Chapter 69 (Patreon)

Chapter 69

“THAT’S WHATSUP RIVEN!”

“Yes, I am the kinkiest.”  He referred to her earlier comment, glanced over his shoulder and winked at Athela who was licking off her toned extremities with her elongated, black, ribbon-like tongue - and he gave her a genuine smile.  “Thanks for coming.  Having you around has been a lot of fun.”

Athela paused mid-licking and her red eyes focused on him for a moment before she blinked and turned around in embarrassment with her hands covering her face.  “Oh stop it!  You’re making me blush!”

Riven snorted in amusement and rolled his eyes.  Turning heel and walking over to the back door, he nudged it open with his boot.  After the locks and reinforcements had been blown off in the initial shots that shotgun guy had fired, the wooden door easily swung open at the small display of applied force.

The door creaked and came to a halt, and he stepped inside to close the door behind him – shutting out the light as well and bringing the house into a darker version of itself.

Given that Riven could now see in the dark, that was completely fine and even slightly more comfortable than being out in the sunlight.

A teapot was set along a stove to his right with a kitchen counter full of used, unwashed plates next to it.  A turned over table, some wooden chairs and a hockey stick were also present before the kitchen led out into the front room.

Coming into the carpeted front room with a television and some book shelves, Riven had the choice of going down a hall to the right, out the front door which had been barricaded with a couch and boxes, a laundry room just beyond that with its washer and dryer, and then a stairway leading up.

Riven didn’t need to ask which direction the people had gone given the trail of blood leading up the stairs, and he could hear their frantic heartbeats directly above him on the second level when he concentrated hard enough.  Wondering why he could pick up heartbeats with his sense of hearing, yet couldn’t hear what they were saying in hushed tones, he shrugged and began stomping up the stairs to make his approach apparent.

“Coming up!  I killed the guys chasing-”

His voice cut off as he turned the corner and met a metal baseball bat square in the forehead.

“OW!”  He nearly stumbled back and tripped down the stairs, but managed to catch himself on the railing with a scowl.  Rubbing his bruised forehead, he scowled back up the stairs where a woman and man both shrieked to run back down the hall out of sight.

But he could still hear their voices as they frantically scrambled into a room and slammed a door behind them.

“You goddamned idiot!  That was the wrong guy!  He just saved us and you could have fucking killed him!” the man’s voice said with a growl and a huff, saying some other words after that Riven couldn’t make out.  “Now he’s DEFINITELY going to kill us!”

The woman’s frantically sobbing voice came next.  “I got scared!  I wasn’t sure if it was the slavers!”

“You knew god-damned well it was him when he yelled up the stairs!  And what about that scary woman he had with him!?”

“It could have been anyone saying that!  And what about the things he did out there?  You saw how he moved!  And that thing he summoned into the air and killed those men with, and the fangs!?  He’s one of them!”

“One of who?”

“The monsters that keep appearing!  Look at the woman he was with!  He came to kill us too!  That’s why I swung ok!?  I thought I’d get him good!”

“Margaret for the love of god… You’re such a damnable surly wench!  Get it through your thick skull that you don’t need to WHACK everybody that we see!”

Surly wench?  He actually really liked that insult and jotted it down in his memory.  He needed to use that one himself sometime.  Riven blinked and began to make his way up the stairs again with Athela still eating outside.  Muttering to himself about how if that’d been any normal man he’d likely have died, he stepped onto the open hallway that was cluttered with various children’s toys and a couch half-way dragged out of a room on his right.  Meanwhile, the closed door leading to a room at the far end of the hall on the left was where the man and woman continued to argue.

They were also completely engrossed in their arguing to the point that they didn’t even hear his footsteps coming up to the door.

Flinging the door open and easily throwing the man and woman behind it to the ground, Riven stepped inside to lay eyes on the dynamic duo of husband and wife.  The brunette, slightly balding man was bracing his left side with a crutch after having been shot in the leg, a white, bloodstained bandage around the leg as he pushed himself up with a pained groan.  He turned around, clambering to his feet again, limped over to his wife with a fearful glance Riven’s way and nearly stumbled when he saw Riven staring him down with red glowing eyes.

