Chương 24: Thieves from Thievestown

The thief was on his knees holding the stump where his arm had been and the blood was coming out of the stump in a way that no movie blood ever came out, in pulses, in rhythm, in a wet way that had a sound and the sound was real in a way the screams had been real and Ben was— A second thief reached him.

He moved without thinking and he swung the wax knife in a backhand and the wax knife was a foot too short to reach the second thief but the wax knife swung anyway and a thing came off the edge of the wax knife, a crescent of something that was not light and not metal and not air but had qualities of all three, a shimmering arc that left the blade and traveled the four feet of distance between him and the second thief and went through the second thief and the second thief was in two pieces.

The two pieces fell separately. The two pieces fell separately in the road. His panel chimed. [New Skill Unlocked: Wax Arc!] [A projected slash extends the reach of your bonded blade by 2 meters. Cost: 4 MP. Cooldown: 4 seconds. Whoa! Ben! You're a natural! Sparkle] He stared at his panel. The second thief was on the ground in two pieces. The second thief had been a person three seconds ago. The second thief was now two pieces and Ben's panel was congratulating him with a sparkle emoji. A scream from up the line.

He turned. The scream up the line was a real scream and it was the merchant in green, the food guy, the dry fish guy, the guy who had handed Ben dry fish at midday yesterday and had said fine quality, two days old in the same tone of voice a person used to recommend a wine. The merchant in green was on the ground. A thief was standing over him. The thief was pulling something out of the merchant in green's neck.

The thief had used a knife and the knife had gone into the merchant in green's neck and the merchant in green was on the ground holding his throat with both hands and his throat was—his throat was— Maddy was already moving.

Ben saw her go because Maddy had also been watching and Maddy had clocked it and Maddy was running at the thief at a speed she should not have been running at, her STR 18 and her DEX 21 and her x1 Energized stacking into a movement that looked wrong, looked sped up, looked like a glitched character in a multiplayer game, and the thief turned at the last second and saw her coming and tried to bring the knife up and Maddy hit him in the chest with the spear at full extension and the spear went through him and the air around him cracked white and the thief's whole body went rigid and then went slack and Maddy yanked the spear back and the thief fell.

He died. Ben watched him die. The thief's eyes did the thing eyes did when a body stopped being a person and started being a body, the switch that happened in the eye, the click the system could not make the system make, and the thief was a body and Maddy was standing over him with the spear and the merchant in green was still on the ground holding his throat and the blood was just… The blood was so much. There was so much blood. Ben stood there.

There was a third thief coming at him from his right and his hand and the wax knife had decided together that they were going to deal with the third thief, because his head was elsewhere, his head was at the merchant on the ground, his head was at the two pieces of the second thief, his head was at the arm on the road, and his hand and the wax knife just did the thing. The wax knife came up. Wax Arc was on cooldown.

He met the third thief with the blade and the blade went through the third thief at the waist and the third thief was on the ground in two pieces and the system chimed and Ben did not look at the chime. He moved. Moving was easier than not moving and not moving was where his head got to choose what to think about and his head was not going to be allowed to choose what to think about for at least the next two minutes. A fourth. A fifth. The wax knife.

Wax Arc again, the cooldown had ticked, and a thief at the edge of the trees was in two pieces and Ben had not even taken a step toward him. He was not breathing right. He could tell he was not breathing right because his vision was tunneling at the corners. Hiis ears were a high whine and somewhere underneath the high whine there was a thudding which was his heart and the heart was very loud and very fast and the heart wanted out. Up the line, a woman was screaming.

Up the line, the woman in red, the braided one, was—wait. The woman in red had killed a thief. The woman in red had a long knife in her hand and the long knife had blood on it and a thief was on the ground at her feet and her braid had come loose and her face was screaming but her hands were holding the knife correctly and she was already turning to look for another target.

The two guards were back to back at the center of the caravan and one of them was bleeding from a cut on his arm but they had stacked two thieves at their feet and a third one was running away into the trees and one of the guards yelled something and threw a knife and the third thief went down face-first into the dirt. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. Maddy. Maddy was in another fight.

Maddy was three wagons away from him and she was glowing pink, she had drunk again, she was at x2 or x3, she had her left hand around the Monster Tube and her right hand around Bolt and there were two thieves on the ground in front of her smoking from the chest and a third one was backing up with his hands up. She killed the third one with a spear thrust. The spear thrust electrified the third one's whole body and the third one went rigid and the spear came out and the third one fell.

The chime on her panel was very fast, several chimes overlapping, [Critical hit!] [Level up!] [XP gained!] [Mana low—please refill!], and she didn't even look at the chimes, she just uncorked the Monster Tube and drank and the chime cycled to [Energized x4!] and she kept moving. Two more thieves came at her. She killed both of them. She killed both of them in maybe four seconds total.

