Hello. Welcome. Greetings. All that stuff.

And now, for an announcement and an explanation all at the same time. Basically, this chapter is going to be late. I know this for a fact. The first reason for this, is Fallout 4. I fully expect that game to consume my life entirely when it comes out in a few days. The second reason, which some of you may have noticed, is that I am going back to update all of my original chapters. I have been considering it recently then Anthropomancy (the quality-assurance guy) suggested it and he convinced me.

Really makes me realise just how terrible I was at making coherent sentences back then. I still am on occasion, but not as often (hopefully).

CHANGE LOG:

-Adding more detail on how things are said by characters. For clarity: I cut down on my use of this quite a while ago because I felt like it took up a lot of time and didn't add enough to the story, however now I'm willing to try it again in case I can make it work now.

Joke (simplism, bruh): What do you call it when someone gets knocked out by Anivia? Out cold.

Oh hey, would you look at that. The start of the chapter.


Chapter 51: Sneaking Badly

"I'm just going to say right now that I am not one-hundred percent on this plan."

"How? It is brilliant in AT LEAST every single conceivable way."

"I… don't agree. It feels like this is going to get us caught and, personally, that's something I'd like to avoid. We're a bit, oh, I dunno, massively outnumbered."

"Don't worry yourself with thoughts of having to murder many hundreds of people. We just have to go make a hole in the wall and run away into the distance. You can do your camouflage thing and I can do some Dark Lord things. Done and dusted."

"So, we just run away. With hundreds of Summoners firing spells at us and whatever war-machines they have hanging doing their best to end us violently?"

"Precisely. How can we lose?" I concluded rhetorically, shrugging at him.

Arckani dropped his head into his hands and sighed before mumbling: "Months upon months of surviving against all odds, and I die now because some cunt with a bunch of skeletons convinced me to go with a terrible plan."

"Actually, it's 'months of surviving and I live now because some cunt with a bunch of skeletons convinced me to go with the greatest plan to ever be spoken then go and…' I suppose that's where it ends, cause I have no fucking clue what you're doing after all this. Although, if I do say so myself, I hope it involves me somewhere down the line. You seem like a really interesting person to get hammered with."

I gave him a thumb's-up before shoving the door open and stepping into the hallway. I looked either way then started strolling in the direction that wasn't just a wall a few feet from my face. No-one was around but the doors all had windows on them, so I had to duck occasionally.

After a few moments, Arckani caught up with me and, very quietly, asked: "Where is everyone?"

I had to think about it for a few moments before I realised the most obvious, and most likely, answer: "They're probably outside, trying to work out where the fireworks came from."

"Why did you have fireworks in the first place?"

"I wanted to be stealthy."

"So you used the loudest, brightest- ohhhh, I get it."

A few seconds later, we reached the end of the hallway where it split in two, one going directly to the left and the other going to the right. The moment my face went past the precipice of the corner and the hallways came into my peripheral vision, I noticed the Summoner a few metres away to my right. I jumped back and shoved Arckani down onto a chair set against the wall before taking a seat next to him. A thin, circular table separated the two chairs and held a pile of newspapers. I picked one off the top and my partner-in-stealth followed suit. We both brought them up and pretended to be reading them as the Summoner turned the corner and passed by us. He nodded at our presence as he walked: "Gentlemen."

Not wanting to be rude, I replied: "Afternoon."

He turned and stared at me: "Hey! It's the evening."

"My mistake."

He went back to his own business as I spared a glance over at my comrade, shortly before we both put down the newspapers and got up.

"Not even close, baby."

I patted myself on the back, literally, before spinning around and going down the hallway that the Summoner had come from. It went on for a few metres before opening up into a room that was clearly undergoing renovations of some sort. The windows were boarded up and boxes were scattered around the place. Not even half of the walls were painted and the floor was bare wood planks all over.

I stepped into it and made my way across to the window at the other end of the room. Arckani searched around the room, looking from nothing in particular from what I could tell.

As I watched him search through a few of the boxes I realised that the building size and how far we had walked didn't make any sense. The window couldn't possibly lead to the outside.

With that in mind, I grabbed one of the planks and yanked it off.

"Oh… that can't be good." I supposed blankly, taking a few steps back from the window in mild shock.

Arckani stood up and turned to me: "What?"

"Just… come over here."

He strolled over and stood next to me, turning to look through the hole in the window.

