Log inOf Fates And Fetters Ch 1
Exactly what it says on the tin.
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“Why do we even have the square-cube law!?” I demanded breathlessly as I ran through the forest. The six-story building sized, scaled, tusked Praying Mantis hissed loudly and angrily enough to shake my bones.
I could swear it was mocking me.
I heard the air whistle behind me and ducked, some titanic mass ruffled the air where my chest and head used to be, and several decades old trees instantly transformed into splinters and firewood.
No, the giant bug couldn’t have followed after that mounted patrol that passed by, nnnooooooo, it wanted some premium spiky haired Aryan/Vaguely-Asian beef!
One could perhaps wonder how it is that I came to be in this situation.
Well, that hypothetical ‘one’ better get in goddamn line cause that’s what I wanna to know!
But such conundrums what resided in manners of philosophy would have to wait until I didn’t have a giant murderous insect trying to eat me!
Its massive claw swung again, but instead of swiping at me directly, it knocked a number of trees onto the dirt path I was using to run in a mostly straight line, I could try crawling over the mess, or I could try going around, either way, the giant monster would catch up and eat me. And just like that, it was fight or be eaten.
I had an instant of temporary indecision between the numerous ways I carried on my person for the explicit purpose of killing people, but muscle memory decided on drawing the bastard sword I’d made while working as a blacksmith.
I had painstakingly forged it from a single large puck of crucible steel. The weapon was forty inches of blade, eight inches of grip, two inches of pommel, and all deadly. It had claimed the lives of its fair share of bandits over the years, and it was currently, I suspected, the single best piece of sharpened mundane steel in the continent.
The blade was in my hand and moving into a rising slash without conscious thought, its edge striking the carapace of the descending limb from the giant insect. The attack, which carried all of the momentum my body could produce, slammed into the bodypart with a reverberating impact, the weapon nearly being wrenched out of my grip and the force behind the beast’s half-hearted blow sent me tumbling over the ground.
But I was alive.
I threw myself to my feet and looked up just in time to see the enormous insectile tusked head of the creature, descending to eat me whole in a single bite.
I threw myself to the side, and interposed my blade mid-air as, missing with the bite, the creature tossed its head angrily, its tusk slamming into my blade and my blade onto my chestplate, once again sending me sprawling, but buying me a few more seconds of life.
I levered myself up to my feet, gasping for air, and readied to sell my life as dearly as possible as the giant insect locked two out of three beady red eyes onto me.
“Well come on!” I snarled, my hand grasping for the emergency item I kept in a pouch at my waist. “You want some!? Come get it!”
It would require delicate timing, but if I could get it inside its mouth…
Several things happened in such quick succession that they were difficult to parse.
The thing reared back, hissing. Something cracked against the ground and a large cloud of dark grey smoke enveloped much of the forest. I jumped to the side and heard a torrent of hissing liquid strike the ground where I had just been standing.
I felt a pair of hands grab one of my arms and pull me, and not having a better idea myself and trusting that this wasn’t the giant insect, I went along with whoever was pulling me without protest. In moments we were hiding behind a boulder I had failed to spot because, well, giant fuckoff insect monster, and quietly waiting out the monster’s temper tantrum caused because dinner had managed to run away.
After a few incredibly tense eternities, the giant insect left in a huff, devastating more acers of forest in its tantrum.
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, sheathed my sword and slowly sank to the ground, resting my back against the boulder and hissed. “What the sacred fuck was that!?”
“Feyrbrand, the Green-Tusked Dragon.” Said a voice, deep for a woman, to my side. Turning to look at her, I saw a strikingly beautiful raven-haired lady in a dark blue coat, looking thoughtfully and far too calmly in the direction of the giant monster.
“That’s a dragon?” I demanded, stifling the urge to peek at its retreating form past the boulder, I was too afraid of it choosing that exact moment to look exactly in my direction, so instead I studied the woman who saved me.
She was tall, for a woman, what I had taken to be a dark blue coat was, upon closer inspection, an armored dress with chainmail over vital areas and leather pauldrons, it had a few gold and silver accents. And a scabbarded sword at her hip.
Her right boot was a thigh high, her left ended a bit past her ankle, showing off a whole lot of comely pale skin. She had a strong nose, grey eyes, and was wearing a circlet that matched her dress, and made it look like she had a small pair of dark blue and gold horns growing out of her temples.
