Tread Lightly – Among Monsters And Men

The sprawling boneyard is massive, but also desolate. The flowing sand and winding bones are absent from any living creatures as we walk. I stay at the front of the group not practicing or distracting myself with Ether but watching out for any ambushes that might occur. But no, nothing living even enters our vision.

The spider must have either been a fluke or the graveyard only gets active at night.

Despite the lack of seeing any threats, we all collectively decide to move as fast as we can, so we spend most of the day running through the boneyard as fast as we can. I put Esther on my back and ran with her. She tries to resist at first, but after seeing how fast she is on my shoulders, she starts yelling joyfully with the wind in her face and her hair in mine.

Because of our hurried pace, we make it to a point in the boneyard where far in the distance I can see the edge of it. I had to be on top of a twenty-foot-tall skeleton to do so, but it’s still definite progress. And that’s not all. I see smoke and fire about a mile away towards where we are headed, Rustbank.

After a short discussion, once I descended from the skeleton, we decided to go to the fire and see what was going on. At this time, the sun is just about to set and the is beginning to drop in temperature. I am the first to see the originators of the campfire as I was in the front.

A group of eight, three women and five men, all armed and geared for life in the wilderness. My first thought is Hunters when I look at them from a distance. They're all sitting around a campfire being rowdy with a tent for each of them. I can’t quite tell them all apart from here, but the two loudest ones I am able to recognize as being a man with an eyepatch and another with a massive almost 5-foot-long shotgun on his back.

Then, I activate Chain Eyes to get a clearer grasp on the situation. I see five total people with colored chains, the other three have uncolored and dull chains which means they are Unsigiled. Of the Sigiled, the man with the enormous boomstick and another in brown leather with a huge backpack and a pickaxe sticking out of it are the only ones with orange chains wrapped around them. The rest of the Sigiled bear red chains like me.

So, there are three Unsigiled, three 1st Sigils, and two 2nd Sigils. That’d be enough to put me down for sure. I’ll have to be careful when speaking to them, but they are the first group we’ve seen. I should go and see who they are and if they have any information on how to get to Rustbank. Maybe they have any advice for the boneyard. I turn to the rest of the group who are crouched behind me next to a tent-size slab of bone in the ground.

“I’m going to see what’s up with them. If anything bad happens, you guys run, okay? There are five Sigiled among them. The guys with the big shotgun and pickaxe are 2nd Sigils, so stay away from them okay?”

Earl, Leonard, Elizabeth, and Esther all look at me worriedly. Elizabeth grabs my hand before I reveal myself and walk to them.

“Don’t go, let's just leave them alone. We’re doing fine, aren’t we?”

I shake my head at her. No, we’re not doing fine. We’re almost out of food, that spider was inedible because of how much time it’d take to cut up and we don’t have that to spare. We need to find a safe way to Rustbank. A few more instances like Harmony Town or last night and we’re done for. That is not even to mention the blade hanging over our heads. The break.

“No, we can’t. We’re really low on food, and I don’t want to make you guys starve. Plus, we need to ask for information. Like what to avoid nearby and ask about Nain Rouges. I think that one might still be following us. Or at least affecting us. How unlucky do we have to be to get attacked by a spider in the middle of the night while we’re all quiet on top of a massive skeleton? Or that the creature that appeared made Earl shit himself. Or that our wagon broke. None of it is a coincidence.”

Earl looks at me in anger when I mention him, but he doesn’t refute what I said. He only nods. Elizabeth gives up on persuading me as she sees I’ve made up my mind. She tries to encourage me instead.

“We’ll be right over here, so if anything happens we’ll cover you okay? Worst case, I’ll make Leonard cough up his alcohol to help.”

I smile at her and Leonard. Leonard’s not too pleased but he reluctantly agrees. Earl pushes something softly into my hand before I step out and makes me clasp my fingers around it. It’s a small glass vial with a yellowish crystal inside.

