The Way Ahead

“That was so cool!” Yathal yelled, “You were all like woah, and then slice and chop and they didn’t even see it coming! How’d you do it?”

“You saying something, kid?” the newcomer asked, “Speak properly or don’t at all.”

“I know! Getting big and strong, just like you. That’s what I wanna do. Just you watch me, I’ll do it too!”

“Hey there kid, stay back. Quit blabbering and go play with your dog."

“Yeah! I know, it was so cool! Can you teach me that?”

Wait, they were just talking completely past each other, what was...

Oh right.

“You don’t have Polyglot, do you?” Edwin asked, “I know Yathal doesn’t because he’s still pushing Language to sixty-”

Kyni barked.

“Sixty-six, whatever. Doesn’t matter right now. But you’re what, tier three?” He sized up the Skills slowly beating within the boy’s body, trying to get a feel for their nature and density. None felt that high of a level, but there were quite a few complex Skill structures present. Not quite so complex as Inion, more than the average citizen or Lefi, more on par with Rillah, “Tier four? And you didn’t take the single most useful Skill in the entire System?”

“Words are meaningless. The only language I need is the one of blood and Skills. What did words ever do?”

“Found empires, topple tyrants, create civilization, enlighten entire swaths of people as to the nature of reality? Tell you what your Skills can do?”

“Nothing but dust on the wind. The moment anyone finds themselves out of their depth, the first thing they always want to do is talk. It’s disgusting, they don’t have the strength to defend themselves so they debase themselves pleading for mercy or proclaiming their innocence as though that has anything to do with their survival.”

“Are you listening to me… at all?”

“What makes you worth listening to?”

“We… have stuff to say?” Edwin shook his head, “Never mind.”

“It is impressive that you have achieved such a high Tier at such a young age, young…”

“Don’t call me young, don’t you go dismissing me just because of my age. I’ll tear you inside out if you aren’t careful, you little brat.”

The blade was back in the boy’s hand and aimed at Lefi’s throat. Lefi took a half-step back and raised his hands in a placating gesture, “Peace. I apologize for offending you.”

The raven-haired rogue nodded grimly, scowling as he stowed his weapon once more, flitting like a shadow…

Edwin squashed the slight influence he felt from the Skill, twisting his perceptions to make the kid seem more intimidating than he really was. It wasn’t powerful, but it was annoyingly persistent, and Adaptive Defense didn’t deem it enough of a hazard to actually defend against. Not that he’d want it to un-defend from the cold, that was much too useful. Though Rillah did offer to help him out if he needed it next time and he wouldn’t mind taking her up on that offer…

Bad Edwin. Stay focused, he blinked and tried to pull his inner thoughts back in order, coming to an amusing realization. Heh. So much for ‘words being meaningless.’

“Good.”

“So… what’s your name?” Edwin finally asked.

“I have no name. None that the world hasn’t already taken from me. I am but a nameless shadow of vengeance, so you may call me just that. I am Dark Shadow of Vengeance.”

Edwin sighed. Hmm… According to Alchemy and a brief consultation with some of his alchemy notes, he could make a fairly effective bright pink dye with mostly just what he had, assuming he could get some… wait, a ‘pink’ was a kind of flower? Was that where the color name had come from?

He privately swore to give the guy a coat of bright pink paint at some point. He didn’t expect it would have much of a positive impact on his behavior, but it would at least be amusing to see, and honestly that was all he could really hope for at this point.

“So then… what are you avenging?”

“My parents. I never knew them, but I managed to track down an old friend of theirs, and before he was murdered, he told me that my parents were exceptionally wealthy and powerful, to the point where they inspired jealousy in the eyes of their neighbors. So, they were murdered and their killers never brought to justice. So now, I’m hunting down every last clue I can find about them, trying to discover who wielded the knife which threw me to the streets. I am a perfect weapon, carefully crafted to discover secrets, prying them from the lips of scum who may have them if needed, and return the same kind of care to those who helped my parent’s murder as they showed me. That’s what Sanguine Shadow is for, finding the things I can’t see.” He summoned his shadow-raven once more, giving it a brief stroke with his hand before sending it into the air, where it flew off into the distance.

“So did you ever get actual advice from a Registrar? I’m… not sure how you got to your current class choices.”

“As though I’d ever let them strap me into their little chairs and pick apart everything that makes me me. No, I’ve crawled my way from the ground since I was born.”

Edwin felt the boy- he refused to call him by that absolutely absurd name, he’d go with… Bob. Nobody scary could be called Bob.

Okay, that was decidedly untrue. Humor of name and actual danger were entirely unrelated, but it would be much harder to take them seriously. Actually, he wondered if he could…

Edwin ‘pushed’ at the Skill, and he felt Polyglot click surprisingly easily. He’d need someone to actually say Bob’s name, but if he did it right, it should translate for him as simply ‘Bob,’ and probably the other way around as well.

