Chapter 30: Twenty eight

The clean up from the crocodile hunt went smoothly, with the crocodiles being placed into enchanted canvas sacks and the Sarcosuchus secured to the back of the wagon. I was genuinely surprised the wagon could even hold all that weight, even with the hunting team having gutted it to ease the load. 

When I’d spoken to the hunting team regarding the siren lilies, Killian had brought it to my attention that normally lilies will enter a dormant state during colder months. Which would explain why a plant that should have been easily found was no where to be seen. On the bright side, my wagasa was recovered and didn’t look like it had suffered any damage during its time under the ownership of the crocodiles. 

“It sucks, after all that I still didn’t get my siren lilies.” I complained to Markion as I sat perched on the side of the chariot. 

“You could always try the herbalist stores in the city.” He suggested, but I shook my head with a sigh. 

“I tried, and none of the three stores in the city had any. Though considering they are ‘out of season’, it makes sense. They probably wouldn’t have worked for what I wanted anyway.” I grumbled, crossing my arms over my chest. 

“Sorry sis, I don’t know what to tell you.” 

“It’s fine, I’ll just…” I started, but a high pitched shout interrupted me.

“Marky!”

Turning my head at the sound of a woman’s voice shrilly calling out, I saw a group of four centaurs trotting along carrying a palanquin with sheer blue curtains aloft. 

“Ah, fuck.” My brother muttered, flicking the reins he held to increase the rhinos speed, but it was a futile effort. 

Snickers from the group of riders surrounding us proceeded them digging their heels into their mounts, and galloping away from the slower chariot. The only one who didn’t rush away was Dorian who was plodding along far behind us, weighed down by the Sarcosuchus. 

 

As the palanquin reached us, and the centaurs matched our pace, the curtains pulled back to reveal a beautiful blonde-haired woman whose appearance sent my heart racing. Danica? No, it couldn’t be she didn’t spend time in virtual worlds and even if she did, Danica was in prison. Wasn’t she?

“What do you want, Bianca?” Markion snapped, ignoring the woman as he tried to get the Rhino to speed up. 

“So mean,” the woman whined, giving an exaggerated pout. 

Not Danica then. Looking closer the nose isn’t quite right, she also looks younger than Danica. This girl looks like she based her appearance on a picture from one of the magazines Danica used to model for. 

“I just wanted to talk, and see if you’d given any thought to what we discussed. Maybe you’d like to join me to talk privately.” Bianca crooned, reaching a hand out towards my brother and just managing to scrape her long nails across the metal shoulder piece of his armor. Is this Danica look a like trying to hit on my brother? 

A mixture of anger, and amusement warred within me as Markion’s face screwed up in a disgusted grimace. My choked laughter drew the attention of the elven Danica wannabe and she scowled down at me as I sat perched on the opposite side of the chariot. 

“Who’s your little friend.” She asked, sitting up from her reclined position and opening the curtain to reveal more of her body, which was clad in a skimpy silk dress. 

“She’s my sister, now if you don’t mind, we’re busy.” Markion replied gruffly, moving to shield me from he woman’s gaze.

“Your sister?” 

Sneering, the woman gave me a slow assessing look before saying something so stupid it actually made her more like Danica than her appearance did. The sneer on her face bringing back memories of the last time I’d seen my step mother. 

“You don’t look like his sister.” The Danica look a like stated, and I struggled against the desire to leap out of the chariot to claw her eyes out.  

 When he didn’t answer, I glanced at Markion who was staring ahead with a blank expression on his face, like he was trying to pretend the woman didn’t exist. 

“Thats because my father got black out drunk one night and made his way into a cow farmers barn, and well, Tada!” I exclaimed, waving my hands at Markion with a dramatic flair, as I tried to dispel my rising anger with humor. 

This woman wasn’t Danica, but her mannerisms, and behavior that were so close to hers were driving me over the edge. I’d been doing so well at trying to keep myself from breaking down, yet this woman was able to shred every ounce of control I had with just one look. 

This statement had two of the buff looking centaurs letting out muffled laughs, and Markion was almost slumped over the front of the chariot, wheezing for breath, but the woman on the palanquin looked less than impressed. 

“I see you both have the same twisted sense of humor,” She commented, before turning her attention back to Markion. 

“Marky,” crooning the elven woman once more reached for my brother, but he turned to give her a cold look. 

