Time Since Reckless Self-Endangerment: 4 Days 19 Hours

Goal: Save Tarquin

Nic spent the rest of the night digging. Not only did he cut a subterranean road from below the imprisoned elves to the outside of the camp, but he dug three huge trenches, filling them with spikes of raised earth. It was slower work now because he had to reinforce the walls of each tunnel, compacting the sand until it hardened and became like rock, all to make sure that an unsuspecting human walking above wouldn’t cause the ground to collapse and reveal his plans.

It was gruelling work, and Nic didn’t sleep that night. His body could sustain the effort only by pausing to meditate every so often, refilling his aura and pushing all his Essence towards a breakthrough in Poison Mist’s toxicity.

Poison Mist Shard (F)

Creates and controls poisonous mist from Aura. Excellent attacking Shard, capable of piercing many defenses and inflicting ongoing damage.

III Increase Toxicity (73/8,000)

Add Aura Efficiency (0/5,000)

Secondary Slot (0/50,000)

I Poison Devouring (Complete)

Mist Armor (0/50,000)

By the time day forced him to retreat, Nic was pasted in slimy sweat and his meridians ached like lines of fire within his body. It was the most sustained effort he’d ever encountered on the path of cultivation and it had taken its toll. Still, he would’ve worked even longer if his ring wasn’t slowly changing forms from night to day - and losing its ability to protect him from detection skills.

He slithered out of the camp as dawn broke, leaving nobody the wiser that he’d filled the earth with hidden pitfalls and secret tunnels. Arriving outside, he dug his way up, emerging near the grove of palm trees where they cut lumber for their ships.

There was still more work to do.

Assaulting this camp would take multiple layers of planning. The most important thing was to keep the humans on the backfoot, confused and unable to surround him. As long as they couldn’t bring their full forces to bear he’d have a chance.

Digging the earth full of pit traps would slow them down and hopefully wound them.

But Nic needed some more tricks up his sleeve.

Already, the humans were waking up. Overseers marched between the tents grabbing up the sleepy workers and directing them into work-crews. Some would haul water, others were due to work at chopping lumber and stripping it down to planks. There was a massive amount needing to be done if they wanted to build even a single ship. Not only did they need to process down the trees for boards, but they would need to weave reeds into sails, find a source of timber that could provide the enormous single pieces of the rudder or mast, forge nails….

Nic watched with curiosity. It was clear there was an order to the camp that bordered on brutal. The protectors of the camp, the people whose Shards and talents enabled them to fight, were barely bothering to wake up. They yawned and stretched and ate leisurely breakfasts as the morning sky slowly turned from a dome of stars to a blue and cloudless horizon.

By comparison, if you weren’t a talented fighter you were basically a servant. Expected to pay with labor for the protection the warriors provided.

More than once Nic saw a worker flinch when a warrior approached - as if they’d been abused badly in the past.

Nic sighed. Things really didn’t change much across the whole of the known cosmos. The usual order of things, the weak being forced into slavery for the strong, was already beginning to assert itself in this camp. Given enough time they’d recreate the shape of City d23 right here.

It was the only shape the System allowed.

Still. There were sparks of humanity. People checking in on their wounded companions, or warriors taking the workers aside to spar, teaching them how to hold their bodies and weapons. Fighting was one of the most instinctive things in the universe. When a blade was whipping towards your face, pure instinct carried you from motion to motion. And either those instincts were good…

Or they were worse than useless.

Given enough time you could beat the instinct to cringe and flinch out of someone. You could teach them the proper stances. Sooner or later they’d be able to hold the line and fight in formation.

But you’d never teach someone to live in the moments of life and death. To dance under pressure. When the blade was coming at your face, either you knew what to do, like you had been born knowing, or you panicked.

There was some promise, even in the ones that hadn’t immediately made the warrior class. When a halberd bearing fighter in heavy, reinforced leathers let three of them fight him at once, the battle quickly went sour for him. A tiny girl slammed her fist into the ground and dozens of black chains erupted, each ghostly and incorporeal. They wrapped around his legs as a huge man with tattooed arms lowered his head and summoned the image of a rhino around himself, gaining a huge burst of speed as he flung himself forward.

The halberd-fighter was able to rip free of the chains in moments, his polearm spinning and ripping them apart, but he couldn’t lift it in time to meet the charge. The tattooed man slammed into him and sent him sprawling, and as he tried to come back onto his feet, a chain whipped up and snagged him around his neck. He grasped, pulling it apart -

And was taken down by a spray of pressurized water from the third fighter, a girl with a short thistle of unruly dandelion-blonde hair. They actually froze up, then.

They hadn’t expected to win.

And as the man slowly groaned and pulled himself up, they were half-afraid. Wondering if they’d be beaten for daring to come out ahead.

But the fighter just grinned, and grasped the hand of the tattooed man to shake.

That was how the weak could win against the strong. Numbers, teamwork, and the right combination of powers. It wasn’t that there was a distance of heaven and earth between the ones gifted with natural talent and those without.

