Nobody's Memories
Chapter 6 - Step one; Kill Two, ?. Step Three; Profit.
I hadn't been attacked since I left the village.
This was concerning.
Not that it wasn't a good thing, of course; but over the past two hours I had spent out in the wilderness, scouting out the surrounding area and testing several 'things' out, I had yet to be attacked by a single monster. Oh, it didn't mean that I hadn't encountered them, or that they hadn't been hostile - simply that they weren't coming at me in massive swarms dedicated purely to attempting to ambush and kill me. It was as worrying as it was refreshing - no Golems suddenly springing up to make a makeshift cage around me I had to break through, no Chort making a particularly rocky area suddenly trigger into an avalanche... just random wolf packs that learned to run from me after I killed a group of them without them even seeing me move, a drowner near a pond, and the occasional ghoul near the paths.
There were also, of course, plenty of torn-up landscapes covered in soldiers corpses or hanged 'deserters' and women near said ghouls, but little details like that wouldn't help much. The nearest I could figure - judging by the Temarian lilies and Novigrad suns - was that I was somewhere near White Orchard. Beyond that, though, no dice. No particular landmarks called out to me, no villages that I had come across existed in game, and I had found no one willing to help me, quite understandably. Even after I had cleaned my robes of monster gunk in a river, I didn't exactly make for much of an approachable figure.
Aside from the lack of Monsters I was mildly convinced were building up an army to try and utterly annihilate me, the grim-dark torture porn that was the continent's landscape at the moment, and the equally concerning lack of recognizable landmarks, what other concerning news had I found? Well, let me think... oh, maybe the fracturing dimensional barriers? The holes in the world I had sensed had, naturally, drawn my curiosity once I hadn't been wading through piles of monsters. At first, I had simply been curious about what they were doing there and why I could sense distant hearts, as imbalanced yet not quite overcome by darkness as this world's people were. I, of course, had my suspicions at the time, considering that I was in the Witcher.
Then I watched the invisible cracks chip away at the edges and expand.
Within the context of Kingdom Hearts, a normally "Oh Shit!" situation irregardless of circumstance, yet perhaps not quite so large an "Oh shit!" and more an "Oh fuck!" situation considering the context. Sometime over a thousand years ago, this world had been your average medieval-age earth-like world; then, the Conjunction of Spheres happened. This world, via non-specified means, had meshed with another, the two worlds meeting in a violent manner; and in the aftermath of that, Magic had been let into this world, as had literally everything that didn't also exist in our world. Reading character profiles had revealed that the Wild Hunt was from the world magic originated from, and freely traveled to and from this one for shits and giggles; maybe? Probably.
My Meta-Knowledge supported this fact with memories accidentally watching a video of high-tier monsters appearing from nowhere attacking Geralt as relentlessly as they had me, with fireballs raining from the sky. Unfortunately, that wasn't the most reliable source for my assumptions.
A lack of information here literally might kill me. What a pleasant thought.
So, aside from the Wild Hunt probably being the quite literal and accidental heralds of a Second Conjunction, anything else I would like to add to make the situation on this world even worse?
Not particularly so, no. I mean, I still had a dozen dedicated cats following me and sleeping on sunny spots whenever I stopped moving, so that was one positive.
But even in my wandering, idle musing,c at-wrangling, and constant recording of everything I had encountered, I hadn't been doing nothing but despair at how shit this world was. No, as mentioned earlier, I had been recording everything I came across of note… and also sketching out a map of the area, using a large stone with a subtle hum, one which had labeled it as a Place of Power. I had stumbled upon it hidden within a large tree's trunk by sheer dumb luck, and decided to use it as the center of my map. In the hours since leaving the village, I had made a mostly complete map of the surrounding area, marking down locations of interest in a similar manner.
Now, as the sun began to set, everything within a large radius of the Place of Power explored… it was time for Plan B to start.
