Vainglory 3.14 - Thoughts on Mortality

Here's today's chapter! Thanks for reading and supporting :)

See you with more of Ward's adventures on Wed.

-Plum

14 – Thoughts on Mortality

Ward wasn’t sure about the etiquette of a duel, but he knew he wasn’t feeling charitable. In his mind, as soon as he’d “agreed” to the duel and drawn his sword, the duel was on. He lifted his sword and launched his attack, feinting toward Thrund’s face and then taking an earnest stab at his midriff. For his part, Ward’s challenger darted back and yanked one of his sabers out of its scabbard, whipping it up just in time to deflect Ward’s thrust.

He narrowed his eyes angrily, but Ward didn’t need to read the emotions on the man’s face; his nose told him a different story. He could taste the bitter tang of fear behind Thrund’s bluster. In his old life, knowing an opponent was frightened might have inspired pity. It might have made him doubt his convictions about winning at any cost. With the wolf prominent in his mind, though, all it did was fuel his intent to kill the man—prey should be afraid.

He pressed the attack, hacking his heavy, broad blade against Thrund’s saber, smashing it aside in a show of one-sided dominance. Then, fearful as he might be, Thrund uttered some words of power, “Vryskan thravek!”

The words were sharp and rang against the cobbles, sending dust into the air, almost like something heavy had fallen from the sky. Ward felt a sharp pain in his right ear like one of the words had gotten in there and bounced around a bit too violently. Meanwhile, Thrund’s movements became a blur as he ripped his other saber free of its scabbard and then somehow glided around to Ward’s flank, hacking both swords in a pair of lightning slashes that Ward could barely see, let alone defend against.

Ward’s sword training helped him avoid getting killed outright; he turned into the attack, whipping his broadsword up to drive Thrund back, but not before receiving two deep gashes on his shoulder and upper back. The stinging cuts served to heighten his awareness, sharpening the focus of his angry, wolfen eyes as he grinned, pressing an attack against the smaller man, whose unnatural speed seemed to have already faded.

Ward could taste Thrund’s fear grow thicker. Had that been his big move? Did he think he could end Ward with just a momentary burst of magical speed? The idea was almost insulting. Ward had the words for his Mana Bolt on the tip of his magical tongue, but he held them in check. Why give everyone witnessing this fight an insight into what he could do? He’d also prepared the spell he’d won from Trent Roy, Chains of Silence, but there was no way he would reveal such a powerful card if he didn’t have to.

As he hacked his sword, smashing it against Thrund’s lighter blades, unimpressed by the man’s ability to wield two weapons simultaneously, Ward could feel his flesh knitting together. He could easily outlast Thrund, he decided. He could wear him down. The additional sword didn’t seem to be helping the other sorcerer at all. In fact, his defenses seemed softer, and it was easier to break through now that the challenger tried to weave elaborate flourishes with both blades. It almost felt like he was trying to set Ward up for a—

Just as he began to notice the ruse, Thrund sprang his trap. He lured Ward into making a smashing, overhead attack by leaving one of his swords down and to the side while he offered a seemingly weakened guard with the weapon in his primary hand. As Ward’s broadsword cleaved downward, though, Thrund hissed, “Dravok slenvek!”

The words of power slithered into Ward’s ear, twisting through his mind and confounding his senses. His vision filled with strange patterns of light, twisting lines of color that spiraled around him—a kaleidoscopic three-dimensional maze that supplanted the world around him. Chimes rang in his ears, the distant clangor of bells ringing, and suddenly, Ward couldn’t remember where he was or what he was doing.

He lost his physical awareness. His hands felt like balloons floating beside his mind. His feet were like lead weights, pulling him downward, stretching his legs like taffy. Something tugged at his guts, and a warm wave spread downward like he was being dipped in a hot bath.

“Ward!” Grace’s voice came to him distantly, echoing around the weird, light-filled maze. “Chop your stupid sword down!”

Some reflexive instinct in the deep roots of Ward’s brain listened to those words and responded. He couldn’t feel it, and he wasn’t really aware that he did it, but his right hand finished the powerful, hacking cleave that he’d been about to deliver before the weird magic confounded him. Instantly, the confusing spirals of magical lines burst apart in his vision, the ringing bells faded, and blinding pain erupted in Ward’s midriff. He blinked and saw that his sword was wedged firmly in Thrund’s forehead.