The man looked to be about 40 years old.  He was skinny, wore a gray checkered shirt and jeans that had holes in it after the shotgun had grazed him.

The woman with him looked to be about the same age, with longer brown hair in a ponytail and being mildly overweight.  She hid fearfully behind her crippled husband with wide teary eyes, carried a metal bat and wore a dark blue shirt depicting a guitar that was stained with blood along her hip where a cut had been bandaged up with gauze.  The wound must have been shallow though, because she paid it no mind and didn’t limp like her husband did.

“Jerald!” the scared woman scolded her husband when he nearly fell before settling her gaze on Riven.  She frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but closed it immediately after with a shameful and avoiding glance to the floor.

“Didn’t realize you would attack me for trying to help.” Riven stated flatly, anger flaring to life again as he saw them.  “Maybe I should have just let them do their thing.”

The husband, who’s name was apparently Jerald, tried to hold back a shaky frown and failed as he remembered what they’d just gone through.  However his emotions were only partially directed at Riven, and he limped over to sit on a desk with a groan – suspending his injured leg.  “I’m sorry for what happened.  My wife, Linda, was out of her goddamn mind when she swung at you.”

The man’s voice shook.  His wife followed him over to hide behind him at the desk, and both of their heart rates were beating frantically.

Riven raised an eyebrow and folded his arms in the doorway, watching Linda put a hand on Jerald’s thigh.  “Oh?”

The husband and wife exchanged looks, but neither of them caught Athela’s lithe, black body silently leaning against the windowsill outside with a shit-eating grin as she snickered silently at Riven’s bruised forehead.  She was holding herself along the side of the house with all six of her arachnoid limbs, and she was utterly silent.

Riven just looked back at his demon, unamused, as she made silly faces at him while sticking out her tongue and pulling her eyelids up or puffing out her cheeks and wiggling her ears with her fingers.

They had no idea she’d been there the whole time.  Athela really was one sneaky bitch, and she apparently thought this entire situation was hilarious.

“Well… We’re sorry…” The man trailed off uncertainly, turning back to Riven a moment after glaring his wife down.  “Now that she attacked you, I just wanted to let you know that we really meant you no harm.  There are no hard feelings, right?”

“That hit would have killed a normal person.” Riven stated sourly, turning his attention away from Athela and back to the couple.  “Probably, anyways.”

“Normal person?” repeated Jerald as Linda started to tug at his arm.

“See!” Linda stated, quickly becoming frantic as she jammed a finger repeatedly in Riven’s direction.  “He’s not normal!  Not human!  He has RED EYES Jerald!  Humans can’t do the things he did out there!  Even LOOKING at him gives me the creeps!  You feel it too Jerald, don’t you!?  He gives off terrible, scary vibes!  You should just kill him now so he doesn’t hurt us!”

Kill him now?

Was she daft?  Riven glanced down to Jerald’s bloody leg, the plastered image of fear of Riven and rage directed towards his wife frozen there after her words had come out without thought.  The husband paled and slowly turned to the ranting woman, then aggressively pushed a quivering finger up to her lips to shut her up.

Ugh.  Was this the negative charisma at work again?  He’d literally saved their lives, and this woman was literally telling her husband to kill Riven just because he was ‘different’?  Or was she truly just that stupid?  If he had to guess, it was probably a combination of both.

Riven gave her a flat look, then turned the flat look on Jerald.  “And what if you’re right, Linda?  What exactly is it that either of you are going to do?  Even if I’m not normal, I saved your life.  Didn’t I?  Do you really think your husband can take me in the state he’s in?”

Linda hadn’t been expecting the near admission of guilt after she’d accused him of not being a ‘normal’ person.  Her face puckered as she pointed a quivering finger in his direction when the words finally hit home, and her expression turned upside down.  “Ah…”

She lowered her finger, nodding to herself as if a lightbulb had gone off in that small brain of hers.  “I suppose you’re right.  You did save our lives.  Apologize to him Jerald, what WERE you thinking!?”

