The Fusionist Book 4 -- Chapter 2

Chapter 2

“I don’t care what kind of obligation he has toward Enderflow, Magistrate.  He’s too dangerous to work with.”

“Be that as it may, he got the job done, didn’t he?”

“Well, yes, but there’s a difference between ‘getting the job done’ and what he did.  Not only did he not follow orders, which put the prisoners in danger, but he didn’t leave any of the bandits alive to tell us if they were working alone or if they had contacts elsewhere. From our preliminary investigation, there is a fairly good chance that the victims from previous caravans had been trafficked somewhere; unfortunately, we have no leads as to where they went.”

Larek drowsily awakened to the conversation he was hearing in the background, and it was only when he was fully conscious that he comprehended what was being said. Memories of his “righteous” rampage against the despicable bandits flowed through his mind as he kept his eyes closed, and he mentally shrunk back as he remembered bits and pieces of what he ended up doing to those people. While he still felt as though they deserved it for what they were doing to their victims, the conversation made him aware that he had messed up. And messed up badly.

Not only had he put the victims in danger by acting out as he did, as the bandits could’ve killed their victims when they saw him coming, but he also killed any of them that may have been able to shed light on their illicit activities. It hadn’t occurred to him at the time that what they were doing to their victims wasn’t unique, and that they had been selling people to what he could only assume were slavers of some kind. He’d heard that those that dealt in slavery existed in some of the fringe nations and empires of the world but hadn’t thought he’d ever come face-to-face with it; the forced magical slavery imposed upon the Nobles of the Kingdom was more than enough interaction with the horrible practice as it was.

“Be that as it may, if we forgive his obligation, it will set a precedent we can ill afford, Protector Ashlynn. He must serve out the rest of his service with the Protectors… though you can certainly choose how he will participate.” There was a momentary silence as the voice that Larek recognized as the one who had questioned him when he first arrived in Enderflow shuffled around for a moment. “Regardless, he’s still your responsibility, so do what you can to keep him in line for a just a short while longer.”

Larek heard footsteps walking away, followed by another set coming closer.

“You can stop pretending, Martial Larek; I can tell that you’re awake.”

Hearing Protector Ashlynn’s tired-sounding voice, he opened his eyes to find himself lying in a familiar-feeling bed in a room he recognized as the one he had been staying in since he arrived at Enderflow. How he ended up there, he had no idea, though he could only assume he had been carried back from the bandits’ camp and thrown in his room when he proven to be unconscious.

Turning his head, he saw the Protector – and she appeared just as tired as she sounded. Dark circles under her eyes, a frown that looked permanently etched onto her face, and what appeared to be old blood still covering a part of her leg armor that hadn’t been cleaned up led to an entire package that screamed exhaustion and impatience. With a sigh, she gazed at him with dead-looking eyes.

“I take it you heard my conversation with the Magistrate?” she asked, and he nodded. “I meant it when I said that you’re too dangerous to work with. Sure, you’re strong – there’s no denying that – but you’re undisciplined, reckless, and somehow this is the worst of all, untrained. We watched you essentially charge into the clearing with apparently no brain in that head of yours, throwing yourself all over the place with no sign of any skill or even a plan.  I don’t know how they do things in the Kingdom, but as far as I can tell, you don’t have even the slightest bit of training. How by all that is holy that you haven’t died yet, I’m truly perplexed.”

Larek struggled to sit up, the weakness in his body just as present as the last time he inadvertently used his Battle Art, though he wasn’t quite as hungry as he expected.

“I apologize for my behavior,” he began as soon as he was able to sit up. Looking down, he was happy to see that he was still wearing his robe, though his axe was currently leaning up against the wall out of reach. “I’ve yet to formally begin my training as a Martial and haven’t developed any… control. I wasn’t aware that such a thing would happen, however, or I would’ve warned you. It was seeing what they were doing to those people that set me off—”

“I take it that you’ve never seen anything similar before?” the Protector suddenly asked, interrupting him.

He shook his head.

