Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Chapter 8

“So, what brings you two out here in weather like this?”  The man that answered the door had waited for me to step inside before putting down his giant cleaver, and was looming over Jess and I as we sat down together on the bunk farthest from the fire.  Inside the bunkhouse, the layout was surprisingly comfortable.  Eight beds were lined up against the walls, with a walkway running down the center.  Opposite the doorway was the fireplace, with enough space for two benches that allowed people to sit close to the fire.  It had two tiny windows on each wall, barely big enough to reach an arm through.  The thick timber walls made it feel cozy, and I could see why Jess thought it was a good idea to stay in a place like this.  If there weren’t weirdos already inside, of course.  “You aren’t cursed, undead, witches, magic casters, or otherwise a threat to the Trinity, are ya?”

“We’re traveling to Greendown, where my friend will be looking for a new job.”  I glanced over at the other man sitting by the fire, still picking away at his feet.  “And who might you two be?”

“You don’t recognize who we are by our clothing?”  He motioned at what he was wearing, which was some kind of blend of leather, chain mail, and odd copper disks so old they had turned green.  “Haven’t you met a member of the Tinker’s Guild before?”

“Nope.  You’re the first.”  I nodded toward his partner, who had finally stopped picking at his feet, and was now ladling the smelly mixture into glass jars laid out in a row in front of him.  “If you are tinkerers, why are you making potions?  Isn’t that the job of some other guild?”

The man laughed uproariously, apparently finding my question to be hilarious.  “Why would another guild make Vampire Bane?  Have ya seen a member of the Alchemist Guild ever lift a weapon?  They’d crap their pants at the first sight of an undead, especially one that’s smart enough to talk!”  He walked over and picked up a potion, taking a small sip and smacking his lips.  “Ah, that’s the stuff!  See, only the Tinker’s Guild has enough hair on our chest to go out in the wild, face the evils of the world, and then…”  He looked over at me, expecting me to finish his sentence.  When I didn’t, he let out a defeated sigh.  “And then, we fix broken pots.”

“Not just pots.”  The other man spoke for the first time.  If I had to guess, I would say he was at least distantly related to the first guy.  Big, hairy, and terrible personal hygiene.  “We fix anything with metal.  I like to sharpen things.”  He pointed at the ninjato on my belt.  “Can sharpen that for you, if you want.”

“I just sharpened it, but thanks anyway.”  I pointed at one of the jars cooling on the floor.  “I wouldn’t mind buying one of those off of you, though.  I’ve never seen a Vampire Bane potion before.”

“We’re in the Tinker’s Guild, we don’t sell potions.”  The guy who liked to sharpen stuff shook his head, clearly disappointed about not getting to play with my sword.  “I’ll just give one to you, if you have somethin’ else I can sharpen.”

“How about this?”  I pulled out my folding pocket knife and held it up.  “It could use a good sharpening.”  He seemed confused, until I opened it, showing him the blade.

“Oooh, you must be rich.  I’ve never met someone who could afford somethin’ like that out in the wilds before.”  He walked over – giving me the new and fun smell of bare feet that smelled like rotten corn chips – and traded me my knife for a potion.  “I’ll have it ready before you know it.”

“Thanks.”  I sat the potion down on the bedpost, not willing to put it in my bag without knowing it wouldn’t leak out all over my stuff.  “How much for sharpening the knife?”

The first man sat on the bed across from us, making the wooden slats groan in protest.  “Two coppers, and a promise to not waste that potion.”  He tried to give me a disarming grin, but his eyes couldn’t help but drift over to Jess once more.

“Here’s the money.”  I handed over the coins, not bothering to barter.  “And I assure you, we won’t waste the potion.”

“Yeah, James killed three vampires all by himself just last night!”  Jess seemed to be recovering quickly, the color in her cheeks already starting to come back.  “He didn’t need a potion to do it, either.  Took care of all three with only his mace, and didn’t get a single scratch!”

