to single handedly destroy and entire nation. No matter how strong he became the nation would repopulate faster than he could murder, and he could murder pretty fast. Genocide was a tricky business, and whether he preferred to operate alone or not, he was not stupid enough to think it practical.

Eventually he would need to ally himself with someone.

“I think it will be a nice day,” he muttered to himself as he tried to banish the thought. As he watched the sun brake over the horizon he scratched at some of the fresh stubble on his cheeks. In the few years he had been in the Basin, hygiene hadn’t exactly been a priority. His long dark hair was an oily mass of strands as thick as fingers, and his skin was constantly dry and cracking. He didn’t like thinking about how he must have smelled.

Chomping down on the last of his breakfast, Hadrian rose to a standing position, his tall and lithe frame uncoiling like the body of some big snake. He had grown over the years, though mostly just in height. Hadrian had always been tall, but now he towered over most adult men. His once carefully curated muscles had become thin and lean, and his once strong features now looked a little hollow. He wasn’t exactly emaciated, but proper nutrition wasn’t really accessible in the Basin, so things weren’t likely to change anytime soon either.

As Hadrian milled about his makeshift camp and collected his things, he noted that he was running low on supplies. Soon, he would need to take another job, or to kill a few people and take their stuff. Regardless of what he ended up doing, he needed to keep moving. Once he had finished repacking everything, Hadrian stopped.

Something wasn’t right. He could feel it in the air, and in the connection between him and the shield. Reaching up, he went to touch the metal of the shield for reassurance, only to unclasp it and swing it in front of his chest.

Somewhere far off in the distance, he heard the sound of a whistle.

Within moments of him readying his shield, the arrow came plummeting down from above, slamming itself into the metal and driving Hadrian back a little with it’s force.

“Shit,” he growled. “Not this again.”

Suddenly, the arrow pivoted away from his shield and soared off in the direction of the whistle.

“Maybe it won’t be a nice day after all…”

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