Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 7 (Patreon)

Chapter 7

As I was leaving town, I noticed a dark and heavy cloudbank moving in from the west.  It looked like I was about to get soaked.  Now was the time to pull out the bracelet.  I waited until I was out of sight of the town before digging it out of my bag.

It was a simple black band with a line of runes carved down the center, and it had taken me almost a full year to get right.  Gaining the Runesmith as a Profession meant I had to make something worthy of a proper Runesmith, not just a Blacksmith that knew some engravings.  The bracelet had been the item that helped me make the jump from dabbler into professional.

When I put it on my right wrist, opposite my hand cannon, it grew on its own enough to close around my wrist.  It was a constant drain to wear it, but I had just gotten clean, and having a personal shield to keep me dry was worth it.

The bracelet glowed a dull green, letting me know I was alone.  It would glow yellow if someone who could use magic was close, and red if it was actively defending against an attack.  I had added that feature after dealing with a group of psionics that didn’t use visible magic.  Just thinking about those assholes gave me a headache.  Ain’t no head pain like a brain-sucker attack.

As soon as it had drained enough mana from me, the bracelet activated.  A soap-bubble-thin film wrapped around my body, protecting me from the rain that started falling.  The shield was strong enough to block one or two major attacks, five or six minor attacks, or keep the rain from soaking me for about half a day.  It had kept more than one arrow from killing me, especially after I had made a name for myself on a new planet.  Those who were afraid of the changes I represented always thought of using an assassin at some point.  Usually right after trying to assault me in a dark alley somewhere.  Which wasn’t a very nice thing to do, really.

Hearing the rain drum against the barrier had a soothing effect, and soon I found my mind drifting back to a few days ago, when I had been transported to this new world.

“Are you sure you have to go?”  Sinthia stood in front of a group of children, cradling a broken arm.  Her golden waves of hair glinting in the moonlight only enhanced the beauty she projected, despite the dirt and injuries from the final battle we had barely won.  “We still need you here.”

“This isn’t my choice.  The gods determine when I go, and I’m no better than a leaf caught in a hurricane.”  I fought back the urge to kiss her, knowing that I would leave a piece of myself behind if I did.  “As long as you don’t allow things to regress to the way they were, life will be better for everyone, like it should have been in the first place.”

“I would change everything back to the way it was if it meant you could stay.”  A single tear traced down her cheek, creating a streak of clean skin through the grime and blood.  It was the only clean spot on the battlefield covered in the bodies of our friends and the forces we had barely defeated.  “None of it matters if you aren’t here.”

“Don’t say that.”  I reached forward, healing her injured arm with a push of my recovering mana.  She grimaced in pain as the bone set, but she suffered in silence, the grit and determination that was one of a thousand reasons for me to love her, making my heart ache.  “This is about more than just you and me.  We have changed the world with today’s victory.  Freeing children who can do magic will make all the difference.”

Before she could answer, a hole in reality ripped open behind me.  The pull wasn’t strong enough to pull me through yet, but I knew from experience that it would grow stronger the longer I avoided going through the portal.

“It isn’t fair!”  Sinthia reached out for me, and I took a step back, afraid about what would happen to my already fragile heart if we touched.  The look of anguish on her face almost broke me.  “There’s so much I want to tell you.  So many things I should have said.  We deserve to be together!”

“What we deserve and what we get are seldom the same thing.”  I nodded to the dozens of freed children cowering behind her.  “Get them somewhere safe, and teach them what you have learned.  They are the future this place needs.”

“I will!”  The wind pulling me backward almost drowned her out, its pull growing faster than ever before.  “I love you, James!”

My eyes never left hers as I was dragged through the portal, leaving yet another piece of my soul behind.

I wiped at the moisture dampening my cheeks.  Stupid shielding must have sprung a leak.  While I scrubbed at my face with my sleeves, my system dinged with an alert.