"What the hell is that!?"

"It's a really big… crystal." I stated as we stared through the window. Beyond it was a massive room, hundreds of metres in every direction, with a huge, blue crystal in the centre that was half-way excavated from the ground. That thing was so massive it could have put the skyscrapers in Piltover to shame.

Arckani turned his head to look at me and I stared back into his goggles.

"Don't look at me like that, you asked what it was. I was just replying to your stupid question with a stupid answer."

"Shut up and help me figure out how to destroy it before they do something with it!" He exclaimed while throwing his hands up and going over to one of the corners of the room. As he attempted to open a conveniently-wide vent, I shrugged: "It's a good thing I didn't have plans for tonight."

He tugged the vent-cover open then looked over his shoulder at me: "What the hell kind of plans would a guy like you have on a Wednesday night?"

"Evil shit. We've got a torture room and all. Actually, we have twenty-odd, but that's beside the point."

"You're such a weirdo." He remarked while clambering into the vent.

"Look who's talking!" I declared slightly louder than I intended to. To be safe, I stared down the hallway to make sure no-one was in earshot before following him into the vent.

It was at times like that where I was really happy I decided to go for smaller armour than my usual. It was enough of a tight fit that I couldn't raise my head to look forward, as the helmet was way too tall.

Arckani must have heard my clanging about and got worried that I'd lose us the element of stealth: "For the love of fuck, will you just stop trying to look around or take the helmet off?"

"You say that now, but what if I took my helmet off and I was just a spooky ghost or a sentient sheep or something? That would fuck with you."

"I stopped trying to make sense of people like you ages ago. You could pull off that helmet and literally be me and I wouldn't give a damn."

"Right, well, I'm going to go ahead and keep the helmet on to preserve the mysterious element to my infinitely charming personality." I joked half-seriously.

We continued crawling through the vents until Arckani stopped in front of me. A few moments passed with my anticipation slowly building and a little bit of concern growing in the corners of my mind before he whispered: "Do you hear that?"

Nothing was showing up on the rudimentary sensors I had yet to replace in my helmet and I couldn't hear anything but the muffled sound of Summoners going about their business in the rooms above and below us.

"I can't hear anything. What is it?"

He shuffled around a bit then froze in place shortly before whispering in a horrified tone: "They're gassing the vents!"

Immediately he started crawling forward at a much accelerated pace, throwing caution to the wind in the hopes of escaping in time. After considering that I hadn't made the suit air-tight, I pushed myself along to catch up. After a few seconds, the sensors picked it up and I could hear a huge amount of gas being flushed through the ventilation system.

The smell hit like a truck and stuck around no matter how fast we went. I couldn't see past Arckani in front of me, but the occasional peek backwards showed that we didn't have very long. Quite some distance back was a ghastly yellow cloud, and it was approaching fast.

"Fucking hell!" Was my only vocalisation of my ever-increasing heartbeat. Squeezing myself through those vents was beginning to take its toll on my endurance, and I was starting to break a sweat.

A, probably ill-conceived, look back served to inform me that we had barely a few seconds left to get the hell out of there. When I turned my head forward, Arckani was dropping into an opened grate in the vent. I saw the gas creeping through the vent next to me so I turned on the rockets in my boots for a second. The extra speed shoved me far enough forward to pull myself through the hole and drop into the room below. I smashed into the floor a few metres below and immediately rolled myself over to look up at the vent. Gas was pouring into the room, thankfully filling from the top.

A hand appeared above me and I took it. Arckani pulled me to my feet and I realised we were in some sort of cleaning-supply room. There was a door but, by my companion's failure to open it despite turning the handle, it was locked. The gas was just above head-level at that point so I grabbed Arckani and flung him away from the door, though I kept my grip on him. With my spare hand I pulled out my axe and obliterated the hinges before kicking it open and hurling Arckani through. After I had dove through, I shoved the door back into place and turning to see where we were. We were on a vast catwalk network that covered the top of the room, from mid-way down the crystal to the ceiling. A large amount of Summoners were walking around network, using technological or magical panels, moving supplies around, patrolling the area, or seemingly just going for a stroll.

By some incredibly stroke of luck, none of them were close enough to notice the commotion we had caused. Gas was starting to spill out of the door, so I hurried forward and took cover behind a control panel. Arckani hid behind a nearby pile of boxes and looked over at me, giving me a chance to ask the vital question: "Why the hell did they throw so much gas through their own air vents?"