She bore my scrutiny with a mixture of detached indifference and mild curiosity.
This woman screamed ‘dark and edgy mentor with a tragic past.’ Which meant I had to get out of here as soon as I could do so without being impolite.
I’m not some barbarian.
“What did you expect a dragon to look like?” She asked, so maybe it was less ‘detachment’ and more ‘disdain for the uneducated country bumpkin.’
Joke’s on her, I memorized the first six digits of π!
“Dunno, giant lizard that breathes fire?” I said, picking myself up and trying to still the shakes I was getting from all that leftover adrenaline. “That’s a pretty popular depiction.”
She did not dignify my nonsense with a response. Turning to lean against the boulder and crossing her arms she said. “But why bother sending the dragon here? That village was far too small to put up any proper resistance, it would have fallen regardless.”
I felt as if my heart had stopped beating.
There was only one village near here.
The mounted soldiers hadn’t been a patrol.
I only realized I was sprinting as I heard the woman calling out that there was no reason for me to go now, I was already too late.
Why exactly did I let my mother talk me into the whole ‘Martial Arts Journey’ thing!? I should have said ‘to hell with tradition!’ Making Mom sad at me would have been a worthwhile fucking exchange!
Fuck!
I crested a hill, breaking through the tree canopy, and finally saw the smoke. I shoved the rage and grief down and put a lid on it, letting it simmer.
Its time would come, but now was not it.
I jogged downhill toward Old Johnathan’s home, the fence I’d built for his sheep when I was fifteen was broken, his flock nowhere to be seen, his home in ruins. As I neared the break in the fence, I heard him speak, his voice had turned feeble in the last five years. “Why? Why do this? We are farmers.”
“Hey! This one’s still alive!” Said a voice I did not recognize. I drew my bayonet and stalked forward, putting my back close to the remains of the building’s brick wall. “You Basil swine, didn’t learn your lesson the first time!?”
I heard a strike and a feeble grunt and tightened my grip on the bayonet. Its blade was eight inches of crucible steel and razor sharp, good enough.
I peeked past the wall and saw three men, Old Johnathan was lying on his side, curled up into a fetal position, two men wearing knockoff Roman Centurion cosplay, both of whom had their backs to me, one of whom was kicking the defenseless old man.
I stalked forward, supported the knife’s base with my offhand and lunged, burying the blade to the hilt in the back of the asshole’s neck and threw the dying man aside like so much trash, rushing the other as he jumped and turned around when he heard his friend gurgle.
His hand went for his sword, his palm grasping the hilt an instant before I was there, I took hold of his right wrist as I tackled him, pushing him back until his back slammed into the wall of Johnathan’s outhouse. He struggled, trying to draw his sword and failed to keep in mind that I had two hands, one of which I used to take hold of his throat and crumple his trachea in a steely grip.
He lost strength quickly, when his struggles grew feeble, I threw him to the floor, drew his sword, put his hands together, and drove the blade point down into ground to the hilt through his wrists.
I left him to choke to death while I checked on the old man. One look at his now deformed chest was all I needed to know he would not see the evening.
As I inspected his wounds, he looked up, his eyes cloudy as he whispered. “Dart? Dart my boy, is that you?”
“Hey old man.” I said with as much levity as I could muster. “I told you to lay off the drinking, now look at you, all filthy.”
He gurgled a laugh, when he coughed, specks of blood came out of his mouth. “If anything. I should have drank more.” He reached up, I grasped his hand and squeezed it lightly. “It’s good that you’re here boy, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He took a deep, gurgling breath. “Go, your mother was fighting them, if she isn’t dead, then she needs you, find her.”
I grit my teeth. “I will.”
“Good, boy.” He let go and lay down. “Now give them hell.”
I left the dying, crotchety old veteran on the ground, my eyes burned, but I grit my teeth harder and didn’t let the tears come.
They’d impede my vision.
I only stopped to retrieve my bayonet from the corpse, and to wipe the blood off on its tunic, and kicked the other bastard who was still annoyingly hanging on to life.
I moved carefully through town, I saw several shadows in broken buildings, but none were wearing armor.
I saw plenty more corpses, and recognized most of them.
Gregor, he’d died holding his grandfather’s rusty spear, he never did take my advice about maintaining it.
Rotwell, his trusty plow buried in the head of a dead enemy next to him, his intestines lay on the ground, his head connected to his body only by the thinnest bit of skin and cartilage.
