Chapter 72

It might have been more merciful if the pain knocked Luke out, but he wasn’t that lucky. He got to see all four inquisitors approach him, or at least hear them and sense the XP that was infused into their bodies. He couldn’t sense Myla at all, but she obviously had some sort of skill that let her adjust how many levels she put on display. Right now that number was 0.

“All three darts hit,” one of the inquisitors reported.

“You doubted?” Myla said.

“No, ma’am.”

“And the monster core?”

“Missing,” another inquisitor said.

“Find it. It can’t have gotten too far and I’m not interested in listening to that old witch complain that we didn’t bring it back. Hestoc knows we’ve already paid her a small fortune for her services.”

Luke saw two of the inquisitors scouring the forest for the ball he’d thrown away and laughed silently. At least he’d been a casual inconvenience to them, if nothing else. He really didn’t see himself getting away this time, not with so many poisons in him. Even if he could use another [Life Surge] right now, Myla had gone for overkill and made sure there was no way he’d escape.

Someone rolled him onto his back and he found a pair of swords pointed down at his neck. “Quite dangerous, isn’t he?” one of the inquisitors said.

“Very much so,” Myla replied. “The poisons should keep him tractable long enough for us to secure him, but I don’t want to test that. He has repeatedly shrugged off powerful poisons that would defeat even level 30s who specialized in stamina.”

Out came manacles and chains of all sorts and sizes, and in short order Luke found himself hobbled and bound. The part of his brain that still worked noted that they’d underestimated his strength if they thought regular steel would hold him, but the rest of him was screaming in agony and couldn’t have broken free from the tie on a loaf of bread, let alone an actual restraint.

While they were doing that, the XP aura of one of the two that were searching for the ball disappeared. At first, Luke thought they’d just gotten far enough away that he’d lost track of them, but then he realized he could smell blood, and that the person who’d disappeared was well inside the range of his perception. Something had killed an inquisitor.

The other inquisitors noticed a moment later and went on their guard. That wasn’t enough to save them, and he felt the XP of a second one snuff out a moment later. “What the hell is that?” one of the still living inquisitors whispered harshly.

“Knife wound to the throat,” another one said.

“Impossible,” Myla snapped. She took a deep breath and said in a much more even tone, “Take the apostate and retreat back to town. Whoever is out here must have an extremely powerful [Stealth] skill. We’ll move as one and watch everything around us. If it can’t sneak up on us, it will likely give up.”

It didn’t take much to connect the dots then. Luke wasn’t sure exactly how she was doing it, but somehow Zea had followed him and was taking out people twice her level, all without being seen. He couldn’t see a way that didn’t end badly for her. The remaining three were on high alert now, and there’d be no more surprise attacks.

The two remaining inquisitors hauled Luke upright and started dragging his limp body back towards town. The ankle manacles kept getting caught on things, but the inquisitors just tugged harder until whatever branch or vine or root he’d snagged on gave way. It was all just background pain for Luke, who was currently dealing with what felt like full-body cramps as his body tried to fold itself in half. His best guess was the first poison Myla had hit him with, Sour Gut Blight.

Between that and the wyvern venom laying the pain on him, they probably could have taken him without trouble. Adding the essence of manticore blood to the mix was just mean. It attacked both his muscles and his organs, making him feel limp and heavy while at the same time he struggled to breathe.

It all would have been much, much worse a few days ago before he’d put another 10 AP into stamina. Unfortunately for him, none of the poisons would wear off on their own before he got hauled back to town, and Myla had plenty of opportunity to dose him again if they needed more time. [Life Surge] might take care of the first two, but using it again so soon would have its own set of problems.

In short, he was completely fucked. Whatever they were going to do, he was powerless to resist it, and he was pretty sure the end result wasn’t going to be him walking away. Hell, at this point he figured he’d be lucky if they skipped the torture and killed him quick. If that had been the plan, they’d probably have done it in the forest right after he’d killed that weird monster.

One of the inquisitors dragging him along cried out in pain and clutched at his gut, where blood was already seeping out through his fingers. While everyone was looking at him, something attacked Myla. She flinched away, practically leaping down the trail when a line of blood appeared on her leg. She whipped a pair of daggers around her in a full spin, but hit nothing.

“Your invisibility won’t save you,” Myla called out. “I know how long such spells last and you’re surely running out.”

Luke would have laughed if he was able. He knew how Zea was doing it, but he thought Myla was probably right. It wouldn’t last much longer. If she was going to save him, she probably only had seconds left to do it. He needed to find some way to help, but the best he could do was to kind of flop around and groan.

