Side story - Eyn and Weavy - Chapter 3 Survival (Patreon)

Author's note: Hey, new side chapter. Let me know what you think :). Also who would you like to see? If anybody.

Chapter 3 Survival

Eyn watched the man open one of the bottles they had brought, sniffing on it before he took a sip, “That’s the stuff. Always worth just for that.” He said and threw a small sack of coins at Indra, the necromancer catching it and taking count.

“It’s all there necromancer, now leave before the guards come around this part of town. The patrols have increased again.” He said, Indra nodding before he gestured to Eyn. The buyer looked at the mind mage but didn’t say anything further.

The two of them had to sneak through parts of the sewers to avoid one of the wealthier areas of the city, more guards according to Indra. Eyn didn’t really understand why they had to sneak around. Selling and buying goods isn’t illegal, is it?

They reached the gate again, the same guard who had let them in quickly checked around and nodded, “Make a run for the trees. Guard change is in ten minutes. The captain increased rotation again, the old fool.”

Indra chuckled, glancing quickly at the snoring guard sitting on a chair to the side, “Dale was it, well then let’s hope he gets a higher position for all his ambition. We’re off then.”

Eyn didn’t see how it was a bad thing. Weren’t they attacked by elves a while ago?

“Why was one of the guards sleeping? Aren’t they supposed to… well, guard?” He asked Indra after getting back into the forest, finding their cart, the necromancer summoning his horse again.

Indra looked at him and smiled wryly, the two of them moving off into the dark sea of trees, “If those two would take their duties more seriously we wouldn’t be able to enter the town at all.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea master?” Eyn asked the demon, crouching over the carcass of an animal he couldn’t identify. The demon didn’t look up from his meal before answering. Not in words but a mental shrug.

Walter had advised him to focus on his training for now but Weavy was the one he would follow. “Leveling skills is good. Your dark magic alcohol brewer is correct. But I have seen many fail when a battle for life and death came up. It is necessary young one.”

“The ash warrior has entrusted you to me and I won’t have you fail the first time you get your face mauled by some idiotic monster spawn. Compared to her you do not have the luxury of recovering half your body.” Weavy explained, more than he usually did. Eyn kind of understood but he wasn’t ready, not by far.

The demon stood up, blood dripping on the black cloak he had wrapped around himself, “I don’t feel prepared master. I can’t even take a single blow of your magic without nearly dying.”

“Don’t compare me to some rabble wandering these lands. Luscious with food and easy prey. Your people lack any sort of hardship except that self imposed. I have learned enough, speaking with the humans here, seeing their lives.” He said straight to his mind and walked to the door, “Do you seek power young one? Or do you wish to dwell in these caves, safe in hiding?”

Eyn gulped and nodded, following his master. He didn’t understand completely but he knew the demon had ample experience. Weavy wasn’t from this place even and the Shadows had brought him here after all. Shadows… There was something entrancing about how they had looked, in their black armor. Even the demon now his master had listened to them. If he, if he could reach that sort of strength, maybe…,

“Where are you staring. Come follow me.” The demon said into his mind, with pressure enough to nearly know him out.

Eyn breathed hard and stumbled into the closest wall, holding himself up before another pressuring wave entered his mind. Not enough to kill him but it hurt, badly. “Wh…. Why…,” He managed to get out to his master, pain overtaking most of his being.

The pressure stopped as quickly as it had came, tears forming on his eyes while his vision became blurry, “You have a mental shield do you not? A wild beast is attacking your mind and you ask it why it does it? Why? If you can talk you can put up your defenses. Maybe next time the beast won’t be so kind as to explain their reasoning.” The demon said and attacked him again.

His telekinetic shield came up and actually helped reduce the pressure. It did after all defend him against all kinds of magical attacks. He allowed himself a little confidence before it broke and the pain commenced. Just for a couple seconds before he collapsed, a bony and clawed hand grabbing him by the neck.

Eyn slipped in and out of consciousness, his legs dragging over the stone floor, soon in complete darkness before finally the light of the sun woke him up. He was lying on his back and started coughing. Blood came into his mouth as he took in his surroundings, finding his master sitting on a nearby rock, rubbing dirt onto his face.

He just looked at the demon with wide open eyes, checking around them. “Where are we? Did you not bring anything master?”

The demon carefully put the clump of dirt down and looked at it, “Isn’t this lovely little human boy. Earth. Life. This alone would entice hundreds of our kind to slaughter each other… just for the privilege to touch and feel it.”

