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I could feel the one closest to me by the warmth of his body, the way he stirred the air as his moved and smell the way that he had been a long time without a proper shower. Even without my vampiric senses I could hear the shuffling of fabric and the creaking of leather as he knelt down over me.
"Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt us." the nearest bandit said, and I felt a pair of hands start patting down the pouches I wore over my armour. His greed was making him blind to the simple fact that I shouldn’t have been wearing armour in preparation for bed.
"How many of these dead’uns are in here?"
"Nine?" commented one helpfully and there was a crack as one of his comrades hit him.
"Since when can you count Depuyon? Someone else give me a count."
My heart began racing even as the bandit rifling through my mostly empty pouches began swearing at the lack of anything valuable. One of the other bandits in the room had begun counting, loosing count briefly as he struggled to remember his numbers before reaching the total.
"There’s only seven in here Rodethe."
"Count again. We’re missing one."
"I did! I used both hands and everything!"
"There’s supposed to be eight! Find it!"
The nervous energy that was building within the hut reached a crescendo as the group of bandits began looking about frantically. This was the one portion of the plan that was the most dangerous but as they were beginning to panic I opened my eyes and stared at the bandit admiring the Stallion Ring on my hand.
I could almost feel his breath on my face as we found ourselves staring into each other’s eyes and I found myself mirrored in his expression of astonishment. The second of dawning realisation lasted longer that what seemed possible, especially when the sound of choking and a body falling could be heard from the direct...
My assailant died almost before he had fully realised what was happening as the dagger in my lap was buried to the hilt in the bottom of his jaw. The point was somewhere in his skull and I twisted and threw his body to the side as utter chaos erupted in the confines of the hut.
Viconia had been the only one not physically present inside, and had been the one that they had missed when they entered. Expecting to find nothing more than poisoned corpses they hadn’t bothered to check the wood and thatch roof for anyone that had been waiting for them and the sound of choking had been as a result o...
A rapier and broadsword flashed and two bandits went down without the chance to scream as Detane and Alexi cut them down. The bandit acting as the group’s leader was ripped off his feet by an enormous green paw before there was a crunch of bone and cartilage as she simply punched him in the face. To my right the bandi...
The entire group died in less than three seconds, their surprise complete and all of them entirely capable to stave off the end. Falid killed two by the simple expediency of grabbing one by the throat and simply squeezing with the sound of someone cracking their knuckles, and grasping the other by the back of the head...
"Well, that’s a start." Alexi muttered as he too rose from where he had been sitting.
Trying not to listen to the chorus of shouted questions throughout the village as they heard the scuffle, I looked about the room as the way how it was filled with death. "Any of them left alive?"
"I think this one is." Mazoga replied, grabbing the bandit she had pulled off his feet by the collar. Judging by the way his nose was crushed and face covered in blood, her punch had broken his nose and possibly knocked out teeth. "He might be a bit broken."
"Good. We’ll come back for him." The comatose body of the bandit slapped wetly onto the stones as she simply released her grip on his clothing and armour. It was partially impressive how she had lifted a fully grown man to waist height with a single hand but we had more pressing concerns.
Our plan was so simple it was almost ridiculous and relied entirely on the assumption that like most other bandits, the group we would be facing would be ill equipped, poorly trained and more used to shaking down defenceless villagers and travellers. Those who had entered the hut had proven my assumption correct for t...
We were also relying entirely on surprise and the fact that they bandits would not have been expecting resistance such as what we would provide. They definitely had the numerical advantage but they also had the issue where they had to secure the entire village which meant that as long as we struck fast, struck hard an...
At least that was the plan. As a group we stormed out of the hut with Mazoga and Falid leading the way in their thicker armour. Within seconds of bursting from the entrance a pair of arrows flitted past and a crossbow bolt lodged deeply into Mazoga’s shield. One of the arrows hit Falid in the shoulder but the incredib...
Alexi and I paused very briefly after we exited the hut, turning and putting our backs to the wall and boosting Weebam-Na and Bejeen onto the roof. Viconia had already vanished in the darkness and without my vampiric senses there was no hope in following her as she flitted from roof to roof in pursuit of the dozens of...
With a portion of our group on the roofs causing chaos with thrown bolts of magicka and spears, the rest of us scattered in every direction. We had to move fast, and within seconds of separating from the others I began to allow the vampire to assist.
I twisted through the buildings, finding myself thankful for their closely built nature and the cover that they provided. There was a building amount of noise within the village as screams and cries of pain joined the questioning shouts and bellowed orders as the others encountered the scattered bandits. Our discussio...