“Unfortunately, it happens from time to time with us being so far to the western portion of the Empire,” she explained. “This portion of the Empire was only claimed from the wilds a few decades ago, where slavery was more prevalent than it is now. It wasn’t exactly lawful, as it isn’t now, but in the wilds… well, ‘anything goes’ is a common saying when speaking about unclaimed lands. This isn’t the first bandit group that we’ve uncovered continuing the practice, though its methods were a bit more… extreme than what we’ve seen before.”

For such a thing to be so common that it didn’t seem to faze the woman was unconscionable to the Fusionist, but then again, his own Kingdom had a slavery problem – even if most of the people didn’t know about it. Regardless, he had done what he could to at least stop what was happening with that current group of bandits, even if he had gone about it in completely the wrong way.

“Again, I apologize for my actions; it won’t happen again.”

“You bet it won’t, because I’m not taking you out ever again. You may have to complete your obligation to the town, but I’m not going to put my people at risk if you suddenly lose control like that in the future. As far as I’m concerned, as soon as your time is up, I want you gone before the day is out.”

She spoke a bit harsher than he would’ve wished, but he couldn’t deny that it was probably for the best. If Larek was faced with another situation like what had just happened, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to prevent the same thing occurring again.

“Then what do you want me to do?” he asked.

She just waved at him still in the bed. “Nothing, for now. Rest up since you were unconscious when we dragged you back in here – which was no easy feat, by the way – so I assume whatever it was you did back there had some adverse effects.”

“How long was I out, by the way?”

Protector Ashlynn thought about it for a second or two. “From the point when you collapsed to when you woke up, I’d say that it was approximately 12 hours. The wounds you had sustained during your chaotic frenzy of poor decisions seemed to be healed before we even secured the caravan victims, so you don’t have to worry about having been bedridden for days.”

That reminded him. “What about, uh, how are the victims? Do they need further healing?” While he didn’t have any Graduated Parahealing Fusions on him, he still had the Healing Surge one on his robe that would help with some of the injuries. Anything too bad would likely end up with them in a coma, but at least they would be better.

“Most of them weren’t too bad, compared to what you saw that set you off; either they were being saved from being tortured because they were to be used for something else or they just hadn’t been picked out yet. As for the others, they have already been seen to and will require extensive recuperation. Most of the damage, unfortunately, is to their minds because of the terrible ordeal they went through.”

Wanting to be useful, considering that he had messed up his role in the attack against the bandits, he offered to heal who he could. “But the worst of the injuries might end up putting them into a temporary coma,” he warned.

“You can do that?” the Protector asked, a look of skepticism on her face.  She had seen him heal Gwest, but his broken wrist and lower arm had been a relatively clean break compared to what he saw happening in the bandit’s clearing.

“I can. There are limitations and risks, but it will speed up their recovery time immensely, nonetheless.”

“Then I’ll see about you getting to see them when you have the chance. Rest of first, as most of them aren’t going anywhere and I’ll see you later.”

His minder left quickly after that, hopefully to get some sleep, he couldn’t help but think.  Larek felt bad about his uncontrolled actions and how it had likely caused even more problems, but there wasn’t any way to change the past; he could only strive to prevent the same from happening in the future and to make up for what he did however he could. That included healing those that had suffered from the bandits’ vile ministrations – but Larek needed to rest up and eat some more before he did something like that.

It was only after he got up, feeling a weakness in his body that felt like he had been wrung out to dry, and got something to eat that he started to feel a little bit more normal. With that normalcy came the ability to think about what had actually happened. Not his actions, specifically, though that was a symptom of what was worrying him; instead, he was finally able to acknowledge that his statement of losing control was completely accurate.

It was as if his rage had taken on a life of its own, and it somehow consciously (or perhaps unconsciously) tapped into his Stama to activate his Battle Art. Even thinking back on the event, he was unable to pinpoint exactly what or how it was all accomplished, and even now he had no idea how to activate Furious Rampage again even if he wanted to. Controlling his Stama was a completely foreign subject to him, and while he had unlocked Stama Subjugation after falling into the lake nearby, he still didn’t have the smallest inkling of to even touch the roiling energy inside his chest.