It was just that the strong could swim against the currents, and the weak had to build a bridge.

Nic spent most of the day ready to flee at any moment, expecting now that his ring was in day mode somebody would have the skills to detect him. However. He quickly found there was a solution.

Because he wasn’t the camp’s only monster.

Huge, crystal-horned buffalo were being used to haul lumber back and forth. They were heavily yoked and watched at all times by warriors, beaten when they slowed, and covered in wounds that drew flies to drink the half-dried blood.

Nic silently added them to the list of those that needed saving, but he was thankful for their presence. As long as he made sure to linger near them any monster-hunting skills would pick him up as one of the pack beasts.

Moment after moment passed under the pressure of being surrounded on all sides. He listened to the thump of axes striking palm trees. To the talk and chatter of the camp as they labored. It was a strangely lonely experience, to be surrounded on all sides by people - but only people who’d consider him a deadly threat.

So his eyes lit up as the first work crew was rotated back to camp, pausing to splash water from the oasis over their heads, and the new one came in with a familiar face.

Matteos stood head and shoulders above the rest of his crew, his axe made special to fit his giant hands.

It was clear just by the way the guards treated him that he was considered an oddity. Not quite a warrior, but clearly not a mere worker either. He had a presence to him that the others simply lacked. They were afraid, and fear made them shrink into themselves and take up as little space as possible. Matteos couldn’t be like that even if he tried.

Matteos simply had a presence that couldn’t be ignored. Even his aura was subtly different, like a stormcloud hovering around him.

And perched on his shoulder was a familiar green wyvern, puffing little clouds of venomous smoke through its nostrils as it snapped at dragonflies and buzzing gnats.

Nic couldn’t be more happy to see the both of them.

Slightly less welcome was the woman following them. She had braided, dark hair and a huge burn scar across half of her face, bands and pads of gauze wrapped around the black-red inflammation. Her mouth was only half-visible beneath the wounds.

But simply by the strange expression in her eyes and the lifeless way she walked Nic knew she was one of the cursed. She carried a long wooden spear tipped with green-blue crystals in a bristling blade, and small deposits of similar crystals grew from her bare arms.

Nic watched as she directed the workers to their positions, her words faintly slurred, her reactions to them always lagging behind as if she was drunk. They probably assumed she was.

He waited for Matteos to break away from the group, sidling off to have a piss. Before he could drop his pants, Nic coughed politely, sliding away his cape and standing up.

The look on Matteos’ face was worth the million lightyears he’d traveled between here and his homeworld.

“Nak? God, you just pop up where you please, I see.” On his shoulder, the little wyvern gave a short, yappy bark of greeting.

“Nak.” Nic agreed.

“Damn.” He was genuinely shaken, and paused to wipe the sweat away from his face before sinking onto one knee and down to eye level. “It’s not safe here, you know? I mean, I expect you do know, but- It’s worse than you think.”

Nic made a croaking sound that Matteos correctly interpreted as ‘tell me more.’

“Just… something’s wrong with people, is all. I don’t really know what. It’s like a sickness. They get feverish and pass out and when they come back… they’re violent and stupid like animals…”

Nic nodded his head along.

“You know. And I don’t mean to be rude. But you scare me a little, Nak. You seem to be a never-ending source of surprises, and surprises haven’t treated me well lately. I know you’ve never done me wrong. Probably saved Shane’s life, even.”

He tilted his head to one side.

“I just can’t figure out what’s different about you.”

Nic nodded again, and dipped his finger into the sand. He drew a stick-figure man and a stick-figure lizard, which ended up looking more like a snake with legs. Then he carved an arrow between the two.

“You used to be human?”

“Nak.” Nic agreed.

“I see. That would explain a lot. Listen, I have to get back…”

Nic produced a flask of fountain-water from his bag and pushed it into Matteos’ hands, taking the moment to lift his arm and let the wyvern scuttle down it onto his shoulder. The beast rubbed its scaly neck against his gill-fronds, letting out a happy purr to be reunited.

“What’s this for?”

Nic pointed towards the girl with the crystal spear and the curse-blurred eyes.

“Ah, I’ll see what I can do. Is this going to… cure her?”

Nic gave another nod.

“Thank you.” He grinned widely, and made his way back to work. Pulling his cloak up Nic scuttled along the ground to watch.

It wasn’t long before Matteos made his move. He positioned himself near the girl and lifted the flask to his lips, faking drinking, and offered it to her after. She paused, looking down in confusion before slowly taking it and chugging down a gulp.

Nobody turned down water in this heat. Not even the dead.

But Nic’s satisfaction turned to horror as she began to shake, body writhing violently and dropping her to one knee. She bent over and everybody looked her way as a vivid stream of blood exited her mouth, splashing across the front of her shirt.

People were turning to look. Matteos was caught red-handed. As far as anyone would be able to say after the fact, he had poisoned her.

“Shit.” Nic croaked. The guards were coming, and he had to retreat as the girl twitched and vomited up more blood. It looked like curing the curse would be harder than he thought.

At least he already had plans for a prison break.