Chapter 16 - Part 3

Orphan trotted into town, wondering at the appearance of street fog in the area near the Tharashk cottage. He slowed down as he saw that a horse and rider stood in front of the building. Inside he heard sounds, but he was too far away to hear clearly what they were.

The warforged monk meant to go around the back and sneak into the cottage, but the Tharashk elf was there, and had spotted him. Orphan had not been trying to hide, so that was no major feat, but something made him nervous. There was a shifter standing next to the elf, and the shifter’s stance was not friendly.

“Ahoy, Orphan!” the elf called. Orphan carefully walked up, noting that the man on the horse was shifting his longspear.

“Hello,” he said. “What is that I hear in the cottage?”

“Just Brode and Thomas sparring,” the elf said casually.

Too casually. Orphan glanced about and saw that no one else was out on the street. It was night, and everyone was inside. In fact, the street was suspiciously empty, and several windows that he would have expected to be open, were shuttered. The street fog that had appeared so suddenly seemed to be concentrated on trails that lead to places where the Wardens of the Wood congregated.

“Then I can go in and join them,” Orphan said, testing him.

The man on the horse shifted, and Orphan saw the green dragon head that marked the Gatekeepers. He also saw the human in leather armor sticking to the shadows.

“You can’t come in now,” the elf said vaguely. “House business, sorry.”

“Right,” Orphan said. He made as if to turn, then he rushed the horse and grabbed the longspear. He expertly wrenched it from the startled druid’s hands, and then spun and threw it at the shifter. It was an awkward thing to throw, and it only scratched the surface of the shifter’s chain shirt, but violence erupted immediately.

The horse raised its hooves and struck at Orphan, clipping him slightly as he twisted away. The stout druid easily kept his place in the saddle even as his horse reared, and began to cast a spell. Then the human in leather armor came somersaulting out from the shadows and threw a kick at the warforged. Orphan dodged it easily. Then the elf and the shifter pulled out their rapier and battleaxe respectively, and waded in as well. The shifter’s face was morphing, taking on the animalistic aspects of his ancestors.

Iron Orphan spun around, launching a flurry of kicks and punches. The human in leather armor was thrown backwards by a hand chop to the throat, and hit his head hard on the ground. He would not be up for hours. The shifter, whom Orphan had incorrectly identified as the most dangerous combatant, took a punch in the nose that barely slowed him down, while the elf expertly dodged a kick to the ankles.

Behind him the horse struck again, this time missing, but something else happened. The druid was still chanting, and something from the druid’s words was touching Orphan internally. He felt cold, very cold, like all the metal parts of him were turning to ice. The pain was building, and he felt the stress reach his joints.

Dodging both rapier and battleaxe, Orphan flipped backwards, tumbling under the rearing horse to come up behind the druid. He snagged the man around the throat and jerked him out of the saddle. The startled druid was a good rider, and the saddle was well constructed, but months of training with the Balanced Palm had only amplified the skills that Orphan had been forged with. The pressure on his throat made the druid lose the spell, and he thrashed about on the ground trying to break Orphan’s grip. Orphan felt the cold welling within vanish utterly, and knew that he had made the right call.

The horse pranced, unwilling to try and strike, afraid of hitting his master. Similarly the elf and the shifter paced around them, but were wary of trying to attack.

“Tell them all to back up twenty paces or I snap your neck!” Orphan yelled.

“Do as he says!” the druid gasped, no doubt urging on by the lack of air and the stretching of his neck ligaments.

The horse snorted in anger, but did as his master bade him. The elf and the shifter looked at one another, but then stepped backwards.

“Good,” Orphan said. He let the druid’s neck go, but then walloped the man on the side of the head with a stone and metal fist. The druid went limp, although like his hireling he would survive. Orphan was not about to kill anyone of Pienna’s order so long as he was merely able to knock them out. The warforged rolled to his feet and darted for the front door of the cottage. The horse could not fit in, and neither the elf nor the shifter was fleet enough of foot to follow.

He locked it behind him as he entered, wondering if the elf had a key, and came to a stop in the main room.

Ahead of him was Thomas, rage contorting his face, standing over Greoche. To the left of Orphan was the man Quinn, unconscious, with deep bruises around his head. Ahead and to the left Brode stood dead, supported only by wood planks that had somehow wrapped themselves up to his knees. Three dead men lay around him in a sickening and gory pastiche of blood. Behind Thomas lay a black bear, gutted and dead. To the right of Thomas was a man, a druid by the look of him, clutching his stomach and trying to hold his intestines in.

