Chapter 4:
The First of Many Terrors
Izuku's first two months in Sanctuary went by faster than any previous two in his life. This was mostly because he barely had even aa single moment of downtime during it all outside of sleeping, bathing and meals.
His first week was spent under the specific tutelage of Captain Kashya, an intense red-haired woman. She insisted than any child who passes through the sisterhoods care must know how to use a knife and a bow. Izuku's insistence that he was, in fact, not a girl did nothing to deter her. And so she drilled him on basic archery. From dawn till dusk if he wasn't practicing his aim on straw targets he was cleaning and repairing the bows of every rogue in the encampment or drilling strikes with the knife Isendra had gifted him.
"You will make yourself useful or you shall not eat." She had said sternly and repeatedly. "I don't expect you to be physically capable of defending yourself anytime soon, but by Philios you will be mentally able to do so. Until then you will find uses for yourself outside of combat."
Izuku both wanted to make himself useful and wanted to eat, so he rather pleased with this turn of events. But he got the distinct impression that Kashya was deeply depressed and anxious. Life in the encampment wasn't keeping her as busy as her usual duties would. The boredom and anticipation of being cooped up in the Rogue Encampment instead of their recently invaded Keep must have been killing her, why else would she both training a boy like him in basic archery and knife fighting?
When somebody finally told him the story of how the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye lost their home he realized depressed and anxious were not sufficient words to describe how she must be feeling and warmed up even more to her strict and arguably harsh treatment of him. He realized she was trying to do to herself what they all were successfully doing to him, keeping too busy to think or feel. And boy did they keep him busy.
Kashya had pawned him off onto the Caravan leader, Warriv, who tried to teach him the subtle art of wagon repair and wheel making. After his twenty fifth catastrophic, and possibly expensive, failure in that he pawned Izuku of onto the blacksmith Charsi.
She was one muscular but had an absolutely adorable voice that juxtaposed her scarred and soot-covered appearance at all. She worked him hard, at his insistence, but was sweet about it. And from that day on every bone in his body hurt from the labor, which made him happy.
From then on splitting wood for arrows and cutting feathers for fletching made up most of his mornings, while making charcoal in a closed burner and cleaning out the forge and smithing equipment made up his evenings.
The weirdest part of living in the rogue encampment was the communal baths in the river. Everyone bathed every day on a cycle. Night watch folk bathed in the mornings while everyone else kept guard, day workers bathed in the evening while the night watch guarded them. Nobody seemed nonplussed by this and not even the normally lecherous, or at least perverted-humor blessed, Gheed acted inappropriately during said baths. Possibly because the water was so cold, possibly because they were all kept so exhausted from their long days of work, or possibly because washing time was considered sacred even to him.
Izuku earned a reputation as an unusually shy boy due to his tendency to bath a bit further down the river from anybody else while avoiding the conversation and neither wanting to be looked at nor wanting to see the many nude women around him. For some reason they thought he was odd for this and after a while the priestess Akara invited him into her tent.
"Was anything done to you prior to you arriving at this caravan I should know about?" Akara asked him pointedly.
"Um... What?" Izuku asked, not understanding her meaning.
She stared at him in consideration, before taking a deep breath to speak again.
"The sisterhood targets a certain type of young woman for recruiting. Those whom, as girls as young as you or younger, were forced into doing things that only grown women should do and in a loving marriage. Worse are those who were harmed by other women, whose twistedness is far worse than the men who prey upon young girls and make use of sharp implements or worse to harm children." Akara explained. "Has anything like that happened to you?"
Izuku stared at her with the blankest expression he could manage.
"Ma'am, if you're asking me if I was ever sold into prostitution or raped, the answer is no." He told her flatly. "Nor have I ever been sodomized with a knife."
The shock on her face from an eleven-year-old even knowing several of those words, let alone using them, would have been hilarious if the situation wasn't so serious.
"And I'm confused as to why you might think I had been?" Izuku prompted.
Akara shook herself calm before answering.