"It's called 'Teening'. You throw enough toxic gas through the vents and it keeps them clean for months."

"Wow, we got really bad timing then."

"It's uncanny. So, what do you think we should do here?"

"Well, it looks like they're still trying to work out what they can do with this thing. I suggest we blow it to high-hell before they work it out."

"But couldn't we use it somehow?"

"If you're offering to carry that thing out of here and hide it somewhere, be my guest."

"No, I meant…" He sighed: "fine, we'll destroy it."

"Woo." I whispered while slightly throwing my hands up, but not far enough to draw attention.

"Are we going to use explosives or do you have some Dark Lord magic you can use?"

"I didn't bring any magic with me today but I did find space for about ten kilograms of plastic explosives."

He peeked over his hidey-spot at the crystal then back to me.

"That'll do just fine."

I tossed him a few kilos then turned to head down the stairs next to me when I heard Arckani clear his throat to get my attention: "Where the hell am I supposed to put these?"

"Dunno. I've never blown up a giant crystal before."

"I was kinda relying on you to know what to do here."

"That was a dumb thing to do on your part."

He sighed and started sneaking away while mumbling: "Apparently…"

I smiled then went down the stairs. As I neared the bottom, I realised that I had no idea how I was expecting to reach the crystal to plant the bombs. The catwalk network was a bit of a clusterfuck but it seemed that the Summoners had stationed people at all the important junctions and on top of all the best vantage points.

After coming up with a terrible plan, I grabbed onto the rail and hopped over it. I realised at that point just how high up I was and how obvious it would be if I fell. A stealth mission, it would no longer be.

A few deep breaths later I felt calm enough so I clambered down and onto the underside of the catwalk. There was a lot of wiring under there and two convenient metal bars that were suspended a few inches from the bottom of the metal walkway above them. I took one in each hand and hooked my feet into them. After a few seconds of checking that they were sturdy, I started climbing along the underside in the direction of the crystal. Summoners passed over me without suspecting a thing, despite me being close enough to hear about how Amanda was being a real bitch lately. How did she expect him to pick up the groceries on his way home from work when the shop was on the opposite side of the house to his job? That doesn't make any sense Amanda.

As I struggled to climb up the underside of a staircase, an announcement reverberated through the room as loudly and clearly as if the source was right next to me: "The Executive Summoner is arriving in five minutes. Repeat: five minutes. That is all."

I sat there for a few seconds before letting my head hang before thinking: "That complicates things slightly."

I shrugged it off then decided to continue with my plan as I had originally intended. If he did show up before I had time to set everything, I'd just have to hope he didn't have amplified senses or something to detect me. If he arrived after I had set it all up, then hopefully he would get caught up in the explosion.

Hurrying my pace as best I could while still remaining mostly silent, I neared the crystal. The thing really was massive. You could have carved an apartment block into that thing and it would have been one of the largest on the planet.

However, I had a sneaking suspicion that the Summoners had other plans for using it. Considering its bright blue colour, I assumed it would be made into a massive Nexus to provide a massive boost to the power of every Summoner on the planet. That would cause a few problems, to say the least.

Luckily for everyone on the planet who didn't wear purple robes, a man with an army of skeletons and a man who is so ugly he wrapped himself in ten layers of cloth were about to save the day. Truly, a tale that would be told around campfires for decades to come.

As I approached a junction in the walkways, I pulled out the detonator and started adjusting the settings to work from as long a range as possible. Not an easy task, considering I had to do it with one hand. I was so focused on it that I did not see that I was about to bump into someone. When I did, it made me jump and I dropped the detonator.

It was still falling when I turned my head to look at who I had hit. Arckani had, apparently, had the exact same plan as me and had been similarly distracted; however it was by a small fire on his hand and not a detonator. I had no idea about how he had ignited himself and I didn't want to ask.

He managed to put out the fire by patting it enough as we both looked at each other. A perfect storm of terrible had formed, as a Summoner was walking directly over us just as the detonator hit the floor. He stopped and stared over the rail at where it had impacted the floor. I could hear him sniffing the air, probably getting a whiff of the smoke. My free hand was on my axe, but it was not necessary. Arckani had already thrown something at a light attached to a nearby wall. It was knocked off and fell to the ground, attracting the attention of the woman above us and probably a few more of the nearby Summoners.

