[Raw]Dark Exodus -- Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“Kitty?  Kitty!” the sword seethed.

I lopped off the head of the last Kobold.

“Listen, there’s no way I’m calling you Kritallenu, the Madness Behind the Stars,” I told her. “It's a freaking mouthful.”

The snow was stained red with blood.  That had been the third warband we had encountered since leaving the pyramid. At first, I had tried to parlay with them, at least asking where we were, but the Kobolds had attacked without hesitation.

That basically confirmed they didn’t have the Analyze Skill.  It was one of the first ones I had learned after arriving on Yulon, revealing not only the levels of the enemies I faced, but the properties of the items and equipment I used.

The Kobolds seemed to have maxed out around level fifty. They weren’t even a challenge to kill.

Still, the mindless bloodshed made Kitty happy, and it was fun to practice all the Skills Marcus had sealed away.

Confirming all the creatures were dead, I began trekking across the dunes again.  I didn’t have a definitive direction, I just walked towards the two tallest pyramids, which rose against the horizon.  Either I’d find civilization, or more Kobolds to kill.

“You aren’t going to loot the bodies?” Kitty asked.

“It’s not like they’re carrying anything of value,” I replied.

I’d searched the first group, looking for clues on our location, but they hadn’t been carrying any coins or paperwork.  All I’d found, beyond their crude weapons and armor, were supplies like water and dried meat.

When I had killed Archmage Reddon, I had looted his personal storage ring. It had mostly been full of arcane junk, but the man had kept a huge swatch of emergency supplies; food, water, and camping gear.

If I hadn’t known any better, the old bastard had been prepared to cut and run at any moment.

His loss was my gain.  I had tossed out most of the useless crap and made room for loot I could actually use.  The academy had stockrooms full of potions and alchemical elixirs, which I happily helped myself.

Sadly, when I had raided the Royal Bank I hadn’t been able to get into the vault where the kingdom kept their gold reserves. But I had managed to steal a few nice pieces of jewelry, including a few rings from the royal jewels. Everything else, including all the kingdom’s ledgers, I had burned.

I reached the top of the next dune, then surveyed the path head.

If we were truly in a dessert, it was the strangest dessert I’d ever seen.  The temperature was cold, below freezing, and snow lay across the landscape.  Sunlight streamed down from the constantly overcast sky.  There was no plant life outside the occasional lichen I saw sticking to the sides of rocks.

Despite how cold it was, I wasn’t shivering.  My sky-high levels made me immune to most environmental issues; I imagined I could walk around naked in a blizzard and not even feel it. I was surprised about the Kobolds though.

The filthy bastards looked like a weird cross-breed of rats and lizards.  Fur ran along their scabby skin. Supposedly they were the descendants of dragons, but to me they looked like vermin.

They had been extinct in Thure for centuries, wiped out well before my arrival.

“You at least getting a good meal – or whatever – from killing them?” I asked.

“It is adequate,” Kitty replied.  “If you followed their tracks, you could find their camps and homes, slaughter them!”

“That sounds like a hassle,” I told her.  “Besides, we still don’t know where we are.  The Kobolds are weaklings, but killing them all might piss off someone more powerful.  Until we get the lay of the land we should avoid going too thrill-kill-crazy.”

“Wise,” she admitted begrudgingly.

My armored boots sank into the cold sand as I reached the bottom of the dune.  Re-orienting myself, I resumed hiking.

“So, I told you my life story, want to share in kind?” I asked.

Kitty was silent for a while.

“I don’t remember much beyond what I told you,” she finally answered.  “I was sealed away for centuries, captive of the Alleria Kingdom.  You were not the first Hero they handed me to.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I sighed.

From what I understood of the kingdom’s history, there had been several Heroes over the ages.  Like me, they had been summoned from other worlds; apparently compatibility with Kritallenu was a rarity, even across the vastness of the multiverse.

“They kept my thoughts sealed, my wielders did not know my nature,” she continued.  “You are the first to know my name, to witness my greatness.”

“I’m honored.”

There was another ruin ahead, something smaller than the pyramids that filled the desert.  It took some effort to reach it, but at least there were no more warband ambushes.

It appeared to have been a long, low-lying building defined by columned promenades.  Flagstones peeked up through the gray sand. The few remaining walls and archways indicated whoever had built the structure had been skilled stonemasons and architects.

