Watching Cecelia move at full speed was just as incredible as it was hard to track. I scrambled off of the bench to follow after her as the two of us ran towards our room. A distant racket could be heard on the floor below us, a haunting reminder of what I had just witnessed the Marked woman do to this small trading town.
“Phern! Sebil! We’ve got a problem!” Cecelia began speaking the very moment she threw the door to our room open.
“We know!” Phern replied. She and Sebil were staring out of the window on the far wall of the room. I wasn’t exactly sure how much of the event they had witnessed, but I had to assume it was enough that we were all on the same page when it came to how much danger we were in.
“Get Cornrows on his feet! We need to move!” Cecelia moved to the small table in the room, quickly latching and tightening her belt around her waist and throwing her bag over her shoulder. Thankfully, it seemed that Sebil and Phern had already grabbed their own equipment. I was still lacking even the barest of essentials, but at least it meant I never had to worry about forgetting stuff.
Sebil moved to Lucas to lift him to his feet. I watched as Sebil unsheathed a small knife from his leg to sever the ropes around the lower part of the Marked’s body. After a few moments, the only ropes tethered to the man were the ones binding around his chest, keeping his hands together by his stomach.
Despite restraints being severed all over his body, the Marked seemed to pay no mind. He instead moved his head to face the direction of the window. He must have sensed something outside of the room that surprised him. I heard a small gasp slip out of his lips, packaged with a tightening of his fists within the magical restraints. I couldn’t help but wince at the pure force he exerted into clenching his fists until they shook with strain.
“Laia… what are you doing?”
The words left Lucas’ mouth in an almost inaudible disbelief. I wasn’t sure anyone else in the room heard the words aside from Sebil and I. Laia? Could that be the other Marked? His reaction only served to boil the concern in my gut, if cornrows was shocked at the other Marked, we were in for a real treat.
“Where are we going, love?” Sebil spoke the words aloud, but it was clear he meant them for Cecelia.
“I-I’m not sure. But anywhere is better than where they saw us. If we can get close to the barrier, we could try to find out what kind of barrier it is.” Cecelia took one last look out of the window, and if her reaction was anything to go by, it wasn’t a pretty sight.
“You won’t get through it.” Lucas spoke in a grave tone. For someone who always spoke as if everything he said was the most important essential information, his voice took on an even more serious tone. I wasn’t sure you could get more serious than his usual, but here we were.
“Why’s that, love? What do you know about it?” Sebil asked, maintaining a kind and friendly tone despite being given every reason not to.
The Marked hesitated, but eventually opened his mouth to speak. A scream cut his answer short before he could even begin. Wait, that was my scream.
My body must have reacted before my brain could catch up. A piercing pain danced across my chest as four shiny tips of metal greeted me less than cordially. That was a pitchfork. In my chest.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that the first person to react would be Cecelia. What I was surprised about, was that she was preparing to drop kick me! Her boots, fortunately for her and unfortunately for me, had a layer of metal on the bottom. Her foot landed squarely on the four prongs sticking out of my chest, dislodging the pitchfork from my chest and throwing back me and my attacker in one swift move.
I had to give her points for creativity, but I was going to dock a hefty penalty for kicking me square in the chest to achieve her goals.
Once I had regained my bearings, I looked towards the person who had just stabbed me in the chest. The all too cheery receptionist who may or may not have scammed us was lying on the floor next to me, dazed from having been thrown backwards into the wooden railing that led down to the stairs. She turned to face me with an expression that I could only describe as hollow. Her eyes glowed with an eerie darkness that felt like it could pull me into its void-like grasp at any moment.
Her sudden crawl towards the pitchfork that lay on the floor between us shook me from my investigation of the magic burning in her eyes. She wrapped a hand around the pitchfork before I did, but I managed to grip onto the lower end of the farming implement as she tried to pull it away from me. Gods she was strong. There’s no way that a receptionist like that had this sort of unnatural strength. Had whatever magic took hold of her also increased her strength? Her viscous yank threatened to pull my arm from my socket, but I had managed to barely hold on, being dragged back onto my feet as she backed away from our doorway.
“What did she do to you?! Can you hear me in there?”
I pleaded to the woman, doing my best to avoid the pain circling around my chest as I did so. Thankfully, her pitchfork was entirely mundane, meaning that I could already feel the four stab wounds stitching themselves together like construction workers making overtime.