Ducking around one corner into the wider "street’ that passed between the huts in the direction of the Hist, I almost ran full tilt into a bandit dressed in mouldering leathers. "Araonriel! The scalies have betrayed us! The fuckers aren’t-"
The way my darkened form seemed to grow from the shadows left him reacting with instinct alone and cutting his shout off in mid breath. His eyes widened in realisation as the torch in his hand began falling but before it hit the ground Sunchild erupted from his back and made him grunt from the intrusion of the blade i...
A few metres away his comrade stood with a strung bow in hand and arrow gripped tightly by the fletching. Whether it was the Araonriel that my victim had been calling out to I couldn’t know, but the thin featured bosmer gaped as I began dragging my sword free from his dying comrade. At such a distance and with adrenal...
From the shadows above the feeble torchlight there was a sudden whistling of air and before either of us could react a length of wood thudded into the bandits chest and pinned him to the wall. All two metres of the spear had transfixed him neatly through the chest, throwing him backwards and sending the half drawn arr...
Meanwhile the sporadic fighting was spreading throughout the village and the collections of raised voices and shouts of those not yet faced with a member of our party were growing louder and louder. Expecting a simple occupation of the village and the chance of acquiring tinkets from our bodies, they were unprepared f...
Led on by my increasing blood thirst and vampiric urgings, I rushed towards the nearest group. Their panicking heartbeats was drawing the darkness of my soul towards them like a moth to a candle even as they began to react.
"Fuck this..." I heard one of them stammer as a particularly loud scream was cut off by the thunderclap of magicka and a chilling elven laugh echoing from the rooftops on the far side of the village. "Torch the place! Burn everything!"
This was also expected but other than killing them all there was no real counter to such a reaction. The particular group was almost a dozen strong and I couldn’t tell how close the others were even with my vampirism. With so much death and increasing carnage around me, the vampire was becoming distracted and it was t...
Some of the lit torches suddenly began sailing through the night as those holding them tossed them onto the nearest huts or raised them to ignite the semi-damp thatch roofs. Our only saving grace was like it had every afternoon we had spent in the marshes it had rained and ensured that setting the village ablaze was n...
Defeating the bandits was unfortunately just as difficult despite their poor equipment and dispositions. Almost to a man, they were equipped with a varied collection of bows and my darting figure was unfortunately too easy to spot within the shadows of flickering torchlight. Within the first seconds of bursting from c...
An arrow buzzed past me and despite myself and my battle cry I winced at how close it had come to hitting me in the chest. A second followed the first in close succession and despite myself I managed to twist to the side and narrowly dodged its owner’s better accuracy. by now the skin and flesh of my face was tighteni...
Before I could finish crossing the distance between me and the band of cutthroats there was a darting figure appear from one of the rooftops to their rear who dived, struck the ground as lightly as an acrobat in a tight roll in their midst and came up with sword in hand. To my left there was an earth shaking roar that...
As I rushed to join the sudden melee that had erupted in the packed street I saw how one of the bandits dropped with his throat cut away with a single contemptuous slice. Another lost a hand before being stabbed in the heart, his dagger being ripped from a sheath on his chest as he crumpled and being thrust into a shr...
Detane killed with all his usual scorn and disgust for everything and everyone around him and he was killing the bandits without mercy or hesitation. At some point in the few short minutes since we had burst from the hut he too had clambered up onto the huts and had used this height to outflank the group that we now f...
The bellowed roar from the other direction announced the towering Falid purposely stomping his way down the street with the inexorability of a landslide. Unlike the rest of us he was incapable of jogging or running in his armour, at least not quickly and had to settle with a fast paced march. Although with how large h...
His size and bulk, combined with the way that he stood a full two and a half metres tall in his winged helm was terrifying enough but now he appeared as though spawn from the depths of Oblivion itself. Smoke was billowing out of every gap and seam in his armour and a burning flame licked and swirled out from every joi...
Those who looked upon the towering Black Knight striding towards them lost themselves to fear and more than one attempted to turn and flee from him. Instead they found themselves trapped with a pair of master swordsmen in their midst and armed with nothing more than mallets, bows, daggers and spears they were complete...
I caught one hand holding a military pick as it swung toward my chest, spearing the owner through the chest and blocking the only shortsword in the group as it tried desperately to cut my arm. One of the bandits shrieked in terror as the flame wreathed visage of Falid lifted his sword high above his head and brought i...
One of the last surviving bandits, terrified at the prospect of approaching death had taken advantage of Detane’s attention being drawn away from him and thrust forward with a steel tipped spear in a last do-or-die attack. Against someone like myself or Falid it would have been wasted on armour unless it penetrated a ...
Instead of smashing in the centre of his chest and impaling him through the sternum, the wicked point ripped through the brigandine along his side. Several of the armoured plates were torn free, chiming as they stuck the ground but instead of tasting flesh and blood the spear didn’t even cut the tunic he wore undernea...