The tinkerer sharpening my knife didn’t react, but the one sitting across from us didn’t like hearing what she said.  He looked me up and down with a frown, and I felt the temperature in the room chill just a little bit.  “Ya say he killed three?  I don’t see a Guild badge.”  His eyes flickered to his cleaver leaning near the door.  “It’s illegal to take bounties without a Guild badge.”

“Oh, the Wardens already talked to him.  It was self-defense, not hunting.”  Jess squirmed, obviously realizing her mistake.  “The vampires tried to turn the innkeeper, but he stopped them before they could.”

“Well, I would still watch myself if I were in ya shoes.”  He stood, making his way over to his weapon and walking over to join his partner.  “If word got out that someone was killing the undead outside the Guilds, it could end bad.  Even if it wasn’t really hunting.”

“Thanks for the warning.”  I spoke up before Jess could, trying to keep her from making things worse.  The dynamic of the Guilds being in charge was most definitely the first thing I needed to figure out when we got to town.  “We’re planning on getting back on the road at first light, so we better get some sleep.”  I moved to lay down on the bunk the tinkerer had just vacated, sitting my ruck down next to it.  The tinkerer turned back to get a bowl of their ‘soup,’ his offer to share it with us apparently no longer on the table.  I was perfectly okay with that.

While both of them were busy, I decided to see just how effective their homebrewed potion really was.  “Identify.”

Item: Potion

Type: Defensive

Grade: 1/10

Description: Barely more than a poorly made soup, this tincture will repel vampires, lycanthropes with advanced olfactory senses, and most other creatures with a nose that come close enough to smell it.  Purity level is very low.  Adverse side effects when consumed may include intestinal distress, halitosis, and a temporary reduction in the Vigor statistic.

Seeing the side effects wasn’t any kind of a surprise, but I was genuinely impressed to see that it was an actual potion.  It wouldn’t do much beyond slowing down an enemy temporarily, and I decided to give it to Jess instead of risking it breaking inside my own pack.  She didn’t appreciate it very much.

“Why do I have to carry it?”  Jess wrinkled up her nose when I passed it over to her.  “It stinks.”

“That’s why you have to take it.”  I pointed to my ruck.  “Do you want that stuff to get on our food?”

“How about I carry all the food, and you take this?”  She tried to pass it back, but I was already laying down and doing my best to ignore her.  “Fine, but don’t expect me to hold onto it forever.  If I’m supposed to get a job in Greendown, I can’t smell like this.”

I was already halfway asleep, trusting in my shield to protect me if the tinkerers tried anything.  Neither of them carried anything magical, which would give me at least some warning if they tried to hit me with something.

Soon, the only sounds in the bunkhouse were the crackling of the fire, and the stropping of the knife as the tinkerer sharpened it.  I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in ages, and it was hard to keep my eyes open, despite the smell.

A loud thump coming from the door jerked me awake, and I held perfectly still.  It took a heartbeat for me to remember where I was, and I could feel every bone I had ever broken throb in response to the realization that I wasn’t sleeping on a pillow top mattress with actual sheets.  And a pillow.  Oh, how I missed pillows.  It had been two decades, and I still had moments like this.

“What was that?”  Jess hissed the question, doing an admirable job of keeping her voice down.  The fire had died down while I had slept, and it was pure darkness inside the bunkhouse.  Another loud thump shook the door in its frame, snapping the two tinkerers awake.

“Wuzzat?”  The shout from the more talkative tinker let whatever was outside know someone was inside.  Apparently, it really wanted to say hello, because the door started rocking as the unknown assailant started pounding on the thick timbers.  Whatever it was, it had to be strong.

“Wake up!”  The tinker that had sharpened my knife hopped out of bed and started stumbling into everything, making even more noise that only excited our late-night visitor even more.  “Anton, something is trying to get inside!  Wake up!”  He found his partner, and thumped him hard on the chest to get him out of bed.

“Okay, okay!  Keep ya shorts on!”  Anton sat up, his burly outline barely visible in the dim light.  “What’s all that racket about, Ausin?”