“Kind of reminds me of the Egyptians, from back home,” I said.

“Egyptians?”

I gave Kitty the pop-culture rundown of what I remembered of Egypt when I had been a kid.  She seemed fascinated by the idea of mummies.

Sadly, like the pyramid, any evidence about the builders was gone, erased by time.  I found signs that someone, likely Kobolds, had been camping there, but that was it.

“I’d really like to meet another human being, or at least someone not trying to kill me.” I stood up from the burnt out fire circle.

“Why?” Kitty challenged.  “From your story, everyone you’ve met on Yulon has either deceived you or tried to kill you.  Embrace the adversity, grow stronger!”

“Sounds lonely,” I replied.

Kitty had no reply to that, which surprised me.

The only thing of interest I found was a small, clay urn, buried under a pile of rubble.  Miraculously, it was intact.

Little bigger than my fist, its sides were painted with geometric patterns and lines using red and blue glaze. It had possessed a stopper at some point, but the lid and the contents were long gone.

I stuck the jar into my storage ring.  If nothing else, it might be worth something.

Left with nothing else to do, I began walking toward the twin pyramids again.

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We camped that night in the ruins of another structure.  The Archmagus had packed a huge, silk pavilion in the storage ring, along with a full set of hand-carved camping furniture.

Not bothering to set any of it up, I just staked a tarp as a wind blind and rolled out a sleeping bag.  I was used to being a soldier and being in the field for months on campaign.  Sleeping in the rough was second nature to me.

It was a little weird though having Kitty laying next to me.  When I had known the sword as Escalon I had slept with it every night.  Grace had not been happy about that.

But now that I knew the sword as alive, and sentient? It felt strangely intimate.  And while we were Cursed, and bound together, I was glad that Kitty couldn’t read my thoughts.

The eye in the sword glared upward, dying the brown blanked a bloody shade of red with the unholy light.

“Do you sleep?” I asked quietly as I laid there, rolled on my side.

“Not as you know it,” Kitty answered. “But I can allow my consciousness to fade, my thoughts to wind through the infinite currents of the past.”

“Good, do that,” I grumbled.  “That glow is gonna keep me awake.”

Slowly, the glow dimmed, then vanished.

It took me a while longer to fall asleep.  Memories of the past kept flashing before me; Marcus smiling and cheering after our first victory together, the Church of Durmon burning to the ground, the fetid stench that hung to my clothes after we sacked Port Glyfhi.  I kept seeing the screaming faces of the people I had slaughtered.  Even Marcus’s illusions hadn’t been able to hide them.

When I did fall asleep, I was blessed by dark, dreamless slumber.

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We found our first signs of proper civilization the next day.

An hour after breaking camp, we discovered the wreckage of a caravan.  Three wagons, broken and burned, laid half buried in the snow and sand. Bits of ripped cloth fluttered from the splintered frames that had hung over them.

“Merchants?” I used my boot to nudge the shattered, broken crates that laid across the ground.

They were all empty.  Based on the scratches and weapons’ marks, I’d guessed the caravan had been hit by the Kobold warband..

There were a few skeletal corpses off to the side.

“They were stripped of flesh, devoured,” Kitty said as I knelt by the remains.

“Guess the Kobolds are man-eaters,” I agreed.  “Not that I felt bad about the ones we killed.”

It was impossible to say if the caravan had defended itself, or if there were survivors. Based on the direction they had been moving though, the group had been heading the same direction I was, toward the twin pyramids.

I dug through the wreckage a bit more, finally finding a lockbox underneath a wagon bench.  Easily shattering the lock, I was disappointed to find mostly sand and frost inside.  Only a single, slim volume survived.

The language didn’t look familiar to me, but I was able to read it thanks to my Passive.

“Emery Brothers, Importers and Exporters,” I read.  “I guess they were traders of some sort.  This must have been their ledger.”

Most of the items listed in the book were survival supplies; meat, cheese, fruits, and vegetables, or so I assumed. I only recognized a few by name from my stay in Alleria. Raw materials, like metal ingots and bolts of cloth had also been part of their inventory.

“Might prove useful,” I muttered as I tucked the book into my storage ring.  “I’m going to become a packrat at this rate.”

With nothing better to do, I got up, dusted off my palms, and resumed our trek.

“I hope we find more people to kill soon,” Kitty grumbled.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sure you’ll get your wish.”