Chapter 71: Chapter 71 – The Weight of Judging Eyes

“Most of these things look human, or they have some similarity,” the mercenary scout says, rubbing at the hair on his chin as he stares into the forest looking for the exact monsters that he’s looking for. “The hollows are skinny and tall, their limbs are too long for our bodies, and they have hollow eyes, which is where the name comes from. Their skin is some chitinous substance interconnected as something like armour. I don’t know what’s hiding inside, but you have to smash their every joint before they stop moving. They’re mostly scavengers, but don’t get too close while they’re eating.

“Lyarls are meaner, they look almost like kids when they’re looking at you, but that’s just a trick. They won’t show you their backs until they’re close enough to attack, which is when they’ll unfold and bite you. They’ve got a very venomous bite.

“When unfolded they look like a bloated centipede, but their fake human face is convincing at a glance. If you see a kid sneaking closer to you, look for a giant centipede tail trailing behind them, and try to get a look at their backs. They’re only dangerous from up close.”

I nod quickly, drawing together a quick image of them in my head. It’s not strange for something to try and make itself look small and weak to try and lure something closer. There are lots of things that would want to eat a small weak child wandering out in the forest, so if a Lyarl can use that to lure other hunters in, they could eat pretty well.

Nadia is sneering at the man for some reason, but I don’t really get why she’s so bothered by all this. It’s just nature for monsters to hunt, kill, and eat.

“False serpents are the most dangerous we’ve come across, our company has records of them out far to the south, living on the edges of the deserts,” the man says, slowing down. “They’re large. A metre wide, and long as a full merchant train. I don’t know how they could’ve gotten this close to the city but…

“It’s a community of creatures that grip onto each other and move together as a serpent would, though they can walk if needed. The head of their ‘snake’ is the queen of the colony and it’s what you need to kill. The rest are pale humanoids with scales on their arms, legs and upper back for when they’re acting like a false serpent, and mean claws for killing things when they’re not. They’ll kill you and feed your corpse to the queen to produce more of their own.”

Another hive species like the ants but you never see the queen of an ant’s nest. Not unless you’re somewhere that you really don’t want to be. I learned that from one of the books that I had to read before Alice let me become a mercenary.

How long before new books come out with the moon-blessed, vampires, and hollows detailed carefully in the pages just like the books that Alice had me read? Would necromancers be put on the same pages? Would they be considered something different? Something worse?

There aren’t as many corpses scattered about here, suggesting that it’s not as bad this far away from the city. I guess that the slow people all died behind us, and the people running themselves to exhaustion got a bit further before collapsing.

“We’ve been safe here, we haven’t gotten into any real fights,” Anna says, hopping along beside me with titan guarding her other side. “The Falchion company has been good to us. They’re moving into Snowspring with us, right?”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” I say, running æther through the length of a stick again, still burning through my power at much faster a pace than I usually would. I’m pretty sure that I can get bigger numbers faster by doing this, but Vael is right, I should make sure.

Grey comes to a stop as he stumbles onto a hollow slowly pulling apart a corpse, forcing chunks of flesh into its too-wide maw. The empty eye sockets look at Grey but don’t see him. He leaves the monster alone, carefully sneaking around it.

“Everyone’s safe?” I ask, gripping Namor’s hand and making sure she’s still by my side.

“So far,” Anna nods looking worriedly down at a corpse on the side of the street. “We’ve been safe.”

“Good,” I nod, walking a little closer to the next people in the group as I stare around for the next threat to appear. We march and talk, I even train Namor in how to understand our language for a bit until she gets tired of it.

“I don’t get it, it’s all stupid!” she repeats for the tenth time. “When can I see Papa again.”

“When we’re safe from all the people that want to kill you and your Papa,” I explain. “And they’d want to kill me too, for helping your Papa.”

Namor huddles down in place.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? You’re not the one trying to kill us,” I look down at her, trying to show my confusion. “They’re just mean and stupid, but because they’re mean, stupid, and powerful we have to be careful. Like when you come across a big grumpy bear. You have to be careful of him.”

She nods slowly glancing up at me as if to make sure that I’m not upset or anything. Why would I be upset?

We continue training, memorizing new words, and getting better with our magic up until the sun starts to fall and we have to help set up camp. When everyone is finally settling down, and we all know when our shifts on watch are, I can finally look around and start talking to people.

Before that, I have to introduce Anna and Namor properly.

“Namor, this is Anna. She’s a friend,” I tell the little girl who isn’t quite as scared of the other elf now that we’ve spent hours walking beside her. “Anna, this is Namor.”

Anna is a little shocked looking at the girl covered in thick fur, rubbing at her long snout which has been crammed uncomfortably in her mask all day. She flops down on the bedroll I’ve laid out and stares up at the two of us while awkwardly looking around.

“She’s… what is she?”

“Moon-blessed,” I say. “They have weird magic, if they bite you, you’ll become like them. Like she is.”

Anna blinks a few times, looking between me and the girl.