"Your behavior while bathing inspired many of the inhabitants of the camp to come to me with this concern. They recognized your distaste for the nakedness of others and uncomfortableness with your own body as behavior they themselves showed for a long time. One of my duties as a spiritual leader is to talk members of our order through these traumas and heal from them. As such, I am the one such concerns are always brought to." Akara explained.
"Oh. Well, everyone where I come from is cagey about nudity. The only people who should see you like that are your spouse and maybe children or siblings, but only while they're very young." Izuku explained. "Communal bathing hasn't been acceptable in a long while. At least not with both sexes."
Akara had accepted this and dismissed him, letting him go with a polite request not to share any of his revelations about the Sisterhood and its' members with anybody else, which was a promise Izuku was more than willing to make.
About a month into his stay there his body had a adapted to the work and he no longer went to sleep nor woke up aching. This turned out to be a disaster for him, as it meant his mind was now allowed to wander and he once against started feeling that burning sensation he had on that first night in the meadow. He hadn't felt it the following night when he had walked an entire day through the Blood Moors with Akara, his feet, legs and back were all too sore. But now that he wasn't distracted from it by the aches and pains of labor? It was back with a vengeance.
From that day forward he pleaded almost weekly for additional tasks to do around camp. He went from splitting wood for arrow shafts to chopping wood with an ax. The soreness to new muscle groups from doing that kept his mind off of the burning under his skin and thoughts of home. Carrying larger and larger loads across camp helped when that stopped.
All the while during his stay he kept up with a morning routine of archery and knife drills, which earned him a few appreciative nods or looks from the rogues, including from captain Kashya. He didn't know why; it was just another chore like any other. It was honestly one of the easiest and most automatic of them, aside from bathing and eating.
It was near the end of his second month there that his peaceful life came to an end.
Izuku had been eating lunch at the time. It was some kind of mystery meat that he suspected belonged to one of the felled guerrilla creatures as it didn't taste like what he expected lizard-porcupine meat to taste like. Whatever it was, it was tough and gamey, but good.
"Let them in! Quickly!" He heard Kashya yell to the guards at the gate, who quickly opened it.
Everyone around him stopped what they were doing and moved towards the noise to see what was happening. Izuku finished off the last of his lunch before doing the same. He knew this could either being something great, like a good catch from the latest hunt, or something really bad. It turned out to be something really bad.
A quartet of scouts, bloodied and bruised with three dead being dragged behind them, were rushed to Akara's outdoor facilities for treatment. They talked the whole while.
"What happened?" Kashya demanded as she tried to bat away the small crowd forming around the injured.
"A cave." The head scout of her group said. "Filled with undead abominations and fallen, more than I've ever seen since the Keep fell. Worst of all, its only a few kilometers to the east, barely beyond the line of sight from atop the gate. I don't know how we missed it before!"
And so began the chatter.
"Is that where all the zombies and fallen are coming from?" Said one person.
"That or they may be amazing there for an attack on our encampment." Said another.
But Izuku paid no mind to the rank speculation. His focus was on Isendra, who was standing off just outside of the small crowd deep in thought, with an expression he recognized. An expression he had seen on heroes faces before jumping into action. The face of a hero planning their course of action. And now he was sure he had the same look on his face.
Izuku snuck out of the Rogue encampment through a gap in the fencing barely big enough for him just after dark that night. He hid beside a tree just to the east and waited. He didn't have to wait long, as the moon was barely risen when he heard the familiar footsteps go past him.
"Take me with you." Izuku demanded as soon as she walked past.
Her startled scream of shock and following tumble to the ground almost made him burst out in laughter himself. He hoped they were far enough away from the encampment not to make every nightwatchwoman knock an arrow and turn their bows in their direction.
"If I could cast magic as quickly as the sisters can fire an arrow you would be dead, young Midoriya." Isendra said as she picked herself up with a hand on her chest.
Slower to cast than it is to shoot an arrow. File that away for later.
"Now, why do you wish to go to the Den of Evil with me?" Izendra asked.
