The Soul Engine Ch. 16 (Original Fantasy) (Patreon)

A/N: Welcome back for Week Four of The Soul Engine everyone! Thank you for sticking around, hope you enjoy!

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Mikael doesn’t even get the chance to ask why Bula is thanking him. She immediately tries to follow through on her promise to kill him quick by lunging at him from her relaxed position and bringing that axe of hers to bear faster than should be humanly possible. But then, as Mikael had already figured at their last meeting, Bula simply isn’t human.

If he had to put a name to what she MIGHT be, the thing that came to mind was ‘orc’. She had the tusks, the strength, and the speed that he would expect from what little he remembered of the fictional orcs back home. However, if she was this world’s version of an orc… well then, Vaclatora had some pretty soft-looking orcs.

Bula might have the tusks, she might have the strength, and she might have the speed, but she didn’t have the ugliness that Mikael felt should come part and parcel with orcs. In fact, she was pretty damn beautiful in her own savage way, with a figure that would give Thayla’s a run for its money and a fierceness that had some of the foreign entities in Mikael’s head VERY impressed.

Not that her beauty made her any less dangerous. She races at him and Mikael has to rely on a burst of speed from the Soul Engine just to play keep away. Her axe goes right through the crate behind him, destroying that one just like the first she’d come down on, but the fiery red head doesn’t care. In fact, she lets out a bark of laughter as he dances out of her way, whirling around to swipe at him and miss.

“Hah! You’re fast! I like that!”

Well, now that she’s opened up the floor to talking…

“What ARE you, exactly?”

Bula grunts as she comes after him, forcing Mikael to rapidly backpedal. He really doesn’t want to see if Tak’s sword can hold up against that deadly looking battle axe she’s swinging around, which means he has to keep dodging. For a moment, he thinks she’s not going to dignify his question with a response, but after a couple more exchanges, she grins a savage grin.

“Heh. Never been to the Savage Lands before then? I’m a half-orc. Name’s Bula.”

Half-orc. Well, he’d been half-right then, hadn’t he? Mikael files that information away under ‘nice to know but not necessarily immediately pertinent’ and grunts as he dodges another terrifyingly fast and frighteningly powerful axe swing.

“… Ya know, its only fair to name yourself, when ya ask someone for their name.”

Blinking at that, thrown off a little by the juxtaposition of Bula’s nonchalant tone and the physical violence she’s currently trying to enact on him, Mikael laughs as he continues to lead her around on a merry chase through the warehouse.

“Sorry, but I’m not about to tell you anything that might get back to your boss.”

That actually gives the half-orc woman pause, her nose wrinkling in annoyance.

“That bastard? Pah! Like I’m going to tell him anything about you! Not in the contract, is it?”

Wait, what? That sounds interesting. More than interesting, in fact.

“Contract? Does that have something to do with why you’re working for a scumbag like Zadicus Quinn?”

If he could get Bula to turn on Zadicus, then he had to try, right? Only, just as the hope of finding common cause with his enemy flares up in his chest, Bula proceeds to burst his bubble.

“Aye. Bastard pulled one over on me. Tricked me into this collar.”

She stops trying to kill him long enough to tap at the fancy-looking gorget she’s wearing, causing Mikael to blink. Collar? As in… a slave collar of some sort? What he’d initially taken as a piece of armor now takes on a much more sinister vibe as Mikael really looks at the gorget and shoulder pauldrons that Bula the Half-Orc is wearing. They’re all one piece, he realizes, and they’re faintly glowing with magic as well.

Of course, he doesn’t have long to study them before she lunges at him and is once more trying to take his head off. Still, her attention is split now at least. She’s definitely trying to kill him, but she’s also seemingly happy to tell him her life story, since he asked.

“I do shit for coin. Kill things. Guard things. Fight things. Thought when I reached this shit hole city I’d found my kind of place. Thought Zadicus Quinn was my kind of boss. Bastard said he wanted me to fight in his arenas for him. Sounded great to me.”

Bula lets out a snort, making it clear it was anything but.

“I didn’t care about the contract or the collar. Figured Zadicus was just the high strung controlling type.”

Mikael can’t help but interject here rather drily, even as he’s forced to continue dodging Bula’s overwhelmingly powerful blows.

“Seems like that’s exactly what he is.”

Letting out a bark of laughter, Bula nods.

