The Fusionist Book 5 -- Chapter 29

Chapter 29

It didn’t take long for Larek and Nedira to backtrack toward the village that had caused him so much trouble, as it only required a quick use of his Pattern box and a flight over to it; in all, it took him no more than two minutes from his decision to visit it and setting down in the village center. He didn’t care how it looked, he didn’t care if it brought attention to him, and he didn’t even care if they recognized him – all he cared about were the answers he needed.

Amazingly enough, the village of Rushwood seemed to have expanded since he was last there, with a dozen additional buildings haven been constructed at some point, mostly appearing to be residential houses. Not only that, but for the first time in its history, there was a wall surrounding the perimeter, just outside the nearest Rushwood trees that slowly attempted to encroach upon the village. It was only about 6 feet tall and made entirely of stone; where they got it, Larek wasn’t entirely sure. As far as he knew, there weren’t any rock quarries nearby, but things had changed enough lately that anything was possible.

“Why didn’t they make the wall out of wood like a palisade?” Nedira asked as they were landing.

Larek was barely paying attention, because his focus was on the people moving around, but he absently answered her question. “Because if they used whole Rushwood trees, they would be more likely to grow into the ground and cause all sorts of problems. It’s a miracle that the whole village isn’t destroyed, in fact, because Rushwood roots reach quite a distance and can grow new trees quite quickly.”

As soon as the box touched down and Larek made it disappear, he gained the attention of the dozen villagers that were walking around on one errand or another, and he was startled when he realized he recognized some of them. They weren’t actually villages, or at least they hadn’t been when he still lived there; instead, they were Loggers. One in particular stood out to him, if only because she was one of the only female Loggers that he ever remembered meeting.

“Luciana? Is that you?”

The powerfully built woman seemed startled that he knew her name, and a single glance at her face when she looked at him keyed him into the fact that she had no idea who he was. Either she didn’t remember what he looked like, or all that most people remembered of him was that he was abnormally tall; with his new, shorter stature, it was quite possible that no one would recognize him unless he specifically told them.

“Yes? Who are you and what are you doing here?” It wasn’t exactly a polite question, but his arrival must have startled her and the other wary-looking villagers and Loggers.

“I,” he began, thinking quickly, “used to live around here and visited this village a few times years ago. What happened? Why isn’t the Rushwood pushed back?”

She snorted in disgust, transferring the Logger’s axe she had on her shoulder to her other. He could tell right away that there was no longer any Fusion on it, though there was the barest traces of one that used to be there. “Wow, you really mean years ago, because everything pretty much fell apart around that time.”

“Yes, uh, it was a bit before the Apertures arrived.”

Luciana spit on the ground to her side in disgust. “Yeah, that was just the final nail on the coffin for our efforts here. By that point, we were already consolidating into the village, as we couldn’t hold the line anymore.”

“Why?”

She spit again. “Stupid Nobles and their lack of deliveries. We suddenly stopped receiving any tools with Fusions, and then a few months after that, supply shipments slowed to a crawl before stopping altogether. We had to resort to trading for what we could get down the river, but its been difficult simply surviving.”

Larek could completely understand the reason for everything in the area now, because without Fusions, the Loggers would only be able to work half as fast, or possibly even less. They were barely keeping everything held back behind the line as it was; with fewer trees being cut, they would quickly become overwhelmed.

As for the delay and stoppage of deliveries, he could only assume the problems began once the Scissions began to appear in random places instead of near towns and cities, as he remembered the disturbances in trade around that time. If the Baron in charge of this area had suffered sort of setback because of this, then he could certainly understand the situation.

But that didn’t answer what he needed to know.

“Did all of the Loggers move here?” he asked, looking around for his parents or even one of his siblings.

“Most of us did, yeah.”

Then they might still be here. “There was one family I met years ago, the Holstens; do you remember what happened—”

He was interrupted from behind as he heard footsteps coming up to them, and a familiar voice shouted at him in a drunken slur.

“Da Holstens? Dose *hic* good fer nuttin’ freaks? Good rid, er, ridden, riden, uh, deys gone, ya hear me? None too soooon, if yer askin’ me. Ya askin’ me?”

Larek didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. He managed to restrain himself as he did so anyway, only to see the village headman, Toran, barely upright as he held a brown bottle in his hand as he swayed drunkenly. As much as I want to punch his head off, he seems to know what happened to my family. I’ll get it out of him… and then punch his head off.

Although, with his current inebriated state, that might be difficult.

“Ah, are you the headman here?” Nedira asked politely, quickly moving up next to Toran. Larek could immediately see that she understood the problem as fast as he did, and in the process of pretending to steady him, she activated the Graduated Parahealing Fusion on her robe and allowed it to touch his skin. Within moments, the headman’s swaying began to subside and the intoxicated expression on his face began to fade.