Each body I passed another failure to add to the pile.
As I neared the town square, I heard a feminine cry, a grunt, followed by a roar and the sound of a mailed fist striking flesh.
“Looks like the cunt still has fight in her!” The owner of the voice laughed cruelly. “I like women with fire!”
I abandoned stealth and ran. I came upon the square to the sight of two wannabe Centurions and a man in full plate armor, the three of them standing over a struggling woman, her shirt torn, her breasts exposed to the air as the full plated man knelt between her legs, one of the others holding her hands above her head.
One of the bastards shifted, and I saw the one they’d chosen to rape was my mother in this life.
I saw red.
I dove my hand elbow deep in the small sack at my waist and pulled the double barreled rifle I’d forged out of it. I brought the stock to my shoulder, clicked off the safety, and pulled each of the triggers once, there were two thundering booms and an obnoxiously thick cloud of smoke, and the two lesser enemies fell dead with a ragged hole through their helmet.
I imagined that Full Plate said something, but I couldn’t hear him past the ringing and the blood pounding in my ears as I tossed the rifle to the ground and charged the fucker, bastard sword leaping into my hands with murderous joy.
He barely got his sword out in time and into a block as I slammed into him. I grabbed my sword by the blade, put my leg past his, and twisted my hips, using the sword as a lever to hip throw him to the ground.
I mounted him, trapping his sword arm beneath my leg, then drew my bayonet and drove it down at his neck. He caught my wrist with his off hand, his arm trembling as it fought my whole weight trying to drive the weapon down.
“Basil…Mongrel!” He growled, bucking his hips in a failed attempt to dislodge me.
I didn’t bother answering him. This particular dead man was not deserving of the courtesy.
As loath as I was to say anything positive about the scumbag, he put up a valiant effort, nearly successfully throwing me off the mount; something I was not eager to allow, as, to put it bluntly, his armor was better than mine, a fight without the element of surprise might well not go my way.
His arm tired, the point of the bayonet at first kissing his neck, until suddenly his arm gave out, and my bodyweight drove the sharpened steel down through his neck. His body spasmed as his cervical spine was served.
“That’s what you get asshole.” I snarled into his faceplate, I could see the terrified glint of his eyes through the slit of the helmet. “That’s what you get for hurting my people, for hurting my mom.”
I twisted the knife, then tore it out, his blood spraying in a wide arc, and didn’t bother to witness the light leaving his eyes.
I wiped the bayonet off on his trouser leg, sheathed it, and ran to the battered woman who was now sitting up and wincing.
“Ma!” I said, kneeling next to her, pulling a wool blanket out of the small sack and wrapping it around her shoulders. “Ma, you okay!? The fuck kinda question is that, how hurt are you!?”
Mom wrinkled her nose at my fussing. “Dart, I’m okay, it’s just a broken arm.”
“The fuck you are! I’mma splint it, one sec.” I rummaged in my sack and pulled out my rudimentary (to my standards) first aid kit. “How come that asshole got the drop on you?”
She shook her head. “I was defeated by a man wearing a fancy cloak. And what have I told you about your language?”
“I’m a sailor at heart.”
Claire Feld was forty-one years old and looked to be somewhere in her late twenties. She was plum-haired, baby-faced, and had the trim body of a life-long martial artist. She’d also taught me hand-to-hand combat and so long as I tried to match her using only technique, she was a significantly better unarmed fighter than me.
My mother was proof that this time around, Karma had spat me out onto what was clearly an anime world.
I just had no goddamn idea what anime I was in.
Hopefully, next time I died, I’d be deposited in an anime setting with working toilets.
She grunted as I slathered a poultice on the arm before I carefully set the bone, then splinted her limb, bandaged it up and secured it as best I could. I wished I had the money to keep a healing potion for emergencies, because of course those were a thing here.
“Dart, enough.” She said as I began looking her over for any other injuries. “You don’t have time for this. They took Shana.”
My hands stilled as the bottom dropped from under my stomach. “Come again?”
“The whole attack on Seles.” Claire said, pushing herself to her feet, ignoring my protests. “Imperial Sandora attacked the town, purely to take Shana away.”
“The fuck do they want with the mayor’s daughter of a tiny backwater town?” I demanded.
“Dart. They’re taking her to Hellena.”
Well…shit.