"Someone get that fixed! We can't have this place looking like its falling apart when he gets here!"

A few Summoners jogged over us and towards the broken light as the one above us went back to staring over the edge of the catwalk. By the time she stared in the right place and from the right angle to see us, we were already gone. We split up again to plant the explosives quicker but I froze solid when I heard some nearby doors opening. I couldn't see who went through it, but I heard a procession of footsteps headed in our direction and made an assumption at who it was. I didn't dare peak past the walkway, but I made an educated guess that he was accompanied by a fair few bodyguards, cutting out the option of surprise-attacking him.

He and his bodyguards were only a few metres from me when they stopped to stare at the crystal.

"This… won't be enough."

"All due respect, sir, but I don't think there's anything we can't do with th-"

I heard something collapse onto the walkway floor.

"I shall not have my intellect challenged by anyone here. Do I make myself clear?"

I could practically hear everyone in the room nodding their heads.

"Good. Now, find another. This one shall be used for smaller projects."

I heard him and his guards begin making their way out as the rest of the Summoners in the room remained perfectly still. When the doors closed, everyone came back to life. Everyone on every level of the maze of walkways began running around, casting spells, consulting technological instruments, or moving things around. It made it quite happily loud enough that I could rush along with planting the final explosives and meeting up with Arckani on the other end of the crystal as he put the final chunk of explosive in the place.

"What do we do now? You dropped the fucking detonator."

"Don't worry. I always carry a back-up detonator." I whispered proudly while pulling out my secondary detonator.

"Unfortunately, this one was just a prop for a movie and doesn't actually work."

"Well what's the point of it then!?"

"Well, I was thinking that we could go find a technological terminal that I could yank some stuff out of, shove it in here then fiddle with it until something explodes."

"Do you have even the slightest idea of how the technology required works?"

"Let's say I do. Come on!" I declared, quietly, while turning myself around and moving along. I headed straight for the closest door and reached it pretty quickly. In order to peek my head over to check, I had to get myself into an awkward position. My right hand was under my left leg, my right leg was next to my head but I could see pretty well so it was fine.

The coast was pretty much clear and the only people who might see me were very distracted. I shoved myself a few times and stretched out before being able to pull myself up to my feet. Arckani was already up and pushing me through the doorway by the time I had stood.

He closed the doors behind us as I looked around. We were in some sort of library. And it was kinda big. Looking down the main walkway, it had to be hundreds of metres to the other side. The bookcases were stacked to over twice my height and the spaces between cases were barely large enough for me to walk through without twisting my body. I couldn't actually see anyone, but I could hear people walking around and messing about with the books in the distance.

Seeing as it was a library of nothing but books, a dodgy carpet pattern and some weak lights, there wasn't really much we could use to make the detonator work.

I couldn't see any doors nearby, so I checked to make sure we were clear before walking along the wall to my right. A few ancient paintings and some benches decorated the walls, but other than that it was pretty bland.

I did have a minor heart-attack when we rounded the corner and a summoner was sitting on a bench within arm's length of me. Luckily, his face was planted in a book, fast asleep.

In the distance, I could see a door. For once, nothing was blocking our way there. Nothing was going to make it difficult. It was easy enough that I could let my focus drift to some random thoughts about how I could totally make loaf of exploding bread. That would be a cool way to kill someone. Imagine waking up in the morning and going downstairs to make some toast or some shit then suddenly BAM! Exploding bread.

"I'm a fucking genius."

Arckani tapped me on the shoulder before whispering with a hint of confusion: "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Did I say that out-loud?"

"Uh-huh."

I gave a short sigh before responding quietly: "Oh, dang. Well, in case you didn't notice, I'm a genius."

"No, you're just a weirdo."

"Same difference."

"You're not even going to try to deny that you are a freak?" He questioned as we neared the door.

"No. Cause I am. Have you seen what I'm wearing?"

"It's a bit hard to miss what you're wearing. It kinda stands out."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a-" He began before someone exclaimed from behind us.

"HALT. You are both under arrest for trespassing in a military compound."

When I turned, it was just a single Summoner, albeit a rather large one. Getting arrested wasn't on my list of things to do that day, so I improvised and grabbed him. He started to make a ball of fire before I could turn him to face away from us then jump behind a bookcase. Arckani went behind a different one and looked like he was prepared to do some fighting when the Summoner mumbled: "Hmm, must have been the wind."