“This is something I made a long time ago back in Luadner. I’ve been hesitant to use it as there hasn’t really been a good time except for the wolves that attack us, but you should take it. I made it using alcohol, mercury, and nitric acid. When thrown or hit with a strong enough force, it explodes like dynamite. I named it Fulminate. It’s the only truly useful thing I ever made when trying to become an alchemist, and this is the last of it. I used the rest of it to test and play with back in Luadner. In case you're wondering why I didn’t use this with the Bakwas, it is because it doesn’t create flames, just a shockwave. But, I think it might be useful if a large group attacks you like what’s possibly about to happen. So, good luck.”

Earl says this all fast as if to make up for his mistakes and be helpful. A small little stick of dynamite could always be useful, but I do feel like all of them are making this encounter more dangerous than it needs to be. I mean, these are probably just Hunters out on a job, right? What could go wrong?

And before I even get up and move, I see Earl open up his backpack and call Esther over. Then he begins handing her something in a glass bottle and giving Elizabeth a firestarter. I just shake my head and turn away from them.

I stand up from behind the piece of a skeleton that blocks me from vision and walk towards the group at the campfire with my hands up. Once I get within about a hundred feet, I call out to them and they notice me.

“Hey! Are you guys Hunters? I could use a little bit of help! I’m lost!”

I see the entire group turn away from their conversions and the fire to look at me. Then, the one with the boomstick and the other with the eyepatch stand up and approach me. The one with the boomstick on his back speaks first.

“What do we have ‘ere? A lost little lamb? Eh, Harold? What you think?”

I feel a bit uncomfortable with how he’s speaking about me and lower my arms a bit. The one on the right, Harold I presume who has the eyepatch and a wide mustache on his face, looks at me. Then, I see the veins around his eye tighten and bulge before he replies. But before he does so, I recognize that look. That’s what happens to my eyes when I use Chain Eyes. Just for confirmation, I quickly reactivate the skill and see that Harold has red chains wrapping around him. My thoughts are interrupted by Harold and the gruff man with the shotgun speaking.

“He’s a first, Arnold.”

Arnold then notices something and slaps Harold on the back. What he says next causes me to immediately tense.

“Would’ja look at tha’ Harold! He’s like you, ya freak. Seems like ‘ur gonna get ‘ur second Sigil today!”

When he finishes his sentence, the rest of his crew behind him stand up and walk over. In a flash, I feel tiny and outnumbered. A phrase from my one and only mentor glides past my mind as I watch Harold’s arm slowly reach for the holster on his side.

“You ain’t ever been outnumbered before like that kid. And there are no easy and nice kills in war. And that’s was this is. A war against the demons, monsters, and maniacs in this world. Sometimes it gets brutal.”

Just as the men and women in front of me brush their holsters and sheaths with their hands, I funnel Ether into my now-cleared upper body and arms. I grit my teeth so hard in preparation for what’s to come that I hear a tooth chip. Then, I quickly drop into Bloodhound’s Step and burst forward towards the first one who drew their gun. The mustached and eyepatched Harold.

I reach him before he even is able to point his gun at me, and in one clean motion, I draw my daggers and tackle him to the ground, stabbing him the whole time. It all happens in less than a second and it takes the group of men and women a second to react to what I’m doing even as Harold is choking on his own blood with my knife in his throat.

But when they do react, it’s thunderous. I hear a crack of thunder that indicates a gun has been shot as I feel agony blossom in my side. Quickly before I get shot again, I jump off of the dying man and dart towards Arnold, the one with the shotgun. The 2nd Sigil.

He reacts fast, too fast for me to reach him as he dodges to the side and points the fist-sized barrel of his boomstick at me. For a second, my vision widens and I see all that surrounds me. Seven people remain standing and four of them have guns pointed at me. Three of them have a variety of spears, knives, and machetes. The one with the machete is directly to my side.

