Chapter 2: Ch 2- The long road

A bump in the road jostled the wagon, violently colliding the side of Kalia’s head with a large bronze statuette of an owl. Obviously, the Impact woke her immediately.

 

“FUCK.” She exclaimed loudly as she sat up while clutching her ear, sending the owl toppling into several other artifacts and creating an enormous racket.

 

“Someone seems to be in a clumsier mood than usual today.” A voice came from a fair distance away.

“Any of those not in one piece will be coming out of your pay!” It continued, this time louder and more clearly addressed in her direction.

 

Kalia spent a few moments reeling from the impact to her head. She barely remembered falling asleep and didn’t at all remember her party’s departure from the town. Given that it was about noon now, It was safe to assume that she had slept in by a substantial margin and been hauled aboard like a piece of cargo.

After gathering herself as well as the toppled objects, she sat up to address the owner of the voice.

 

“That fucking hurt y’know. Is there concern for me at all in that backwards skull of yours?” She asked the driver of one of the other carriages, a squinty man with dark circles under his eyes.

 

His name was Codrin, the de facto leader of their little group and the only twice-gifted among them. Kalia had known him off-and-on for a while until about a year and a half ago when they had happened across each other two jobs in a row and had stuck together ever since. Despite having a friendly and approachable aura about him, once you got to a certain point of closeness the man would allow you to go no further.

He was fun; a puzzle, and although it took some work to enjoy his company, Kalia ultimately enjoyed working under him.

 

“I’ve seen you take harder poundings before. You’re fine.” Codrin said, not bothering to look back to see if he was correct. 

“Besides, that’s what you get for drinking so much that we had to haul you onto the carriage like a sack of potatoes.”

 

“FUCKIN- I’ll show you a pounding!” Kalia yelled back while frantically searching the carriage for something non-valuable to throw, with minimal luck.

 

“Shhh. You’ll make your headache worse.” The figure driving the carriage Kalia was riding in said. 

 

“Huh? You decided to be a smartass now too?” She asked the driver; a tall woman with a long red braid named Angela.

 

Angela was an archer, and wielder of the largest longbow that Kalia had ever seen. She could fire it as repetitively as a child could toss stones into a lake, while Kalia could barely manage to draw the thing halfway. 

She was the newest permanent member of their group, joining only a few months back after her last party had broken up. Kalia had known her for a fair bit longer than that, though.

 

“I’m not engaging you in another one of these childish arguments, Kal. Go point that mouth of yours somewhere else or I’ll toss you off the carriage.” The tall woman said, barely taking her eyes off the road.

 

Kalia eyed the archer for a couple of moments, trying to think of a way to weasel her words between the woman’s thick layers of indifference. She gave up rather quickly. Pestering Angela was hardly ever worth the time, and she had a more deserving target for scolding at the moment.

Kalia stood up in the moving wagon and took a few moments to shake the remaining sleep that still clung to her, which exited in various joint cracks as she stretched out.

 

The four carriages in the convoy were arranged in double-file, Kalia in the front-left with Angela and Codrin in the front-right with the fourth member of their party.

He was an enormous ex-guard from Rundburg with olive skin and unkempt curly black hair, over 7 feet tall and almost too broad to fit in an outhouse. 

Despite being a bit of a local celebrity, he was ultimately relieved from duty for being drunk on the job a couple dozen times too many. 

In fact, it was entirely Kalia’s fault that he was drunk on the day he got fired. The hot headed soldier just couldn’t say no to a challenge even if it was a drinking contest at eleven in the morning.

His name was Davriel, or ‘Davy’ for short, and he was currently lying on a few bundles of pelt and gazing up at the clouds. 

Or at least he would be if his eyes weren’t slammed firmly shut.

 

“How ‘bout you, cotton liver? Anything new and interesting on the insides of your eyelids?” She teased the very obviously hungover man.

 

“Mmmgmh…” he replied, eloquently.

 

Already balancing on the rumbling carriage, Kalia stepped forward and perched herself on the side of the vehicle. After a moment spent judging distance, she lept the gap between wagons and boarded the one carrying Codrin and Davy.

 

“Don’t go scare’in the horses!” One of the drivers in the rear called out.

 

“Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” She shot back while performing the tiniest of mock bows before crouching over her collapsed comrad.