He left and we both exited out cover and went to the door.

"How the hell did that work?"

"Bethesda AI. Don't question it."

"You can't just answer the damn question by breaking the 4th wall!"

"I can, I just did, and I will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Now let's go find some technology." I declared proudly before turning and going down the hallway. From the sigh, I guessed that Arckani had, at that very moment, decided to give up trying to make sense of me. Which was good. Had to happen eventually.

It didn't take long for us to come to a set of doors, one on each side of the hallway. Above each door was a plaque, the one on the left stating 'Communications Control', while the one on our right read 'Repair Parts'. I went to open the door on the left; however I was halted by Arckani's hand on my arm before I could reach it.

"Wouldn't this other room make more sense? It says it's for spare parts right there."

I turned to face him and he pulled his hand back: "Yes, however this one is for communications. I'd think that the same shit that goes into those things inside there would go into a detonator."

"Let's just split up and each search one room."

"That's a terrible idea. Someone always dies when groups split up to search places."

He crossed his arms and sighed at me.

"Alright, fine. Split up then. It's your funeral."

"If it is, you're not invited." He stated while stepping over to the other door and slowly pushing it open.

I was quite hurt emotionally by that comment, but I sucked it up and went to my door. After shoving it open slightly and sticking my head through, I realised that I had made a mistake. Promptly closing that door, I hurried across the hall and followed Arckani into a small room, almost the size of a large closet. Shelves were stacked all up the walls and random bits of technology were thrown onto them haphazardly.

It didn't take long for my companion to notice my presence and turn to face me as I shut the door.

"What happened with the communication room?"

"Oh, you know, I decided against it. Tis a silly place."

He grabbed me by the bottom of my helmet and brought my face close to his before repeating slowly: "What happened?"

"Imagine a really long and wide room with desks from one end to another and a Summoner at nearly every desk. Oh, yeah, and guards next to the entrances."

He threw me to the ground but I managed to do a fucking great roll when I hit the floor and hop back up to my feet. It looked awesome.

"That was rude and unnecessary but did you see those skills?"

"Shut up! Only speak when I ask you a question, all right?"

"I can see you're mad, so okay."

"Right then. First off, did anyone see you?"

"Not that I saw. Some people probably looked my way but I was out of there pretty fast."

"What about the guards at the door?"

"One was chatting up some dude and the other was behind a door, so he probably didn't see much."

"Good, good. So it's not a total disaster."

I mumbled a: "Woo.", however that seemed to irritate Arckani slightly.

"This doesn't mean you're off the hook! If the alarms go off and they start blaring about intruders, it's entirely on you."

"Ugh! Fine. Can we just search for the parts before I make this any worse for myself?"

"It would help if you could give me some idea what I'm looking for first."

I couldn't give him any indication I knew how complicated technology worked or my cover would be more easily blown, so I had to play the idiot for my reply and the ensuing search. Something that I found surprisingly easy.

"Just look for something that might fit into this detonator casing."

Arckani rubbed the bridge of his nose as he turned around: "Useless."

"It's the trying that counts." I replied cheerfully as I began searching. Almost immediately I found the three components that I could scavenge together to make it work, however I still had a cover to keep. So, I dismissed them and picked up a RAM card. After smashing it into the casing until it broke, I threw it back onto the shelf and returned to sorting through. Occasionally, Arckani would hand me something which I would try to smash into the detonator, but it never worked. He even handed me a signal transmitter at one point, however it was slightly too large.

When I started to sense his growing frustration with our lack of progress I accidentally attached a micro-transmitter to a signalling motherboard, then accidentally installed an auto-charging battery, then accidentally welded the parts into place.

By the time Arckani had turned around with the circuit-board for a microwave in his hands, I had closed the casing on the detonator and even got the little red warning light working.

"Wow, you actually got it working. I'm impressed."

"Yeah, I suppose throwing things together until a little light works out after all, huh?"

"Seems so. Are we good to get out of here then?"

"I think we ar-" I was cut off by a bunch of sparks coming from the detonator, followed by a huge explosion that shook the building and sent all of the piled-up components flying through the air. Some bits of the ceiling fell out and I lost my balance.

The explosion subsided and I pushed myself up to see Arckani staring at me blankly, though I could guess that he was not too pleased.

