The Lance of Zaros, Chapter III
A Different Kind of Life
Veliaf Hurtz sat on a simple wooden stool, with a silver sickle in one hand, and a cloth in the other. He was apparently too busy cleaning his weapon to notice Kyran and David enter the pub that passed for a base.
"Veliaf!" David said, carrying his Ivandis flail over his shoulder. "I've got a new recruit for the Myreque!"
Without looking up, Veliaf said, "Wonderful, how much training will he need?" He didn't sound at all enthusiastic- rather bored, actually. "I think that the recruits these days are getting a little more- wow." His eyes widened as he took a look at David. "Well, I suppose training is out of the question, then."
Kyran shook his head. "Not at all, sir. There's always room for improvement. For example, I can honestly say that if you gave me a weapon like David's, I would have very little idea how to use it. So training is always an option."
Veliaf chuckled. "Oh, he's a real dandy, David. Good on ya, son! You'll do fine around here."
David was about to respond when he heard footsteps coming lightly down the winding steps.
"Captain Veliaf!" an airy voice said. "Has David come back yet?" As the last word ended, Kyran saw a female elf step out of the shadows. She had a silvery hair that fell to her shoulders, and eyes of the same color that seem that look straight through him. She wore a loose-fitting black tunic cinched above her waist by a sash, with slightly baggy trousers beneath. Kyran quietly averted his gaze.
"Oh," she said, a hint of wry amusement shading her words. "Well, I knew you would bring a new recruit, David, but you didn't tell me he'd be so handsome." Kyran suddenly had an urge to be somewhere, anywhere else than down here. He willed her to stop talking. She didn't.
"That's quite the cape you've got there, sir," she almost purred. "I'm sure only someone exceptionally brave and mighty could earn that."
Kyran blinked a few times, then forced himself to look up. "Sorry," he said, extending a hand to her, "I didn't catch your name, and I don't believe you know mine, either. The name's Kyran MacTavish. It's, uh…it's good to meet you."
The elf raised an eyebrow and smiled silkily. "Well, Kyran MacTavish, you should know that my name is Adalyn Blackwood. But you can call me Addy." She ignored his hand and instead took a hold of his arm just above the elbow, almost possessively clutching it to her admittedly impressive chest.
Kyran's face turned red, but before he could respond, he heard Veliaf laugh. It sounded like someone beating a timpani drum.
"It's not nice to tease the newcomers, Adalyn," he said, a stupid grin showing beneath his black moustache. "Try to save the seduction for a few hours, at least."
Kyran noticed that David, too, was chuckling. Adalyn- even if she was being serious about this, he couldn't call someone he had just met by a nickname- joined in, a smile revealing perfectly white teeth.
"He was too easy to pass up, Veliaf," she said, letting go of his arm. "I have to have some fun, after all. Where'd you find him, anyway? He acts like he just got off the farm."
David shook his head. "I don't know about that. Any man would be hard-pressed to stand stoic in the face of your wiles, yeah? Besides, Kyran here's an honest-to-Saradomin war vet, not to mention-"
Adalyn's face suddenly went stoney. "Big deal," she said blankly. "We're all veterans here; it's no great honour among us."
David looked slightly put off. "As I was saying, he's also a master slayer. Meaning he's most likely more adept at combat than the rest of us. We can scarcely turn down help, in any case."
Adalyn gave an accepting nod, then turned back to Kyran who was till silent. She looked him in the eye and seemed like she was about to say something, when suddenly-
-she jumped on him! She executed an astonishingly high leap, and came forward, causing him to take a steadying step backwards before tripping and crashing to the ground with Adalyn straddling his chest, her face only inches away from his.
"Oh, yes," she said, a playful grin on her face. "You and me, we're going to have lots of fun."
Several hours later, Kyran stepped into the strangely clear spring water that passed for a communal bath in Burgh de Rott. A few other men- and not an insignificant number of women- sat or lay in the winding river, holding bars of soap or rags, trying to wash off the scent of the Marsh to varying degrees of success. He sank into the water up to his chin, letting the tension roll off his shoulders. He had finally unpacked his rucksack into a small yet functional room that held two beds, both unoccupied. Folding up his clothes, he had taken only his helmet into the river, to clean the blood off. Now that he was done with that, though, he could finally afford to relax a bit. He closed his eyes and submerged his head underwater, feeling the grime and dirt wash out of his hair and beard. The only thing that could ruin this was-
"Well, hello there, handsome."
Damn.
He opened his eyes to see Adalyn already sitting in the water next to him. Without a stitch of clothing. Did she enjoy making him agitated? Probably. He forced himself to look her in the eyes, rather than…elsewhere.