In a moment of fantastic cosmic timing, a giant fist punched through the small square window near Anton, throwing broken glass all over the shirtless man.  The pounding at the door only increased, meaning we had at least two whatever-creature-of-fun-new-terror trying to get inside.  I finally got out of bed, grabbing my staff so I could maximize my reach in the tight confines of the building.  I was about to twist the locking mechanism to unleash the spearpoint when I had to jerk back from getting hit by Anton as he fumbled with his cleaver.

“Lycans!”  Ausin threw something that glinted in the dark at the thick arm grasping around inside the bunkhouse.  It made a meaty thwap as it hit the fleshy part of the forearm, and the arm whipped back outside, taking the weapon with it.  He let out a grunt, and his silhouette turned to look at me.  “Oh… uh, sorry.  That was your knife.”

“Seriously?  I liked that one.”  I didn’t really care too much about the blade at the moment.  Especially since the thing outside didn’t react at all when it got stabbed.  Most lycans would have let out at least a small roar of surprise or pain.  Instead, there was only silence.  Not counting the one at the door.  It was still banging on that hunk of timber like it owed it money.  “Why didn’t it make a sound when you hit it?”

Jess appeared near my elbow, her cat eyes flashing in the darkness.  “Because it isn’t shifters outside.  From the smell, it’s a pair of wendigo.”  The two tinkers gasped, and I had to think furiously about what in all the hells a wendigo might be.

“It can’t be a wendigo, they are almost walking skeletons!”  Ausin pointed to where the window used to be.  “That thing’s arm was big!”

“Only starving wendigos look like skeletons.  That one has been eating well.”  Jess pointed to her nose.  “Trust me, I’ve smelled them before, and this is definitely a pair of wendigos.”

This was another problem I had come across more than once.  Sometimes monsters in one world were called something else in another.  Or – and this was by far the worse option – they had entirely unique monsters that I had no idea how to fight, or what weaknesses they might have.  And while I enjoyed fun new nightmares that could wake me up in a cold sweat as much as the next guy, learning to fight something new with zero preparation and innocents to protect was the opposite of how I wanted to spend my night.

“What are we going to do?”  Anton seemed jumpy, and that was never a good thing.  Especially when the jumpy person was holding a giant meat cleaver.  “We don’t have any wormwood, or lilac water!”

I squeezed between the two, making my way over to the fireplace.  “First, we get this fire going big and bright.  Fighting in the dark with unknown friends can be even more dangerous than fighting in the dark with enemies.”  A thin scar running along my ribs that no amount of focused healing could manage to get rid of was proof of that.  Man, world number eleven really had sucked.  “Once we can see, things should start looking better.”

Jess came over and knelt down to help me get the fire going again, since I could only use one hand while I had my wrist cannon on.  Didn’t want that cooking off accidentally.  As we waited for the fire to build, she leaned in close to speak quietly with me.  The incessant pounding at the door ensured the tinkerers couldn’t listen in.

“James, what are we going to do?  Wendigo are almost impossible to kill, especially without the weapons meant to fight them.”  Jess glanced quickly back at the tinkerers.  “But, there are only two of them, and when they kill something, they stop and eat the whole thing before moving on to the next victim.  We could hide, and as soon as they started eating those two, we could run far enough away that they would forget about us.”  She shivered, but it wasn’t from the cold.  “I don’t want to get eaten.”

“I know you are scared, but running away while someone else gets devoured isn’t the right thing to do.”  I stood up from my crouch in front of the fireplace and offered her a hand back to her feet.  “And that’s the opposite of what I do, Jess.  I’m here to do the right thing.”

Jess took my hand and I pulled her up.  She leaned into me, and I fought down the automatic reaction to hold her as we pressed together.  The gap in my chest where Sinthia belonged ached in response, and the pain must have shown on my face.

“I-I’m sorry.”  Jess pulled away and stood up straight.  “I didn’t mean–”

“It’s fine.”  I cut her off, and turned to face the door.  This wasn’t the time or place to deal with events from the past, no matter how much they hurt.  “Tell me everything you know about wendigo, especially what their weaknesses are.”