“Why did you bring them here?” Thomas was roaring, his own life leaking from a dozen lacerations. “To test me?”

“No!” Greoche was screaming. “No!”

Orphan took note of all of this in mere moments, and even as he heard someone outside attack the door, he saw the mortally wounded druid beg for assistance.

“Orphan!” Thomas called, his axe wavering. “Help me kill her! She has – she has betrayed – help me…” The half-daelkyr finally collapsed, the rage-fueled adrenaline subsiding. He keeled over not far from the dying druid, his greataxe tumbling from his hands.

On his neck the stormstalk twisted and writhed, poking at him, trying to get him up.

“Get healing potions!” Orphan demanded of Greoche.

“No, he’ll kill me!” Greoche yelled. “He hates his own creators, he doesn’t see the glory!”

Orphan jumped towards her, hauling her up to her feet. “I’m not letting him die, and we’re not letting the druid die either!” the warforged insisted. “You must have healing potions, where are they?”

Greoche spit in his face and tried to shove away from him. He felt her saliva n mucus travel down his faceplate from his eye and fall onto the floor. “Like I’d ever tell you!” she snarled. “You spoiled everything! If not for you none of this would have happened!”

The door burst inward, shattered by a battleaxe. The shifter lunged forward, and the elf was right behind him.

“Do either of you have healing potions?” Orphan asked, pointing to Thomas and the dying druid.

“You still stand by the abomination?” the elf asked with a tired sound to his voice. He held his rapier securely in his right hand, and his left hand was fishing for something in his belt.

“My brethren,” the shifter gasped, seeing the dead humans around the standing corpse of Greoche’s nephew.

“This is House Tharashk!” Greoche was screeching. “Get out! Get out! All of you, get out, get out, get out!”

The elf frowned at her, and threw some dust from a packet. It enveloped the woman, and she began to have coughing fits. As he did this, the shifter with the battleaxe charged at Orphan, and the elf then moved towards Thomas with his rapier ready for a coup de grace.

Orphan dodged the battleaxe easily, and jumped for the elf. He plucked the rapier from the traitor’s grasp easily, and followed up with a solid punch to the jaw. The elf reeled backwards, his eyes glassy.

A druid with a snake around his neck had stepped into the doorway in the meantime. He swore an oath and ran for the eldest druid, channeling some small spell energy into him. The man’s guts settled, and the cut in his stomach closed partially, but his eyes still closed all the way and he slumped over. The snake slid off of the newcomer’s neck and circled carefully around Orphan and the shifter, heading for the coughing Greoche.

There was a dreadful slurping sound, and the stormstalk detached itself from Thomas’ neck, leaving a puddle of some abnormal fluid. The symbiont sat up and fired a bolt at the snake, catching it along the length of its body. The snake hissed and doubled back towards the symbiont. Outside the cottage, his horse neighed and whinnied in impotent anger.

“You are first,” the shifter growled, catching Orphan across the back with the battleaxe. It was not the most serious blow that it could have been, but it was bad enough. Orphan twitched from the pain. “Then the abomination and its pet. We’ll see if –” A loud bang followed a gurgling sound as Greoche, who had finally managed to clear her lungs, smashed a chair to kindling over the shifter’s unprotected skull. The shifter did not fall just yet, and he turned to swing at Greoche. He would have killed her if the stormstalk had not turned itself, firing directly into the shifter’s back. Battered and bruised, the electrical bolt sent the shifter into unconsciousness.

The druid cast a spell, and a ripple went through the air. The stormstalk shivered, and appeared weakened. The snake darted forward, fangs glistening.

Hoping he was doing the right thing, Orphan kicked the snake hard through the air where it slapped against a wall. The warforged had a strong feeling that Thomas would eventually die without a symbiont, wounds or no wounds, and he could not let the thing come to harm.

“You chose your side!” the druid howled, raising a sickle. “Prepare for the righteous vengeance of nature as I avenge my snake!”

“He’s not dead,” Orphan said, easily dodging the druid’s attempt to hook his legs and trip him. The warforged followed that up with a kick to the bridge of the druid’s nose. “Just bruised. A woman named Pienna taught me that it is not necessary to slay every opponent.”