Den of Evil? Kind of a tacky name, but if that's what the encampment had decided on then so be it.
"Every hero needs a sidekick, and if I am to be a hero someday I need to follow in the footsteps of another. You're the one I got." Izuku explained. "And I owe you all the help I can give, after all you've done for me. Ditto for the encampment."
"And how do you suppose you will be able to help me in a cave full of demons and undead?" Isendra asked.
"Pack mule." Izuku said simply.
"Pack mule?" Isendra asked.
"Pack mule." Izuku confirmed. "Give me your pack, you focus on fighting without being weighed down by the bulky thing. Let me worry about collecting any treasures we find as I watch your back."
Isendra removed her large pack and handed to him, surprising Izuku with how light and nearly empty it was.
"Very well. Hurry along, I wish to be done by morning." Isendra told him.
"Really, that's it?" Izuku asked, suspicious.
"You will need to become strong and hardened, and you will need to do so quickly. Your months working for the encampment and blacksmith in particular has already given you most of the physical benefits they ever will, or at least until you begin growing into manhood, and now you must at least witness battle." Isendra said. "But I have conditions.
"Name them!" Izuku said excitedly, unable to stop his giddy shaking and All-Mightish grin.
She listed off her demands one by one, raising a finger with each.
"One: You stay behind me, fist clenching my belt. Checking corners and warning me of oncoming danger from my back." She instructed.
Izuku nodded.
"Two: You do what I say, when I say, no matter how terrible the order. If I instruct you to leave me behind and flee the cave, you do so. If I tell you to kill me and then yourself, you do so. You do not question me. You do not disobey. Are we clear?" she asked.
That one was tougher for him. A couple months ago he could scarcely imagine such scenarios, but now he could and he didn't like it, but he nodded all the same.
"Third: You collect anything useful you see. Scavenge the dead as I slay them. Weapons, armor, jewelry, everything. Can you do that? Or do your sensibilities still prevent you." She asked.
Izuku shrugged. Again, looting the corpses of the killed would have given him pause, but these really weren't people. Whatever they would find there needed to be killed, and the people in the encampment needed supplies. Izuku and Isendra needed supplies too.
"I accept your terms and conditions." Izuku told her cheekily, knowing she wouldn't understand the reference.
She nodded at him once and turned to continue her trek east. Izuku followed her.
"By the way, how did you sneak out?" Izuku asked.
"I didn't. I walked out through the front gate. That was always allowed."
The moon was high in the sky by the time they reached the cave entrance. Izuku could see how the scouts managed to miss it. It was a tiny rock outcropping huddled in a large expanse of white boulders and felled trees. If he hadn't been looking for it, he might have missed it himself.
Painted with crude depictions of a demon skull and a green, horned beasts spitting a great ball of lightning at would-be heroes.
He spotted a corpse just outside of the cave, near the mouth, as if of a man killed as he tried to flee from the horrors within. Izuku looked up at Isendra questioningly. She nodded at the skeletal remains and Izuku bore down on it with thieving hands. He found not so much as a crumb among the tattered clothes and rusted through chain mail. All he'd achieved in the exercise was proving to Isendra that he was capable and willing to pat down the dead for belongings.
"Come, quietly. Remember my terms." Isendra whispered as she creeped past him into the cave.
Izuku reached out to grasp her by the belt as she had instructed earlier and together, they entered the hole in the earth.
The cave was all teeth. Stalactites and stalagmites as far as the eye could see, which wasn't far in this darkness, even with the glow of Isendra's staff and the magic gems in the jewelry she wore. Isendra walked tentatively forward, hunched over in respect to the low ceiling. They didn't have to get far before encountering the first of many creatures calling the cave home, and if Izuku had thought the fallen capable of higher thought he would have deemed it intelligent to plant to of the gargantuan beasts to guard the entrance.
As he had seen her do months before, she clapped her hands together and sprayed the two gorilla-creatures with a whirlwind of ice, coating them in a thick layer of mist. They struggled against their new, cold armor and tried their hardest to advance towards Izuku and Isendra, but the latter kept her hands near each other the whole time and followed up her icy gale with two bolts of blame that shattered the two beasts like fine glass.