Where was he? Oh, right. There was a mental Skill probing at his defenses. Well, it seemed to have subsided after his momentary distraction, so… mission success? Whatever. A quick query to Memory filled him in on what he’d missed.

“I grew up on the streets, you see. No mother or father to coddle me, make me weak. No, all I ever had was what nobody could take from me. My Skills and my fists. So I used them, and I used them well. By the time I grew up, everyone knew better than to mess with me. They did, I’d kill them and use their head as a stone to throw at the next fool who wanted to pick a fight.”

Well that was a morbid picture, though Edwin couldn’t help but wonder how long these heads usually sat around before being used for. Were they decomposed at all?

“I learned real quickly that none of the other kids were my friends either, and the ones that said they were were always the worst. I threw a bunch of their heads over the years, though a few just ended up dying on me, being too weak to truly survive the moment I left them alone. So, better to be alone. I was fast and I was strong though, and my little corner always had fresh blood from the latest little punk trying to prove themselves with their stupid, weak little ‘Imperial Classes.’ That weakness isn’t for me, so I embraced the darkness. The Imperials all use the light, you see, and it weakens them. So I knew better, and the night became mine. I was reborn in the darkness, molded it, made it my ally and my kingdom. But evil still lurks in the bright rays of day, so I must venture beyond my home to confront it, and to spare the innocent for one more day.”

“So what brought you out here?” Lefi prompted. Yathal was sitting wide-eyed and in awe of Bob. Edwin didn’t know how much he could understand of the morbid tale, but he hoped it was minimal.

“The trail for my parent’s murder is old, so I need to find every last possible lead that might exist, and one of those leads was a silver and gold medallion which belonged to my mother. I had it for some time, after I pried it out of the cold, dead hands of the assassin who killed the avior who knew my parent’s friend, who was also murdered while I was asking them questions, and their killer enslaved me for several years as an assassin.

“Eventually, I got good enough I was able to assassinate my employer and took the medallion back, and tried to uncover what the writing on its back meant. I nearly had deciphered its secrets when a pickpocket swiped it from me. I taught the pickpocket a lesson in why you don’t do that, of course, but he had already passed it along to his fence. He, I needed to beat out that he’d passed it along to a merchant headed south, but before I could track down and find that merchant, I discovered that he’d been murdered and eaten by a river drake. Then, that drake was killed by a hunter who…”

This is getting ridiculous, Edwin mused as he tuned out the endlessly-talkative man, Are all adventurers living caricatures, or is this just really unlikely? And if it’s the former, what am I a caricature of?

“Then, after I escaped my enslavement, which is what gave me this scar, I found that it had been stolen by another bandit who had been recruited into a larger group of malcontents, and they’d settled down and were preying on helpless travelers in this area. Unfortunately, they were exceptionally good at hiding themselves, so I prowled these woods for a week, waiting for them to show themselves before you came along and finally baited them out. Unfortunately, none of them have the medallion on them, which means it must be back at that lair, which, now that I have some of their blood, Sanguine Shadow is now able to look for.”

“That’s so cool! How can I get a raven of my own? How’d you get that sword? Am I as strong as you were when I was at my age? Where’d you get that scar? What’s the chain on your wrist for? Why’d you kill all those people. Well, other than it looking cool anyway. Can I...”

Bob stopped paying attention to Yathal altogether as his shadow-raven swooped back in, and he looked at it for a few seconds before nodding tersely, “Excellent. Sanguine Shadow here has found the bandit’s lair. It is not far from here, but you had best come with me for your own safety. I suppose you may as well benefit from my intervention as well, you may have all that they plundered which I am not interested in myself. Just mind yourselves, I do not want to have to save your pathetic little lives again today. If I’m going to go through the trouble of ensuring your safety once, I may as well ensure that your meaningless little existences aren’t snuffed out before dark.”

“Was that a compliment, or an insult?” Edwin wondered aloud, quietly enough that only Lefi and Kyni were likely to hear him, “I genuinely couldn’t tell.”

Lefi let out a bark of laughter, “Why must it be either?”

“Point,” he admitted as Bob started to walk north, and Lefi moved to follow him. “We’re going along with this guy?” he asked.

“He does not mean us harm, so you needn’t fear him thusly.”

“No, I’m not worried about him,” Edwin shook his head, “I more just can’t believe we’re humoring him.”

“Ah, well this certainly does seem to be an interesting diversion, does it not?”

“Interesting? I guess technically, in that it’s not what we’re usually up to.”

“Precisely! It is, after all, not as though we are in any particular hurry.”

