ALL NOVEL This Is Why You Plan!
4/26 afternoon
Shit.
Seriously. I fucked up. Even if I win this fight, I can’t let anyone escape or I’ll be a fugitive. It was them or me, unless I wanted to change my face and name and give awkward explanations to Auffrey and Anetta later. I didn’t really want to kill these guys, they were just doing their jobs.
I wasn’t going to just throw the Defias to the wolves when they had put their faith in me, though. Weird priorities maybe, but I had to live by some kind of rules or I’d just be some random jackass wandering around brainwashing women into sleeping with me. I intended to be that very jackass, to be fair, but I wanted to be able to live with myself too.
At least after several days of training, I was ready to throw down. For a certain value of the words. First things first, I raised my hand, pointed it at the lead guard, and smote her. She took a step back as I blasted her; but retained her balance stubbornly. Shit. I didn’t really want to hurt her, so my smite was weak. I really needed to get Drusilla to teach me some offensive spells that were less fussy. I switched to healing, trying to make sure that nobody who went down would bleed out.
The defias were giving as good as they got against the lightly armored militia, but it turns out that full plate armor is actually quite good at dealing with knives and short swords. Padfoot, Darcell, and a big guy with a staff were each paired off with one of the guardsmen, but it was obvious they were hoping to get lucky or hold out for backup. Darcell in particular was so busy dodging that she never got an opportunity to strike back.
They weren’t likely to get much backup; the rest of the outlaws had numbers, but the militia garrison was better equipped with chainmail and shields, and seemed better coordinated. Adding to that, I’m pretty sure at least ten members of the brotherhood were staying in the woods hoping to wait this out; cowards.
I kept track of my energy with my amulet, and used lesser heal on the spot whenever someone on team Defias took a hit. I was restraining myself, so I usually just reduced the injuries instead of making them go away completely. Deep cuts became ugly but superficial scratches and potentially broken bones became modest bruises. I needed to put a lot of energy towards keeping the three guardsmen locked down; as formally trained and equipped soldiers, they were scoring hits on the three champions of the Brotherhood a lot more often than they were taking ones that mattered.
After about thirty seconds of that being the status quo, I knew I needed to change the rules somehow or we’d all be be arrested and thrown into the stockades at best. Summary execution seemed fairly likely in the worst case scenario. I might be able to escape that, but I sure as hell didn’t want to have to.
I considered fleeing for a moment, then decided I didn’t want to live like that. Shifting gears mentally, I willed Drusilla to come here through apportation. I waited as I felt the magic working painfully slowly, seeming to reach out and connect the two pieces of jewelry. Time seemed to slow as I concentrated, just watching as the big guy with the staff went down to a stab in the gut, before finally the magic seemed to snap and I had the only proper member of my retinue by my side. “Take down the guards if you can.” I snapped at her as I positioned myself to heal the injured.
I was starting to realize that triage would probably work differently in this world. Where I was from, medics would focus on treating those who would likely die without treatment, but would likely survive with it. Here, I needed to get people back in the fight to turn the tide of the battle; anyone who wasn’t going to die within the minute could be taken care of later. Two of the militia were down, as opposed to eight of the outlaws, but I didn’t know what I could do about that. I focused on staff guy, probably the best fighter who was currently out of the fight, and sent him the biggest wave of healing I could muster.
My legs turned to jelly, but his opponent had already turned around to double team Padfoot. When the big brute of a man scrambled to his feet and smashed his staff into the side of his opponent’s head, the guard went down instantly; at best he was stunned, more likely he was dead.
Drusilla, to her credit, had accepted the situation and rolled with it. She was rapidly chanting words of power like some kind of dark auctioneer. She gave special attention to Darcell’s opponent for some reason; within a few seconds he was on fire and seemed to be staggering under his own weight. In his initial surprise and panic, Darcell had the opportunity to dive in and stab him through a weak point in his armor, near his armpit.
The one fighting Padfoot and staff guy seemed to be moving slowly, like her armor had just gotten much heavier. Whenever she tried to focus on one of them, the other would dip in and take a free shot at her legs or head.
The fight seemed to be turning around; Drusilla and I had leveled the playing field, and the militia were starting to cut and run as Drusilla turned her attention to them, making large painful looking boils appear all over their bodies. “Don’t let them get away or there’ll be a lot more after us!” In a panic I cast a smite on one of them, knocking her over with a pained cry and making the world spin around me. I think I saw Darcell disengage and dart off after the runners. “Bring them back alive if you can.” I said it into my amulet, directed at Darcell, but I don’t know if she heard me. I wasn’t speaking or thinking very clearly.
My head was spinning, I could barely stand up. If anyone had come after me right then, I’d have probably been an easy mark. A thought floated through my mind, and I grabbed my amulet and willed the arcane orb into my hand. The moment it did, I touched the sphere and came back to Azeroth. I still felt like shit, but I was functioning again. I looked around and saw that the fight was basically over, and Darcell was dragging two militia back with her with the help of a couple of her fellow outlaws. I did a quick head count and none of the agents of the law had escaped.
Two of the militia and the guard whose skull was bashed in were dead already when I got to them. It was blunted, but I’m pretty sure stress resistance was the only reason I was functioning as I got that news. The injured defias got my first attempts at power word renew, which was the best I could do when I was this wiped out. The surviving guards got an ultimatum: surrender or die. If they surrendered, I shoved them in my inventory to deal with later. If they refused, I shoved a bit of cloth in their mouth and held their nose until they were sufficiently out of it to count as an object, and then I shoved them in my inventory. I started getting warnings that it was almost full as I put in the last of the bodies, but I was going to spare these people even if it was as my slaves.
“Well, everyone. You did well. Unfortunately now I need to leave you for a bit. You all lay low and keep Drusilla with you. Once I’m out of the valley, I’ll be able to get you out finally.” I didn’t feel like explaining myself, so I just walked at that point. I crossed the river and bleached my clothes with the light on the way to the road.
As I made my way down the road I thought about how much of a pickle I was in, just because I couldn’t bring myself to kill a bunch of innocent people I barely knew.
Obviously I’d need to either kill or capture all of them. Unfortunately capture took 3-7 days, and I doubted these six would be receptive. Seven seemed like the safe estimate for all of them, unless I used my one stamp. Most of a week’s worth of jewelry would be going to these people, and at least some of that would be delayed by the cap I had on jewelry. At least by the end of it I’d have a fairly elite, by my standards anyway, fighting force.
Speaking of delays, I apparently needed to find somewhere that I could keep six prisoners, where nobody would stumble upon them, and preferably where nobody allied to me would be able to question my brilliant strategy of brainwashing my enemies en masse. If I had some kind of base, or an extra dimensional space that wasn’t frozen in time, this would be easy. For now, I have a bunch of bandits who think I’m ambiguously part of their organization, one warlock, some food and clothes, a handful of forbidden books, a couple magic items, and about fifteen silver pieces.
Damn I’m glad I picked up stress resistance.