The woman did not respond. It was unclear if she even heard, honestly. There was absolutely no reaction to my words across her face. It almost looked like I was watching a sleepwalking person. All but her eyes seemed limp, like whatever magic was puppeteering her was only utilizing the barest essentials to achieve its goal.
The receptionist twisted herself around, attempting to once more pry me off of the pitchfork that both of us held firmly with our hands. Her maneuver only served to trade our positions, leaving me otherwise unaffected.
“Is that nice lady still in there somewhere? I-I can help you!”
The woman rotated the pitchfork counterclockwise with such immense force I found my feet leave the wooden floor altogether. Before I could react to her attack, she kicked me into the nearby wall hard enough to splinter the wood behind me. Gods she was fast, she fought just like the Marked at the church. Was she directly controlling this woman with her magic?
I pushed off of the wall with both arms to dislodge myself from the cozy interior wall of the inn, before the pitchfork pierced through my right arm, nailing me to the very wall I had just removed myself from. Give me a break, girl.
I’m sure you could expect that being stuck to a wall with a pitchfork in your arm is an unpleasant feeling, but did you know that being kicked repeatedly in the stomach while pinned to said wall hurts even worse? After a few of the kicks landed squarely in my stomach, the final one hit me directly in my diaphragm, knocking all of the wind from my lungs. I knew I needed to break free, or I’d be tenderizing repeatedly until I was fit to serve in a fancy restaurant. I clenched my teeth and dropped all of my weight to the floor, ripping my arm from the pitchfork and freeing myself, tearing off a chunk of my arm with it. That would heal, right?
Probably.
The woman had already been winding up another kick, which sailed over my shoulder and into the wall where I had just been. I took advantage of my position underneath her to grab by the waist and throw her into the railing that surrounded the staircase. She slammed into it with a resounding thud, the wooden creaking uncomfortably underneath the sudden stress. I moved towards her and restrained her arms. I managed to grab both of her hands before she regained her footing.
“Quit it! You’re not gonna win this, don’t throw away your life for that woman!”
Again, there was no reaction whatsoever. Emotionally, at least. Physically, she reacted quite violently. With no care for her own safety, she kicked one of the wooden supports of the railing with her foot, rendering the structure unstable enough that the two of us fell right through the railing and down into the staircase below. I could see Cecelia and Phern race out of the room as we tumbled down into the staircase and became a painful amalgamation of arms and legs that rolled down the wooden stairs.
The two of us landed at the bottom of the stairs, completely disoriented and exhausted. I wasn’t sure about the receptionist, but I had hit my head more than a few times on the way down. A pregnant pause filled the space between the two of us. There was a splintered piece of the railing that looked like a makeshift wooden stake that sat conspicuously on the floor between us. The two of us looked at the improvised stake, and then at each other.
“Please don’t make me-”
I started yet another appeal to the woman, but she had already grabbed the stake and pushed it towards my chest. I barely caught it before it had a chance to rip it’s way inside of me. Our arms strained during our power struggle, the splintered tip of the wood steadily getting closer to my heart. She knew exactly what she wanted, and it was me out of the equation in order to focus on my allies. If I died now, there’s no telling how many of my friends-were they friends?- would die while I was recovering. I couldn’t afford to let that happen.
I kicked the woman’s leg that was supporting her weight on top of me, causing her to collapse as I twisted the two of us around. By the time I had reversed our positions, with me on top of the Marked puppet, the makeshift stake had already been pushed into her heart. I immediately pulled back, watching with a grim nausea as the kind woman who had given us a perhaps too expensive room choked up blood before lying still.
I had been killed in the past few days, that was certain. But I had told myself that all of those were necessary. That they were people who would stop at nothing to hunt me like an animal. But this woman wasn’t a threat. She was just a poor receptionist caught up in something entirely above her knowledge, much like I was. I watched as the inky black color filling her eyes drained and receded, leaving the lifeless eyes of an innkeeper behind.
“Hey, bandit, are you okay? We gotta keep moving.”
I think it was Cecelia who was talking to me. I didn’t dare look away from the corpse across from me, as if the moment I looked away, the body might vanish, and nobody would care to remember her. I couldn’t have that, I didn’t want her to be left here to be forgotten, caught up and discarded in something bigger than the town of Thrum had ever deserved to be wrapped up in.
“Bandit!”
Cecelia was trying to get my attention once more. I didn’t look at her, but quickly felt her start to pull me away from the body. I resisted at first, attempting to stand my ground where I was. She pulled my face towards her own, those icy blue eyes delving into my eyes like a wide ocean.
“As dirt on earth, I root my heart. Say it.”
