TD005 - Camping Trip (Patreon)

Vampires are unliving, but like the rest of their accursed Faction, they are not dead, since they were never alive in the first place. Spawned in their cauldrons of evil, they rule over the Ghouls as the Exemplar of the Undead Faction.

Unlike the enlightened guidance of the Elven race, the Vampires rule over their charges with an iron rod of oppression. Every living corpse harvested by the ghoul armies must have its blood drained and magically preserved, to be sent to sustain their betters. Should not enough living blood be found, the blood of the ghouls will have to do.

Avoid fighting Vampires after sunset. Their strength, speed and regeneration are all increased once the sun goes below the horizon. They can also see far better in total darkness than a human can in the day. There are some vampires that avoid the light entirely, but this is, as far as we can tell, merely an affectation.

- Elf-sage Alimoniel, Lectures on the Nature of the Races

With a sigh, Lif dragged Kailex out of the loop he’d been walking around in.

“I told you to look out for the redirection sigil,” she said. It took a moment. for Kailex to respond, disoriented as he was by his perceptions being re-aligned.

“That was— I did look out for it! And I avoided it!” he insisted.

“No, you saw the decoy and didn’t look behind it,” Lif explained. “I told you, this place is tricky.”

Kailex grunted in acknowledgement. “How come you haven’t disabled all these traps? It must be a pain avoiding them each time.”

“I disabled some of them,” Lif said.

“Some? This—” Kailex gestured around them, “—this is with some of the traps disabled?”

“It’s something, isn’t it?” Lif asked, laughing. “Some of them I couldn’t disable, couldn’t get close enough to the actual sigil. Some of them, it was safer to leave them in place. A redirection trap like that one is going to send people back down the mountain, eventually. Better that they wander around for a few hours than they find a firebomb trap the hard way.”

“How do you do that, anyway?” Kailex demanded. “I’m an actual mage, and I can’t get past wards like you can.”

Lif shrugged. “Any magical field, no matter how well designed, is defined mathematically, perfectly. The real world isn’t like that, so there’s always some kind of flaw where the design meets reality.”

“You sound educated when you talk like that,” Kailex said. “Where’d you learn spellcrafting, anyway?”

“There was an escaped familiar hiding in the slums,” Lif said. “I found him food, and he taught me stuff.”

“An escaped familiar?” Kailex said doubtfully. “I wouldn’t have thought that one would want to, let alone be able to.”

That’s true, Mistress, Davethai put in silently. The bond that a familiar shares with their master allows the master to order the familiar back at any time.

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Lif said, answering both of them at the same time. “That’s what he said he was, and he didn’t seem to have any master. You have familiars in demon lands, too?”

“Most of the Arcane Faction’s territory is demon-held now,” Kaliex said smugly. “A lot of them sought shelter with the Holy Faction, but not all of them.

“Right.” Lif winced at the thought of a friendly familiar getting trapped in demon-held lands. Her childhood had been full of tales of the cruelties and violent excesses of demons and demonlings. Since meeting Kaliex, she’d learned that most of them weren’t true… but some were.

“You might as well get out of those bandages,” she said. “There’s no one here to see.”

Kaliex grunted his acknowledgment and pulled his hood down. The hood didn’t entirely conceal his horns, but it obscured them enough that you had to know what to look for. They were sharp, but not very long. Kailex then unwound the bandages from his hands and face, revealing his rich ruby-coloured skin. 

Unlike any natural human, a demon’s skin varied from bright red to a wine-dark purple. Kaliex was about in the middle, maybe a little more towards the purple end. It took some getting used to, even if you had accepted that the Holy War was long over, and there was a peace treaty.

I still don’t think this is wise, Davethai said. Demons are inherently untrustworthy. Up here, there is no one to stop him from murdering you in your sleep.

Unable to respond aloud, Lif just tapped Davethai’s hilt in acknowledgement. She still wasn’t sure what she was going to tell Kaliex, but she was glad of the company.

The pair slowly made their way up the mountain. Lif tried to show Kaliex some of her tricks for getting past wards, but didn’t have much luck. Her understanding of spellcraft was mostly self-taught, based on experimentation. She didn’t know many of the terms Kaliex was familiar with, and he found her “twisty, round-about” way of thinking hard to grasp.

Not much had been achieved by the time they reached Lif’s campsite.

“This is both worse and better than I expected,” Kaliex said. “I’m amazed that you managed this much and shocked that you expected me to stay here.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Lif said. “It’s already better than the cave.”

There had been progress. The pile of odd-shaped lumber, which was only a shelter in the sense that you could crawl under it, was replaced by a small building with three walls and a roof. The astute observer would have noticed that three walls were one too few. There were planks cut to make the fourth wall, but Lif had run out of nails.

“Wait— are you going to make me build a wall?” Kaliex exclaimed. “That’s honest labour!”

“Only if I pay you,” Lif replied. “You can do the roof instead if you like.”