 

Hearing both the landing and the discussion, Davy pried one eye open and gazed up as the annoyance that had come to greet him.

 

“S’not fair…” he mumbled. “Yuh drank 5 times as much as what I did and yet I’m the one collapse’in here in a heap.”

 

“Aww c’mon, at least you were conscious this morning. I haven’t even eaten breakfast yet.” Kalia said, giving a wave of dismissal before grabbing some dried dates from a pouch. “Want one?”

 

“Oh, don’tcha start about this again. It doesn’t matter how long you sleep for you're able to do it in the comfort of your own room. I passed out on the tavern floor and somehow woke up on the floor of a whole different tavern. And you know what that earned me? The privilege of draggin’ your ass down a flights of stairs and halfway ‘cross town.” Davriel sleepily slurred out.

 

Kalia grabbed some cold bacon and shoved it into her mouth followed by a whole skin of wine. Morning wine was, after all, the most important meal of the day.

 

“Kalia cupped one of her tits and gave it a squeeze. “You at least cop a feel as payment?” She mumbled through half a date. “I’ve told you that you're allowed.”

 

A few quiet moments of Davy staringpassed “Shut it, wench.” He barked, rolling over away from the display in an act that made the whole wagon groan. ‘M in no mood for your damn teasing.”

 

Now done bothering the absolute mountain of a drunk, Kalia moved to the front of the carriage and vaulted herself over to be seated next to Codrin. He gave her a courteous glance before returning his eyes to the road.

 

“You feeling ok?” Codrin asked as she was getting herself settled.

 

“Oh, is that legitimate concern I detect in your voice? How forward of you, my dear Codfish.” Kalia teased back, although the question had surprised her a bit.

“Seriously though. I’m fine. You should know that by now.”

 

And it was true. Thanks to her gift, the goose-egg that had swollen on Kalia’s head was already beginning to subside. 

Gifts were generally grouped by rarity and what they affected, with ‘common’ gifts being present among about 80% of people and  ‘uncommon’ gifts held by just under 20%. ‘Rare traits were present in about .1% of people and anything rarer was too few in number to get an accurate reading of. Codrin may have been the only twice gifted among them, but Kalia’s gift was the only one considered to be ‘rare’. Gift rarity was only a matter of that; how rare any particular gift was, and had nothing to do with an objective power level, but Kalia did like to think that she had gotten one of the more useful ones.

 

She had first discovered her trait; ‘Rapid constitution”, when she had fallen into a patch of nettles as a child and the resulting full-body rash had healed in only a couple of hours. While she certainly wasn’t stupid enough to actively try and hurt herself, over the course of her teenage years she had discovered a number of its effects.

 

The main benefit it provided was accelerated healing from injury, but it would also make drugs and poisons wear off very quickly as well. As far as diseases and poisons with long term effects went, she was practically immune since her body would heal from their effects long before any symptoms progressed far enough to be noticed. She also developed muscle memory very quickly and possessed fast, twitchy reflexes.

 

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games, and like most gifts, hers had its fair share of downsides. Making use of any of its effects, which it was hard not to, made Kalia quite tired, and she would often need to be literally dragged out of bed in the morning if her party had somewhere they needed to be early on. Also particularly unfortunate for her, alcohol was also subjected to her gift’s effects, and Kalia found that she would need to keep drinking constantly in order to stay intoxicated. It also seemed to interfere with various inner workings of her body in strange ways, causing her heart to race at the drop of a hat and causing her to hyperventilate easily. 

 

Overall, the gift had shaped Kalia into quite a rowdy person. One who rarely had to think or deal with the consequences of her actions. As a teen she would jump rooftops and explore every nook and cranny of the city she grew up in. She would find trouble often, but knew that she could afford to take risky shortcuts when she would run away or just simply turn around and fight.

 

She had even developed a strategy in order to get as much free alcohol as she could drink, and often would still use it just to have a bit of fun.

It was really quite simple:

First, find a target. They had to be a straight male and a regular at the tavern, but also had to be the type of person who would always pay off their tab.

Second, show a bit of skin and challenge them to a drinking contest. Say that the loser has to pay while showing off a bit. It can help if the man you chose is already drunk.