Eyn didn’t know how to respond, just now noticing the grazes on his legs. He had been dragged for quite a while it seemed. “Yet you, human. You cannot eat dirt. Just like me. And you are wasting precious time. How long can you survive without food… or water? Was it a month? A week? The one named Ilea. I believe she would survive for a year, perhaps two. Who knows where she is now, how much she is progressing.”

Eyn watched in disbelief as his master started levitating from the ground, flying up and away through the tree tops. He was alone. You should have stayed… He heard a voice in his mind. Eyn sunk to the ground and held his head. Was this another one of his master’s attacks? The telekinetic shield he put up didn’t help, didn’t change the fear, the breathing accelerating.

Three days… He thought, that was how long he would survive without water. Or so the boys back in Fenhold had said. They wanted to become adventurers, wanted to train and fight. They had to know such things. He had listened, listened in on their talks. Had asked questions even though few would give answers. He was to remain in the village after all, to work and grow old. To die with his weird magic that invaded their very thoughts.

Opening his eyes, he brushed away the tears that had started to well up. Weavy had chosen him. Out of boredom perhaps or entertainment. The demon was vile, vicious, bloody and cruel. Eyn knew as much, had endured as much and worse. But the demon had given him a chance. Walter would have prepared him but perhaps the training he had received in the single week had been more than he could ask for. More than he deserved.

Standing up, he looked around. The forest was quiet. Not unnaturally so, birds chirping occasionally and crickets playing their musicals in the distance. There were no people around, the bustling of the village was nowhere to be heard. The magical noises of experimenting necromancers he had gotten used to. He was alone in the forest.

Not quite alone. He told himself, with more confidence than he knew he had. Eyn had his magic with him. A class he could hone. Trying to think back to the many tidbits of knowledge he had learned about, the boy tried to listen, tried to orient himself. Water was important he knew, food as well. It was spring, meaning that the cold winds and snow wouldn’t endanger him. He knew there were monsters in the wild, knew they could show up at any time but he put that thought to the very back of his mind.

‘ding’ ‘Fortitude reaches lvl 4’

Being in the wild alone, outside the enchanted houses, the village borders or the huge city walls he had seen in Riverwatch. It was lunacy, suicide. Utter nonsense. And yet Weavy had brought him here. The demon more powerful than anything he had ever seen before, with magic that could snap his mind in two with a single pulse. He would trust that demon.

Walking through the forest made it perfectly clear that his shoes were of the lowest quality. His feet felt every stone, every root growing out that he stood on. After five minutes already it had started to hurt and with time it only grew worse. He was sweaty, his flimsy shirt soaked as he looked for a source of water. There had been no conditions from his master. Just a remark about survival. To find water and food. Perhaps if he reached that goal it would be enough? No, you know them better than that. You know him better than that.

Eyn walked on and on, lost in the forest unable to find a single sign of humans ever passing through. He couldn’t help but smile at the advice he had gotten so long ago. Never to leave the roads, never to stray into the forests, lest an elf eat him alive. Tales to scare children for sure but he knew that those who did wander off, to find adventure, to get away or simply because they got lost. None returned.

Finally, after hours of searching, his stomach rumbling and his throat soar he came upon a small stream. The creek lazily cutting through the forest, the water flowing without a second thought, a lifeline for the young man who knelt down quickly, splashing the water on his face before he cupped it with his hands. Eyn drank until he couldn’t anymore and then he cleaned his shirt, his pants and his body. The dried blood on his knees went away, showing him the shallow and thin cuts below.

His greasy hair cleaned out and with soaking clothes, he carefully took off his shoes. The cloth stuck to the bottom of his soles, pain rushing through him when a blister opened. He grit his teeth but couldn’t help but let out a yelp.

Something rustled in the bushes a couple meters to his left, on the other side of the creek. He looked over, curious at the noise before a head popped out. Not human, nor demonic.

[Drake – lvl 20]

Something stirred in him when the beast turned towards him, reptile eyes blinking before its mouth opened. A gaping maw lined with deadly teeth, a hunter and he was its prey. The realization hit him too late, the man unprepared for the hunter that lived and breathed the wild. He was in its territory and he had to get away. Stumbling backwards, he barely managed not to fall. His eyes became blurry as he started running, faster and faster while he tried to dodge the trees. A roar resounded behind him but he didn’t dare turn.

Not until he heard the steps, loud and powerful they dug into the dirt. Right before something hit his back, something cracking before he shot forward, stumbling and rolling on the dirt. Groaning, he tried to move but felt something terribly wrong with his back. It took all of his consciousness to roll to the side, to see the beast carefully approaching him. It looked beautiful. Born to kill, muscles bulging on all four legs, claws at the front of them. Thinner than he had expected and the color hiding it better in the forest than most leather armor he had seen before.