-0-0-0-
" 'Ta a bounty well-earned!" Toasted the four bandits, sitting together around a campfire, drinking deep from their booze. Having just successfully killed off a wandering trader and his escorts, one ripe with wares to sell after visiting some large city, they were feeling particularly brave, bold, and accomplished.
Especially when one considered that on at the bottom of his cart were high-quality weapons, leagues above the rusted long swords and axes they had been using before now, barely fit to be used against one of the Black One's armor, even as a joke.
"Cheers, mates! I'm turnin' in for the night." One of the bandits declared, drinking deep from his booze and carelessly tossing the bottle aside.
"Bah, you were always a lightweight when it came to holdin' yer drink, Steve!" Called out a guffawing bandit, who drank deep from his eight bottle that day... and promptly fell off the log he sat upon, as fast asleep as the log he had sat upon was dead.
" And Dale, you never know when to stop! Eh Barry?" One of few remaining awake bandits claimed, chortling all the while. The Bandit, standing and stretching, only responded with loud, bellowing guffaws.
"I'm turnin' in for the night as well, Larry." He yawned, hazing towards the moon located high in the night sky, already beginning to descend for the night. Larry simply nodded, not bothering to tease him ,already enthralled by his own drink.
Stumbling off towards one of several tents, Barry collapsed into his canvas, glad to sleep with a full stomach, warmed by the light of the campfire...
And then the fire went out.
"Light the fire , Larry!" He both mumbled and groaned, stirring in his sleep.
There was no chinking of a flint and steel, no clink of a glass. Not one movement.
"I said bloody relight the fire, Larry!" Barry angrily called out from his tent, making an effort to wake up and sit up as something small and furry ran itself across his face, glancing towards where the fire was.
At Larry's body, cut in half and resting in the flames, blood putting out the flames.
Barry made a move to scream, to alert Steven or Dale - no, that was only the upper half of Larry's body ,wasn't it? The other half was Dale's.
Barry moved to arm himself, to awaken Steven who still slept silently without making a single movement-
Where was Steven's head?
"Let's see if this one lasts any longer than the last few swords I tried out, eh?"
Barry tried to move, to scream, to defend himself even as his pants grew soggy and he felt the blood drain itself from his face...
Yet he could only turn, turn to face the specter dressed in white and silver, who's face he could not see. A truly terrible, ghastly sight, his darkened outline illuminated against the dying moonlight and fire- one to fear for the rest of his life. It stood barely a single step behind him, not a sound to be made even as the leaves rustled in the wind and his robes billowed, a blood-soaked sword held outstretched on his Right, an shattered and gore-covered axe in his Left. A few splatters of blood, lightly illuminated, could be seen in contrast to his robes, crimson drops perfectly rounded. Glowing Irises. reflected in the dying moonlight, revealed a dozen silent cats sitting and stalking around the spectre.
Barry trembled, prepared to barter for his life-
*Ching!*
-0-0-0-
Dropping the broken axe, I sighed. More test data was good and all, but every broken weapon was a smaller net worth of the goods I was bringing in by slaughtering bandits. Certainly, I had plenty of weapons of varying quality from 'shit' to 'decent', stored away in various bags and boxes now alongside various other goodies I had 'liberated' from various bandit camps, with only the sword I held now of potentially high enough quality to survive more than a hit or two from me before being utterly annihilated; testing its now brittle edge, dampened and cracking, it looked like I would have to keep searching.
"And I remembered finding such high-quality items in random bandit's camps in my constant search for more crowns..." I murmur, looking back at every other bag, box, and cart the Bandits had owned, tossing anything of worth into a small pile where there had been a large enough space. Content that everything had been found, I opened up a Gateway beneath my loot, watching it vanish from this world to safely reappear at a secluded spot I had found earlier.
"Camp 38 cleared; 22 more to go..." I mutter, walking off.
"Definitely don't remember there being this many of them in the Game either..."