Kingdom of Rust Chapter 34 (Patreon)

We only rode for another hour, encountering multiple groups of corrupted monsters and even one man that was jerking around and mumbling to himself. I recognized the signs of the madness, it seemed like this man had been exposed days ago.

Animals didn’t seem to resist the Father’s taint like humans could. There was no sign of them being addled or acting out of sorts, they were either just normal creatures or tainted. Thankfully the tainted ones we're drawn to human activity like moths to a flame.

Master put the poor individual down by dropping him into a pit and closing it back up. Simple and effective. I could tell Master disliked having to kill people, his whole demeanor changed after the first civilians were found to have nicks and scrapes.

He couldn’t have been sure if they were truly infected but the risk of letting them go far outweighed the cost of removing one family. Even Holton’s lackadaisical attitude had shifted more towards the dour persona that he held when I was with him. I still had a hard time thinking of the man as anything other than an asshole, but at least he didn’t seem completely heartless.

“I think we need to go the rest of the way on foot,” Holdon spoke while dismounting his horse. “If we push further, we risk the horses getting attacked.”

Master grunted, “I agree, but my age may slow us down.”

“That shouldn’t be too much of an issue. We are seeing more and more infected, if we pushed in too fast, we may be overrun from all sides.”

“We can’t just leave them tied up,” I spoke up, not seeing how the choice to leave the horses here would help either.

“They will be safe as I can make them,” Master stated, raising his walking stick and whipping his arm in an extended arc.

A wall of stone rose in a half-circle, extending ten feet into the air. He repeated the motion and a second arc appeared almost fully closing in the sides. There was now a rather large area surrounded by thick stone walls with one entrance.

Master used the same trick he used to get onto his horse, to get off of it. “I will close the entrance after we exit. The horses should be fine inside until we return.”

I saw Holton glancing at the tops of the walls. “Not gonna close it in?”

Master shook his head. “It would require too much energy for me to do that and the stone would collapse under its own weight before I completed the work.”

Holton grunted, “fair enough but something might still climb over, guess I gotta pitch in to keep my animal safe and sound.”

I wasn’t sure what Holton was going to do but the man nimbly climbed up the ten-foot wall Once on top, he pulled out his flask of oil and poured it along the entire top. By the time he finished, Master had already closed off the entrance and Holton completed his circle and dropped down. He corked his flask and sent a small spark to the top of the wall. There was a whoosh as the entire top lit with a three-foot flame. “There, that should burn for about three hours and discourage anything that might try to get inside.”

“A fascinating substance,” Master eyed Holton with an appraising eye.

“Ahem… yes, well, it’s a mixture of my own making.” Holton seemed a bit nervous at Master's gaze, which was odd.

“I’m sure it is,” Master smiled knowingly. “Shall we move on?”

Of course, nobody explained what that little exchange was about and I wasn’t in the mood to ask. Perhaps when this nightmare was over and I was safely back in the tower’s walls, I would ask him about it.

***

Three pebbles shot away from me. Their speed didn’t make an audible crack but they still impacted my targets with deadly accuracy. I was starting to get the hang of my calling and throwing stones seemed to be an okay use of the talent. It certainly wasn’t the most energy-efficient means of using my gift but it was the quickest. This was good because a large group of fifty infected animals had rushed us not long after we left the horses behind.

It was my first time seeing Master really go all out. With a simple tap of his staff, the ground in front of him rippled and broke apart, sending the silent monsters stumbling. Some were outright crushed as large rocks tipped up from below ground and flattened them.

This also closed off a section in front of us and made it so the surviving monsters had to split and go around the rocks that now barred their path. I didn’t want to speak highly of Holton, but the man was cool under pressure. With a deft flick, he sent a spray of his oil out and ignited it with a small spark.

There was a loud boom that sent a wave of dust out across the area and I felt hot air and sand strike my shaved head.

“Ha! Learned that little trick after our little cave run-in.”

I stuck a finger in my ringing ear and glared at the man before shooting three more pebbles out. With my ability to adjust their course slightly, all of my attacks hit the corrupted aminals in either the head or the heart. I aimed for the head because sometimes they would get back up if I only aimed for the heart.

“Please warn us if you are going to use something so dangerous, so close to us next time,” Master scolded him.

Holton shrugged, “I would have but I didn’t know how much of a bang it produced, first time trying it.”

I groaned, of course, it was.

We cleared out the few surviving creatures before moving on.

“Are you not going to bury them?” I asked Master.