“She’s a good girl, but she’s lost her whole village, and she doesn’t know how to talk normally. I’m taking care of her so that she won’t be alone,” I say.

“I thought it was weird the way you were talking to her, is that something you learned in the wild?” Anna steps a little closer and kneels beside the girl. “Is it okay to heal her?”

I nod.

“She was infected with a sickness to make her really, really angry and hungry. So now there are lots of people like her out there biting people and making everyone furry, angry, and hungry,” I stare at the side of the tent where someone is walking a little too closely, waiting for him to pass before I continue.

“People are going to see her, and they’ll want to kill her,” I say, and Anna’s expression turns sour. “I’m getting Olive and her mom. They can help.”

I nod slowly, but reach out and stop her before she can run from the room.

“She’s scared of new people, so tell them to be slow and careful when they enter,” I explain and she nods, before rushing away. Namor and I sit uncomfortably in place for a little while. I don’t know what to say to her.

She swishes her tail slowly back and forth, staring down at the ground without moving. I lick my lips to say something, but I lose my courage when I look at her. She’s like I was. What would I want to hear in her situation?

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“When… can I go home?” Namor asks, her voice slipping halfway through. Even I can tell that she’s trying hard not to cry. “Can I go home?”

I pull up all the thoughts in Grey’s mind that show what happened when they were taken. The chaos and the violence, the buildings destroyed.

I shake my head.

“No, you can’t,” I say. “Home is gone. The buildings were smashed, and the people that make it home are… gone. It’s…”

She’s whining. Crying. I bite my lip and force myself to keep going.

“We can make a new home, if you want,” I say. “I don’t have a home, either. We can make a new home. I’ll be strong enough to make sure that no one can take it from us. Do you… do you want that? Do you want a place in the home that I’m building?”

“I want my home back,” Namor whispers, still crying. I shuffle to her side and pull her into a close hug. She needs it, she needs to know that she’s not alone.

“I want my Mama and Papa,” she cries in my arms. “Where’s Papa?”

I say nothing. There’s nothing I can say.

I don’t know how long it takes for Anna to come back, it feels like it could be minutes, or it could be hours, but when she breaks through the tent door the atmosphere breaks too. Namor slumps down, halfway hiding from the pair.

I’m telling her constantly to hide and cover her face like she’s some sort of a monster, and I know that it’s bad for her. It’s going to hurt her, but I can’t do anything else if I want to protect her from everyone that’ll come to hurt her.

“Oh, oh, no,” Saya, Olive’s mother, steps into the room, her eyes widening at the sight of Namor. “She’s… is she alright? Is she healthy?”

“She’s better now,” I say. “Do you… could you keep her company? I need to go do things, and…”

“I’m here to help,” Saya replies firmly, rushing in. “How did she get here? What happened?”

“Do you know her?”

“… People I used to respect would tell me about her kind. Those blessed by the moon. They are… ‘monks’ is the closest word. They dedicate their lives in worship to the moons and the gods, we… most of us were enslaved so long that we don’t remember them but… what happened to her?”

Her expression turns from worry to animalistic rage as I explain the events that brought Namor and her tribe to us. The vampire that captured them, forced them into cages and made them sick. Going through the story again, I squeeze more details from Grey that I didn’t know before.

I remember a place with countless cages and strange beasts all locked away. A place filled with all the most unusual and terrible monsters, barely fed enough to survive. Some sort of collection? It was a city of cages.

Grey can’t remember it all entirely clearly, but there are moments of it that stand out. The mornings with the mist rolling in thick and hiding everything from sight. The star dappled nights, where they’d cry out in mourning.

Olive is shaking her head and covering her face as I tell their story, and how I helped save Namor. I leave out the part about her Papa. She can’t talk to them yet, so she probably can’t say anything that she shouldn’t.

“That’s… it’s beyond forgiveness. The monsters that have done this…” Saya, shakes the dark look from her eyes, her expression softening as she turns to Namor with a soft smile.

I stay with them only for a few more minutes before leaving to search out my own goals.

I can’t help Namor if I’m too weak to fight off all the hunters that come to kill us. The same for Adeleya, Lothar, Theo, and Nadia. I’ve been training non-stop, but there is something more that I can do.

I can learn new magics.

Semi promised to send special magic trainers with these groups of mercenaries, and I want to know what they can teach me.

It doesn’t take long to find the first one. He’s with a small group of families in the middle of the camp, talking to the kids and speaking with them about the basics of magic. By the sounds of it he’s finishing up soon, and he glances at me with a nod as I approach the scattering group.

“You’re interested in my teachings?” He asks when the families return to their own cooking fires. “My services are free, so you need only ask.”

“Which one are you?” I ask. “Enchanting?”

“Weight, mass, gravity,” he says with a smile. “There are many terms used to describe the magic, scholars insist that there is a difference in the terms but for us, all that matters is what we can do with the magic.

“Do you want to strike harder?” He asks with a smirk, brushing back the hair that escapes his long ponytail. “Would you like to stand firm against the blow of a man ten times your size, or maybe you want to float through the skies like a butterfly?”

 

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