“No, I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again. I have no interest in joining your guild, I don’t care what you can ‘offer’ me. I am a founding member of Eternia, and have no intention of leaving my guild for Dreadmere.” 

Dreadmere? The guild of that scum, Ge hong? 

“Markion,” the woman’s tone was almost scolding now, and I shuddered at how much she sounded like Danica in that moment. “You’re making a mistake, my guild is the strongest in Kaledon. That little guild is nothing more than a bunch of scavenging bottom feeders. You have a chance to…” 

Bottom feeders? Really? Shut up, just shut up before I.. Drawing in a shaky breath, I screwed my eyes closed as I tried to drown my rage. 

“Have you ever heard of the Stonefish?” I asked opening my eyes, and glaring coldly at the woman who just kept droning on and on. Why didn’t she leave when Markion told her to? Why does she insist on destroying my life, no matter where I am? 

“What?” Danica asked, and I laughed, of course she didn’t, she’d killed all her brain cells with that toxic perfume she drowned herself in.

“The Stonefish is an ugly little bottom-dwelling fish that when stepped on, will inject high quantities of venom into its victim, which is intensely painful and can be fatal.” I informed my stepmother sweetly, as I dug my fingers into my pouch.

“What does that..” 

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“Don’t step on me, unless you want to get stung.” I told her coldly, flinging the metal dart I held straight towards her and watched with pride as it hit her barely covered chest. 

Watching with glee as the moment the dart hit her, she let out an agonized scream and fell back onto the cushioned floor of the palanquin where she writhed, shrieking in pain. The centaurs holding her palanquin came to a halt, dropping the palanquin to the ground and whilst two of them went to tend the woman the other two drew swords. 

Laughing, I grabbed four more darts from my pouch, and flung them at each of the centaurs as Markion pulled the chariot to a stop. Sliding down the side of the chariot, I continued laughing as tears poured over my cheeks. 

“Kads, oh Kads.” 

Big arms wrapped around me as my laughter faded into chocked sobs, and I buried my face into my brothers armor covered chest. As I struggled to regain my composure, the sound of Dorian’s voice called out, causing me to stiffen in Markion’s hold. 

“It’s okay, just stay in the chariot.” Markion said soft, rubbing a hand over my back as the wagon carrying Darion pulled up on the scene. 

“What happened?” The healer asked, but I refused to turn in the healers direction, not wanting him to see I’d been crying. 

Huddled in the chariot, I wiped franticly at my face as Markion jumped down. 

“Don’t ask, just keep going. We need to get out of here.” My brother called out, waving for Darion to keep moving.

As the sound of the wagon faded, I looked around for Markion, seeing him dragging the palanquin, along with the unconscious Dreadmere guild members off the road into the forest. As Markion jumped back on the chariot and pushed Basher to move along as fast as possible, he let out a low chuckle. 

“Kadia, do you even know what you just did? That woman is the Dreadmere guild leaders daughter, they literally call her the ‘princess’. The last person who angered her was hunted down relentlessly until they reset a new character and went into hiding.” He informed me as we sped along the road, easily catching up to the wagon. 

“Oops?” I choked out, sniffling a little as I pressed a wet cloth to my wash. “I’m sorry, she just..”

“I know, I feel the same, probably not as much you though.” He sighed, shaking his head.  “You’ve potentially just set us at war with Dreadmere.” 

“Weren’t we doing that anyway, though?” I asked confused, didn’t Darius and Noctus say this morning we were going to be working with the Whispers guild to bring down Dreadmere? 

“Yes, but not like this.” Markion moaned, pressing a hand over his eyes. “What are you even doing with poison darts? Damn, I can’t decide whether I’m pissed at you or proud of how badass that was. That stonefish line was smooth.” 

“Well, Tink saw my scorchers and asked if I could help her make poison bolts for her cross bow. I’m not very good at using weapons like swords, and thought I could maybe use a cross bow like Tink, but it was just too clunky for me to get the handle of.” I told him, shoving the cloth I’d been using to clean my face back in my bag, as I settled into a more comfortable position. “Tink suggested I use a sling and use clay balls filled with poison, but I kept catching it on my tail when I tried to swing it around. Our next idea was to use throwing knives, which developed into throwing darts because I actually know how to throw them. These are just dipped in poison, but the second model she designed has a compartment that can be filled with one milliliter of liquid that will inject on impact.” I told him excitedly, holding up one of my darts for him to see.