But no, that wasn’t all he could do. He had [Power Strike] and could easily channel that through a punch or a kick. The problem would be connecting with anything useful. If he could provide some sort of distraction, that might give Zea the opening she needed with what little time she had left to work.

Luke channeled the skill through his foot and twitched his leg up. His heel came down on the links of metal connecting his ankles together and snapped the metal with a loud popping clang. Immediately, both inquisitors turned to look at him, but Luke barely noticed. It turned out diverting his stamina into another skill when it was hard at work keeping him from dying from a massive overdose of multiple poisons was not good for his health.

He turned his head to the side and hurled his guts out, with barely enough of a presence of mind to make sure he aimed at the inquisitor who was still holding him upright. Whether that was petty revenge or another attempt at distracting them wasn’t something even Luke was sure of at that point. Either way, the next thing he knew, he was laying on his back, still bound and tied up.

“Got you!” Myla said.

“Get this, bitch.”

And then there was an explosion of some sort. It rolled over him and pushed him down the trail until he collided head-first with a tree trunk. New pain bloomed on top of the old familiar pain of the poisons, and Luke thought he might finally have had enough. Sweet oblivion was calling, and he rushed to meet her embrace.

* * *

“Come on,” Zea said. “Open your eyes already.”

“Whuh?” Luke responded.

“Help a girl out here. You’re too heavy to move.”

He blearily realized that most of the straps binding him had been severed, leaving just a few of the metal chains remaining. More importantly, he was feeling significantly less like shit now. With a thought, he called up his status to check his condition.

[Condition: Poison- Essence of Manticore Blood (3H52M)]

“Oh, guhd,” he mumbled. “Thoo don, wun tuh shoh.”

“What’s that? I can’t understand you,” Zea said.

“Bish posnd meh. Fuh ours.”

“Yeah, I didn’t get a word of that.”

He tried to focus on Zea, but his vision was strangely blurry. It took him a second to realize the muscles controlling his eyes had also been affected by the poison. That also explained why he was having so much trouble talking; his words were basically falling out of the side of his mouth since he couldn’t get his lips or tongue moving right.

Luke tried again, but it was just more of the same result. The only intelligent word he could get out was, “Shafe?”

“Safe? Not really,” Zea said. “This thing’s burnt out now and I don’t think I can take another inquisitor in hand to hand combat.”

She held up the feather he’d given her a few days ago and the little ball core thing he’d thrown out for him to see. “Oh, uh, I guess I should probably explain some stuff. Maybe later though? I need you to get up now.”

Luke flopped over onto his side and managed to kind of drag himself to his feet. Everything felt all gummy and he didn’t see himself doing much walking. “Luut?” he slurred out, nodding his head at the bodies.

“Already took everything I could carry off them,” Zea said with a smirk. Luke tried to smile back, but judging by her expression, he was guessing he just looked demented.

They managed to get Luke off the trail and kind of hidden in the trees, though anyone doing more than a casual inspection would find him. Until the poison weakened though, that was as far as he was getting. Zea spent her time patrolling the forest, the knife he’d gotten for her in her hand.

After a few hours, the poison symptoms started to alleviate and it got a bit easier to move, but it was kind of like dragging himself out of bed when the flu was kicking his ass. He could do it, but he sure as hell didn’t want to. It turned out that not chilling a hundred feet away from a bunch of corpses was a hell of a motivator though, so the next time Zea looped around to check on him, he stood up.

“Ready to go?” she asked.

“No, but do we have much choice? Seems like we’re asking for trouble if we stay here any longer than we need to.”

“Pretty much. Good news is we’re eight gold richer.”

“I picked up a few off the three I killed too. Call it ten gold.”

The two of them went deeper into the wood, Luke slowly limping along and eating some food Zea had picked up, and Zea herself shooting him the occasional worried glance when she thought he wasn’t looking.

“You know you’re going to need some new clothes,” she said. “Yours are covered in blood.”

“Not the first time,” Luke said.

“You think they’ll keep coming after you?”

“Probably. Only good thing that’s happened to me since I got here was meeting you.” Well, that wasn’t quite true. He liked Red, and his bird-person had been nice to Luke. Still, the amount of bad things outweighed the good by a lot.

Once the poison was fully out of his system, they picked up the pace. By the time the sun came up, they were twenty miles away and Luke called for a break to rest for a few hours. They found a nice little mossy overhang to shelter under and Zea gathered some firewood while Luke cleaned himself as best he could in a nearby stream. The clothes were probably a total loss, but for the moment, he didn’t have anything better.

When he was clean, he settled down near the fire. Zea plopped down next to him and snuggled into his side. “I guess we should talk about some stuff,” she said.

“Later. Sleep now.”

She hesitated, then hugged him tighter. “Sleep is good.”