New Title Earned: Hide and Seek Loser

-Your lack of ability to sense those spying on you has gained the attention of the gods.  Lucky you!

Skill Imparted: You become 10% more likely to discover someone spying on you.  An additional 10% will be applied if the entity spying on you has no negative intentions.

Another notification from the ‘gods’ that landed me here.  For the thousandth time, I cursed the invisible entities that used me like a punching bag in some kind of perverse game that I was forced to play.  The sound of someone rustling through the leaves off the road to my right reached my ears, and I sighed.  It looked like someone from the town had followed me as I left.  Considering the properties of the new title meant they were most likely friendly, I made a not-so-great intellectual leap and guessed who it was.

“Jess, you might as well just come out.”  I was surprised to see my bracelet flicker from green to yellow as she approached, but it settled back to green as she stepped out of the underbrush.  “I told you not to follow me, remember?”

She got to the edge of the muddy road and stopped, unwilling to come any closer.  “I know.”  Her bedraggled appearance matched her tone, and I almost felt bad for her.  Almost.  “You don’t understand, though.  When I stood up for you in front of the Wardens, Frons tossed me out.  I don’t have anywhere else to go.”  Jess had a small pack on her back, and she carried a staff that resembled my own, with a long dagger hanging from her belt.  Without the super-cool additions I had made to mine, of course.  Her clothes were thick canvas, dyed a dark brown and green to blend in with the surrounding landscape, and clunky boots with soles thick enough I had no idea how she managed to follow me for so long without making more noise.

I didn’t see a waterskin, and the pack was too small to hold much food.  She was soaked through, thin, barely old enough to be considered an adult, and short enough that she barely reached my shoulders – basically, she looked as pitiful as a kitten forced to take a bath, in order to pluck as many heart-strings as possible.  Whether it was on purpose or not, I had no idea.  The universe could be downright mean sometimes.

“I take it you left in a hurry?”  I leaned on my staff, feeling its tip dig into the mud a few inches before hitting something.  “Because you aren’t well-prepared for a journey through the wilderness.”

“I grabbed what I could, but most of my belongings were loaned to me by Frons.  This is all I have.”  Jess shrugged, her soaked clothing dragging down her shoulders.  “My savings bought these clothes, and this dagger.  It’s supposed to be blessed, so it can hurt the undead.”  She indicated the simple bone handle, and I held out my hand to test it.

“Let me see.”  I took it from her, and admired the simple craftsmanship.  Thick blade, sharp edge, and a faint blood-groove to keep it from sticking in an opponent.  Also, definitely not blessed or magical in any way.  “Yeah, you got ripped off.  A vampire would shrug that off with no problem.  You could still kill a zombie or skeleton, but you would need to crush the skull or remove the head, like any normal weapon.”  It also meant my bracelet activated because of her, not because of her weapon, which made me doubt what she said about not being able to shift.

“What?”  Jess took it back, staring at the weapon like it would bite her if she took her eyes off it.  “All my savings, everything I had…”

“So, you want to join me, but you don’t have any food, water, shelter, or effective weaponry.”  I turned to keep walking down the road.  “I don’t think this life is for you, kid.”

Jess hurriedly sheathed her dagger and jogged to keep up with me.  “I can cook, and clean, and wash your clothes, and I don’t mind taking a watch during the night to look for predators.”  She stumbled, and I reached out to catch her before she did a facer into the mud.  “And, I… I don’t have anywhere else to go.”  She shrugged out of my hand, and looked down at her feet as they squished into the road.  “Please, don’t make me go back.”

“I’m sure you are very good at all of those things, but so am I.”  I picked up the pace, forcing her to hurry to keep up.  “I won’t force you to go back.  That isn’t my place, and I do owe you a little for sticking up for me.”  I squinted through the rain, thinking hard about how to best balance the scales between us.  “I’ll get you to Greendown, and you can start a new life there.  Sound good enough?”