He shook his head, “I need to conserve my energy. I used much more than I wished to use by this point and we still haven’t gotten to the source. Unfortunately, Terrani gifts don’t have any way to lessen their cost. Earth is earth. It’s not like using oil to enhance fire.”

“Can you not throw rocks as I do?”

He shook his head. “I could propel a rock with a spike of stone but it would be impossible for me to aim it. If this area had more water, I could produce streams of compressed water but it's still just moving rock. It’s simpler and quicker to just pull a large boulder from underground and use that to crush everything.”

Master made that sound like a simple thing, and for him it probably was. I could barely even throw marble-sized rocks if I didn’t want to exhaust myself after only a few tosses. And my upper limit seemed to be just over what my sword weighed. I made a mental note to get some more throwing knives. Stone ones would be more than adequate. As for my energy, it seemed to have evened out and wasn’t really expanding anymore. It seemed to have maybe tripled from the small guttering flame I started with but it was really hard to quantify something that was only a feeling.

I still experienced the influx of energy that seemed to supercharge my body but even that was bleeding off quicker and quicker. It seemed to have rushed through my body and fixed any imperfections it found. The slight hitch in my step that had plagued me since Gan stabbed me was now gone. I also rubbed my cheek at some point after I realized that and found the scar on my face had faded to barely noticeable. It hadn’t completely gone away but it had faded like scars do with age.

When I told Master about this, he seemed fascinated. “A truly rare gift indeed, it’s only a shame it's tied to fighting these things,” he said, gesturing to the dead tainted strewn about the area.

I had to agree. While in some ways it was easier to fight these corrupted monsters, I almost wished I was fighting bandits. I didn’t enjoy killing but at least bandits deserved it. The only thing these animals had done was not flee before they were corrupted.

We started encountering more people as we got closer to the town. Some looked completely fine but with the risk of them hiding an injury, we couldn’t let them past. One man did try to flee after he saw what was happening and for the first time, I was forced to kill someone that wasn’t attacking me.

I spent the next few minutes heaving on the side of the road. It was worse than the time Holton forced me to fight the bandit. Thankfully both men remained silent while I retched and voided my stomach of what little I had eaten that day. “I can’t do this,” I said quietly as I wiped my mouth.

Master must have heard me as he walked over. “It’s fine. Holton and I can deal with the people, just focus on the corrupted animals.”

I nodded woodenly as Master gave me a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

Rest was a luxury we didn’t allow ourselves as the sun fell behind the horizon only to be replaced by an eerie red glow in the distance.

It wasn’t the soothing glow of a campfire but the demonic glow of hundreds or maybe even thousands of eyes.

By this point, we only encountered infected animals and people in the middle or late stages of delirium. I was exhausted from using my gift all day but I pushed on, having to rely more and more on my swordsmanship as larger groups of monsters attacked us.

Master was flagging as well, the long walk had taken its toll on the elderly man, despite his strength and conviction.

Holton was just quiet, but his fury showed in his attacks as he threw himself bodily into groups of tainted. He was coming away with more and more wounds but the man seemed to ignore them completely.

Finally, we reached the edge of the city. Master had erected another wall around us at this point, forcing the Father’s tainted monsters to come at us from a chokepoint. We fought like that through the night and I honestly lost track of what was going on. My arms felt numb and I could only continue swinging away as it seemed like there was an endless tide of infected. I didn’t even pause as the animals were slowly replaced by infected humans. They were mindless as they sought to just kill.

When morning came, the tide had slowed, the walls and chokepoint were piled with corpses and the ground inside was slick with the weirdly sparkling blood. All three of us were covered in wounds and blood. I had fewer wounds though thanks to my far faster healing rate but even then it had struggled to keep up with all the bites and gashes I had taken throughout the night.

Master had erected armor of stone around himself at one point during the night. I vaguely recall him punching infected into pulpy messes. My weary mind was jolted when Holton spoke up.

“We gotta quarantine the city,” he said, spitting a glob of blood from his mouth before wiping his face with his sleeve.

Master made the helmet of rock he was wearing, retract. “I need time to recover, can you two give me an hour?”

Holton grunted, “Do we have a choice? Come on, Bakus.”

Startled at the man calling me by my actual name, I followed him without a word. We exited the fortress and I got my first look at the city in the daytime. I could hear screaming and crying in the distance, meaning there were still people trapped and alive in the city. The belltower I had so admired upon my first visit was visible in the distance.

Holton let out a scream of rage and frustration, startling me out of my thoughts.

“Get ready, we should have company soon.”