The man was slumped on his knees, and Ward realized he was holding his weight up with his sword arm. He also saw that Thrund’s left-hand saber was buried nearly eight inches into his guts—stabbed there from the side. The blade was curved, and, thus, the point had found its way out of Ward’s body and was peeking through the buttoned gap of his blood-soaked shirt. “Son of a bitch,” he grunted.

He looked around the crowd, silently gawping at the scene. When his eyes fell on the woman holding his satchel, he grunted, “Bring me that bag, will you?” He wondered if he’d be dead if the asshole before him hadn’t had a curved sword. If it had been straight, would it have severed his abdominal aorta? Would he have bled out before his regeneration could save him—before Grace could snap him out of his magically-induced stupor?

The woman hurried forward, her face red, her eyes wide, and Ward realized he was asking her to approach a scene out of a horror movie. He nodded, glaring around the crowd, ensuring no one would try to capitalize on his weakened state. The strange silence that had befallen the onlookers was broken, though, and people were reacting to the scene in all manner of ways—coughing and gagging, cursing, laughing, and, more than any other reaction, turning to put distance between themselves and Ward.

Even so, he wanted to get out of the street, so, with his free hand, he carefully removed Thrund’s fingers from his sword hilt, and then he let go of his own sword, allowing the dead sorcerer to collapse to the cobbles. “Thanks,” he muttered to the woman who was clearly trying not to look at the dead body or Ward’s wounds. Her eyes were trained upward toward the blue sky. “Can you open the top flap, please?”

“Um, of course.” He watched as her shaking fingers worked the clasp, and then he dug his blood-stained hand inside, fishing around for a little bottle of healing tonic he knew was near the bottom. When his fingers closed on it, he sighed with relief, then lifted it to his mouth, yanking the cork out with his teeth. “Step back,” he grunted as he spat the cork onto the cobbles. The woman moved a few feet away, and then Ward carefully pulled the saber out of his guts in a splatter of crimson droplets.

It hurt like hell—like someone was sawing at his skin with a razor and pulling his intestines out through his belly button at the same time. Gasps and exclamations told him people were still watching him, but Ward didn’t care. When the saber clattered to the cobbles, he lifted the tonic to his lips and drained half of it. Then, he lifted his bloody shirt and poured the rest over the two enormous cuts in his flesh. He hoped the tonic and his lycan healing would be able to deal with the infections a perforated bowel might cause.

Grunting in relief, he bent to yank his sword out of Thrund’s skull. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s linen pants, then slid it into his scabbard. Ward waved the woman close again and took his coat off her outstretched arm, throwing it over one shoulder. Then he took his satchel out of her hands. “Thank you, milady.” He chuckled inwardly at his use of the archaic term.

“M-my pleasure, good sir.” She stumbled back, and Ward wondered if he ought to offer her a few glories or something. She didn’t wait around, though, hurrying off into the crowd. Ward stared after her for a moment, then glared at the rest of the gathered people until his eyes fell on a pair of men wearing the armor and livery of the city watch. They were just standing there, watching, leaning on their halberds as though his duel was just another oddity of their day.

“That’s how it is around here, huh?” Ward stooped to pick up his challenger’s fallen sabers, then took a moment to stuff them into their scabbards. He didn’t want to leave them lying around. Then, as though it were the most normal thing in the world, he gripped the dead man’s leather coat by the lapels, hauling the body onto its feet. A moment later, he stooped and threw it over his shoulders.

“Oi!” one of the nearby city watchmen called out. “Where are you going with that corpse?”

“That’s my business,” Ward growled, stomping toward the edge of the enormous Assembly Hall square. He intended to walk around the perimeter until he found a quiet place—maybe a park or an alley—where he could go through the dead sorcerer’s pockets and maybe see if he could harvest some mana from it.

“You can’t just go walking around the city with a corpse, sir,” the watchman said, following him as he crossed the road to the square.

Ward turned to glare at him, the dead man’s legs swinging with the motion. “What would you have me do with it?”

“Leave it for an undertaker, of course!”

“Did you witness our duel?” Ward growled.

“Aye.”