“As dirt on earth, I root my heart.” I replied.
Once I had begun, it was easy to continue to repeat the phrase like she had shown me just a couple of minutes ago. I felt myself relax and return to the moment, aware of the chaos happening around me. Perhaps there really was something to that technique.
The front door, which was being held shut by Sebil, was being bombarded with countless people outside. Phern was standing with Lucas by the back door, watching Cecelia and I. How long had they been waiting for me?
However long it had been, I didn’t dare make it longer. Cecelia ushered me towards the backdoor, and as I ran, Sebil peeled off from the front door to join us. The five of us stumbled out of the backdoor to the inn, a resounding crack from where the front door was telling us it was just in time.
“Where do we go?!” Phern yelled towards no one in particular as she turned to face the door we had just left through. I watched in fascination as she closed the door and began to collect her turquoise slime around her hands. The small half-elf pressed her hands into the door, the goop leaping from her fingertips, eager to coat the door in it’s viscous slimy form. Once the door had been covered fully, the slime seemed to quickly harden, making a glossy, almost glass like blockade.
“The further from her, the better.” Lucas stated plainly. Why was he giving us advice? There wasn’t any way that we could trust him, right?
Cecelia watched Phern nod her head, and nodded in response. “Alright, cornrows, I hope you know what you’re doing.”
What?! Why was Cecelia listening to Lucas? She is the most distrustful person in this ground, aside from possibly me, and yet she listens to the man who killed me less than 24 hours ago?
I wanted to voice my displeasure in a very strongly worded criticism, but the sudden thumping from behind the blockaded door quashed that plan.
Gods I’m gonna kill that Marked if this was a trick.
‘Not if I get to him first, fledgling. Marked always taste the best.’
“The stables on the far side look like they’re the furthest we can get from the Marked.” Cecelia pointed towards the large stables at the far side of Thrum. It made sense they were unusually big, this was a town known for trading goods.
We weren’t afforded much time to consider, so the five of us started to run. All around us, ordinary looking people swung the doors to their residences, with some form of improvised weapon, and began to walk towards us. It was horrifying to witness what had just been such a calm and peaceful town be overtaken by an otherworldly force that stripped their autonomy without a care. This was what a Marked was capable of? How could the Empire allow something like this?
I might not have been the only one asking myself though questions it seemed. Each time I risked a glance towards Lucas, his face was contorted in what looked to be a frightening mixture of anger, horror, and betrayal. As long as he wasn’t a liability, I didn’t care much for what he was thinking.
The swarm of possessed townsfolk was slowly matching our pace towards the stable, but with how much distance we had on them to begin with, I had no doubt we would make it there first. The problem was that we had no idea where to go from there.
“Not to be too much of a bother, love. But why are we going away from her? You seem to know what's happening, care to explain how to stop it?”
“Like I would help the beasts’ group.”
“Then do not think of it as helping us! I’ve seen your face, love. I know what has happened to these innocent people is hurting you. Do it for them!” I once again had to hand it to Sebil, he sure knew how to appeal to people’s desires. It was like he was a surgeon at understanding what people want, and how to help them get it. That thought came with an uncomfortable question of just how long it was before he used that maliciously. I hoped that wasn’t the man he was.
His words seemed to strike some kind of chord with the Marked man. Albeit begrudgingly, he began to explain what kind of spell the female Marked had performed.
“It’s forbidden magic, something she never should have used! She has used the mana of the town for herself, forming a barrier of their will, and controlling them with her own whims. I-I… I have never seen it performed before.”
“That’s awful!” Phern cried out as another nearby house swung open to reveal another family that would soon join the group accumulating behind us like a wave roiling up to shore.
“How do we stop it?” I asked.
“She is still limited by her own mana reserves. Her capacity is vast, but it has it’s limits. We need to drain it anyway we can for her to drop the spell. The more people she controls, the more she uses. The further away she is from them, the more it takes to maintain.”
“So we exhaust her, and we escape?”
“You exhaust her, and the townsfolk are safe. We’ll see about your ‘escape’ after that.” Lucas spat at Cecelia. Clearly helping us was not an act he took lightly, but for the moment, our goals aligned, and that would have to be enough to trust him momentarily.
We made it to the stables. A long building that had enough space to hold the horses of any trader who was spending the night in town. The large double doors at the front were swiftly closed, and barricaded by Lucas and Sebil. I watched as Phern made the same realization as me. There were windows in nearly every pen, large enough for humans to possibly squeeze through if they tried. It seemed as though Phern already had a plan for that, however, as she swiftly started going up to all of the windows and throwing a blob of slime at them. They hardened, much like the door before, which would certainly prove more difficult to break than the glass that revealed the encroaching horde.