I did not know it could do that.

Unfortunately, his drunken state was replaced by pure, unbridled anger. Not directed toward Nedira, or even Larek as far as he could tell, but at the mention of Larek’s family.

“Those damned freaks! I told them they should’ve strangled that boy when he was a baby, but they ignored me! They were the cause of all our problems, I tell you! First, that tall freak of nature tried to kill my precious daughter, Giselle, and it was only through the efforts of the SIC that they saved her from his murderous ways.

“But that brush with death only made her more afraid to live out here in the middle of nowhere, and she asked to move to a town where it was safer – but then Barrowford had to go and be attacked, wiped out to the last man, woman, and child… and Giselle perished along with them. It’s all his fault, and I hope he died a gruesome death at the hands of the Baron!

“But at least I was able to get my revenge; if not on the demon boy, then his family! I reported them to Baron Bleck and told him to investigate them for suspicion of deliberately raising a criminal. It took them over a year to respond, but respond they did! In fact, royal guards arrived and took them away, kicking and screaming like they deserved. There was even someone important that came to arrest them, someone powerful that… huh? Why don’t I remember… … … What was I saying? Oh, yes, the royal guards took them away, likely for even higher crimes than even I expected. Dragged away in chains to the capital, even; I hope they suffered before they were executed—”

Larek tried.

He really did.

Barely repressing his rage at hearing the headman speak, he took in all the information that was being imparted, as he quickly deduced what had happened to his family. Toran had sold them out. Based on the timing and the apparent memory loss the headman was suffering from, it was likely that a Gergasi – possibly even his father – had arrived in Rushwood and took them away back to the capital. What was more likely was that they were in the Enclave, where the Gergasi lived, and who knew what those blasted giants were doing to him.

But even after learning this, and knowing that it was possible that the headman might know a little more if he pressed him, he couldn’t restrain himself. It eventually became impossible as Toran mentioned his family suffering before being executed… and he snapped.

Nedira must have seen something come over him a second before he moved, because she stepped away from Toran as Larek sped forward, using every bit of his Agility stat to arrive in the blink of an eye. While the man was in mid-sentence, the Fusionist applied every iota of his Strength into his fist as he punched the headman in the face.

The head of Toran, the individual who had caused Larek to be hauled away as a criminal and sent to a Mage academy against his will, exploded from the sheer force of the blow, sending blood, bone, and brain matter flying backwards, before it splattered across the large residence building approximately 50 feet away.

The Fusionist pulled his hand back, which was covered in the nasty remains of the headman’s… head. The anger drained away as he saw the headless body of Toran collapse, the bottle in his hand dropping to the ground, the pungent liquid inside spilling out to pool with the spreading blood coming from the neck of the corpse.

He looked up, expecting Nedira to appear horrified at what he’d done, but her expression was a combination of things he couldn’t define completely – but he didn’t sense horror anywhere in there. Shock and surprise, certainly, as things had happened so quickly that it would be almost impossible for her not to be startled, but he also thought he saw hints of pity and, strangely enough, understanding and acceptance.

There was a lot to unpack there, but he didn’t have time to dwell on her reaction because she wasn’t the only one reacting. Screams erupted from various placed around the village as nearly everyone who had witnessed Larek killing the headman started to panic, as if expecting him to start going on a rampage to slaughter everyone else. The only one nearby who only looked on the scene without any dramatic reaction was Luciana, who simply stared at the corpse in the same position she was standing in when he walked up.

The powerfully built Logger eventually looked up at Larek, before nodding and saying, “Thank you.”

It took him a few seconds to register what she had said. “Uh, what? I just killed him.”

“And for that, you have my thanks,” she repeated, before taking a deep, shuddering breath as a tear squeezed out the side of her eye to roll down her cheek. “The bastard had it coming, ever since he had a hand in my own family dying. He… I don’t want to relive that time, but suffice it to say that after his daughter died, he pretty much gave up. The drinking at all hours of the day wasn’t even the worst, and he made a lot of enemies; at the same time, he seemed to make just as many friends, so I couldn’t enact my revenge upon him without likely sacrificing myself in the process. My family wouldn’t have wanted me to throw my life away for something like petty revenge, so I’ve had to deal with his sorry ass for years.

“But now he’s dead. I figure that I should feel some vindication, but really I just feel numb.” She stared at him, nodding again. “So, yes, thank you. You’ve probably invited a bit of trouble your way for what you’ve done, but I have a feeling that you can handle yourself, stranger. That being said, I would suggest you leave before you’re forced to handle yourself, because losing any productivemembers of our little village could hurt.”

Larek was speechless for a few seconds, but at a few angry shouts coming from one of the buildings, he said, “I’ll take that advice.” As Nedira walked next to him and he formed the Pattern box underneath and around them, he added, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your family, Luciana.”