“Then you know we both walk the Road. Well, he used to. Anyway, his belongings are mine, and I intend to take my time checking his pockets. When I’m done, you can have the body.”

“I don’t want the bloody thing!”

“Then quit hassling me!” Ward glared past the guard, nodding toward a gap between a smithy’s shop and a general goods shop. “I’ll just carry him over there. Send an undertaker if you want.”

The guard frowned, his face red, but his partner stepped forward and gripped his shoulder. He looked at Ward and nodded. “Right, well, just see as you don’t go wandering off with it. The last thing we need are strays and rats feasting on it after you stow it behind some building or other.”

Ward didn’t respond. He shifted the weight on his shoulder, glowering at the two men, then turned and stalked toward the alley. His stomach ached, and the strain on his abdominal muscles from lifting and carrying the corpse was enough to make him grimace. He hoped his regenerative abilities were working on his innards. What if the son of a bitch had severed one of his intestines? Would it mend on its own, or did he need someone to cut him open and put the two ends together?

The gory images running through his mind served to aggravate him further, and his face must have shown it. People who saw him coming hastened to get out of his way. When he passed by the smithy whose hammer rang loudly out of the open side of his shop, Ward soon left the crowds behind as he slipped between the two buildings. A stack of empty wooden crates was piled beside the smithy’s building, and Ward stooped to slide his burden off his shoulders and onto them.

“Son of a bitch,” he groaned, pressing a hand to his side and carefully stretching. He thought it might feel a little better than right after he’d drunk the tonic. He glanced left and right and saw the two watchmen standing at the mouth of the alley. They weren’t following him in, but they were certainly not comfortable leaving him to his own devices. Ward decided he didn’t care. He unbuckled the dead man’s sword belt and slung it over his shoulder. He wasn’t interested in using the sabers, but they looked like high-quality weapons. He’d sell or trade them.

Then, he patted down Thrund’s pockets. He found a pouch with five hundred glories and change. He found a metal case filled with neatly rolled cigarettes. Ward chuckled at himself, calling them cigarettes. He had no idea what sort of herb was inside them; he just knew it didn’t smell like tobacco or marijuana. He closed the case and slipped it into his pocket. The dead sorcerer had a silver, skull-engraved ring on his thumb, so Ward took that, too.

“Where’s your spellbook, you asshole?” Ward moved from the man’s pants pockets to his leather duster. He was about to give up, frustrated, but then he felt a hard little object in an inner pocket. Reaching in, he closed his fingers around an ornate silver key. Was it a house key? Peering closer, Ward realized the top of the key wasn’t a random decoration; it was a stylized number nineteen. “Aha. Staying at an inn, were you?”

Ward pocketed the key, then he straightened up, looking at the pitiful, pale corpse with the dark cleft in the center of its forehead. “Kind of messed up how death reduces us to nothing more than meat, eh? All your dreams and ambitions—gone. All the memories you built—the people you loved, the enemies you hated. None of it matters now, buddy.”

He sighed, leaning a shoulder against the nearby building to watch the corpse while keeping an eye on the alley opening. His morbid thoughts about mortality had reminded him of how close he’d been to being the “dead meat” in question. He thumped the dead man’s shoulder. “No sense in letting myself get jumped, eh?”

As if in answer to his gallows humor, tiny sparkles of blue light began to dance atop Thrund’s pale, lifeless flesh. Just as he’d hoped, he saw the charged, electric flickers that indicated the presence of anima. “Ah, thank you, buddy,” Ward said, reaching his hand out to the cloud and slowly exhaling, trying to center and ground himself as quickly as possible.

His rather ugly humor and sour mood began to fade as the mana motes tingled against his skin. The sensation forced him to remember that the mana and anima drifting out of the body meant that Thrund was no longer inhabiting that flesh. He’d opened a doorway in the “veil,” and his spirit had slipped through. At least, that’s what Ward wanted to believe; he hoped Grace and others like Old Maggie were right about how that worked.

As the cold electricity of the rich mana flowed into him, Ward sighed, some tension from the fight and his near-death experience bleeding out of him. His worrisome thoughts faded to a background hum, and he felt the air tickling his face and stirring the hair around his ears; he felt the ground beneath his feet anchoring him, drawing him toward something vast, and he felt the currents of…life flowing all around him—people and their dreams, weaving an elaborate web that would be impossible for a mortal mind to unravel.