"To be fair to me, I got pretty close to making something that works." I joked a few short moments before the alarms started blaring orders to put out the fires and secure the perimeter.

"That's all well and good, but how the hell do we get out of here now?!"

"Um… just stay behind me. I'll make a path."

I turned to the door and put my arm up to protect my face before running forward. The door was already weakened by the explosion rocking the building, so it just collapsed in front of me. As I charged through the hallway, I knocked a Summoner aside before smashing through a second door. Nothing could put a dent in the momentum I had built up as I cleared a path through the hundreds of desks in that room. Summoners had to dive out of the way to avoid being trampled as I obliterated their workspace. The only thing I could hear at that point was wood being disassembled into thousands of chunks and splinters.

A short backwards glance proved that Arckani was keeping up just fine. The amount of spells being thrown our way worried me slightly, considering his lack of protective gear, but I tried not to think about it as I ploughed through a wall and into a training area. Dummies were set up all over and it took a very short amount of time for all the Summoners present to change their focus to us. Within seconds of barging into that room I had face-tanked at least five balls of fire.

None of them seemed to be doing a particularly noticeable amount of damage to me, so I tried my best to focus on my path. We were a few seconds away from going through a window to the outside, so that was fun.

Shards of glass exploded in all directions, mixed in with splinters of wood and lengths of metal pipes. As we fell through the air, the debris mixed in with the heavy snow falling, becoming practically invisible.

My heart skipped multiple beats as we fell past the wall. I only cleared it by a few small inches, while Arckani was somehow even closer to the barbed wire.

All the breath was forcefully removed from my lungs when we slammed into the snowy ground. There was no time to rest, however, as searchlights honed in on our position in seconds. I grabbed Arckani's wrist, the only bit of him I could see, and pulled him up. We ran through the snow until the base was just a flaming wreck on the horizon, only noticeable due to the huge pillar of smoke.

Our run was cut short when, inexplicably, my armour ran out of power. Immediately, I fell face-first to the surprisingly-hard ground.

"Ouch." I sighed as I shoved myself up to a sitting position. Arckani stopped running and came over to sit next to me. We both sat there breathing heavily for a few seconds before he bothered to ask: "What did you trip over on?"

"Nothing, Armour just ran out of power."

"It needs power to run?"

"No, it's just there's a bunch of stuff in here to help with the weight because, in case you couldn't guess, this metal is not particularly lightweight."

"Other people wear heavy armour just fine. Are you some kind of wimp?"

"Hey, other people don't use the same materials as me. This is like lugging around two extra fully-grown people with me all day."

"Just bear with it for now. We've got to go find somewhere to make camp for the night." He ordered in the closest thing I had heard to a cheery tone from him all day. Arckani got up and I could immediately tell something was wrong, mostly due to the limp he'd developed.

"Hey, have you hurt your leg?"

"It's nothing. There's a medic back at my main camp, so I can deal with it later."

"Just let me see it."

"No. It's really not something to worry yourself with."

"Look, I'm a certified doctor. I need to make sure whatever it is won't get worse before you can even reach you camp."

He sighed and turned around to reveal a relatively deep slice on his lower leg, near the knee. I immediately got up and hurried over to examine it. By some absurd luck, it had just barely avoided an artery, only grazing it slightly. There was, however, a large amount of blood despite the near-miss. I tugged the small first-aid kit from the back of my belt and pulled out some steriliser.

"You're going to want to sit down for this."

Given that the only light-source nearby was one of the gashes in the landscape just behind us, I was glad I wouldn't have to be doing anything difficult. It was still going to be a difficult procedure, as Arckani would not be able to sit still for all of it. Which was fair enough, given that the steriliser was like getting shot by an electrified bullet that was on fire and explosive.

Very slowly and deliberately, I applied it to a cloth then dabbed it on the wound.

"AHH HOLY SHIT ON A TRICYCLE WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!? It hurts so fucking muuchh…" He trailed off into choking back tears.

"Don't know what you expected from the Dark Lord of a skeleton army."

"Something, anything, other than that… shit! Holy fuck…"

"To be fair to me, che- I uhh- alchemy is not my strong suit. Like, why does this red liquid explode when I pour it on this green gas? Fuck if I know." I explained while wrapping his leg up in bandages.

He laid back on the snow and put his palms to his goggles while shaking his head: "If I wasn't is so much FUCKING pain right now I'd kick you in your fucking nuts."

