Wandering Warrior: Judge (Patreon)

Chapter 24

The twang of a few more traps going off without associated screams of pain meant Cross didn’t hide them well enough after the first one was found.  The treeline seemed to waver as a veritable wall of people walked into the clearing.  It was a struggle not to sigh when I saw how many of them there were.  I was starting to get tired of feeling like I was rushing from one proverbial fire to the next.  This whole planet was a train wreck, and I was ready to get off this ride already.

As they moved out of the shadows, the two leaders were immediately obvious.  The bandit leader looked like he could have won any amateur weightlifting competition on my home world, as long as they didn’t care about personal hygiene standards.  His long, stringy hair was matted together in clumps that looked like an octopus was living on his head.  I could tell from where I was crouched that being around him too long would require me to burn my clothing to get the smell off of me.  If at all possible, I would try and get Cross to fight him.

The real standout was the vampire.  I wasn’t sure how culture bleedthrough worked across the universe, but I had no doubt I was looking at a Mayan.  The misshapen skull looked like every one of the shaped skeletons from that ancient culture I had seen in museums on my world, and the obsidian-edged plank of wood he carried looked just as deadly as the ancient sword-like clubs had been.  His aura pushed on me like a weighted blanket, confirming my concerns about him being an elder.  It wasn’t the strongest I had felt, but this guy was no pushover.  If I was a betting man, I would say he probably ranked as a lieutenant for the big guy running the show, the Destitute.

“Spread out.  Find them.  Take them alive.  Otherwise, you will be the next blood sacrifice.”  The vampire held completely still after giving his orders, the creepy kind of stillness only the undead could manage.  His burning gaze was a physical force that cut through the night like a cone of contained hatred.  It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up as it passed over where I hid, but it moved on without pausing.

As the group of bandits spread out, I counted almost twenty enemies.  As long as there weren’t any surprises it wasn’t impossible, but I was going to have to take the gloves off this time around.  They moved slowly, taking their time to poke at the grass to make sure there weren’t any more traps.  More than a few of them kept glancing back nervously at the predator waiting to pounce behind them.  I didn’t blame them.  The leader motioned for them to keep searching, hefting a heavy single-bladed axe to help prove his point.

“I can smell you… hear your heartbeat.”  The undead moved fast enough to be a blur in my vision, stopping with a swirl of wind several yards closer to where Cross was hiding.  “You were marked by one of my kind.  Are you their servant, or their prey?”  It let out a gravelly chuckle.  “It doesn’t matter.  You are my prey now.”  There was no way the disgraced Warden could fight the vampire, so I started gathering power in the palm of my hand.  Instantly, the creature’s head snapped around to where I was hiding.  “Another?  Excellent.  And this one has magic.  A soft little wizard, ready to be plucked.  It makes me… hungry.”  Clenching my hand into a fist, I punched the ground in front of me.  I wasn’t a wizard, damn it.

The wave of power that erupted from my punch disappeared into the ground, vanishing with a ripple.  A tremor went through the ground before a grasping hand of stone erupted from the ground, snatching the vampire out of the sky as it tried to leap away from the surprise attack.  It squeezed him hard enough the sounds of snapping bones were audible all the way to where I was hiding.  I knew it wouldn’t hold him forever, but it would give me enough time to deal with the others.  Another wave of dizziness hit me as ambient energy rushed into my body to replace what I had used, keeping me on one knee for a brief moment.

Even though Cross was a terrible Warden, he was no fool.  The distraction caused by my spell was the perfect opportunity for him to leap from the top of a shed, his sword cleaving through the skull of the bandit closest to him.  He showed his experience by maximizing the surprise of the moment, not pausing to admire his minor victory.  Ripping his sword free, Cross swirled into the nearest cluster of bandits.  Their screams spoke of his effectiveness against them, and threw the rest of the group into more confusion.

I went to capitalize on the vampire’s current situation, but the bandit leader came to its rescue.  He leapt from the edge of the clearing, forcing me to jump back in a hasty dodge.  The man was an obvious bruiser, his swollen knuckles showing scars from hundreds of fights.  I was also absolutely correct about how bad he smelled.

“I guess I need to show this wizard who’s boss!”  He smashed his knuckles together, creating a small shockwave.  “Better be careful, little spellcaster.  I don’t want to kill you before the blood sucker is done with you.  Take your beating like a man, and–”

The paper-thin blade of my yari-like speartip cut through his throat with a splash of blood.  It was a great way to shut him up.  He grabbed at his wound, but there was a distinct lack of panic in his face.  I let loose a short sigh.  Definitely a strong healing ability for him to not be freaking out right now.  “I knew I should have let Cross fight you.”

“You’re gonna have to do better than that, little man.”  He coughed before spitting out a glob of blood.  “That little pigsticker ain’t big enough to do me in.”  Then he rushed me, using his powerful legs to leap right at me.  I wasn’t intimidated.

A boot to the chest stopped him cold with a crunch of ribs.  I followed up with a short punch to his face, breaking his nose in a spray of blood and mucus.  The big guy took two quick steps backward, but I didn’t give him time to regroup.  A quick thrust of my spear caught him in the groin, and he doubled over in pain.  “Look, now you’re the little man!”

He looked down in a panic, and I stabbed him through the top of the skull.  He spasmed before dropping onto his face.  That should do it.