As the charged mana stopped sinking into his flesh, the broader awareness faded, and Ward blinked his eyes, looking down at the Thrund’s corpse. “Godspeed,” he muttered, turning to see a man with a cart waiting near the mouth of the alley. Ward walked toward him, reaching into his pocket to grab a fifty-glory coin. He tossed it to the undertaker on his way past, and the fellow deftly snatched it out of the air, giving him a nod.

Ward might have asked the city watchmen about the key he found; they might know what inn it belonged to, but he didn’t trust them. In his mind, they’d be just as likely to tell him they didn’t know, then go and raid the sorcerer’s room on their own. Maybe he was being paranoid, or maybe he was just being realistic. He didn’t know, but he wouldn’t take the chance. Walking past them, burdened with his satchel and the swords of his enemy, Ward didn’t give them a second glance.

He wondered how safe he was. How soon would the next challenger appear? One thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t underestimate a sorcerer willing to duel him to the death. When Ward realized he could outfight him with swords, he’d put magic out of his mind and focused on battering him with his blade. If not for Grace, he’d be dead. “Speaking of, Grace,” he said quietly, “I know you’re not going to appear out here in the square, but thank you. I don’t know how you did it, but I appreciate you breaking me out of that spell.”

Part of him wanted to go and try to hunt down Thrund’s room right then and there, but he knew he had to swing by his room. He had to change his clothes, and he needed to talk to Grace for real. His stomach was feeling better, but he was still worried about his guts getting so severely hacked. What could he do, though? Did they have the equivalent of emergency rooms in this city? Was there a physician he could see to be sure he wouldn’t slowly die from a truncated intestinal tract?

While he walked, worrying about all those things and more, Ward kept his head on a swivel, looking for trouble that might be coming his way. Nothing bothered him, though, before he climbed the steps to the assembly building and made his way through the busy corridors to the stairs that would take him back up to his living quarters. His bloody state drew many a stare, but no one challenged him, and sadly, no one came forward asking if he needed any help.

When he closed his door behind him and turned the key to lock it, Grace was on him in an instant, “You idiot! Why didn’t you cast your silence spell?”

Ward sighed, turning around to see her staring at him, arms folded over her chest. She looked upset but not really angry. She’d been worried, and with good reason; Thrund’s other saber had probably been about to cut his neck when Grace had snapped him out of his mesmerized state. “I guess I let him trick me, Grace. I thought I was beating his ass pretty soundly, but he was just setting me up for that stun.”

“You can’t treat a sorcerer like a sparring partner!”

“Yep. Lesson learned. I was worried people would learn about my spells, especially the Chains of Silence.”

“Ward, people can’t understand words of power. Only the person you cast that spell on will know what you did and, if you do what you're supposed to do—”

“Kill them,” Ward sighed, interrupting her.

“Then they can’t tell tales, right?” She unfolded her arms and approached him, looking up into his eyes. He could tell she wasn’t really angry because the flames in her irises were low, just embers. “I had to use some of your anima to break that spell.”

“What?” Ward groaned, pressing a hand to his chest as though he could feel the missing anima. “How much? I thought I had to agree to that!”

“Just a tiny bit, Ward—less than I used to trap the spirit in the medallion. As for permission, you’ve already given me that twice. Have you ever told me I can’t take any more?” The corner of her mouth lifted mischievously.

“No, I guess not.” Ward was tempted to bar her from touching his anima again without permission, but how would that work out for him? He’d be dead if he’d done so after the last time. He shrugged. “I guess I’m starting to trust you, huh?”

“I hope so. Now, I want to assure you of something: your guts are in one piece.”

“You can tell?” Ward felt a wave of relief wash over him.

“Of course I can. I’d also know if you had cancer or were poisoned or had a ruptured appendix or—”

Ward laughed, interrupting her as he pushed past her, unbuttoning his bloody shirt. “I get the idea.” He slung his captured sabers over a chair and pulled off his shirt. “Now, after I get cleaned up, what do you say we take a look at the hemograph to see how much mana and anima I got out of that guy?”

“Yep, then you’ve got a hotel room to find.”

Ward grinned, nodding. “Aren’t you glad you aren’t with Haley? All the fun stuff happens with me.”