Before I do anything though, I ramp up the Ether within me even further as a headache emerges. Then, I push off of the ground with both hands and feet in one motion as I push Ether out of my palms as fast as I can, similar to when I attacked the Bakwas with it. This sends me hurtling to the side at incredible speeds without any way to stop but gravity behind the machete man, but the man with the boomstick still follows me with his gun and fires even though there is now a man between him and me.

I am suddenly covered in blood, guts, and brain matter as the person in front of me disappears into a bloody mist and I am sent flying backward several feet from flying sideways riddled with holes and gushing blood. My ears ring and my body shake as I lay on the sand stunned by what just hit me. But I don’t move. Instead, I lay still. None have ever expected my resilience so far. The Philosopher is enduring.

A hurrah enters my eyes from the man with the boomstick, Arnold.

“Look at tha’ one clean shot killed 'em, and it only took our freeloading Unsigiled to distract him. Hey! Jennifer! If Harold dies, I’m feeding you to the carrion!”

Then boots approach me as I lay in agony with my body wounded so badly that I already feel a bit cold, but I refuse to let any sound escape my lips. I wait for the man to reach me. I hear the clasp of a shotgun being opened and the sound of a shell being extracted and then hitting the ground. A shell that’s far too big to be any gauge I’ve ever heard of. He must be a strength-focus Sigiled to shoot that damn thing.

I wait as I listen to boots grow louder in the sand. Once I feel the sand underneath me get disturbed and the very near voice of Arnold, I strike.

“Let’s see what he had, those daggers look pretty–AGHH–”

His sentence is cut off by a cry of pain as I abruptly stand up from my fake death and stab him in the ankle, then the calf, then the thigh, as he falls from the weakness in his lower body, I put both of my knives into his eyes all in one smooth motion carried by pure resolve.

His scream of agony is cut off when my silvery steel slides into his brain. Still laying on the ground, I pull them out and grab his massive, now loaded shotgun from his dead hands and step back as fast as I can while taking a look at the rest of his crew. Four of them just wait, presumably to see what would happen with me and the other two tend to the fallen and bleeding-out Harold.

The other six people appear completely surprised by what just happened to their leader and I take advantage of this to make it only worse. I hurl the vial of fulminate as hard as I possibly can at the group of four that stand close to each other, ignoring the two who are tending to the dying Harold.

An explosion that sends me flying once again with ringing ears. Once again, I’m stunned, but this time much worse as I took the brunt of an explosion without first recovering fully from the first. While I lay and roll in pain, I feel arms wrap around me and pull me to my feet.

I open my dust-filled eyes to see Leonard pulling me to my feet and taking the shotgun from my hands as gunfire reaches us. I see through shaky vision that the two that were tending to Harold gave up on him and are now firing at us. One with a revolver and the other with a bolt action rifle.

Leonard yells something into my ear, but I don’t catch what it is with my ringing ears. Then, he hefts the shotgun into the air and points it forwards as he screams. His scream is quiet to only me as the ringing just intensifies as he fires the shotgun back at the group even while holding me. I see one of the people who tended to Harold, the other one with my same Base Sigil, get an entire side of their body torn off by the impact of the shotgun. They immediately drop to the ground and lay silent.

But all effects have an opposite reaction. Leonard and I are sent flying backward once again as Leonard cannot control the recoil. A “hmph” leaves my throat as I slam once more into the dust and slide backward with Leonard.

When we hit the dust, Leonard stops moving. Worriedly, I turn to look at him as I try to get up and I see that blood is trailing from his head. It looks like he hit a piece of bone when he was flung down into the ground from the boomstick’s recoil.

Quickly as I feel the timbre of gunshots in the air with my very bones, I put my finger beneath his nose and feel air passing. Good. He’s not dead. Slowly, I turn to face the group of attackers and see that one of them, a woman with a black bandana, is firing her bolt action as fast as he can toward a slab of bone to my right.

A slab of bone that Elizabeth and Earl keep ducking out of to draw attention. I turn my attention back to the group and I see that four of the ones who were sent flying by the Fulminate are beginning to recover.