So this was to be his end. The first monster he had ever encountered. Well not the first, perhaps the first one in the wild. A flash of a horned black helmet went through his mind, a flash of teeth biting into a massive summoned fish. Would he really resign so easily? He had been cursed and beaten, abused and all his cries for help ignored. You have a class now… magic at your side.

The thought came in the exact right moment, the beast swiping a slaw at his neck, ready to end its prey to start the feast. He found that his body didn’t move like he wanted to, his arms weak and his back aching. For his magic he didn’t need either. A shimmering wall came up, easily mistaken as a reflection of the sun, the beast’s claw slamming into it before it took several steps back. Eyn zapped its mind, the Drake roaring at the pain as it rushed him again.

The mind mage used his skills continuously, deflecting blows and damaging the beast. Right until his shield broke down and the drake bit down on his leg. The pain was unimaginable, his thighbone groaning before it snapped. The man screamed, snot and tears on his face as the Drake bit down even more. White light became visible on the edges of his vision before the Drake released his leg. Eyn was nothing but pain but slowly a comforting warmth filled him, his blood seeping into the earth from the crushed leg.

His face must have been horrible when he looked at the Drake’s maw, opening wide above his neck. Ready to be released from this hell. He passed out when the monster’s head fell down on him.

Blinking open his eyes, Eyn woke up with blinding pain coming from his leg. He started to breath quickly before he concentrated. Meditation worked even when in pain, he remembered. The flow of mana helped him calm down. It was bad, the pain. Not as bad as before, when the Drake had snapped the bone. Using Acceleration, he knew that Weavy had intervened. Either that or the Drake had suddenly decided he wasn’t worth a meal.

His health was low, not as low as it had been before but he barely had two hundred points out of his five hundred total. And it wasn’t going up. The pain was too bad to move, the resounding noise in his mind jerking him and causing an even worse feeling to spread through him.

‘ding’ ‘Pain Tolerance reaches lvl 6’

He should be dead, should’ve been eaten by that monster. Eyn mediated again when he thought about the lines of teeth opening above his head. The blood dripping on his face from when it had crushed into the flesh of his thigh. He focused on something else, on his surroundings.

“You saved me.” He sent out, his master perhaps still close enough to hear him.

He heard movement to his left but moving his eye that way didn’t reveal anything. “I did.”

The demon crouched down next to the man before his clawed long fingers grabbed him by the neck. Pain again coursed through him when he was lifted up, held like a doll by the two meter tall demon. “Like a weak little babe.” He said straight into Eyn’s mind. And then he tossed him to the side.

Eyn rolled, nearly passing out from the pain as he groaned and screamed. “A disgrace.”

The demon walked up to him before he threw what was left of his clothing towards him, “You did not use Acceleration. Your shield was misplaced for several blows. The injury on your back was not bad enough to prevent rolling, yet you did not move. Not until your leg was crushed.”

“The beast was weak, apprehensive and scared. Had you hit it more with your magic it would have fled, not desperate enough to risk death for a meal alone. It is weak, a being of this land. Just like you.”

His master went on, pointing at the ripped clothing that lay over his leg. “Bind it. The wound will close, slowly but it will close. I have stopped the bleeding but your body will have to do the rest.”

Eyn nodded, sitting up a little and wincing at the pain in his back. Something was still wrong but he fought through it, focusing only at the task his master had given him. Acceleration coursed through his mind as he focused on the bandage. He had no idea what to do. So he simply covered the wound and bound it after wrapping the cloth around his leg a couple times.

Weavy opened the knot again before he pulled on both ends, teeth gleaming as Eyn screamed. “Your bone will not set and heal if it is angled improperly. The only way to learn is to show you. To think you would die against such a weak beast. Perhaps I have misjudged you.”

Eyn looked at his master as he calmed down again, gritting his teeth as tears came to his eyes, “I want to learn! I’ll do whatever necessary…,”

The demon looked at him, “Or perhaps I have not. Tell me, what else have you failed to do?”

Acceleration continued to burn through his mana, his black eyes staring at the abyss like sockets looking back at him. “I should not have run. I should have faced the beast, tried to move through the trees and use them as cover.”

“Or you could have climbed one. Your magic can reach them without physical contact.” The demon suggested. “At least you didn’t pass out immediately. And you didn’t wet yourself. Smart to pee beforehand.”

He hadn’t peed beforehand. He simply didn’t have anything to pass. And now he didn’t even have clothes left but he didn’t dare hope this was the end of it. Looking at his health, Eyn noticed it went up by a single point. The man couldn’t help but chuckle. He didn’t care about the consequences but right now he filled with joy. He had survived after all and his master was teaching him. Finally.