The building had interior support beams throughout the structure, which hovered above the animals that were being stirred by the sudden loud noises. The space up there was quite vast. I began to think of ways to get each of us onto the beams to avoid the citizens if they managed to break through.
“A-are you here to help?”
I jumped, under the impression that one of the puppets had managed to find their way in already. When I turned to face the voice however, I noticed this person wasn’t affected by the spells. Clear white sclera with brown irises, thank gods.
Wait, I knew this person.
“Danil? What are you doing here?!”
“Once my shift at the gate ended, I came here to the stable to feed the horses. B-but the sky, it’s gone! I don’t know what’s going on!”
“Hey, it’s okay, calm down Danil.”
“You’re adventurers right? Are you here to kill the monster that’s doing this?”
“Uh, yeah! There’s a monster hurting people out there, but we’re gonna fix it okay?”
I saw Lucas face my direction with a cold frown when I described the other Marked as a monster. Maybe if she didn’t want to be called one, she wouldn’t act like one, I thought. If what Lucas had said earlier was true, then Danil was most likely left alone, being too far from the inn to be of any use when she cast the spell.
“Oh thank you! I don’t know what to do but I’m scared that my family is going to get hurt out there.”
My heart ached for the boy, this was yet another person being swept up in something greater. I didn’t have nearly enough time to explain exactly what was happening, so instead, I attempted to simplify it.
“The townspeople are being controlled by the monster right now, Danil. We just need to hide in here for a little bit until the spell ends.”
“O-oh. Okay! I can help barricade windows!”
If there was one thing this overexcited guard knew how to do, it was give it his all.
“No. Sorry, but you’ll be safer if you stick to the back, we’ll try to keep them from coming in, okay?”
“But I can-”
“No.” Lucas suddenly joined the conversation. “You will not die because of a desperate and deplorable spell. What’s the safest place in this building?”
“Why would I answer to a bandit like you!”
Lucas sighed, and I took over. “It’s okay, just answer him for now.” I spoke nervously, feeling a cold glare from Lucas wash over despite knowing he wasn’t looking at me. Not physically, at least.
“Fine. The delivery room has a solid door so that no one can go in and steal other people’s deliveries.” Danil spoke with conviction, like he believed he was the hero in a book. It was admirable, but not helpful in the current situation.
“Go there. Do not leave until you know it is safe.” Lucas ordered Danil with the same serious voice he always used.
Danil looked at me, as if to ask me what he should do. I smiled, he really did think ‘adventurers’ were the ultimate authority. “Do what he says, we want you safe, kid.” It felt odd calling him a kid when he was most likely 15 when I was only 23, but in this situation, it felt right to say.
When the kid left, Lucas spoke up. “He should not look up to someone like you.”
“Like you’re any better? Your buddy out there is the one putting him in danger!”
“You hide behind the child to make yourself look honorable. I know the beast you are. An animal like you could care less if the boy dies.”
“Oh fuck you. I’m trying to help the kid because I don’t want him killed by his own town! Not because I want to prove a point to you.”
“I can only hope that you are killed in the crossfire of this battle without any innocents dying.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you too!” I moved back towards the entrance of the stables where Sebil, Phern, and Cecelia were attempting to fortify the stable from the first few civilians to descend upon it.
“That’s gotta be the whole fucking town out there!” Cecelia yelled towards the rest of us from her position down the first aisle of pens.
“That’s good.” Lucas said flatly.
“How is that good, love?”
“It means we will only need to hold out for a short time. Controlling this many people at this far of a distance will drain her quickly. My estimate is that we will only need to hold out for around 5 more minutes.”
“I shouldn’t need to say this, but since the Marked is convinced otherwise, I don’t want any bloodshed!” I spoke loudly enough for the whole group to hear. I figured it wouldn’t need to be allowed, but I would rather be safe than sorry. I didn’t want any innocent people to die today.
Any more, that is. I could still see the poor receptionist choking up blood at the bottom of the stairs. I couldn't let that happen to anyone else.
A loud thump rattled the planks and furniture piled at the double doors. Sebil moved to the door to attempt to add more reinforcement to it.
“It looks like they’re all here!” Phern cried out, looking out of one of the windows that she quickly coated in her slime.
5 Minutes. We could survive for 5 minutes.