She smacked her semi-crippled husband across the forehead with the back of her hand and he recoiled, almost causing him to fall off the desk.  “Idiot!”

“IDIOT!?  I’m not the one who hit him with a BAT!”

“Keep talkin to me that way and you won’t be gettin sex for a week!”

“Are you SERIOUS, WOMAN!?”

Riven’s flat look turned to one of confused amusement, and then one of sheer disbelief as he realized that they weren’t joking – rather they were actually stupid.  Truly, truly stupid.  The further and further down this rabbit hole they went, the more inbred they seemed, and he was seriously questioning just who he’d saved when they finally came to a stalemate in the conversation about ten minutes later.

He’d only lost a couple brain cells.  He’d be ok, but in the background Athela was clutching her stomach and reeling with silent laughter.

Sighing and coming around the back of the chair, Linda humphed and stepped forward with a sheepish bow.  “Sorry bout that.  My husbands a true moron at times, he had me convinced I had to smack ya, so I did.”

Riven didn’t really believe that for even a half-second, but was just happy he didn’t have to kill them.  Even though they were idiots, they seemed like nice enough people.  Well, at least her husband did.

He closed his eyes, leaned against the wall, and shook his head.  “So… how’d you two get caught up with those thugs?”

“Slavers, ya mean?”

“… Yeah.  Let’s start there.  Why are there slavers here and who are they selling slaves to, exactly?”

The woman frowned and rubbed her chin thoughtfully, getting a better look at Riven in the dim light of their home.  “You really aint from here are ya?  Haven’t you seen what happened with our town?”

Riven shook his head.  “Obviously not.”

“I’ll answer your question if you answer mine first.”

“Sure.  Go ahead then.”

“How’d you move like that?  And what was that red spear thing you created in the air to shoot at those men?  And the lightning?  WHY does your staff occasionally ripple with black mist!?”

Riven looked down to his hand, then briefly summoned a blood lance through his arm and then up into the air to hover over the top of his palm like a sanguine blade.  “It’s magic.  I also… changed, since the integration.  I am from Earth like you two, but I’ve gained a bunch of stats that make me move faster.  The black lightning was from my staff, which is actually semi-sentient if I understand things right.”

Jerald exchanged a look with his wife and snorted.  “Told you.  That administrator guy was the real deal, we didn’t hallucinate him.”

“That batch of weed brownies was laced with some sorta crack or shrooms!” Linda stated sourly, folding her arms in defiance of the husband.  “Of course I’d have thought it was a hallucination!  We had no reason not to!”

“We haven’t had no weed brownies for at least a good week, you dumb wench!” Jerald growled while poking Linda with the butt of his crutch.  “You have to think!!! THINK woman, THINK!!!”

Oh boy.  Speaking of thinking, Riven really was beginning to think twice about these two. But he needed information, and because they were the first people he hadn’t had to kill that could speak to him clearly and knew the situation from Earth - he might as well try even despite their stupidity.  Clearing his throat and inwardly sighing, he got their attention before they went off on another rant.  “Alright so let’s just cut to the chase.  I’ll give you a brief overview of myself and my story, and you can do the same for you to cover the basics that you’d think I’d want to know about this city.  Alright?”

Both husband and wife nodded in agreement after glowering at one another.

“Good.” Riven said, wiping a hand through his chestnut-colored hair.  “Alright… So it’s a long story.  The short version is as follows: after the apocalypse I was transferred to a trial to acquire a demonic companion, and then I was placed in a dungeon.”

“Demons and a dungeon?” Jerald asked, interrupting only for Linda to shush him.

Riven nodded, modifying his story of what'd happened slightly to reduce the amount of questions he’d get.  “A dungeon that spawned monsters and things that tried to kill us.  No interrupting please.  Anyways, we survived there for a couple weeks and I drank some tainted blood in order to survive because there wasn’t much food and it also had healing properties… later on, I became a vampire.”