The snake pulled itself away from the wall, and slithered towards Orphan, albeit weakly. The stormstalk tried to zap it, but the druid’s spell still had the symbiont confused, and the bolt missed.

Greoche did not. The woman threw a tanglefoot bag, nailing the snake with a puddle of glue. The serpent hissed helplessly as it was stuck fast to the floor. “You’re all dead!” she screeched. “All of you!”

Orphan grabbed the sickle from the druid and hit him between the eyes with its pommel. Blood flowed into the druid’s eyes, and he staggered backwards, screaming deprecations about vengeance. The warforged then grabbed the stormstalk, and held its eye pointing at the floor. “Go get a healing potion for Thomas while there is still time!” he demanded of Greoche.

“Don’t you presume to order me about!” she snarled.

Orphan twisted the stormstalk brutally and it squealed. “If Tomas dies I have no reason to keep this thing alive,” he told her bluntly.

Greoche scrambled into the kitchen, muttering curses under her breath. Behind Orphan the druid stood up and began to cast a spell. Without looking backwards the warforged kicked the man in his stomach, and the wheezing druid fell over on top of his trapped snake.

Moments later Greoche came out of the kitchen with a flask that had a Jorasco stamp on it. Still holding the wriggling stormstalk carefully, Orphan grabbed it from her and poured it into Thomas’ open mouth.

The man awoke with a start, and his body twitched as the many lacerations and bruises healed. Still, the place in his neck where the stormstalk had been continued to leak, so Orphan threw the symbiont to him. Catching it, Thomas forced it back into place. It gave Orphan a sulking look.

“I hate you,” Greoche said. Orphan was not sure who she was talking to you. “I was always passed over for the good assignments, I never attracted the attention of the best men in my village, and I never was as good as those around me. I wanted my body to be different. Faster. Smarter. More attractive. So I wished for newflesh. My crime was to want to better myself.”

“Your nephew is dead because you wanted to better yourself,” Orphan said, pointing to the scarecrow-like form of the dead half-orc.

“You don’t understand,” she said, sinking to her knees. “You don’t understand. You can both build another body.”

“I didn’t get this way from building my body,” Orphan told her bluntly. “I got it from building my soul. It’s sad you don’t seem to care about yours.”

Thomas picked up his axe and regarded the unconscious Gatekeepers. “I would love to kill them,” he said. “But you will tell me that it is wrong because they are of no threat to me now.”

“What do you think?” Orphan asked him.

“I think we leave this place,” Thomas said. “I will go fetch our things.”

“No!” Greoche cried as Thomas walked back to his room. “No, I need you!”

“What you need is the truth,” Orphan told her. “And you need to admit it to yourself.”

“Then as soon as you leave I will kill them!” she swore.

Orphan shoved the druid off of the snake, and then pulled out his kama. The serpent flinched, but Orphan merely cut it free. It tried to bite him out of pique, but its teeth only scratched him, and its poison did nothing.

Orphan put the snake down. It eyed its unconscious master, the other Gatekeepers, and Greoche. “I advise you not to make sudden moves,” Orphan told the Tharashk woman.

“I will tell Delegado about this,” she promised. “He will hunt you down.”

“I’ve bested Delegado in combat before,” the warforged told her. Her eyes widened a bit at that. “I have no fear of him.”

Thomas stepped back into the main room with their small bags. “Your mercy will kill you one day, Orphan,” the half-daelkyr said bitterly. “Enemies brood deeply in the earth, and never forget.”

“One day you will learn not to let your enemies define you,” Orphan told him gently. He glanced down at Greoche. “And perhaps maybe one day she will not let her failures define her.”

“Go f’tesk yourself,” the woman snapped.

“Where do we go now?” Thomas asked.

Orphan tilted his head, listening. Above the whinnying of the stout druid’s horse he heard booted feet. “I suspect that we are going to be taken into protective custody by the Wardens of the Wood,” he said.

“Maybe they’ll kill me,” Thomas said. He almost sounded like he hoped they would do it.

“They know Oalian wants to speak with you,” Orphan told him.

“Does that make it better,” Thomas muttered.

The Wardens came into the open door and surveyed the scene.

“Arrest them!” Greoche screamed. “They invaded my home!”

“Arrest us,” Thomas said. “It will keep us safe from Gatekeeper attacks,”

“Arrest all of us,” Orphan said. “It will make it easier to sort things out.”

The officer leading the Wardens eyed all the unconscious and dead bodies, and told the three men with him that they would need backup.