“And? ‘We have time’ isn’t exactly sufficient on its own.”

“And I believe that this could be a valuable experience for Yathal.”

That got a distinctly raised eyebrow as Edwin incredulously pointed at where the kid was still eagerly trying to talk at the brooding man, heedless of the language barrier “Valuable in a good way? How?”

“He’ll quickly see the faults in the approach, and gain a greater appreciation for proper behavior.”

“He’s eight.”

“Nearly nine.”

“That’s not the,” he sighed, “How long has it been since you were that age?”

“Some decades.”

“Right. And I suppose you were just as… exceptional in your mind as you are now, yeah? Yeah. I think you may be forgetting just how influential the ‘cool older kids’ can be when you’re finding your footing. And him? Mysterious, brooding, and utterly unflappable? Yeah no, that’s about the coolest you can get at that age. If we’re lucky, Yathal will just not want to cut his hair for a long time so that it can fall slightly over his eye.”

“Worry not! All will be fine. I know how these things fall by the wayside.”

“Are you sure?” Edwin was more than willing to concede that he had no idea what normal behavior was, so if Lefi was certain…

“I am.”

“Okay…” Edwin sighed, “So then should we really all go, though? I can’t imagine we’ll actually get that much out of this.”

“Of course! This is clearly a sidequest of grave import, it is imperative we are not separate for this! Who knows what fascinating thing we might uncover that we all would want to be together for.”

“Then should we call the girls back? We’re already separate, after all, and I don’t want them to show up to all this mess while we’re off with Bob.”

Lefi raised an eyebrow.

“Wait, did my trick not work? That would sound really weird if it didn’t, I’m sure.”

“No, it functioned admirably. I merely was… surprised, by your decisions.”

Edwin shrugged, “Not sure how to respond to that. Anyway, calling them back?”

The Adventurer nodded, “Though strife would not be beneficial, I will inform them that we will be leaving for a short time, and allow them to come to their own conclusions.”

He stepped away, a set of Skills blossoming in the air around him and pulsing outwards. As he wasn’t the intended recipient, Edwin of course heard none of the Discrete Communication, but the Skill- derived from a combination of Whispering and Shouting- was one he was fairly familiar with by now. Depending on how far away they were, the message might take a few seconds to reach Rillah and Inion, but they’d hear it soon enough.

Sure enough, less than a minute later, Edwin felt the bundle of magic that heralded Rillah’s return, and she swooped down, alighting gently atop the carriage before hopping down. Finally, Edwin would have someone else on his side that Bob was absolutely insane and should be avoided.

“Oh, who’s this?” she asked

“You may call me Bob, but I am the one responsible for saving the sorry hides of your traveling companions.”

“Oh, is that right? You saved my friends?”

“You shoulda seen it! It was so cool! He didn’t even need to try, he just walked up and wham, they all exploded and lost their heads! He’s got this really cool sword that even Lefi doesn’t have that’s all curved and is super duper sharp! Just a little flick and then blood!”

“Well that sounds very impressive,” she agreed, reaching down and picking up Yathal, “Have you been nice to him?”

“I tried,” he pouted, “But he can’t understand me.”

“Hm. Well, do you see what we mean why Polyglot is so important?”

“Yes… I’d take it now if I could!”

“I’m sure you would,” she smiled. “So, you saved them?”

“Correct. I was hunting down a coven of absolute scum, bandits who prey upon the weak and defenseless, and your… companions were to be their next targets. So, I stopped them.”

“Well, I’m sure we would have managed.”

“Are you responsible for that ruffian?” Bob pointed at Lefi.

“Am I responsible for this ruffian?” Rillah asked, “You know what, yeah. I am definitely responsible for him, I shouldn’t have left him unattended for so long, and what makes you ask?”

“Oh, he’s just very rude and brusque. You ought to teach him manners before someone less tolerant than I decides to cut out his tongue.”

“I will… keep that in mind. Thank you so much for your generosity.”

“Good, you recognize my benevolence. Now come on, I do not wish to have to rescue you again from whatever bloodthirsty rabbit decides to maraud you while I am occupied, it is time to plunder the bandit’s nest.”

“Well, don’t you have any friends that could do that for you?” Rillah prodded.

“Friends? Who needs friends. Unreliable, untrustworthy, more trouble than they’re worth, I certainly don’t need them.”

“Well, if you had them, one of you could just stay here and keep an eye on us, couldn’t they? Also, they make you happy.”

“And just have them die on me as well? Never. Happiness is but a fleeting illusion, wasted by the endless cycle of attempting to ‘befriend’ some random person. Far more trouble than it’s worth, not that it’s worth much to begin with.”