“How do you not know about wendigo?”  Anton cut in, doing his best to strap his armor on over his bare chest.  “They are people possessed by hunger demons, and they eat other people.  Nothing but a wormwood stake to the heart, or weapons coated in lilac water will hurt them!”  He finally got his armor on, and moved to brace the door with his shoulder.  “Our only chance is to keep them out!”

Wormwood was a poisonous plant on my home world that was used to make a fantastic drink called absinthe, which meant it was something else on this planet if they were making stakes out of it.  That one was out.  Thinking hard, I tried to remember anything I could about lilacs.  Something about them being antifungal or killing intestinal parasites was all I managed to pull from my memories.  Maybe it helped with headaches somehow?  I didn’t have any idea if I was right or wrong here, but if I needed some kind of antifungal or anticoagulant, my healing spells might work on one.  Also, if it was a fungus or parasite that was actually turning people into insane cannibalistic monsters, this world sucked.  I might prefer an actual hunger demon.

“Look out!”  Jess shouted a warning as the window close to Ausin shattered.  He had been trying to put his own armor on, but fear had made his hands shake, slowing down the process.  He was just within range of the wendigo’s outstretched arm, and it backhanded him hard enough in the chest that I heard several ribs crackle from being crushed as he flew straight into the stone fireplace, where another loud crack meant more broken bones.  From the impact, I was guessing his spine snapped right between his shoulder blades.  Big ouch.

“Nooo!”  Anton shouted, but didn’t stop holding the door.  It was starting to splinter around the frame, so that was definitely a good thing.  “I’ll kill ya, unclean demon!  I’ll kill ya!”

I looked at Jess, and pointed at the door.  “Go help him hold it.  I’ll try to fix all this.”  She ducked below the flailing arm and ran to help brace the only thing keeping us from ending up in a wendigo’s stomach.  I moved to crouch over Ausin, and ran a hand over his body as I chanted a spell that worked like a weak form of x-ray vision.  It always gave me a headache to use it, but I needed to know if it was possible to even save him.  Healing could only fix so much.  “See-the-unseen-let-me-see-the-unseen-let-me-see-the-unseen-let-me-see…”  As the spell kicked in and my head started to pound, I could see the faint outline of the internal injuries quickly killing Ausin.  The internal bleeding was extensive, and the spinal injury might be too much for me to heal without knocking myself out for a day or two.  I could at least stabilize him though, and work on fixing him the rest of the way after the wendigo problem was taken care of.

Considering this needed more than Leedy’s healing, I had to increase my connection to my patient.  I spit on his bare chest, and used it to draw both a ‘J’ and ‘H’ before making a large circle around the letters, concentrating specifically on what I wanted my healing energy to do the whole time.  The moment the circle closed, I felt a rush of energy leave me.  My recent lack of sleep made the hit to my system harder than normal, and I broke the connection with a swipe of my thumb through the spit.  I stood up, feeling light-headed and a little off balance.  Ausin was already looking better though, and I could see his wounds closing up.  I was surprised to see the spinal injury fix itself along with the ribs and punctured lungs, meaning I was either getting better at healing, or he was a very hearty individual.  Most likely it was a mix of both.  He was still going to hurt, though.  I didn’t do much to diminish the bruising.  If anything it would be a reminder to be aware of his surroundings, maybe duck next time.  I don't know, I wasn't a fortune teller.

“Is he alive?”  Anton shouted to me over the banging on the door, the strain of holding it turning his face red.  “Or did that monster kill him?”

“He’s going to make it.”  Anton didn’t look like he believed me, but a groan from Ausin seemed to change his mind.  He must have missed me casting a healing spell, which I was okay with.  I went to my pack and pulled out a piece of jerky to help with the dizziness while the arm through the window continued to flail about mindlessly.  It was time to see how tough these things really were.

I twisted my staff, and the thin blade snapped out, gleaming in the firelight.  As I approached the window, the arm reminded me of a dangerous whipping electrical cable, flailing around and ready to destroy.  I waited for the right angle, and swiped downward hard with the spear tip, slicing through the elbow joint.  The forearm and hand dropped on Ausin’s bed with a spray of black blood.  The feeling of victory quickly faded when the severed arm didn’t stop moving.