“Not just a soft little wizard after all?”  I turned to see the Mayan vampire walk out of the shadow of the upthrust stone fist he had been trapped in, looking no worse off than when he had first walked into the clearing.  “I might need to turn this one.  It’s so hard finding capable people.”  A thick fog bank suddenly appeared around him, obscuring everything but his suddenly glowing red eyes that tinted the ground around us like it had been soaked in blood.  “But first, I want to see what else you can do.”

“I hate elder vampires.”  I tried casting a wind spell with a wave of my hand to blow away the obscuring fog, only managing to set it swirling as his magic battled mine.  “Fine.  I guess I’ll show you a few tricks.”

The red glow disappeared as I threw my spear at the glowing eyes with a burst of wind magic to help it along.  I heard a grunt of surprise, and the fog seemed to thicken in response.  For him to have advanced control of the weather like this, it meant I had underestimated him.  He was more than a lieutenant.  This guy might be second in command.  I drew both my ninjato and mace in either hand and dropped into a low crouch as I shuffled to my right.

A flicker of movement was all the warning I had before the obsidian-edged club flashed out of the fog, clipping me on the upper arm.  Obsidian holds a sharper edge than surgical steel, which meant it cut through my armor like a hot knife through butter.  It deflected off of the bone, severing muscles and making it impossible to use the hand holding my ninjato.

I heard a low chuckle come from the opposite side, forcing me to spin and block another attack with the handle of my mace.  He disappeared back into the fog with a snarl.  “Hmmm… your blood smells different.  Exotic.  Where are you from?  Of the thousands I have tasted, you stand unique.”

Concentrating on healing my arm, I decided to keep him talking to buy me some time.  “Oh, you know, here and there.  I like to travel, take long walks on the beach, and my sign is asparagus.  Any other questions, you overgrown leech?”

“What?  Did you sacrifice your sanity in a deal with a demon?”  His voice came from directly behind me, forcing another spin.  “No matter.  Your conversion will make any agreements with the denizens of other planes void.  I’ll ensure to keep you on a tight leash until I know how deep your instability has grown.”

“Thanks, you’re a real peach.  I could almost overlook the biting problems you have, but using teeth like you do is a real deal-breaker for me.”  I had use of my arm again, but I didn’t give it away, instead letting it dangle with my sword in a loose grip.  “I just don’t see this working between us.”  A quiet growl was his only response.  “Hey, before I kill you, I gotta know.  Are you this ‘Destitute’ character everyone keeps talking about?”

“You think I’m the Destitute?”  His voice seemed to come from both in front and behind me, the swirling fog making it even harder to figure out where he was standing.  “Oh, you are but a candle in the presence of a bonfire, unaware of the burning sun over the horizon.  The Destitute is the most powerful vampire this continent has ever seen.  I’ll be sure to introduce you once your transformation takes hold.”

“A bonfire, huh?”  I started funneling energy into my mace, causing sparks to jump between the blades that made up its head.  “Let’s see if I can’t make you eat those words.”

The quiet scuffle on my sword hand side was what I had been waiting for.  At their core, vampires are predators.  They can’t help but act upon those instincts.  A wounded opponent makes for easy prey, and attacking their weak spots is the best way to bring them down.  But, instead of a wounded arm that couldn’t even lift a weapon, the elder vampire’s rush was met by the sharp point of my magic-eating sword.

It took him high in his chest, on the opposite side of where his undead heart sat as an unbeating vestibule of his power.  “You missed the important part.  The heart.”  He swiped at me with a smile, using his deadly weapon in an attempt to hack into my shoulder.  I caught the attack using my mace, stopping his hit cold.

“No, you’re right where I want you.”  The look of shock on his face was priceless.  He had been expecting to overpower me, but I was just a little bit stronger.  My mace pushed his weapon aside, knocking it wide and leaving him open for another hit.  Three blades of the mace impacted his shoulder, dumping the load of mana like a thunderbolt.  The sword was always hungry, and immediately pulled in the uncontrolled energy.  It created a tunnel of destruction that ripped straight through the vampire, vaporizing most of his upper body, including his heart.  The blanket of fog started to fall apart, giving me a good view of the undead fire in his eyes slowly starting to fade away.

“Look out!”  Cross barrelled into me, knocking me aside as my own speartip erupted from his chest.  I looked over to see the bandit leader stumbling forward as a newly raised undead.  He was entirely focused on the vampire, meaning he had been the one to raise him at some point while the fog obscured him.  The vampire collapsed to the ground as Cross stumbled to the side, dropping to his knees.

I cast a fireball at the new zombie, the impact blowing it back into the middle of the clearing where it flailed as it burned.  Climbing back to my feet after the dizziness from using so much of my magic passed, I walked over to see the vampire trying to reach the fresh blood that Cross had leaked all over the ground.  “I don’t think so.”  I grabbed the dying elder vampire by the ankle and dragged him over to the still-struggling form of his newly risen underling.  “Burn.”  Tossing him onto the flames turned out to be anticlimactic as the monster simply curled up on itself as it quickly turned into charcoal.

Looking back over to where Cross was, I let out a sigh.  Depending on where the spear would have hit me, he might have just saved my life.  I guess I needed to return the favor before he bled out.