Ben stood there with the wax knife dripping and his shirt soaked through the back from sweat and his chest going too fast and he watched her kill two human beings in four seconds with a sex toy that had been turned into a spear by a system that called itself a sparkle emoji, and he had a thought that he could not finish, a thought that started with what if and got blocked at the second word by his own brain stepping on it and holding it down. Another thief came at him. He killed the thief.

The thief came in low with his knife held the dumb way a movie thief held a knife, like a guy who had never held a knife thought you held one, and Ben swung and the wax knife went through the thief's neck and the head and the body went separate ways. The cape settled over both pieces. His panel chimed. He did not look. There was someone yelling about the amulet. He registered it about three seconds after it had happened.

Two of the thieves who had been coming for him had been yelling something and the something had been the amulet, get the amulet, he has the amulet, and his hand went, instinctively, to his pocket, to the metal lump in his pocket, the metal lump that was somehow audible to the thieves in the woods, the metal lump that he had not put on, the metal lump that— Who fucking cared.

He counted because he was still trying to count because his brain was still running the encounter script even though his brain was, at the actual level of consciousness, not really there anymore. Five. He had killed five. Maddy. He looked at Maddy. Maddy had finished her side of the road. There was a line of thieves on the dirt around her and the line was not moving.

Maddy was breathing hard and her face had blood on it that was not hers, smeared across her cheek and her jaw, and her hair was wet at the tips where it had touched something, and her shirt had a slash through it on one shoulder where a knife had got close, and she was standing there with Bolt at her hip and the Monster Tube empty in her other hand and her panel was glowing soft pink in front of her face with several chimes she was not reading. The road was quiet. The road was suddenly very quiet.

The thieves had stopped coming because there were no more thieves. Somewhere a horse-shaped animal was crying, well maybe not fucking crying, but a high-pitched panicked sound that he could not stand to listen to but could not stop hearing Somewhere else a man was sobbing, and the merchant in green was on the ground. The woman in red was on her knees beside him. Ben walked over. He did not decide to walk over. He just… walked over.

The road was a road and there was glass underfoot, no, this wasn't glass, this was a broken lantern, a fake lantern, and fake glass, and there were bodies and there were pieces of bodies and the pieces were heavier than he had expected the pieces to be and his feet kept finding things and his feet kept also avoiding things and his eyes were going where they should not go and his eyes were also closing for a half-second at a time, blinking long, blinking out.

The woman in red was holding the merchant in green's hand. The merchant in green was on his back. The merchant in green had both hands on his throat and the hands were dark with the blood and there was a wet sound coming out of the throat at intervals and his eyes were open, looking at the sky, doing the thing eyes did when they were waiting. The woman in red was saying his name.

She was saying it over and over to keep him with her, the name as the last thing she had to hold him down with, Mike, Mike, Mike, she said, Mike, Mike, and she was crying, and her braid was undone, and her free hand was on his face. Mike. The dead merchant's name was Mike. Mike. Of course. Of course his name was Mike.

Of course the system had named him Mike, the most cliché possible name for an NPC who was going to die in the first ambush, Mike the food guy, Mike with the dry fish, Mike from Velmoran or wherever the fuck, Mike, of fucking course. Of course of course of course. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. The lit major in his brain was screaming.

The lit major in his brain was screaming because the lit major had recognized the move, had recognized the cheap of it, had recognized that the system was running the same fucking play it had run with Pony, which was to give them a friendly side character with a name and a quirk and then take him in the first action sequence to give the scene weight, to make the reader feel something, and the lit major had read this scene a hundred times and the lit major was throwing things and screaming because the move had worked anyway and Ben was looking at Mike on the ground and Ben was feeling something.

The woman in red was sobbing. The sound was… the sound was… He did not have a word for the sound. Maddy was beside him. He hadn't noticed her walk over. She was standing next to him and her shoulder was almost touching his shoulder. Her panel had folded down and Bolt was retracted in her hand. She was looking at the woman in red and her face had the wrong expression. Like her own face didn't know how it could feel yet. She was breathing wrong. Quick. Shallow. The breathing before something else came.

"Did we just…" She said it small. She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to finish the sentence. He knew what the sentence was. He had been not finishing the same sentence for two minutes.

"Maddy."

"Did we just kill people, Ben."

"They were thieves."

"They were…people. Or—""They were—they were attacking us. They were thieves. They were trying to—""Ben."

"And they wanted the amulet." He looked right into her eyes. She looked back.

"They were trying to kill us Maddy. They were."

"Ben." He stopped talking. She summoned her screen. The screen unfolded soft pink and the screen sparkled idly in front of her face. Her hand was shaking. He could see her hand shaking from the side. She was looking at the screen and she opened her mouth and she closed it and she opened it again.

"Hey system." [Yes Maddy?]"Are these like..." Her voice was small.

"Are the people here real?" A pause. A pause that was new, that the system had never done before, that suggested the system was either processing or pretending to process. [Of course, Maddy! The people here are real!] [I am an extension of what builds this world, but the people and the creatures that live here are real and live full lives!] [Sparkle] Maddy did not say anything. Maddy stood there.