Jess looked up, grinning large enough that I could see that her canine teeth had a sharper point than a regular human would ever manage.  With her slightly pointed ears, slitted eyes, and sharp cheekbones, she looked more cat-like than ever.  “Deal!”  She perked up, happy that she got her wish.  “What’s the plan to get there?  Are we going to stop by each town and straighten them out too?  Protect the weak, like you did in my village?”

“What?  No.”  I thought about how things had been going since I stepped into this world.  “Maybe.  It depends on how they act.”

“Yes!”  She pumped her fist, excited about the prospect of getting into a fight.  Just like every other young person who had never been in a real fight before.  “I knew it!  We are going to fix the countryside first, and then, after they see the error of their ways, we can move into the big cities, and after that–”

“Stop.”  I shook my head, putting a kibosh on her imagined future of conquest.  “You are going to find a nice job in Greendown, and I am going to go where my quest leads me.  There won’t be any ‘fixing’ of anything.”

Jess looked at me sideways, clearly not believing me.  “Sure, of course.  You won’t be bringing your Justice to everyone we meet.  Right.”

“It’s not my Justice, Jess.  It just is Justice.”  I sighed again, realizing that I had been doing it a lot lately.  Already, I started making plans for how I could ditch her in the city without her knowing where I went.  Her enhanced senses would make it hard, so planning now only made good sense.  Her actions so far already proved she would follow me otherwise, no matter what promises she made here and now.  “Let’s hurry.  We need to pick up the pace if we are going to make it to the next village before our food runs out.  I wasn’t planning on feeding anyone besides myself.”  Jess skipped happily as she gave me a thumbs up.  It was hard to hold back the groan that wanted to escape over having to deal with someone that had ‘pep.’  I was too old and tired to deal with ‘pep.’  Young people were exhausting.

We walked for three whole minutes before she started talking again.  “Where are you from?”  When I didn’t answer, Jess fell silent again.  “How did you get to be so good at fighting?  You don’t look very old, but you fight like you’ve seen a lot of battles.”  My only answer was to speed up even more, my longer stride making her struggle to keep up.  “If we go too fast, you’re going to walk right past the trail to the waystop without seeing it.”  She was breathing heavier, which genuinely surprised me.  I would have guessed that her lycan ancestry would help improve her strength and stamina.

“What waystop?”  I looked around carefully, not changing my pace.  “I haven’t seen or heard of any waystop along any of these roads, and I’ve been walking them for a few days now.”

Jess sped up to get in front of me, and held out an arm to slow me down.  “I’ll show you, if you would just slow down enough for me to check the trees.”  She pointed to a birch tree a few paces back from the trail.  “See?  That tells you it’s close.”

I had to move closer to make anything out.  The water draining down my shield was like a car windshield without any wipers, making it harder to see.  Once I got close enough, the worn and faded carving of a campfire was barely visible in the bark of the tree.  I had never noticed any markings on the trees, because I didn’t know it was already there.  This was just one of hundreds of examples of the things that made traveling between worlds so dangerous.  You just never knew about the kinds of stuff everybody else took for granted.

The two of us kept walking for almost a mile before she abruptly stopped.  Not expecting it, I almost bumped into her, barely managing  to avoid the two of us ending up in the mud.  Jess tilted her head and sniffed hard, nostrils flaring.  “Do you smell that?”

My mind stat was maxed out at fifty, meaning my perception was very good.  That didn’t mean I used it all the time.  It had taken weeks to figure out how to ignore the incredibly loud sounds, sharp features, and even sharper smells my enhanced stats caused.  The headaches were not fun.  Once I got past thirty points, worlds without proper bathing facilities, plumbing, and deodorant were definitely my least favorite.  The process of dialing it down had been a kind of meditation, deadening my senses to more normal levels unless I concentrated.  I focused on my sense of smell, and immediately noticed the smell of smoke.  “I think so, yes.”

