Chapter 3: Listless Rain

Chapter 3 - Listless Rain

Victor offered his hand, lifting the princess up and out of the dreary tunnel. What remained of a ladder had long since rotted away from neglect.

Nobody had needed the secret tunnel. Not the Kingsguard. Not the royal family. Not the ambassador. Until today as Ornik lugged himself up and out of the tunnel into the mud.

Rain poured, inspiring a certain sense of melancholy as the three of them looked back upon the smouldering remains of the castle.

Lataya looked at the remains of her home listlessly and Victor couldn’t blame her; nor could he offer her any consolation.

Even Victor could only grit his teeth. Those degenerate fucking outworlders had killed his colleagues and his king. They’d robbed a child of her father. They were scum.

Reaching back, he had tied his cape around his shoulders in a sling to hold the books Thraina had handed him and the bastard’s arm he had grabbed by the Ambassador’s insistence.

If all was right in the world, the bastard had bled out. Yet Victor could only hold so much hope for such an idealistic outcome.

He turned to the princess and ambassador. “We must keep moving. The rain should cover our tracks.”

Lataya nodded, shambling behind Victor as Ornik covered their flank.

Leaving the open clearing for the forest, they traversed the wooded terrain with caution. The first priority was to get away from the Outworlders. As much seething hatred as Victor had for them, it would do him or the princess no good to confront them unprepared.

No, Victor would be patient. Victor would wait. Victor would see to it that when he comes for them they won’t even stand a chance.

“Princess?!” Ornik cried in alarm as a thud sounded out behind Victor, turning to see the fallen Lataya.

She laid there, fingers digging into the mud. “My god her feet…” Ornik cradled the little girl as he noticed her torn and bleeding soles.

Victor rushed to the princess’ side. “Dammit! Ornik, carry her, now. We need to find somewhere so she can rest.”

“I believe I can do that.” Ornik lifted the princess, being careful to support her neck.

Running, they found an outcrop to hide under to weather the rain, laying the princess down to rest.

“I’m a fuckin’ idiot…” Victor grimaced. He had gotten too stuck in his own brooding to realize the princess’ suffering.

Ornik sighed as he tied off the cloth around her feet as it was stained red. “I wrapped her wounds the best I could,” he reported.

“...Thank you.” Victor looked out to the surrounding forest. “We’ll rest here until she wakes.”

“Then I believe it’s a good time to figure out our plan,” Ornik suggested, taking a seat on a rock.

“That’d be good.” Victor agreed, taking a seat. “We should also go through these.” He pulled out the two books from his cape.

“Indeed.” He nodded.

One was a little black book, opening it left Victor confused as every page appeared to be blank. “The hell is this…?”

It couldn’t possibly just be blank, no that was impossible. He grabbed the second book bound by metal rings, opening it up and gritting his teeth.

Within he saw paintings of those bastards, the outworlders. All of the ones who had attacked the castle and more. Along with dense text about them on each page. His anger turned to awe as he turned page by page, seeing only more and more recorded on each page.

“This… this is a record of every Outworlder the High Magus was able to investigate…” Victor stared at the sheer density of information scribbled in the book.

Even more, there was a section with classification and research into their origin and abilities.

Obviously, they were from another world. As the name outworlder outright stated. However, more interestingly, the outworlders he knew were of the ‘incarnated’ variety.

Supposedly, they didn’t just arrive here like stepping through a door from one world to another. No, their souls apparently reached this world and incarnated.

Thraina couldn’t speculate on why their souls had specifically incarnated. But the consequences were the result of their immense strength.

It gave them the body they desire. The runes they had in their bones supposedly inscribed this wish of theirs into their bones. Thraina even theorized that our runes are based off some incarnated outworlder of the past.

But that was only one of three outworlders types. That was when an outworlder’s soul passed here.

Then there are the ‘lucid’ outworlders, who seem to bend reality to a narrative, able to do whatever they seem to deem reasonable. They’re also the most unstable, having appeared and disappeared randomly. They can also leave behind a ‘dream’ that can be claimed to gain the power of ‘narrative’.

Finally, the most rare and dangerous, the ‘esoteric’ outworlders who physically invaded this world from others, bringing esoteric powers that don’t exactly align with this world and sometimes leaving behind what was dubbed the ‘gifts of the esoteric’.

The three bastards who’d killed the king were all incarnated outworlders. Which meant they were absolutely covered head to toe in runes. Even worse, incarnated runes apparently didn’t have any of the downsides of carved runes. They could keep going as long as they had mana.

“So, we have all of her research on Outworlders and…” He lifted the black book. “This. Which I suspect is magically concealing its contents. That or it’s fuckin’ blank.”

“I’ll be betting on the former, ser.” Ornik held the book for himself, turning it to see it from every angle.

“We can use this against those fucking bastards.” He gripped Thraina’s research with anticipation. He could barely wait to read it, but he had to put it aside for now.

“On that note… Can I see the outworlder’s arm?” Ornik held out his hand. Seeing no reason not to, Victor obliged. “I heard the grafted king’s consort was able to extract the runes from the outworlder he killed…”

“Really?” Victor perked up at the idea of being able to turn the outworlder’s runes against them.

“Yes ser… I don’t know how though…” Ornik handed the arm back. “It could be restricted to the ‘killer’, maybe he’s not dead?”

“It’s not like I could just go ‘vwoop’ and just claim the runes…” He gripped the arm raising it as he joked about it.

On cue, the flesh of the arm started to glow, turning to light as the bones had the runes in them start to squirm, crawling through the bone of the outworlder’s former arm, leaving trails as they did so.

“What the hell?!” Victor held out his arm as the light crawled and dug into. Each and every rune sinking into his arm causing an immense amount of pain.

“ARGHJAAHHHHHH!!!” He screamed as the light tortured his arm. The runes wiggled into place, before resting comfortably into his agonized arm.

His vision blurred as his arm stopped glowing. He doubled over, clutching his arm.

“Fuuuuccckk!” He groaned, still feeling an intense itch as the pain subsided.

“That's… One way to do it, I guess?” Ornik commented as he helped Victor back up.

“I don’t need… Your fuckin’ snark.” He stumbled a bit before finding his balance, realizing the rain had stopped. “How long have I been out?”

“Only an hour or so.” Ornik looked over at the curled up Lataya. “The princess woke up but she’s…”

Victor internally cursed, he had wanted to figure out whatever had just happened but they had been still for far too long resting. Additionally the princess was still almost hollow after the incident…

“I… I think she just needs more time.” Victor looked away in shame. “Regardless… we need to move. Could you…?”

“Yes, of course.” Ornik crouched down for the princess, who climbed onto his back.

“Thank you.” He nodded, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We should probably head… Eastward.”

“To Lisarel?” Ornik looked away from the sun. “That would be the closest city.”

“We’ll need to be careful of the outworlders and whatever their plans are we must thwart them. But securing the princess is our first priority.” His fist curled as he looked down.

“Lead the way then, ser.” Ornik prompted him as he led, trudging on to the east.