“Stop that!”  Jess was crouched at the base of the door, putting her weight against it.  “You are only going to make it angry!”

“Removing limbs only makes it angry?”  I watched as the stump disappeared from the shattered window and was quickly replaced by the opposite arm of the monster.  This time, it started tearing chunks out of the wooden wall with a determination that didn’t bode well for the structural integrity of the building.  “Ah, I see.  They don’t feel pain.  Lucky them.”

The still-moving limb was thankfully caught up in the thin blanket on the bed, so it wasn’t able to get away when I moved closer to inspect it.  The first thing I noticed was the smell.  It was a musty, earthy scent that set alarm bells ringing in my head.  Fungus.  And fungus gave off spores.  Which we were certainly breathing.  This world was quickly trying to surpass number eleven for suck factor.

I immediately cast a healing spell on the tangled limb, keeping my body fluids to myself this time.  The weak version was still enough to cause a rapid reaction.  As the limb started twitching, the spell tried to heal the infected flesh and I saw the blood leaking from the end start turning red.  It still moved, which was freaky, but it wasn’t moving as… vigorously.  I couldn’t be sure, but it sure was acting like a fungal infection.  The wendigo wasn’t happy about it either, and the process of the creature turning the wall into wood chips picked up speed.

Wait.  Fungus.  What kills fungus?  A faint memory of my grandmother using a garlic clove on the toenails of my brother to cure the fungal infection he caught from wrestling bubbled up from my distant past, and I immediately turned to look at Anton.  “Where are the potions you made?”

“What?”  Anton looked at me with obvious confusion as he was bounced around by the wendigo on the other side of the door.  “Those are for vampires.  These aren’t vampires.”

“Just trust me!  Where are they?”  I hurried over to where he pointed at a burlap sack at the foot of his bed, and pulled out two jars of the stinking mixture as I dropped my spear-staff.  “I think this will work.”

“I already told you, these aren’t vampires!”  Anton looked down where Jess was crouched.  “Is he hard of hearing?”

The opening in the wall was big enough for the wendigo to stick its head and shoulder inside the room, and the musty smell was nearly as overwhelming as the onion and garlic smell had been when we first got here.  I saw the creature in the light for the first time, and I was surprised at how bestial it looked.  Whatever this thing used to be, I was almost positive it hadn’t started out as a vanilla human.  Either a shifter, or maybe some kind of hobgoblin or orc had succumbed to the fungus, turning it into the monster it was now.  Its lantern eyes blinked slowly as we sized each other up, and it let out a rasping hiss.  Yeah, I don’t like you either, guy.

I popped the lid off the first jar and threw it in the wendigo’s face, and gagged at the smell that hit me like a physical attack.  The wendigo didn’t even react, just tried squeezing itself farther into the window.  Thankfully, it hadn’t made a large enough opening to get its monstrous body through, and it appeared to be stuck.  Not giving up, I bent down and picked up my spear-staff and slashed it across the face with a sweep of the thin point, cutting a narrow gash just above its eyes.  It didn’t even seem to notice until I tossed the second jar in the wound.  Then, I finally got a reaction.

The wendigo flipped its shit.  Big time.  It started flailing around like a rabid wolf caught in a bear trap, cracking the thick timbers holding it in place as its face started melting.  The monster managed to pull itself free, falling back outside of the bunkhouse, where it started a kind of raspy wailing that made my headache worse.  I wasn’t stupid enough to stick my head outside the window to check on it, especially once the constant pounding on the door stopped.

“What just happened?”  Jess stood up, and took a step back from the door that was mostly splinters at this point.  “What did you do?”

“Did ya use the right potion?  Or were ya hiding some lilac water up ya sleeve?”  Anton didn’t back away from the door.  He clearly wasn’t willing to risk backing away.  “Why didn’t ya just say–”  A fist punched through the ragged wood of the door and latched onto his shoulder before yanking him out into the dark in a spray of splinters.

Jess backed up until she bumped into me, and I let out a long sigh.  “Well… fuck.”