Edwin had a sudden, horrible realization. Was this what he sounded like to people? Almost certainly. Ugh. Well, hopefully he wasn’t this bad with his moping, but it was a very slim hope. At least he knew that he had a problem, and wasn’t that half the battle or something?

“Please tell me you’re just having fun with him, and not actually buying into his nonsense,” Edwin asked Rillah when she fell back far enough to walk alongside him.

“Oh, you know me so well. I haven’t found someone so much fun to prod in ages,” she giggled. “Even you weren’t nearly as prickly when we first met.”

“Oi!”

She laughed, “Wait, perhaps you still are.”

“I- that was- I meant… blah.” Edwin gave up on figuring out a clever retort and settled for swatting Rillah’s arm, “Keep this up, and I’m dyeing you bright pink as well.”

“Oh, I think it'd be worth it.”

Contrary to what Edwin was imagining, the bandit hideaway was neither a fortress or spacious cave, just a small farmhouse on the outskirts of the forest. Just outside loomed the burned-out husk of a barn, and the fields immediately around it were overgrown and untended. The house itself, while not in great repair, at least looked habitable.

The interior was nothing too special, only about twice as big as the outside and made with smooth-cut lumber for the walls and the floor. While only a single story tall, there did seem to be a basement or cellar of some form, but it was of less interest to their little band than the pile of discarded stuff in one corner. There was plenty of wooden utensils and containers, sacks of food, and a few boxes of coin, but one commodity in particular caught Edwin’s eye.

“Ooh, lead. Why the heck do they have so much?” he asked confused, looking at the pile of dark metal he uncovered after moving aside a bag of wheat, mostly fashioned into ingots.

“They’re brigands. No doubt they managed to obtain the Unintelligence Attribute and raised it at the expense of everything else. It would explain why they decided to remain together, if nothing else. Look over there, you can see where their previous leader was betrayed and killed.”

Edwin looked over to the corner of the room, where a slight discoloration of the wood did make it look a bit like a bloodstain.

“You can see the struggle play out perfectly. He was sitting in a chair right there, talking to someone on the other side of that table. Then, his second-in-command snuck up behind him with a dagger. Blade under the armpit, that close to the heart blood will flow like a river, and he was dead before he hit the ground. No doubt there was a Skill used, but the former second-in-command left the stain as a reminder of why they all obeyed him.”

“I’m… pretty sure this is wine,” Edwin noted, frowning at his Analysis report, “Not blood.”

“As though I don’t know blood when I see it, pouring around me like such unending tides spilled from the bodies of my enemies.”

“Yeah, Edwin. Can’t you tell the difference between blood and wine? I know you don’t like either of them, but surely you the great alchemist can figure it out.” Rillah teased, and Edwin shot back a glare, rolling his eyes.

“Not you too,” he protested.

“Oh, but you heard the great and mighty Bob, didn’t you? You wouldn’t doubt what a mason told you was stone, would you? Let the artist of blood tell you all about his medium.”

“There’s no beauty in blood, no more than the rest of the world. It clots and stains, drenching everything it touches in its stench. My hands are simply more stained than most, with a stench that will never come clean.”

“Now that’s just dreadful. Edwin, do you still have some of that super-soap?”

“Super-soap? I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“You know, that stuff you were talking about that you used to get out the sap from the trees? For your home? Back in the Verdant?”

“Oh, that stuff. No, I used it all up, and why would I still have it anyway? That was like… two years ago. And besides, it’s not even useful as soap, it’s just an alchemical compound meant to remove water from wood. It’s probably the last thing you’d want to use on yourself.”

“Huh. So no?”

“Yes, that’s a no, Rillah. Anyway, don’t mind me, but I could use this much metal…” he busied himself packing away the lead. Without a bag, it was a little awkward, but he had enough pockets to make it work once he really pushed Improbable Arsenal.

“No, no, no!” Bob yelled in frustration.

“What would be the matter, friend?”

“Not your friend! And the medallion! It’s not here!”

“Now there’s a shock,” Edwin muttered. Rillah gently cuffed his shoulder in admonishment, but he just shrugged at her, “What? Oh right, you weren’t here for that. He’s been looking for this thing for five years at least, but it keeps on slipping past.”

“Little harsh though, isn’t it?”

He shrugged, “If he seemed actually sad rather than melodramatic I’d be a lot more sympathetic. I just… can’t let myself actually feel sorry for him, because he’s just so ridiculous.”

He paused for a moment as he picked over a bit more of the loot scattered around. There wasn’t that much noteworthy, Bob having claimed the most obvious valuables, but they would have their food stocks resupplied, and he had ideas for the several hundred pounds of lead he’d gotten.

Still, if he stuck around for much longer… he looked at the moody outlaw, who was muttering to himself darkly, Skill-enhanced shadows obscuring his face…

He was going to need a lot of pink dye.