The roof was, as Lif could attest, mostly water-tight, but it wasn’t permanent. Lif had merely draped a waterproof canvas over the frame and nailed it down. A single row of wooden shingles indicated her plans, but again, the nails had proved an issue.

Kaliex watched as Lif unloaded their supplies into the sheltered confines of the shack.

“I wondered where you were keeping the supplies,” he said as Lif emptied her Pouch of Holding. “Did you get that back in the city?”

“There’s a lot of stuff on this mountain if you know where to look,” Lif said enigmatically. Kaliex perked up at the thought of treasure hunting, then scowled as he realised his chances of getting far were zero without Lif’s help. Then he came to a much more unpleasant realisation.

“You made me carry the wine cask!” he exclaimed. “It was heavy!”

Lif shrugged. “You’re pretty strong,” she said. “And there isn’t unlimited space in here.”

“You always take advantage of me,” Kaliex complained. “A poor, lost demonling, alone in a hostile land…”

Lif snorted. “Village is that way,” she said, pointing downhill, “If you want to take your chances.”

Kaliex looked dubiously in that direction. “How long do you think I’d last?” he asked plaintively.

“About ten minutes,” Lif said smugly.

“Mmf. I think I’ll take my chances with the cold, tricksey human,” he said. “Can I get started on the wine now?”

“Not until I get some work out of you,” Lif said. “Do you want to nail up wall boards, or do you want to attach the roof tiles?”

Kailiex looked askance at the unfinished roof. “You’re the climber,” he said. “I like walls.”

It took a while for Lif to convey the lessons she’d mostly learned by trial and error, but she did manage to get a few shingles nailed in place before it became too dark to work. She got dinner going before the twilight faded.

Kaliex sat by the fire, looking at his hands mournfully. “I’m going to get a blister,” he announced. “Maybe two.”

In my estimation, you have two days before you need to cut more planks, Davethai told her. You will need to have some explanation for me by then, unless you plan on cutting the wood in secret.

Lif shook her head. Telling Kaliex would, at least, mean she could speak to Davethai openly.

Kaliex got up and looked down at the stew inquiringly. He picked up the spoon and gave it a single stir before setting the spoon down. Then he cracked the cask open and brought two cups of wine over.

“I helped,” he said with a wink. “So let’s get to drinking.”

“Cheers,” Lif said, toasting him with her cup. He grinned and settled back down.

“Now,” he said. “What’s the plan here? Are you really planning on living in this shack?”

“At least through winter,” Lif said. “It needs to be ready for then, and I doubt I’ll be able to travel into the village once the snow starts. I’ll hole up with supplies until spring.”

It’s not a terrible idea, Davethai agreed. I’d prefer it if you learned on the job, as it were, but taking a chance to shore up your swordwork would not go amiss.

“Ridiculous,” Kaliex declaimed. You’re not built for living out in the wilderness. You were made for city living, the same as me! Wine and whores and… whatever it was you filled your time with when you weren’t at the brothel.”

“Reading, mostly,” Lif said wryly. “I can do that fine, living in a shack.”

“Not if you don’t have books! Last I checked, they don’t grow on trees!” 

Kaliex laughed uproariously at his joke before turning slightly more serious.

“We may be different races, you and I, but we are kindred spirits, you know? That’s how I know you will never make it to winter. You will come down off the mountain looking for a woman to share her bed with you— and none of these village girls are your type.”

“What do you know about my type?” Lif muttered uncomfortably.

“It’s the same as mine, of course!” Kaliex exclaimed. “That’s how I know there are none here— I’ve already scoured the place clean.”

“Can’t imagine that went over well,” Lif said.

“Please, that is the one thing that I do with discretion,” Kaliax said proudly. “The first rule of the hunt is not to scare away the prey.”

“Charming,” Lif said.

“Anyway, this is why you cannot stay. And why I cannot stay. Even though you are going to ask me to.”

“You might want to consider it,” Lif said. “Something’s going down in Arneholme.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” Lif admitted. “A vampire, necromancy, ritual killing and the Duke… I don’t know what it all adds up to, but it’s big. And nasty.”

Kaliex shrugged. “Perhaps the duke is just lending his mansion to the ambassador from the Undead Faction. There is a treaty, yes?”

“No,” Lif stated firmly. “I mean, yes, there is a treaty, but that guy. He killed Elolar and tried to kill me just because we saw him. They’re up to something, something bad.”

That sounds exactly like the sort of thing a budding heroine should get involved in! Davethai said excitedly.

Lif shook her head. 

“At some point,” she said, “Either news will come that the Duke’s scheme has been exposed and everyone has been executed, or they’ll succeed at whatever it is they’re doing. Given that there’s a duke involved, it’s probably an attack on the crown, so if they succeed, it will be the Terror all over again, until the angels come down and purge Arneholme.”

This is exactly the sort of thing that you need a hero to prevent! Davethai exclaimed. You need to go back and face your destiny!

“But if that happens, then what will happen to the girls?” Kaliex asked.

Lif shook her head again. “It’s not my problem,” she said. “The first rule of surviving on the streets: When something bigger than you comes along, you get out of its way.”