"Wh…What do you want, Adalyn?" he asked, trying to keep his tone civil.
She made a mock pouting face. "Aww, you mean you're not happy to see me? I'm sorry."
He took a calming breath before responding. "Ok, I'm sorry. I'll…try to be nicer in the future."
She looked him over once, making him feel profoundly uncomfortable, then smiled. "What's the matter, Kyran? Never seen a woman quite as beautiful as me?"
Quite as beautiful…Maybe quite as annoying. Or quite as nude. "Well, uh…what can I help you with, Adalyn?"
She clutched his arm as she had done in the pub, only more…affectionate. "Nothing, Kyran. I just wanted to be near you is all. Should I not have come?"
"Look, Adalyn, it's not that I don't think you're-" he was interrupted by the ringing of a loud brass bell. Everyone seemed to look instantly toward the sky- even Adalyn had cut short her flirtations to crane her neck back.
"What is it, Adalyn? What's wrong?" he asked her, confused.
She looked at him with a grim stare. One sole word fell out of her mouth.
"Vyrewatch."
As soon as she said it, she stood up and gathered up her clothes, hurriedly pulling them on.
"Come on, Kyran!" she said impatiently. "Get dressed- there's fighting to be done, and unless I'm seriously mistaken, David had said you were more combat proficient than us!"
"Uh…yeah." He quickly toweled off and pulled his pants and shirt on before picking up his Zamorakian spear.
"That'll be worse than useless against the vyrewatch," Adalyn said. " You'll need to go to the armoury to get an Ivandis flail!"
Kyran threw up his hands. "From the sound of it, there's no time for that! If I can't fight these vyrewatch with my spear, I'll roast 'em with magic."
Adalyn hesitated for a second, then made a frustrated clawing motion with her hands. "You know what? Fine. Go ahead and try it. Follow the sound of the bell and get right into the fray." She dashed off, presumably to get a weapon.
Kyran took a deep breath and centered himself, then ran off following the ringing, which came from the east of the city. He darted past shacks and decrepit restaurants as the sound got ever louder. He jumped when he saw a black shadow glide through the air in front of him before coming to a halt.
"Holy Guthix…" he mumbled. What kind of abominations were these? The creature suspended in the air before him looked almost-almost- human, but emaciated to the point of grotesqueness, with sunken eyes that glowed red, and what looked like bat ears growing from the top of its head. The worst part, though, were the black, leathery wings that sprouted from the creature's back.
Suddenly, the creature spoke, in a raspy voice that sounded like glass being crushed.
"Where isssss it?" it hissed at Kyran. "The Masssssster needsss it."
What? Where was what? He had no clue what the creature- presumably the vyrewatch that Adalyn was talking about- meant, and he told it as much.
"You are a poor liar…" it rasped at him. "Tell me where it isss…or die!"
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Kyran protested angrily.
The vyrewatch growled in a low, rumbling tone, and dove at him, narrowly missing as Kyran jumped sideways. This…He was trained for this. He focused his mind on the vyrewatch, feeling a familiar heat in his veins. During his apprenticeship with Kuradal, he had injected himself with a combination of liquid rune essence and dragon blood. While the process had not been fun- he had thrashed about in violent seizures for over a day as his body tried to cope with the powerful concoction- it had left him with a nearly infinite supply of fire magic, without ever needing runes. He was his own source of magical power.
"You wanna dance?" he said, grinning. "Let's do it."
He sent a flaming ball of superheated air spiraling toward the vyrewatch, which should have instantly vaporized it-
-if it hadn't abruptly swerved to the left on its path toward him. Kyran maneuvered his left hand and brought the fiery sphere back around to impact the beast from behind, but it dodged again. It screeched as it fell from the heavens onto Kyran, locking the two into a grapple. He felt his hands grow hotter, his fingertips glowing red with spurts of flame. He was about to grab the vyrewatch's face when it seemed to lunge almost supernaturally fast, sinking its teeth into his unprotected forearm. Kyran let out a stifled gasp, then gritted his teeth; he had borne far worse pain than this during his time in the military. With his other arm, he put the vyrewatch into an iron-hard headlock; the creature took its teeth out of his flesh, trailing sticky blood, as it began to thrash and struggle.
"You're…urgh…you're stronger than you look, you know that?" he said through pained breaths as his opponent gradually slipped out of his grasp.
"I am as ssstrong…as the Massster requiresss, impudent human!" With one last burst of activity, the vyrewatch broke free and took to the sky once more, looping around like a lion circling its prey. Quickly, Kyran flicked both his wrists, and fireballs the size of grapefruits appeared in his palms. He hurled them like baseballs, one after the other at the creature.