The bandit had just enough time to realise that he had failed before one hundred and sixty centimetres of ebony blade chopped down hard and bisected him from shoulder to thigh as easily as he had been a strip of bacon. The spear clattered to the ground, the wooden shaft splintered as a result of Falid’s blow but the t...
Gripping it tightly and twisting this way and that, the diminutive Breton began swearing with such violence and emotion that it put most legionaries, and many sailors to shame. After a second or two of infuriation he managed to rip it free and he turned in rage.
"Don’t you ever deign to touch me again!" he snapped, using the tip of his rapier to underline his words as he pointed it at my throat.
Stepping back as though I had been slapped I too felt my anger rise "I was helping you out, you arsehole! I didn’t think that you were going to appreciate a spear tickling your lungs!"
The anger remained but there was a sudden and inexplicable shadow that passed his eyes so quickly that I was left wondering if I had seen it in the first place. He spat on the ground near my feet, sneered with a potency that even put Viconia to shame and ran off without a further word towards the sounds of further fig...
A gauntlet almost as large as my head came to rest on my shoulder and snapped me out of my jumbling thoughts and the pounding of blood and adrenaline through my veins. Falid stood at my shoulder, his armour no longer smoking and a pair of glints in the depths of his visor that were no longer consumed by flame.
"Are you hurt Sir Desin?"
"No. I’m fine." Feeling the tingling in my teeth and the growing metallic taste in my mouth that was not of blood at his presence, I gave the towering knight a quick glance. "Illusion magicka?"
"An enemy broken by fear is an enemy already defeated." Came the deep, yet muffled reply from the depths of his great helm. "Come. Further foes await."
Following in the pounding boots of the giant in midnight black plate, I felt strangely uneasy at Detane’s actions and reaction. Before we were jumped by a trio of terrified and desperate bandits I was left wondering at the strange way how a man of such skill had turned to face the onrushing spear front on. He had demo...
Further thoughts were quickly pushed out of my mind as the fighting in the centre of the village took all of my attention. Our two Argonian guides and Viconia had been forced to climb off the roofs of the huts as the bandits began using their bows and loosing arrows at anything that moved. Over half of them had alread...
"Kaius! Glad to see that you made it to the party!"
An arrow flicked out and punched into the wall near where I stood and I hurriedly ducked around a corner of a hut as another two joined it.
"Seems a little too excitable for my tastes. I wish to complain to the organiser."
Alexi’s laugh was loud and audible over the shout and cries of pain and the sudden thunderclap that echoed through the village as Viconia threw a bolt of magicka in the direction of the remaining bandits.
We were in the centre of the village near the towering Hist but on the side opposite to the river. Now whittled down to the last dozen or so, the band of cutthroats were trying their best to move through the confining streets in the direction of the forest. Every step they made was being hampered not only by ourselves...
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the hunchbacked shaman cavorting about the enormous tree in the centre of the village, hissing and chirping and otherwise acting as excited as a skooma user after draining an entire bottle. He was completely oblivious to the handful of arrows that buzzed angrily through the darkness i...
"What in the gods’ names is he doing?" I called out, seeing the way that Weebam-Na twisted his head in the direction of my gaze before turning back and shrugging.
"He said something about "asking for help’ before running over there. Your guess is as good as mine."
Another thunderous crack of magicka and proceeding shriek of agony ripped through the night air as Viconia loosed another blast in the direction of the archers. She was alternating between swearing bitterly and mumbling the words needed to call upon her magicka but she had enough breath to spare me a withering glance.
"Where’s your bow?" A ball of lightning flickered into existence in the palm of her hand and she threw it in the general vicinity of our enemies as quickly as she could.
"Back in the hut. It wouldn’t do any good as getting into a two-way archery contest isn’t a good thing when you’re outnumbered."
There was another collection of drowish curses, but as she threw another blast down the street a collection of arrows punched into the corner of the wall that was providing her cover and a handful more flickered down the street.
"Iblith! That was a little too close for comfort."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shaman continuing to prance about at the base of the Hist but my attention was dragged in its direction. The bowls that it had pulled down were filled to various levels of the sluggish sap but as I watched he proceeded to tip them all into a much larger urn shaped container. Earl...
"What in Oblivion’s name is he doing now?"
Weebam-Na had been standing with his back to a wall of the building across from where Alexi, Viconia and myself were standing and he turned his gaze back at the shaman. First there was confusion on his face, and then an expression of horror as the other Argonian picked up the urn and proceeded to dump the entirety of ...
"This could be bad." He called out, flinching away from the storm of arrows that filled the air and left the corners of our buildings growing small clusters of feathered shafts.
"How bad is bad?"
Unlike when he had simply consumed a small amount of the sap, the sheer quantity that Greejan-Ze was coated in was overwhelming. He immediately fell onto his back, thrashing about with such force that droplets of sap were thrown as far as the surrounding path and walls of the nearest huts.
