Domr
patreon
Bk 2 Ch. 31 Apostate 3
🕑 Added 2024-08-06 01:25:05 +0000 UTC31.
Naomi watched the large [Rock Hound] as it crouched down, slate gray fur blood stained around its muzzle. Its wide ears were pinned back to its triangular skull as a rowling growl rattled the pebbles around her feet. Naomi breathed smooth and deeply, her sword pointed at the creature’s chest.
She activated [Lunge] and [Pierce] as she crossed the distance and stabbed through the sturdy fur on the monster’s chest. The hound howled in pain, blood coughing up as it staggered back. Naomi disengaged, swinging her blade behind her while activating [Cut]. The second hound had thought to hamstring her while her back was turned, but her experience and instincts were in perfect sync. The red aura around the blade let the sword cut right through the second hounds naturally strong coat.
The wide head of the hound rolled across the ground and Naomi watched as her team finished the fight. Her girls had sent seven of the hounds off in a hail of arrows and Marcus spun his assegai with skill as he fought the last standing monster. Two more had already been felled by him, the pack destroyed to the last.
Iseul Flores and several other members of the harvest team were already moving up to begin their gristly work. The meat from the creatures was inedible, but the coats would be good insulators once they figured out how to cure them. The damn geas kept her from telling them, but she was leading them easily enough to where she wanted.
Their teeth and claws would be useful later and she had gotten them to pickle the hearts and livers for now. It had taken some wrangling, getting them onboard keeping the precious organs, but her future alchemists would thank her. The roaming packs infested the entirety of the mountain range, a scourge of high Initiate level monsters that had slain dozens of people already.
There should be one up here who was standing unbent and unbroken. Adam Murtaugh should be in the area. It would take months for him to work his way out of the mountains by himself, growing lost in the wilderness and killing anything and everything that stood in front of him. He’d be a monster when he emerged, half-savage and barbaric.
He’d killed dozens of her people in the original timeline. He hadn’t become a Champion, but he had almost done it before his death. She had been there for that, it had been like cornering an old grizzly bear. She was here to make sure that didn’t happen.
“Someone’s out there!” Trina said, the scout perched on a tree limb. It was right on time. They’d been patrolling and hunting the hounds for weeks, hoping to find the man. Nia and Tia were both on alert instantly, pulling back and drawing arrows to aim at the forest around them. Marcus finished the last of the hounds with a single thrust and interposed himself between the girls and the forest.
The harvest team paused their work, looked at the fighters and went back to work. They were well trained and trusted Naomi and the others to protect them while they worked. The delicate act of harvesting should be done as soon as possible to keep the harvested remnants as potent as possible.
Naomi shifted her weight and looked at the forest as the tall man walked out of the forest. He was rangy and tanned, his hair disheveled and had gray laced through the red. His arms were bloody up to the elbow and he had a haunted look to his eyes that masked the kernel of insanity that flickered there.
“Hello!” Naomi called out to him. Even with the full breadth of her knowledge and her family around her, she was nervous about this encounter. He was too dangerous to live and develop like he had in his last life, but he could be a potentially game altering player if she managed to sway him.
“Hello,” he rasped. His voice was weak and thin as if he hadn’t spoken in weeks. He stumbled free of the brush and she could see he was barefoot, his jeans shredded to the point they were hardly scraps. His shirt was in a similar state, more rust red than the original white it had been.
“Do you require assistance?” Marcus asked. He was still a bleeding heart. She had gotten them all out of the city before things gotten truly bad.
“Water? Food?” he asked, as if he himself didn’t know what was needed.
“We have that. Are you hurt?”
“No. I don’t think so. Not anymore.”
That was the problem with his entire class. No matter how much damage you put into the man, as long as he could touch you, he stayed alive. Grievous wounds would heal nearly instantly with a single punch.
“Why don’t you sit down and we can get you some food and water. And some clothes.” Naomi waved at a space between them and the forest. Still away from her girls but not out in the woods alone again.
“Ok.” He let his legs collapse and he fell into a boneless pile as he waited, staring at them like they held all the answers in the world. It would have been easier if he had been on Duncan’s list. Adam had been a local threat, not a continent threat so his name had been left with Naomi to deal with as she saw fit.
As some of the harvesters brough the wild man food and water and a blanket, she let herself slowly relax. He hadn’t flown into a murderous state and tried to kill all of them, so it was going better than last time already. She was still wary of him, keeping her sword at the ready incase it was just a ruse for them to lower their guard.
He ate like an animal, ripping apart the food with his fingers inches from his face, shoveling it in as fast as he could. He swilled water in great gulping pulls, spilling all along himself as he cared not for the attention paid to him.
“What’s your name?” Marcus asked after the man finished off his meal.
“Adam.”
“My name is Marcus. That’s my wife, Naomi, and my daughters Nia and Tia.” Marcus pointed out each person in turn, all of them giving the wild man quick waves.
“I have a boy about their age. Had. I don’t know now.” He was broken, the words hardly more than a whisper. Naomi knew that hurt at a level that nobody could experience unless they lost their own child. She had lost her girls before. She had felt that pain that left you a hollow thing.
She put her hand on his shoulder slowly. He tensed at first, his eyes bulging as he looked at her as if he was ready to fight. He slowly relaxed, the muscles in his back releasing as he leaned into her palm. Marcus mirrored her and three of them stood there for a moment as Adam cried silently.
“What is his name?” Nia asked. She had put her bow down and rehomed her arrow.
“Cameron. He was, is, a good boy. Bit bull headed and has a terrible sense of humor. But he was my boy.”
“If he’s anything like you, I’m sure he survived. Can you tell us what’s around this area? Our group is quite far from here?” Naomi implored. She couldn’t recall if his son had been around, but she didn’t think he had been. An early fatality most likely.
“The damn dogs. Got a couple sasquatch looking things, but they’re tough. I couldn’t kill it, just had to run after the first few hits. Some walking rocks. No food. Not a lot of water.”
“Were there any other survivors?”
“Not after the third day. It was just me.”
“Ok, guys, let's wrap this up and head home,” Naomi ordered, swinging her hand around in a circle to start getting all of the patrol ready to move. The harvesters finished their work, washing their hands and grabbing the newly acquired pelts and organs. The last members of her team trickled in, most of them support or scouts. None of them had truly impressed her, and as much as she loved them, her daughters and husband were competent but not exemplary.
Adam Murtaugh would be her first true elite she had recruited. As long as she had found him before his sanity truly snapped away. As the teams gathered up she thought of Duncan and his task to finish off the interloper. It was a pity, the boy hadn’t really meant to be there and from all accounts he had stuck to his role and never played outside of the lines like so many others had.
Duncan would kill him quickly and painlessly as possible, if nothing more than to spare Cara the extra heartache. She wondered what her other compatriots were up too and if they were having as much success as she was.
Comments
Dominick Ruiz
Yeah. Chapter 4 he's mentioned as having been in the mountains when it goes down and he comes back changed
Nicholas Wheeler
So is that the dad of the MC's childhood friend?