“You’ve always been good at darts, even dad stopped playing with you because it wasn’t fun when you always won.” Markion said, letting out a sigh. “What’d you put on em? Looks painful.” 

“A poison, with some diluted scorcher venom. It’ll burn like hell for a few seconds, it’s more of a shock thing. I didn’t think they’d pass out like that,” I told him, furrowing my brow. 

“You can explain what happened to Darius, this is your fuck up.” He told me with a smirk as we saw the group of riders milling about on the road ahead of us. 

The reaction from the guild leader was almost the same as my brothers which was first shock, anger and finally, amusement. 

“I guess it is a good thing you’re about to disappear into the desert for a few weeks. We’ll lock down the guild hall and release the recipes before we go. Hopefully they’ll be too busy trying to work out who gave out their guild’s secret recipes to put too much effort into retaliating against us.” Darius mused, shaking his head before ordering the group to stay quiet regarding the situation that had occurred. 

“The Whisper guild will be the ones distributing the recipes, so we won’t have to worry about them knowing it was us who supplied them.” Noctus added with a grin before leaning down to where I stood in the chariot. 

“You better be planning to share some of that scorcher venom,” he drawled, and I smiled, pulling out a dart.

“Sure, where do you want it?” I asked, holding the dart up as though preparing to throw it at him. 

“Bitch.” 

“Vixen.” I corrected, much to the amusement of the group, and pulled out a tiny glass vial of scorcher venom 

“Unless you have a glass vial, I can’t give you any. It eats through anything else, even metal. It is ten gold a drop.” 

“Ten gold?” The vampire spluttered, looking at the vial I held. 

“If you want it cheaper, you’re welcome to milk the scorchers yourself.” I told him with a smirk, and he shuddered, shaking his head. 

I decided not to tell the vampire that I’d ‘tamed’ two of the scorchers thanks to Yuki’s guidance and thus milking them for venom wasn’t really as dangerous as it sounded. The other scorchers had been dissected for research, and I’d learnt quite a bit about the lizards anatomy from the experience. Scorchers were truly an interesting creature, and their venom was more corrosive than most acids. 

Their ability to breathe fire, by expelling a gas from their mouths was actually not them breathing gas at all, but spitting out a mist of saliva which was highly flammable. This spittle when placed into contact with the venom would ignite, creating the explosive flame thrower effect. Something I’d learnt from first observing my bonded scorchers blowing spit bubbles which would catch fire.

 I did want to bond with more than just the two scorchers, but as I was using a dominance bond, two had been my limit. When creating a dominance bond, I needed to push my mana into the creature and imprint my mana’s signature onto the creatures mana. The mana that was used to imprint myself onto the creature would not regenerate and would remain as part of the bound creature. That made creating too many bonds at once dangerous, as one could easily deplete all their mana and damage their core in the same way repeated deaths could. It would take me awhile to grow my core back to the point it had been before bonding the scorchers, though it would be faster if I was hunting creatures and gaining mana through their defeat. 

Kaledon did not give out experience in the same way other virtual worlds did, fighting a creature here would see a person gain a portion of its mana. As a persons core grew stronger, it would reflect in different ways physically depending on their race. Mana could also be gained passively, by absorbing Mana crystals or being in a mana rich environment. I’d been shocked to learn people could gain strength by absorbing Mana crystals, but Yuki claimed that absorbing even a low grade stone took over a week and it was an unpopular method to gain mana, as hunting for a day would achieve the same result. 

Once we reached guild farm and dropped the crocodile corpses off, I spoke with Calidus who would be overseeing the processing of the crocodiles. After hearing what I wanted, the Onikuma offered to also render down the crocodile fat, which I agreed to split between myself and the kitchen. The farm already rendered the fat from the cattle and other animals they butchered, so they already knew the process needed to render fat for the crocodile oil. 

I’d decided to release Arion at the farm, and after a good twenty minutes of pampering, I saddled him to ride back to the city. He would be spending the next day in the city stables, as we would be traveling through the portal tomorrow to Valonia to begin our hunt for the fire drakes. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the upcoming trip, but I was excited by the idea of traveling through the desert and exploring new lands. 

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