“Aye! You got that right! But he’s also a fucking liar. Bastard had me sign a contract that said I wear the collar and obey his orders until I’ve fought a certain number of fights for him. Problem being, he put in one of those loophole thingies. Basically, HE decides when I fight.”

Oh. Mikael was starting to get it now.

“Thought he wanted a gladiator. But he likes to tell me I ‘misunderstood’ him. Instead, he’s been using me as his bodyguard ever since. So that’s why I thanked you, whoever the fuck you are. Because this right here counts as a fight and you made the boss desperate enough to send me out to take care of the problem. And that’s also why you can tell me whoever the fuck you are and I won’t tell Zadicus Quinn a damn thing!”

Punctuating that last statement with another swing, Bula practically roars the words. Mikael is left wondering if she even wants to know who he is, given just how hard she’s been trying to kill him. He’s also left wondering how much longer he can do this. She’s definitely faster and stronger than Thayla, and Mikael can feel himself burning through the energy in his Soul Engine just trying to stay alive. At the same time…

“But wait, if he orders you to tell him who you fought, don’t you have to tell him?”

The thing is, Mikael isn’t even sure Zadicus knows his name. But the bastard has half his memories, plus Mikael is supposed to be the hero that got disposed of improperly, so he probably would recognize the name if it got back to him. And that… that would be bad.

Blinking, Bula pulls up short for a moment and wrinkles her nose again in thought before shrugging.

“Oh. Yeah. Probably a good idea not to tell me then.”

And then she goes right back to trying to kill him. Mikael is quickly beginning to realize what sort of person Bula the Half-Orc is. She’s not stupid necessarily… but she’s the kind of warrior who doesn’t really concern herself with words when fighting will do. He hesitates to call her ‘simple’… but, well…

“You know he’s probably not going to ever let you go, right?”

The words spill out as Mikael does a literal backflip over a nearby crate to avoid Bula’s latest axe slash. It’s not lost on him that he can’t even catch his breath long enough to go on the offensive against her. He’s got a lot of regrets all of the sudden. He’s suddenly regretting all those sparring sessions. And he’s regretting not sucking the souls out of all of the guards he’s fought the last two weeks too. Subsisting off of rats has taken him this far, sure… but if this is as far as he goes, then it was a mistake to let his morals hold him back.

Or were those the dead men in his head talking, slipping their way into his thoughts all insidious like? In the end, it didn’t matter. If something didn’t change, he was still going to die here.

Fortunately, his words DO bring Bula up short for a moment. She pauses completely, staring up at where he’s standing on the crate and tilting her head to the side curiously.

“Huh?”

As he’d thought, she hadn’t really thought things through to their natural conclusion. She’d been fucked over by Zadicus and tricked into a slave collar and a contract that kept her working for him long past the point she wanted to be. And then she’d just sort of… settled in and decided to tough it out.

“Let me ask you this, Bula. When you finish up your contract and get to take off that collar, what’s the first thing you’re going to do?”

The half-orc doesn’t even have to think about it. She answers promptly and right off the bat.

“Kill that bastard Zadicus of course.”

Mikael nods slowly but can see she’s really not getting it. And that she’s already looking like she’s about to go back to trying to cut off his head. So he lays it out for her.

“You don’t think he doesn’t know that Bula? He tricked you, a very strong and very fast half-orc, into being his slave. Do you really think he isn’t aware of what will happen if he ever lets you off your leash?”

Bula frowns deeply, before shaking her head.

“Doesn’t matter. Has to use up the fights eventually.”

Mikael didn’t know how many fights she’d agreed to, so he couldn’t say how long it would take Zadicus to ‘use them up’. But in the end, that didn’t matter.

“But he won’t risk it, Bula. He won’t risk letting you out from under his thumb. Not ever. Even if you get down to your last fight… he’ll probably have you killed before it can happen, while he still has control of you and you can’t fight back.”

There’s a long moment of silence as Bula just stares at him blankly, clearly struggling to comprehend what he’s saying. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to admit that he’s right. Either way, Mikael doesn’t get to find out her reaction, because before she can respond, the doors to the warehouse suddenly burst open.

“Look! I told you I heard sounds in here! And there they are! It’s the Lord’s pet orc, fighting against the masked man!”

“Get him!”

“Reinforce the orc!”

“For Lord Quinn!”

The ten guards from outside come spilling into the warehouse, causing both Mikael and Bula to look in their direction. Bula snarls at the interruption while Mikael… Mikael smiles grimly. Because he doesn’t see an overwhelming defeat. No… he sees opportunity.