“Me too. I can only hope that you’re reunited with yourfamily, Larek.”

Her words startled him for a second and he stared at her, but she subtly winked at him and turned away to leave. So, she does remember me?

He didn’t have time to ponder such a thing as he made the Pattern box rise into the air as a crowd of angry villagers started rushing toward them. He took one last look at the carnage he had enacted upon the headman, but for once, he didn’t feel the slightest bit of remorse or regret about what he’d done. Even Borex’s death had technically been an accident and Larek had regretted being forced into that position, but this had been an execution, plain and simple.

Less than a minute later, they were flying over the treetops back to the south after fleeing the village of Rushwood. While he wasn’t exactly afraid of the villagers being able to hurt him or Nedira, as he could tell that not a single one of them had any magical potential, let alone being a full Mage or Martial, there were too many things about the village that he didn’t want to be reminded of. That, and hanging around the corpse of the man he had just punched and subsequently made the head explode wouldn’t exactly be productive.

“Are you alright?”

He thought about Nedira’s question as they floated along, unsure of how to answer. On the one hand, when it came to the murder of the headman, he didn’t feel much other than a grim satisfaction; that feeling was a worrying sign to him, because he didn’t want to suddenly become unfeeling and uncaring of people’s lives, as that led down the road of the Gergasi.  At the same time, he also felt that the man’s death was justified – but who was he to pass judgement on other people? It was a conundrum that he wasn’t going to figure out right then and there, so he ignored it for now until he was in a better place to think about it all.

As for his family, he felt an anger simmering under the surface. The rage he felt earlier was like a blaze made with thin, dry, softwood that ignited quickly and burned hot, but ran out fuel in a flash. It was what made him lash out at the headman, but now that rage was just ashes from the brief expenditure of fuel.

The anger he felt now was like a low, slow burn with hardwood that was just waiting to be fed with more material and an accelerant, where it would emerge as a raging bonfire. It wasn’t directed toward the headman anymore, as the object of his sudden rage had already been eliminated, but was instead directed toward the Gergasi. After they “lost” Larek, they had obviously gone after his family, likely in the hopes that they could discover what it was about his mother that had allowed a half-breed such as Larek to survive and prosper where all their other offspring were useless. At least, that was what he assumed after what he’d learned from Ricardo back at Copperleaf Academy and from what he was told by Chinli before he was sucked into a void.

The thought of what they had done – or were currently doing – to his mother made his anger flare up, but he tamped it back down until it simply smoldered in wait. He had an almost overwhelming desire to fly straight to the Enclave and kill every single one of the Gergasi while freeing his family in the process – if they were still alive, of course.  He refused to believe that they were dead until he saw proof for himself, and if that turned out to be the case, then he would stop at nothing to tear down everything the Gergasi built as he danced on the ashes of their bones as he annihilated them all.

Fortunately, he wasn’t suicidal; he was more than aware that attempting to do something like storming the Enclave would simply end with his death. He wasn’t a match for even a single Gergasi, let alone all of them. Even with his Fusions, he didn’t stand a sliver of a chance against them…

…yet.

He was still learning, still developing his Skills and abilities, but he was nowhere near the point where he felt confident facing the patriarchal side of his family. And face him he would, because he would stop at nothing to free his family from their clutches, even at the cost of his own life.

Just… not yet. He needed to embrace all of who he was in order to succeed, and there was one thing that he hadn’t gotten a handle on, let alone mastered.

“I’m tired, angry, and,” he finally answered as he looked down at the fist that had just obliterated the headman’s skull, “dirty, but I’m surprisingly fine.” He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “He needed to go, Nedira.”

“I know. You told me about him before, remember?”

He vaguely remembered telling her about what had led to him ending up at Crystalview, but he had forgotten about it until now. He nodded silently in response.

“Besides, if you hadn’t killed him, I would’ve done it just for what he did to you.”

Larek turned in surprise and immediately saw the angry and determined look on her face. He put his arm around her – the clean one – and pulled her close, speechless for a few minutes as they flew along in the Pattern box. Eventually, he kissed the top of her head and whispered, “Thank you.” He didn’t need to explain what he meant by that, because she knew.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked after another few minutes. “It sounds like the Gergasi have your family.”

“I know, but there’s no way I can fight them right now to free them from their clutches. I’m not quite ready yet.”

“You mean, we’re not ready yet.”

Larek wasn’t sure he wanted her with him if—when—he eventually took the fight to the Gergasi, as it would be extremely dangerous, but he didn’t want to argue about that at this point. He just nodded instead without actually confirming anything.

She hesitantly asked, “So, that means that…?”

“Exactly. It’s time to go back to school.”