"And that is probably why the codpiece was invented, but don't quote me on that. I'm a person, not a historian."

"What the fuck does that even mean?"

"Precisely what I said. You do speak English, right?"

"Okay, you've moved up to joint-first on my list of most annoying people. Congratu-fucking-lations."

"One day, I've gotta meet the other half of first-place."

"Stick with me and you just might. But please, don't take that as an invitation to stick with me. Don't even take it as a suggestion."

I tied off the end of the bandage then looked him dead in the eyes while giving the most sarcastic response that I could: "I will go out of my way to avoid you at all costs and shall certainly not endeavour to piss you off at every opportunity. As everyone knows, I am a man who goes out of his way to avoid annoying people, especially those who ask me to."

"No-one knows anything about you, dumbass. We've met on multiple occasions and I'm still not even sure if you are a real person or just another skeleton."

"Both. I'm a person with a skeleton inside me. Amazing, isn't it? Anyway, that's not important right now. In a few seconds the steriliser will activate its secondary function."

"Please tell me it's not anything like the first."

"The opposite exactly." I assured just as the steriliser began creating stem-cells, massively speeding up the healing process. At the same time, it promoted the release of pretty much every positive chemical in the brain, leading to an overall wonderful feeling. I always wondered why I didn't make it activate the positive chemicals at the same time as the feeling of being stabbed by a particularly sharp and poison-coated mallet. How do you stab someone with a mallet, you ask? With great effort, that's how.

"Oh wow, that feels a lot better! Almost like it's good as new."

"By the time the sun decides to show itself, it will be."

"Can I walk on it?"

"You managed to walk mostly fine before I treated the wound, so I suppose you can probably give it a go."

I gave Arckani a hand up and he gave it a few cautious hops before concluding it was fine.

When I surveyed the horizon for somewhere to make a camp, I noticed that there was a small shack on the edge of a vast, frozen lake a few hundred metres from our current position. It didn't have any lights on and there was no movement so I guessed the occupants were either asleep or not around.

"Uhh, Thexar, you might want to see this."

"Who the hell is The-" I began while turning around, trailing off into silence when I saw the massive snowstorm headed our way. It rolled over the still-smoking compound and consumed it in a moment.

"Now that is certainly an inconvenience."

Arckani looked at me and tapped my armour: "For you maybe. I'm not wearing enough for a snowstorm."

"We'd probably better get moving then."

I grabbed his hand and started heading to the shack, slowly gaining pace. A single glance back showed that where we were covering metres, the storm was engulfing miles. I couldn't help but laugh a bit at our predicament. My companion did not seem to share my cheerful outlook.

"I'd prefer if you didn't bring out the maniacal laughter while we run from that monster."

"Sorry it's just… whenever we're not fucking something up, the universe fills in for us."

"It has a way of doing that. For now, can we just focus on running?"

We were within a hundred metres from the shack and a short look back revealed that the storm was within a few hundred of us.

"Definitely! Let's do that!" I shouted with slight fear plastered over my face.

At that point, all I could hear was a massive cascade of snow, even above my own rapid breathing. After a few tense moments of expecting to be buried in snow any second, I ploughed through the front door, followed closely by Arckani. He was just passing through the threshold of the door when the storm caught up and snow smashed into his back. Shortly after he was sent flying halfway across the room, I managed to close the door. By the sound of the snow hitting into the cabin walls, I wasn't entirely sure it would stay standing. My worries died down with the noise until I was confident enough to step away from the door and over to Arckani.

Along the way, I noted down the details of the shack. The walls, floor and slanted ceiling were made of thick wood planks. A tiny amount of snow was getting in through some of the boarded-up windows, but other than that the build quality seemed rather high. I stepped over some of the shredded carpets before kneeling down beside Arckani, who was slumped over a short coffee table. I grabbed his shoulder and shook him a bit, however there was no response.

"I suppose now is bed-time after all." I shrugged while picking him up and taking him over to the bed in the corner. It was just a wooden frame with a mattress and pillow, but it'd be good enough.

I managed to light the stone fireplace in the corner then went over to the sofa and tried to get comfy. At that point I was pretty damn tired, so despite the uncomfortable conditions, I practically passed out.


BLOODY HELL MY HEAD HURTS IS THIS WHAT A MIGRAINE IS?!