It was as the last of their frozen solid pieced fell to the stone floor he heard it. The cave came alive with the sound of scurrying feet and claws on stone, from every direction their panicked and enraged sounds echoed.
"We must move more quickly now." Isendra told him.
She advanced further without waiting for a reply and he followed closely. They ducked beneath a layer of low hanging stalactites and the cave opened into a massive chamber filled with fallen. At least several dozen of the red imps welcomed their arrival with snarls and gnashing of teeth. These ones were armed with clubs, short swords and bucklers.
His ranking of their intelligence just increased from monkey to neanderthal.
"Grasp me by the waist, make certain to make as much skin on skin contact with me as you can." Isendra instructed.
Izuku blushed at the phrasing but did as he was told. Wrapping both arms around her midriff and pressing his cheek against her bare back. he felt every hair on his body stand on end as a tingling sensation filled the air, and the room was filled with lightning. Small arcs washed over him harmlessly and onto the ground where they grew into wide rings nearly as large as he was. They passed along the ground and bared down on the fallen far less harmlessly than they had him.
He both heard and smelled them being fried alive like raw meat in the microwave. Both the popping sounds of the liquids in their body, and their screams. Neither disturbed him all that much. They didn't suffer long, sadly, and fell to the ground dead in a parade of thumps.
Izuku let go of the woman as soon as he felt it was safe to do so, uncomfortable with such intimate contact.
Before he could even survey the scene around them properly he saw a deep red light envelop one of the dead bodies only for it to rise again. Right, they had mentioned undead things here hadn't they?
"Shaman!" Isendra called out.
She ran forward looking for whatever this shaman was and Izuku ran after her. When they both spotted it Izuku found the name shaman very appropriate. It was another fallen with a Wooden staff decorated with bones. It certainly looked like a shaman to him. And apparently Izuku looked like a more important target than Isendra to it as it threw a fireball of its own at him.
"Get down!" Isendra commanded and Izuku obeyed.
He dived out of the way, keeping enough situational awareness to keep his eyes on Isendra and the shaman. She amazed him with her prowess yet again when she reached out, with her bare hand, and caught the firebolt. It exploded in her hand and consumed her entire arm just past her elbow. He could see the flesh beneath vaporizing from the heat leaving a black husk where her arm and hand had been before and cried out in empathetic pain.
She somehow ignored this pain entirely and returned fire, literally, with another firebolt of her own that did to the shaman what the shaman had done to her arm. She repeated this action with the recently resurrected but now slower and dumber, fallen and felt himself breath a sigh of relief when the battle ended.
Izuku stared at her in mounting horror as she took deep, calming breaths against the pain she must have been in.
"Open my pack, and pass me a red vial from the side pocket on your left." She ordered, eyes closed in concentration.
Izuku scrambled to fulfill her order, taking the pack off and rumamging through the two large side cavities of it. The first one he opened held blue vials, so those couldn't be it. Thankfully process of elimination elft him with one cavity to search and inside of there he found what he was looking for. He removed the cork and handed it to the woman.
"Thank you young one. Now, go pick the bodies clean." She instructed before pouring the red liquid on her ruined arm and hand.
She then drank the remaining contents of the bottle, and it's magic was plain for him to see. He saw the muscles, tendons and fat of her ruined limb rehydrate and return to the natural red and white it was supposed to. Skin knitted itself over the new flesh soon after that but it was a slow process.
"Young Midoriya?" Isendra prompted. "I believe I gave you an order?"
With that, she brought him back to reality and reminded him of his duties. He got to work.
This story was ghostwritten byNonsensicalRants as commissioned by MagikUser. You can hire NonsensicalRants to write your stories as well, all you have to do is provide him with a rough outline and contact him on his patron.
Prices:
$25 per 1000 words, with some wiggle room.
$25 per 500 words for smut/fetish material or for original fiction/nonfiction, meaning anything that is not fanfiction.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with him.