None of us were expecting to see him rise again, but we certainly weren’t expecting to see the way that his body was shifting unnaturally as he did so, or the sheer power that throbbed in time to his racing heart emanating from him. All of the previous tics and shakes were gone and instead he rose up to his full heigh...
The buzzing that reached our ears was first thought to be a result of his magicka affecting our senses but we were all left in awe at how the moonlit night thickened and a horde of flying insects began streaming down from the sky. Mosquitios, flies, enormous dragonflies and moths all twisted and swirled in a horde num...
While not many of us saw it, I at least could feel and hear the way that something burst from the river, dragging itself along the ground on the far side of the village. I caught glimpses of the reptilian thing that heeded the shaman’s magical commands with my vampiric eyesight and was left with the impression of some...
This horde of insects, spiders, snakes and reptiles streamed past us without as much as a sideways glance and within seconds the bandits’ shouts and battle cries were exchanged for shrieks of pain and terror. The entire group became the sole focus of the magical summons from the village shaman and were borne down to t...
As quickly as it had begun, the magicka died and vanished and the shaman fell flat on his face as he was suddenly released from the strange powers of the Hist Sap. The buzzing swarm dissipated into the shadows, the giant river lizard stomped back to the waters while messily feasting on an unlucky bandit and the ground...
"So why didn’t he do that sooner?" Taking a look around the village as dozens of scaled muzzles began poking out of darkened doorways, Viconia shuddered and flicked the frog clinging to her arm in utter disgust.
"Hist sap is toxic in large quantities." Weebam-Na explained as he moved forward in front of the rest of us while checking for signs of life from the bandits. "That amount probably killed him, and is several years’ worth of harvesting at least."
Surprisingly, the shaman wasn’t dead, but he certainly wasn’t in a good way after such an experience. The Sap that he had poured over himself had changed yet again from the honey like substance and now was flaky and dry and falling away in slivers as though all semblance of moisture had been removed. With the bandits ...
Whatever power the sap had provided him was gone and there was no longer the terrible throbbing energies being directed from within his soul. As a group we ended up looking over him and the others attending him and seeing the way that his hunch had grown ever more pronounced, his hands twisted as though he was sufferi...
"He apologises for no longer being in the condition for taking us to the fort." Weebam-Na translated as the shaman painfully wheezed. "But once we are ready he will instruct a member of the tribe to take us there."
"We better go and have a chat to our friend." Wiping the blood off his sword, Alexi returned it to its scabbard until it clicked. "If he’s still alive at least."
"You are bleeding, orc."
Mazoga shifted, looking over her shoulder to the sneering Detane who looked even more disagreeable than usual. At some point during the battle an arrow had lodged deep into her back in the gap between the pauldron and breastplate. The fletching twitched in the wind as she tried to turn to look at it, twisting one way ...
Moving over to her, I regarded the fact that she had an arrow in the shoulder and seemed annoyed more than hurt. Blood was pulsing slowly around the wooden shaft where it had broken the underlying chainmail but I had seen grown legionaries rendered invalid from the pain of such an injury. My own shoulder pulsed in sym...
"Just pull the damn thing out. It tickles."
Muttering "orcs’ under my breath I wriggled my dagger alongside the length of the arrow’s shaft where it had punched through armour and flesh and dug about with the point. Other than the way she grunted as I used the knife to dig the trapped arrowhead free she seemed to ignore the pain and sensations. After a few mome...
Snapping the bloody arrowhead away and pocketing it, she flicked the shaft and fletching away into the night before prodding at my handiwork. "You’ve done this before."
"More times that I probably should’ve." I replied as the others turned away from where the curiosity had been holding them. "A forester in the legion is a scout first, an archer second and a field medic last."
"So you fill people full of holes and then save their lives."
I laughed out loud. "Not really. A surgeon or healer saves lives. A medic simply makes them comfortable while they die."
Her own snicker was loud and drew an annoyed stare from Detane as we moved back to the hut, moving past the bodies that we had left strewn throughout the village even as the locals wasted no time in stripping them of anything that could be of use. There were cries of the handful of wounded that we had left scattered a...
He was conscious as we entered, sitting with his back to the wall with his nose horribly broken and at least one tooth missing and he eyed us all suspiciously and in a growing terror. At our presence, covered in mud and blood of his fellows he grew increasingly anxious but there was no mistaking the way he was more co...
"Good evening." I said as I moved closer to him, feeling the way that his eyes darted from mine to the others with me. The way that he gritted his teeth in fear and eyes widening as he had to tilt his head back to look Falid in the eyes was all too obvious until he took off his horned helm. But as it had been expected...
"We’re going to ask you a few questions. Give us satisfactory answers and you might live to see another sunrise."

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