Third, if it looks like you're going to lose, which is very rare because of your gift, start talking with the subject or find another way to stall in order to sober up a bit.

Fourth, if you haven’t won and the chosen partner isn’t the type you’d like to spend the night with, book it! This was such a rare occurrence that the threat of getting banned from tavern was nearly zero.

Finally, feel free to customize for fun and profit! Secrets flow easily through drinking contests and if the guy turns out to be interesting, you can always still fuck them after you win.

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While this strategy caused Kalia to run into a fair share of creeps and brutes, she always managed to weasle her way out when things turned sour. Drunk people are both easy to fight and easy to rob, and if all else fails, stabbing was always an option.

 

She had met Davy through this method and gotten him fired in one fell swoop, only to feel bad about it and lead him towards the mercenary’s guild later on. The two of them had joined up with Codrin, who was an old friend of Kalia’s, to become contracted escorts for wealthy merchants.

The pay was good since the job came with a fair share of risks, but what Kalia really liked about it was the travel. The mountain towns surrounding Brooksmet were still fresh in her memory from the last dozen jobs, and Kalia had found great interest in speaking to tavern-goers to find out all of the subtle differences that each one bore. While having drinking contests of course.

 

“So, what’s the next job we’re gonna be taking?” She asked the man who was still wordlessly watching the road despite the presence of his visitor.

 

Codrin huffed. 

“Why don’t you slow down a bit, we’ve got nearly a week’s journey ahead of us as well as our job to do along the way. Since it’s autumn, any elvish tribes down on their luck will be getting much more desperate to refill their coffers than they usually would be. We’ve got to be extra observant in case their eyes fall on us.” He explained.

 

“Yea yea, I’m well aware. I’m a grown-ass woman and I’ve got the same job that you do. No need to run your lip about the stuff that Pops taught us.” Kalia huffed. 

 

“Then you should start acting like a grown woman already and go back to your watch instead of distracting me any more that you already have.” He snapped all of a sudden. “Just think about how much you’ll hate yourself if one of us dies in an undetected ambush.”

 

Codrin having a mood swing and getting angry out of the blue like this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence. His primary gift was a sixth sense of sorts that gave him the ability to hear the ‘mental noise’ that living beings in a wide area around him made. He was their party’s primary detector and always took to driving the lead carriage to capitalize on it. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t turn it off, so any stay in civilization for longer than a few hours would give him horrible headaches which he would pass on to the rest of them through excessive crankiness and irritability.

 

As such, his brief display of aggression over Kalia not taking her job seriously wasn’t really a surprise to her, nor was the request for her to stay on the lookout despite his own prowess in the act.

While one would think that his first gift would offer him so much peace of mind about being snuck up on, he was actually one of the most on-edge people she knew.

 

Much to the dismay of the rear driver who had yelled at her the first time, Kalia lept the gap between the two front carriages once more. She landed next to Angela and sat down close enough to the tall woman to be out of earshot of Codrin if she whispered.

 

“Do you know if he slept at all last night?” She quietly posed to the tall woman.

 

“Mm. I don’t think so. He’s hardly spoken a word to me at all since I got up. Angela replied after hardly a moment had passed.

 

“Yea, thought as much.” Kalia huffed. “Ah well, a day or two of the road should have him feeling better now that it’s only the 7 of us.”

 

“I don’t know how he does it. To be in a place with thousands of people and have a gift like that. I’d probably run off to live in a cave for the rest of my life.” Angela commented. 

 

“Yea… I guess I should go a little easier on him. At least when we've been in town.” Kalia relented.

 

Angela turned to face her. “Really? After what he just said? That you could take a  -ahem- ‘pounding’.”

 

“Oh- right! That son of a-“ Kalia started, standing up and getting ready to leap back over to the second file of carts.

 

Angela’s hand shot out, wrapping around Kalia’s wrist and halting her movement. 

“You should be doing your job, though. Even if you can barely contribute anything to surveillance, you should still put your best foot forward to help the group just out of the principle of it. I’m not very enlightened on the history you have with the boss, but  surely you can wait until we stop for a water break to bring up your complaints.”

 

“But you heard what he said!” Kalia sputtered “How am I supposed to take job advice from someone who just said something that unprofessional?”