And he had tried, too, during the first few days in Enderflow while he was initially recovering. Without much else to do, he had done everything he could to take control of the Stama inside his body, up to and including what Penelope had mentioned about “subjugating” the energy and bending it to his will. Nothing seemed to work; it was there, just out of reach, similar to how it was before he unlocked the Skill; unlocking it seemed not to have made any difference in how he perceived the resource inside of him.

As it was, unless he was able to figure it out on his own, he was going to need instruction on exactly how to go about controlling and subjugating his Stama for use in Battle Arts. It was too dangerous to let it go for long, as it was much too powerful to be unrestrained; the proof of that was how it didn’t seem to allow him to turn on his Repelling Barrier during the fight with the Bandits. Instead of Larek controlling his Stama, his Stama was controlling him – which was a frightening feeling, to say the least.

Who knew what it would do next?

When he got back to his temporary room inside the barracks after eating his fill once again, the Fusionist laid himself back on his bed and finally looked at his notifications from the battle against the bandits.

New Battle Art Learned!

Consuming Speed

Effect: Triple Agility stat while reducing Body stat by 60%

Duration: 20 seconds

Base Stama Cost: 300

Axe Handling has reached Level 84!

Long-Distance Running has reached Level 11!

As he had half-expected, Larek had learned another Battle Art, Consuming Speed. At first, it seemed beneficial, as it tripled his Agility stat – which was probably what made the bandits seem to be moving in slow motion, as he was moving so fast in comparison. But its detriment was a reduction of his Body stat by 60%, which was not the best situation; when he added in the 30% reduction of his Body stat due to Furious Rampage, at one point he had a 90% reduction in his Body stat.

He could’ve died if the bandits had been just a little bit quicker or hit him a little bit harder while he had the new Battle Art activated. Without his Repelling Barrier being active, the safety of his body had been in jeopardy – and he had no control over anything to prevent his death. If he hadn’t gotten lucky and killed them all before they could effectively fight back, there was a very good chance he would’ve died.

Using them in combination again would be the last thing he wanted to do.

Apart from the new Battle Art, the only Skills that had increased were his Axe Handling Skill and for some reason his Long-Distance Running Skill; he could only assume the latter was because he was sprinting at his targets with the use of his new Battle Art and that made a difference somehow. There was no increase in any of his Mage Skills because he hadn’t done anything lately with his Pattern Cohesion so messed up, and the Martial Skills that would’ve been utilized during the battle – Pain Immunity and Body Regeneration – were already at their maximum Level. His uncontrolled state didn’t even try and dodge any attacks sent against him and he didn’t throw anything, so those two Skills didn’t progress any further; the same went for his Blunt Weapon and Bladed Weapon Expertise Skills, as his axe was still apparently considered a tool and not a weapon.

What surprised him, but probably shouldn’t have, was that despite using Stama during the fight, his Stama Subjugation Skill didn’t budge even an inch. He supposed this was because there was no “subjugation” going on, unless one counted “Larek Subjugation” rather than Stama – because that was how it felt.

The Fusionist supposed that he should’ve used some of his banked Aetheric Force to increase the maximum Skill level for Body Regeneration before he went out and fought the bandits, as it likely would’ve been useful, but he had been saving it all for when his Pattern Cohesion had fully recovered. He’d been planning on waiting until he could actually create Fusions again, but if he was going to head back out with the Protectors from Enderflow, it would undoubtedly be beneficial if he was able to raise a Skill level during that time. He should probably also use the AP he earned from his last increase in personal Level, but again he had been saving it until he was fully recovered.

Exhaustion overcame Larek as he considered what to do, until he eventually decided to leave close his eyes for a little bit. Before he knew it, he was awakened by sounds outside of his room, causing him to get up and stretch, feeling much better for some reason. It was only when he left the room and looked outside that he realized that he had inadvertently slept through the night.

Energized from the sleep, he went in search of more food – and to find out where the injured people they had rescued from the clutches of the heinous men he had slain were being held.