Chapter 76: Chapter 76 – Prey

When daylight finds us, the march has already long since begun. Our camp was soaked through by the magics of our fierce enemy, and scattered with the terrible ‘snowflakes’ that were made to force fear in our hearts. Even if the bloody monsters weren’t still a concern, we couldn’t stay there.

The march commander has promised us that we’ll have a long break at lunch to give us some much-needed rest. No one was meaningfully injured in the fighting but the people that couldn’t fight, the families of the mercenaries, people like Olive and her mom, were all more affected by the terrible attack than the rest of us.

Even now, Olive is struggling to keep herself present with us as she rubs the length of her arms. I used to do the same after getting harassed by bugs, or when I was bit by something that made me terribly sick. I reach out a hand and heal her just in case, but she smiles at me.

“I’m fine, Syr,” she says again, but I’m not sure that I can believe her.

Namor’s ears are flat and she’s constantly looking about and sniffing at the air. Every whimper has her attention, and every distant sound has her twitching. She hardly has the strength for it, but she’s constantly using her chants to lighten her shield so that she can keep carrying herself.

The mercenaries aren’t nearly so affected, they’re sharing jokes and keeping everything casual. The conversations are so light that I almost feel like I’m sitting in the guild house again, waiting for my next lesson in letters and coins.

With the sun up, it’s unlikely we’re going to be attacked. Unlikely, but not impossible.

The vampire was a foe too great for us.

He could’ve killed us, but he let us live. Every mercenary here knows it, and the others at least have to suspect it.

“We’re safe,” I lie to Namore beside me. I’ve trained hard to get this strength just so that I could stand tall in moments like this. So that I can protect my family.

“We’re safe,” I say in common tongue. “That monster’s weaker than he looks.”

Namor looks up at me, shivering slightly and nodding as she meets my eyes. I don’t look away, and I even let myself smile a little.

I’m not lying, after all.

The vampire is a strong hunter, and I don’t think that I’m strong enough to protect them from him when he has his eyes on us. The ones we fought in the city were weaker, they didn’t expect us to fight back, and they weren’t really giving us their all. This hunter knows what he’s doing, and if we fight on his terms we’ve already lost.

Seeing it now, I feel a little despair that lingers in the back of my mind.

Is this what my father felt as he fought against the bandits that were destroying our home? Is this what he felt as he died, his body taken by fire? Is this the despair that consumed him, leaving only ash?

I can’t let it be the same today.

Everyone here has already given up their homes, they only want to survive, just like when I abandoned my home and left it to burn. I won’t let them die. I won’t leave them behind. I won’t be left alone again.

“The hunter is strong because he is the hunter,” I whisper, breathing slowly as I try to think of a plan.

Namor shivers, her hand tightening around mine as we pass near to another corpse strung up in the trees. The mercenaries are still pulling it down, others preparing firewood to see it destroyed. It’s been twisted in ways that I can’t fully understand, but the fear that it forces on my mind is something that even I can’t ignore. It’s a weight pressing down on my chest, a cold oil that coats my skin, a sick poison that dries my throat.

Even knowing what it is, I can’t completely ignore the effect.

“Namor, Olive,” I speak to them in their respective languages. “Chants.”

As we all recite the words that should teach us the shape of magic, the fear slowly ebbs away until we leave the corpse behind us.

I force out the sounds, but my mind is elsewhere.

I can’t be reckless.

The vampire hunting us is too dangerous for me to be reckless. He already knows his own greatest weaknesses, and I’m sure that he has plans to make sure that he isn’t caught in a trap. My necromancy should be able to give us an opening, and so long as we can ignite him with a spark of fire while someone holds up some light magic over him, he should be finished.

It'll be even easier if we can fight him in the daylight.

We march slow and careful, cautious in our every step, ready to fight whatever monsters come for us. If there is one thing that this road is full of, it’s monsters, but even so, there are people here. It’s almost strange to see them, weak and pathetic as most are, clinging desperately to life, fleeing the many creatures that want them dead.

Maybe they were lucky, or maybe we were unlucky and faced more threats. Either way, the desperate folk keep moving and the road ahead is full of desperate people looking for a new home, scraping together what little hope they can find.

“Come, gather together! The night is not so dark when we stand as one! The monsters are not so strong when we fight together!” The cry comes from a caravan of wagons and carriages that race along the road behind us. The mercenaries guarding them move at a quicker pace than us, and they’re clearly sweating from the effort, but they’re still up for a fight.

The man that was speaking is the one to catch my eye.

“Together we move onwards!” A familiar man stands at the head of the group, the same man that fought the vampires back in the city. A priest of some kind, I think. His face is a twisted mess, and saliva drips from him as he shouts, yet none of that seems to matter to him.

He fought with us against the vampires before, maybe he can fight with us again?

I wave and smile as he passes us by, feeling a little better knowing that others are challenging this same enemy with us, but he only waves briefly my way, focused on the people around us instead.

“We have food and water for those that need it,” he says to the desperate city folk. “March with us to the lands beyond the next hill, together we will fight back the monsters!”

His caravan slows, giving order to the refugees, and soon enough we leave the gathering behind us. I don’t really know if he’ll be able to survive against this foe, but I hope that he can survive. I hope that he can join us in this fight.

There are still other monsters ahead, but all of them are weak enough that I never get called to join the fight. All of them resemble people enough to make me squirm, but it’s the ones that look completely unlike us that make me feel a little sick.

They all have something in common with us, something in common with the vampires.