And so, I get on all fours and begin charging forwards as fast as I can before anyone can recover and shoot at me. The woman turns her attention to me as I near her. I watch her ready her bolt and aim it directly at me. My injured hearing returns just in time to hear another deafening bang that sends a piece of lead hurtling toward me at supersonic speeds.

I try to dodge but to no avail. I feel the bullet tear a hole through me and because I’m on all fours, it does almost definite fatal damage. It enters through the top of the left side of my collarbone on my shoulder and exits out the middle of my back. Instantly, I drop to the ground and go tumbling head over heels toward the woman as I lose feeling in my legs and pain shoots up my spine.

My mind goes blank. All I can feel is slithering vipers of fire coursing up my spine and into my brain. Multiple seconds pass as I lay in agony before I regain my sanity. My lower body goes limp just before the gunman with the bolt action. I spend several moments trying to wrest control of my own body from the fragments of lead that are lodged into it to no success.

No matter how many times I try to get up, all that happens is more pain appears. And I realize at this point that I’m no longer breathing and when I try to do so, I can feel bits of what I assume to be steel stab and slice up the internals of my chest.

Eventually, I give up on standing once more as the timbre of the rifle continues above me. If I can’t stand, I just need to take out this girl in front of me who is shooting at Elizabeth and Earl. I grit my teeth, squint my eyes, and clench my fists with what feels to me like the force to crush diamonds as I lift my head and peer at the woman standing above me.

She has ignored me, assuming I'm already dead. They really made this mistake twice? I guess that makes sense with how few people could live through what I just did. Even then, how long do I have to live right now? My lungs can no longer expand and I cannot breathe with this shrapnel in my chest.

So, maybe she’s not wrong to assume I’m a dead man. Because I am one. Just not quite yet. I got a little bit more in me, and the Bloody Palm rests in my hand as an ace in the sleeve. They’ll never expect the third fake death, right?

All the thoughts pass in an instant as I work up the momentum and energy to stop this man from shooting. But I have to do so without my lower body and left arm.

I grip my dagger with my right hand which still functions and stab it into her foot as hard as I can from my current odd position of laying down after a catastrophic crash. I hear the woman curse in pain as she looks down at me and points her rifle at me with a face wrought with astonishment and another that I don’t understand. Is it nervousness?

It doesn’t matter. I reach up as fast as I can and grab the barrel before funneling an enormous amount of Ether into my already destroyed lungs. I feel them expand and push the fragmented lead out and into my other internal organs as my lungs are filled with Ether condensed air.

Then, I push even more Ether as the torment of my internals being shredded passes through me, but I hold on even as I see the woman begin to squeeze her trigger and the flesh of her finger crease on the metallic piece. Just as I see the sudden flinch back of the woman’s trigger, I release my hyper-focused breath of air.

The bullet tears through the air towards my face but is buffeted by the wind that exits through my mouth and has its destination distorted. Instead of the center of my face, the bullet leaves an open trail of flesh along the right side of my face like a lightning bolt.

The wind continues past the meetup between air and projectile as it reaches the woman, and it blows her off balance and backward. Not just that, but a huge amount of blood and flesh rockets from my throat as well and slams the woman in the face. The woman tries to step back to regain her balance, but the dagger in her foot that I have placed holding her to the ground prevents this, so instead, she falls backward.

Then in a similar way as to how one would climb a cliff face with climbing picks, I stab her multiple times and work my way up to her face with my legs unworking. The whole while I hear her scream, but I ignore it as I hear a molotov land to my left and splash onto another one of these people. The explosion blinds me for a moment and slows me down with its concussive force. By the time I reach her bloody and anguished face by pulling my mostly limp body forward using her flesh as leverage, I feel the woman below me also relax and stop moving.

Then, I try to take a moment to assess this mad and unbelievable situation as I hear a boot and turn. A black shadow that resembles a boot comes rapidly into my face making my head shake and my vision goes black.