Tired Of Death

"It's her!"

"We should kill her now!"

The voices seemed to be echoing, as if she was hearing them from the bottom of a well. 

"We can't just kill her in cold blood," one of them was saying.

"Why not? Best time for it," pointed out a different voice.

"I think she's coming round," said yet another.

Reckless opened her eyes, an act that was far harder to do than it should have been, and looked up.

Framed by trees under a blue sky, a number of blurry faces were staring down at her. One of them seemed to be lacking a body. She blinked several time to try and focus.

"Careful," one said, whether to her or the others she wasn't sure.

Taking a deep breath, Reckless frowned as her vision cleared. "It's you!" she croaked.

"Indeed it is," the person she was addressing said. "I am..."

"Urt," she interrupted. "Apparently you're my brother." She tried to sit up, and act that made her head spin and the world go dark.

"What did she say?" 

Reckless lost consciousness again.

~ * ~ 

"Food's nearly done," said Reginald from over by the campfire. 

"Are you sure we're far enough away?" Samantha asked Urt again, scanning the area from atop a fallen tree nearby.

"I told you," Urt replied, looking up from where he was studying the Lexicon Tormentus. "I've cast a cloaking spell around us, no one's going to see or hear us. It was surprisingly easy," he added, frowning a little. The spell had laid out specific ingredients that should be used, but lacking nearly all of them, he'd tried with the couple he did have, and it had worked with no problem whatsoever, which pleased him, but worried him at the same time. Casting a spell like that should have been some effort, especially after all the magic he'd used earlier on in the day.

He looked around. Lucy and Reginald were sorting through their supplies, some brought with them from Mangle's place, others quickly looted from the necromancer's hut and more still from the bodies rotting in the road nearby. 

Next to Urt, asleep under his cloak, lay the girl in white. The maniac who had imprisoned him in her castle and nearly had Reginald tortured, then attacked him near the walls of Groan, and then called him brother. He wasn't really sure how families usually worked, but her behaviour seemed a little odd, even to him. Still, whilst the idea was surely preposterous, for no reason he himself could understand, he believed it. 

Well, there was nothing more he could do about that until she woke up. On the other side of her rec.u.mbent body Horace had been placed, to keep an eye on her for just such an eventuality. 

The fighter they'd met, Samantha, took his attention away by sitting next to him. She did so in a smooth action, as all of her actions were. Looking at him with those intense eyes of hers, she c.o.c.ked her head in a strange manner. Urt breathed a little faster.

"Aren't you cold dressed like that?" Horace asked. "You'll catch your death girl. Put some proper armour on, that one's all full of holes." 

"I'm not sure something can be full of holes, exactly," pointed out Urt.

"Your zombie head will be if he doesn't stop talking," scowled Samantha, looking at Horace through narrowed eyes.

"Ooh, someone's touchy," Horace sniffed, but Urt noticed he shut up after that.

"So, you're a mage then?" Samantha turned her attention back to Urt.

"I, well, yes. Yes I am." Urt tried to sit up straight and look arcane, although he wasn't sure he really pulled it off.

"Yet you carry a sword." She nodded at the Devil blade, which Urt had unstrapped from his back and placed on the ground next to him.

"It's... complicated," he said. 

"So, where are you bound? " she asked, not pursuing the matter further, to his relief. "Maybe I could join your little band for a while. For mutual protection." She smiled at him again, sending his heart racing. 

"Of course, of course," he said, nodding vigorously. 

"Excellent," she said. "Oh, I think dinner's ready. We'll talk later." With another flash of bright white, perfect, teeth, she stood and made her way over the campfire. Urt watched her go, mesmerised by the sway of her...

"You'll catch flies in your mouth, with it hanging open like that," sniggered Horace, his bravado restored.

"Quiet you," Urt snapped, but closed his mouth and went to get some food.

~ * ~ 

It had turned out that Nicolas was unable to track down Urt by himself, which should have been impossible, and in the end he'd had to swallow his pride and cast a communications spell to his master to ask for help. The Extremely Dark Necromancer had been surprisingly cooperative, and that had made Nicolas even more nervous, but he'd been given the location and so was not going to look a gift unicorn in the mouth.

Having used more than he liked of his stock of healing spells and potions and, with a rest, Nicolas had gathered his strength and teleported once again to the track he'd so recently departed, although a little way out.

Shaking his head at the amount of magic he'd used recently, he'd need a good month to fully recover after this, he traipsed silently along the road, using a small spell to extend his senses and another to detect background magic.

Before long he found it. A good cloaking spell masked everything, and that was a weakness. It also masked the ambient magic in the air, which, if you were detecting it, meant a big 'hole' where it was being cloaked. 

Smiling at his own cleverness, Nicolas made his way, very very quietly, through the spell's area. And there they were. Not even anyone on guard. Still, he hung back at the maximum range needed, squinting until he made out the face of Urt, fast asleep. 

Forzula's spell of Sudden Immolation should do the trick. It was hardly subtle really, but it was efficient, and quiet. The others would wake up and Urt would simply be gone, unaware that his, by then lifeless body, had been transported half a league under the ground. Nicolas took a moment to mop his brow and take a deep breath before beginning the incantation in a low voice.

He was one third of the way through the complex spell when some unseen force surged up to him and grabbed him by the throat, causing him to choke on a Minor Syllable of Pain and swallow the following Rune of Earth. 

Abandoning the magic, Nicolas staggered backward and made a second level Gesture of Denial, which was hardly a major conjuration, mainly being used to scare away stray dogs, but sufficed enough in this case, as the invisible force's grip loosened slightly, allowing him to wrench himself free.

"By the Underhalls of Fue*!" he hissed, as the magical force swirled in the air a few paces away. He twisted one of the rings on a finger, and a shimmering field of energy expanded into being about him. 

Whatever it was that had attacked him withdrew slightly, before slamming back into the near invisible barrier, which g.r.o.a.n.e.d and let out small sparks of stress under the assault. 

"Damnation!" Nicolas swore, and decided something that could do that to one of the most powerful protective devices in his arsenal wasn't something to be taken on in the middle of the night in a damp forest. He uttered a rather nasty sounding Word. There was a flash of light and then a short clap of air rushing to fill in a Warlock shaped hole in the universe. 

*Fue: Dark God of Spiteful and Overdue Revenge. Its followers are mainly overweight for some reason. 

~ * ~ 

"Did you hear something?" Urt asked, lifting his head slightly.

"What? No, just the badgers chirping or something," Horace said. "Go back to bed, I have things covered here." 

"Mmm." Urt settled back down, scratched an itch, and then went back to sleep.