"Sssurely you are not that foolish, human," his opponent said. "You mussst know that you cannot harm me with your pitiful magicksss!" It flitted around the two fireballs without batting an eyelash. Kyran said nothing, crossing his arms in front of his body, and the fireballs came back around , twisting and flattening into flaming red columns burning a scorched path in the earth.
"Idiot!" the vyrewatch turned its head toward the moving pillars as they moved in their twisting patterns, then darted between them, and faced away from Kyran. "You are truly a fine ssspecimen of human ssstupidity!" It turned back to face Kyran-
-and found itself crashing to ground under the crushing weight of his flying body blow. On the dirt, Kyran pinned the vyrewatch's arms under his knees and put the small red dragonmetal dagger that he always had hidden in his back pocket to its throat.
"But…how did you…you're jussst an idiot human! You couldn't posssibly have…" The vyrewatch was silenced by the ferocious glint in Kyran's eyes.
"Listen to me," he said coldly. "If you're smart…if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans on seeing tomorrow, there's one thing you never, ever take your eyes off of."
The vyrewatch squirmed. "What'sss that?"
His eyes flashed. "A slayer."
His dagger slashed across its throat.
Panting heavily, he stood up from his opponent's corpse, re-sheathing his dagger after wiping the blood off it.
"Whew," he breathed. "I can't imagine fighting off more than one of those at a time. Maybe I should go check out the armoury after all."
Just then, in the dim light, he saw Adalyn facing down a vyrewatch. She was fending him off quite capably with her silvthril flail, getting some sizeable slashes around the vampyre's neck and torso. It looked like she had the upper hand until she suddenly doubled over, coughing what looked like blood across her black tunic, and stumbled back as the vyrewatch viciously attacked. For a second, Kyran froze. If he didn't do something, she was going to die. Just like-
No, He couldn't think about that now. He could protect what was in front of him, and that was Adalyn at the moment. He charged at the ghoul, shouting an ancient battle curse Kuradal had inadvertently taught him. It looked up in surprise at him just in time to be slammed to the ground, crushed under his muscle. Kyran's dagger made quick work of the shocked demon, whereupon he turned to Adalyn, who was lying on the ground, her breath coming in short hitches and her eyes barely open.
"Adalyn!" he said quietly, putting an arm under her shoulder. "Are you all right?"
"Oh…yeah," she replied. "I cough up blood every day. I'm…perfectly fine…"
He gently picked her up and wiped the blood off her mouth with the collar of his shirt. "Perfectly fine. Sure you are, Ada…Addy. Where are the others?"
She seemed too weak to be indignant over being carried. "They're…They drove off most of the vyrewatch…or they're driving them off now. This was just…a scouting party…that happened to come upon the town…Drakan still…doesn't know…exactly where we are…"
He eventually found Veliaf, wrapping a white bandage around his upper arm, over a particularly nasty gash.
"Captain!" Kyran said. "Has the attack force been driven off?"
His eyes were cold and steely. "Driven off, no. Completely slaughtered, yes. Fortunately, none of them escaped to tell Drakan where we're located. For the moment, we're safe." He took a look at Adalyn. "I take it she had one of her…attacks?"
By now, Adalyn had passed out, and was breathing normally again. "Yeah," Kyran replied quietly. "What's wrong with her?"
Veliaf shook his head. "We don't know. All we know is that it's not life-threatening- unless it happens during a vyrewatch attack, that is. My recommendation is to get her into bed- she'll be fine tomorrow."
Kyran nodded, and before he could think to ask Veliaf where her room was, he was already talking to another soldier.
"I, uh…I hope you don't mind sleeping in my room," he said to the still-unconscious Adalyn.
He gently lay her on the unoccupied bed, silently pulling the thin blankets over her sleeping form. Kicking off his combat boots, he sat on his own bed for a moment, then fell back tiredly. Definitely a hell of a first day. The light outside was already gone, and his head was throbbing like crazy. Time for a good rest…and as soon as the thought passed his mind, he was out like a light.
Sometime during the night, he felt a weight on his chest, and slowly opened his eyes. In the dark, he could barely see, but Kyran knew who it was instinctively. She must have woken up somethime while he was asleep and thought it would be funny to get in bed with him. Six months ago-hell, even two days before- he would have been angry, but now, with Adalyn sleeping quietly next to him, he didn't know what to feel. He had thought that he could never love another woman like he had Astrid- and he didn't, not yet; he hadn't known her for nearly long enough- but Adalyn embodied perfectly what he had loved about Astrid. For the moment, though, he was content to let her sleep…and maybe put his arm around her, too.