 

Angela sighed. “Cmon Kal, don’t act like you don’t like it when he gives you sass like that. At least just watch the forest while you chat, ok?”

“And you!” She called out to Codrin. “If you’re in such a sour mood, you shouldn’t egg her on like that. You’ll only make your headache worse.”

 

Kalia’s face wrinkled into an ugly pout; the kind found on children when they’re denied desert due to bad behavior. Arguing with Angela was a lost cause. She was just too damn… pleasant.

 

“Fine then, princess. I’ll pay attention to the boring-ass trees for a while.” Kalia relented, vaulting over the front bench of the carriage to sit amongst the cargo.

 

Kalia tried making herself comfortable, feeling a pang of jealousy for Davy who was lucky to be in the cart carrying the pelts. Thinking about it now, there was some weird stuff amongst this trip’s cargo. Stuff that shouldn’t need to be transported hundreds of miles by contracted guards. She looked to the owl figurine, which was only one of the few dozen or so out of place things that they were transporting. It wasn’t even in terribly good condition.

 

“Who’d want these moldy statues enough to have them carted through ungoverned lands? Some eccentric nobleman?” She asked the driver of the cart behind her own; the merchant who had hired their party in the first place.

 

“Sorry, not at liberty to say. Customer confidentiality and all, y’know?” Said the merchant, a middle aged man with a crooked nose.

 

Kalia shifted herself to better face the man by laying sideways on a sack of barley. 

“C’mon, you don’t need to tell me his life story.” Kalia spoke, putting a hand on her hip. “I’m just trying to pass the time a bit.” 

 

“Y’know?” She added, mimicking the man.

 

Kalia watched the man look her over briefly. They were never as subtle about it as they thought they were being. 

 

“Sorry miss, I’m not sure exactly how loose-lipped I can be before I breach my contract. You’ll just have to wait and see who picks them up if you're really that curious.” The merchant told her.

 

Kalia was disappointed; her charms had failed her. Was it finally apparent? The final side effect of her gift?

No. She doubted that this man would care about that right now.

The man’s gaze was certainly lingering in all the right places, but it seemed that the prize she was trying to win was just too far out of reach.

Oh well.

She’d just have to get him drunk and try again.

 

Kalia rolled over to the other side of the barley sack and grabbed a silver mirror from her travel pack. She gazed into it deeply and inspected her own face for the nth time, looking for the new arrivals that would eventually grow to betray her. 

She found one, and sighed.

Her body did everything fast. It healed fast, moved fast, reacted fast, grew her hair fast, sobered her up from poisons and alcohol alike fast, cured diseases fast, and she was even pretty sure that she could even build muscle fast if she really tried to.

And the final side effect of her gift was just like all of these, yet disastrous for her in every way.

 

She wasn’t yet sure if the rest of her party had noticed yet, but in the mirror it was quite plain to her. Her skin was growing wrinkled at an alarming rate.

She was only 22, but she looked a decade and a half older than that. 

Her body was aging fast as well, and not even in a manageable way to boot. 

She had asked dozens of gift scholars opin her travels, and all who were familiar with her gift said that the older she got the faster she would age.

By the time she’d turn 25, she’d be 50, and by the time she’d turn 30, she’d be long dead.

 

She’d often fall asleep cursing her gift. About how it stole her time and turned it into medicine she was forced to take even when she had no wounds that needed mending.

It was impossible to rid herself of the gift, it was part of her soul and connected the very core of what made her, her. Neither did she wish to have been born without it. It had shaped who she had become and she liked who she was. Without its presence she would have become a vastly different person, and that scared her. She didn’t want to change.

But if she found some sort of miracle elixir, a divine solution that would remove both the good and the bad aspects of her gift and simultaneously leave every other aspect of herself perfectly intact? She would drink it. She’d drink it in a single beat of her own easily fluttering heart.

 

The end of puberty had flipped an hourglass with a time of about ten years, and it had now gotten to the stage where she could see the little dip in the middle of the sand from where it was draining away. She closed her eyes. 

She’d thought about this for a long time already. Despite her timer only being half finished at this point, she knew she only would have about a year or two before her body started aching and her charms would become ineffectual. That was only a year or two of fun that remained in her life.

 

And damn, she was gonna use them.

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