Namor looked like nothing more than a mindless monster when we found her. She was like us, because of who she was, not what she looked like. I just have to hope that the other creatures aren’t the same, because I don’t even have a chance to try and find out. The other mercenaries deal with them, and I can’t tell much from a corpse without raising it.

As the time for lunch finally arrives, we settle down and fortify our position. Mercenaries with the right skills put together simple walls and moats while those with ranged talents focus on the skies in case we’re struck from above again.

“Syr,” Theo says, pulling me aside as Olive’s mom tries to comfort the others. They’re all as terrified as one another, but Sora is pushing through it bravely to see that her family is kept safe.

“What is it?” I ask Theo, adjusting my grip as I heave my sword on my shoulder.

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“Do you have time for a sparring match?” He asks, waving me over to a side area, where some others are already going through the motions.

“Sure,” I nod, eagerly hopping a few steps ahead of him.

“Let’s keep it light today,” Theo says, pulling me back by my shoulder. “I want to talk while we fight.”

“Light?” I never fight ‘light’, I like to give it my all. It’s how my entire style of fighting works.

“Syr, are you comfortable with us?” He asks.

“I am, why?”

“Just making sure,” he sighs. “You’re on edge, and I’ve been worried that you’re going to rush off on your own again. You have a habit of doing that.”

“I have to.” No one else wants to be involved in my necromancy, and I don’t want to force them.

“I know,” Theo nods, pressing his lips together as he draws his sword. It’s bare steel but I know that he’s not going to seriously hurt me. I set aside my heavy sword and face him with my two short swords. I have better control over them.

“There are things that you must do on your own,” he acknowledges. “I… we all want to take care of you. A good mercenary team is a family, I’ve said that before, haven’t I?”

“I think so,” I nod, jumping towards him and thrusting.

He steps aside, deflecting my second sword as I attack his new position.

“How are things with Namor?” He asks. “She’s getting close to you, but she’s still troubled. That she’s forced to fight only makes it worse.”

“I know that already,” I grumble as he smacks aside my next attack. “That’s why I need to help her.”

“What I meant to say,” Theo continues, pressing me back, “is that she’s like you were. Like you are. She’s clinging to you, but that doesn’t mean that she trusts you. Just like you still have trouble trusting us.”

“It’s different,” I shake my head, leaning into my next attack. Throwing my sword back and reaching for him with my hand, he somehow uses his sword to catch my strengthened arm.

“I trust you,” I say, meeting his eyes. “I just don’t want to bother you with things that aren’t your problem.”

I find my other sword again and stand ready for the next bout.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m repeating myself, but that’s what a family is, Syr. We trouble each other. Sometimes we even hate each other, but we need to be open with each other,” Theo lowers his sword, inviting an attack, but I don’t push. “That’s what worries me about you. You always try to go it alone, you’re training to take on everything with your own hands. You’re not looking to find your place in a formation or team and being strong enough to fight a knight isn’t enough for you.

“You can’t win if you take on the world by yourself,” Theo’s head lowers as he heaves another long sigh. “You don’t have to. We’re in this fight together. Today, and however many tomorrows there are to come, we’ll be fighting together.”

I nod, but…

“You’re going to die,” I tell him to his face and he flinches. “You’re human, and you’re old. You’re not going to live another century. I need to be ready for the day that I never see you again. If I rely on you too much, then what will I do when you’re gone?”

He stays quiet for a time as we continue a slow back and forth with our blades. Moving like this, I’m coming to understand his fighting style a little better. The way he reads me perfectly each time, making it difficult to keep up, it all depends on my momentum. The moment I get my weight magic sorted out, I’ll be able to start catching up with him properly.

It won’t just be pure force and simple tricks keeping me afloat when fighting against skilled warriors, I’ll be able to stand on my own.

“We can beat him,” I say.

“‘Him’?” Theo tilts his head, as we pause the fight.

“The vampire doing all this. We can beat him.”

“You saw what he did to us last night,” Theo says, some of the others have listened in on the conversation, glancing my way and listening carefully.

“Exactly why we have to kill him,” I explain. “I’ve been stalked by monsters before. We all have. Creatures that will follow us quietly, waiting, preparing for a moment when we can’t defend ourselves. That’s when he’ll strike us, and by then it’s too late to stop him.

“We have to set out our own snares, we have to trap him before he can trap us.”

“He’s not focused on killing us, that’s why we survived,” Theo shakes his head, crossing his arms. “If we make moves against him, he’ll come at us seriously. If we keep our heads down and march on, we could make it out of this without putting ourselves at any more risk.”

“We could,” I admit. “That’s leaving our lives in the hunter’s hands, hoping that he’ll find another prey. I don’t like it.”

“So, what’s your plan?” Theo asks.

“He’s weak in the day,” I explain. “We should try to find him then and kill him before night comes.”

“He knows his own weaknesses better than we do,” Theo replies, sheathing his sword. “There’s no guarantee that we could even find him.”

“I can find him,” I don’t hesitate, holding my head high. “I’ll find him, and when I do, we’ll kill him together.”

“If you can find him,” Theo nods, peering into my eyes. “We’ll talk details and tactics then. Until then, we can put together a plan to trap him the next time he comes for us.”

He smiles, but there’s a glint in his eyes that makes an excited shiver run down my spine. I can feel my frustrations reflecting back at me from his eyes, the same desire to hunt this creature that’s haunting us.

I step closer and he hesitantly rests a hand on my shoulder, squeezing me comfortingly as we walk away from the training grounds.

“Theo, thank you,” I say. “For helping bring me back from the wilderness.”

“Thank you for not killing us when you thought we were bandits,” he replies, chuckling at the memory.

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