Crouching low on the crate, Mikael puts the last of the excess energy in his Soul Engine into boosting his next jump. As a result, it carries him well over Bula’s head before she can react, landing him amongst the guards before THEY can react as well. As they’re all jolting back in shock at his feat of strength, Mikael… sinks his sword right into the nearest City Guard’s neck.

He doesn’t want to do this. He’s tried so damn hard to avoid it in fact. But here he is. He doesn’t want to die here. And he can’t afford to fail either. He needs to get to Zadicus Quinn. He wants his damn life back.

With that in mind, Mikael kills the guard and immediately sucks his soul out of his body. And then, as the teal energy suffuses him and the other guards are just beginning to shout in shock and horror, Mikael uses the power from it to put on a burst of seed that lets him cut the head off of the next guard in line. The Soul Engine sucks up his energy as well, and suddenly Mikael is practically right back where he started at the beginning of the night.

… But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. Unfortunately, he only gets one more kill before Bula is on him again, that signature snarl of hers alerting him to her return to the fight.

“GRAAAAAARH!”

As she swings her axe at him, Mikael slips out of its path with more fluidity than he had before… and takes down another guard before pulling on his soul as well. Four down. Six to go… and of course, one very angry half-orc. He’s not sure if Bula’s sudden rage is because she sees the truth of his words and needs to take her anger out on him, or simply because she’s forced to follow Zadicus Quinn’s last orders to fight, but either way, it doesn’t matter.

The more Mikael kills, the stronger he gets. Its honestly quite addicting. Scarily so, in fact. But also, the more he kills… the faster he gets. And that, he decides, is much more important. The rest of the guards don’t survive very long. And neither does the warehouse. With his newfound speed, Mikael leads Bula in a merry chase through the place, slaughtering the remaining guardsmen, sucking up their souls… and setting merchant goods on fire as he goes.

In the end, he’s able to apply a certain tactic that he vaguely remembers from the video games he played back on Earth. Good old kiting. Bula is like a bull in a china shop, and Mikael is the matador, running her around in circles while the place burns down around them. Until finally, he sees it, his senses also enhanced by the amount of energy pumping through the Soul Engine.

There’s a wooden beam that’s about to come down… and so Mikael times things perfectly and when it falls, it falls on top of Bula, pinning the half-orc to the ground as she lets out a shout of anger and frustration.

Mikael watches her for a second, but the beam isn’t heavy enough to pin her forever. In fact, the only reason she hasn’t gotten it off of her yet is because she clearly needs both hands and she hasn’t thought to drop her battle axe just yet. Instead, she’s trying to lift the massive wooden beam with one hand while staring him in the eye, a sort of battle madness having taken over her. Or maybe it hasn’t, because when he takes a step back, her lips curl into a smile… and she begins to laugh.

As Mikael flees the burning warehouse before any more reinforcements can arrive, he hears the telltale crash of the beam being tossed aside behind him, as well as Bula’s uproarious laughter. He slips away into the sewers before she can give chase, but he’s not sure she even tries. Power like nothing else courses through Mikael and he finds himself almost shaking with the excess power as his Soul Engine glows brightly enough to be seen through the leather jerkin he’s wearing.

To go from managing to avoid taking a life for the past two weeks to ending ten in a single fight… and yet, Mikael couldn’t bring himself to regret it. His moral grandstanding had nearly cost him everything against Bula. Maybe rats had been ‘good enough’ until tonight, but he should have expected that things wouldn’t remain that easy.

He’d had a choice to make and he’d made it. Was he willing to do whatever it took to beat Zadicus Quinn, or did his ideals mean more to him than stopping the Lord of the City?

They didn’t. And Mikael would stop at nothing to take Zadicus down. That was what he’d realized tonight, after talk-fighting with Bula and killing those guards. Zadicus had to be stopped. And Mikael, Avina, and Thayla were the only ones who were even willing to try.

That said… he needed some time to get his head on straight. It was way too early for a night-time stroll through the sewers, but Mikael didn’t care. Instead of heading straight back to the safehouse, he goes ahead and takes the long way around, just this once.

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A/N: And so we learn more about Bula and what her deal is. And Mikael is forced to make a choice between his morals and his goals. In the end, he chooses survival.

As always, I hope people enjoyed and be sure to let me know what you think please! Your feedback sustains me!