“That means someone is already using the waystop.”  Jess bit her lower lip in concern.  “Do you think we should skip it?  If we keep going until midnight, we could reach the next one.”

“Just what is at these waystops?  Why can’t we just set up our own place to set camp?”  I looked around the wet forest, trying to assess what dangers might be hiding in the shadows.  When I looked back at Jess, I finally realized she was shivering pretty hard.  That wasn’t good.  If physical exertion wasn’t working to keep her warm, she was brushing up against the risk of hypothermia when the sun went down.  Which, according to my mental clock, should be in about two hours.

“There is a small shelter, along with a well for fresh water, and a few metal stakes in the ground to tie a mount to overnight.”  She was fighting not to show how cold she was, determined not to let it show in her voice.  “But the biggest benefit is having four sturdy walls and a roof when full night comes.  You never know what creatures prowl the roads at night.”

“Is that so?”  I turned to head toward the source of the smoke.  It was muted due to the rain, but I could still follow it.  “Let’s go then, and get out of the rain.”  She sighed in relief, and I frowned at her.  “And next time, speak up if you have a problem.  I don’t want to spend the next several days nursing you back to health when it could be avoided by just telling me.  I’m used to this kind of environment, and you aren’t.  Don’t try to tough it out when a few minutes now could save us days in the long run.”

“I-I’m sorry.  It won’t happen again.”  Jess was having difficulty stopping her teeth from chattering.  “I’ll be fine after I get warmed up a little bit.”  She pointed farther up the trail.  “Why don’t we just look for the path that leads straight to the waypoint?”

“Because that’s the way everyone expects someone to come from.”  I turned and pushed deeper into the damp underbrush, still following my nose.  Jess stayed close behind, making almost no noise as we went.  I felt a little better about not noticing her following me now.  It wasn’t much longer before I stepped into a clearing, and I could hear laughter coming from inside a small rectangular log cabin.

It reminded me of a bunkhouse from a summer camp I had gone to as a child, back when my parents still cared about what happened to me.  The acrid scent of body odor assaulted my nose, and I immediately turned down my sensitivity.  When I say ‘assaulted’ my nose, I meant it.  At least one person inside the building smelled like they were rubbing a bag of onions all over their body as a hobby.

“I d-don’t know, m-maybe we should j-just keep going.”  Jess must have smelt the inhabitants as well, and didn’t relish the thought of being in an enclosed area with them anymore than I did.

“No, you won’t make it to the next rest area.  We could make our own camp if this place doesn’t work out.”  I approached the heavy front door, and knocked loudly with the butt of my staff.  “Who knows, maybe they’ll be friendly!”

The door slammed into me, bouncing off my shield and knocking me back two steps.  A man large enough to have an ogre in his family tree, wielding an oversized meat cleaver, stepped into the open doorway.  The intense smell of onions and garlic hit me harder than the door ever could have managed, making my eyes water.  While I fought down the urge to gag, the stranger gave me a gap-toothed smile.  I didn’t appreciate how the nature of his smile changed when he glanced at Jess, but I was in the habit of punishing people for their actions, not their thoughts.

“Ah, visitors!  Come in, come in.  It’s wet out there, and you’ll catch your death.”  He turned a thumb toward another man sitting by a stone fireplace inside the bunkhouse who was picking his toes with the handle end of a ladle.  The source of the pungent odor was coming from the cast iron pot sitting over the flames.  Well, some of the odor came from the pot.  There was still plenty coming from the man in front of me.  “We’re almost done making the Vampire Bane potion, and we can have the leftovers as soup!”

With a grimace, I motioned for Jess to head inside.  It was obvious she didn’t want to go, but the firelight called to her like a moth to the flame.  I was not a moth, and would very much prefer to not have to wash every article of clothing I owned to get the smell of garlic and onions out, but I was responsible for Jess until we reached Greendown.  That meant I had to go inside too.

Sometimes, doing the right thing really was a punishment.