The Omen, page 25
part #5 of Eden's Gate Series
Alexander reached up and rubbed his finger across the cut on his face, then turned to the fallen hump of Barbaros on the ground. “That son of a bitch!” He raised the sword high and was about to launch an attack on Trynzen, but Big Dutch raised his hand.
“Forget about it,” Dutch said. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Alexander huffed, but then he lowered his sword, and the pair started walking back towards the exit.
My head slumped down in defeat. I grabbed the trinket again to heal myself, feeling that my only hope was to just not die and to one day be freed.
“No…” I heard Trynzen grumble. I looked up and watched him pull himself off the ground and stumble to his feet. “Trynzen not hurt. No, not hurt. Trynzen is Trynzen!”
The two men turned their heads as Trynzen charged at them.
The Barbaros jumped and grabbed on to Big Dutch, knocking him back and to the ground. He slashed his claw at his face, and when Alexander swung the sword at him, he lifted his paw and someone caught the blade.
The blade cut deep into his paw but didn’t sever it entirely. Trynzen squeezed the blade hard, causing blood to seep out, then pulled, yanking Alexander off balance. Alexander stumbled face-forward, and the blade tumbled to the ground, but in that short instance, Big Dutch managed to land a hard left punch at Trynzen’s face.
Dutch grabbed the stunned Barbaros by the throat and used his strength to rise to his knees. He clenched Trynzen’s throat with both hands and squeezed, causing Trynzen to let out a strange, beady cry.
With all his might, Dutch stood to his feet and flung the Barbaros away so that he landed near my cell. Dutch looked down at Alexander and spat, “Get up, bum!”
“Damn, Dutch,” Alexander groaned. “You were right. Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
“Hurry the hell up!” Dutch ordered.
Alexander reached behind his back and grumbled. “Give me a sec. I think I pulled something.”
“Trynzen!” I hissed.
Trynzen lay in a heap right in front of me, and if it weren’t for the fact that his chest was moving and making an odd buzzing sound, I would’ve assumed he was dead.
“Trynzen,” I repeated. “Get up!”
“Trynzen is Trynzen…” he groaned.
You are bleeding and require medical attention. Bleeding is a damage-over-time effect.
I reached for the necklace around my neck again and used another On Cast to counter the bleeding. “Come on, you want this trinket, right?”
“Trinket?” Trynzen asked weakly.
“Yeah, your trinket from the Peace Temple.” I turned to see Alexander slowly pushing himself to his feet. “You’ll get your trinket, and we’ll get you out of here. Jenzyn wants to see you.”
“Jenzyn?” Trynzen opened his eyes and jerked his head slightly.
The thought of Jenzyn reminded me that she had given me Trynzen’s razor claw. I wasn’t sure if it would really help the situation, but now that we were both fighting for our lives, I figured it was worth a try.
I pulled the claw out of my bag and held it up. “This is yours.”
Trynzen blinked a few times and his eyes slowly grew wider. “Trynzen’s… Mine… Give Trynzen,” he said strangely. He pushed himself back to his knees and lunged for the prison doors. “It’s Trynzen’s!”
I jerked back but then I held the clawed glove out between the prison doors. Trynzen immediately grabbed and held it in his hands. Within a second, he held his right hand out and slid it on, then wiggled his fingers and admired the blades. “Trynzen’s….” Whatever pain he was in before, he was now somehow completely ignoring it.
“Trynzen!” I hissed again.
He turned to me.
“You want this trinket or not?” I tilted my head to the pair of men. Alexander was brushing himself off. “Get the prison key.”
“One and then two.” Trynzen said.
“What?” I shook my head. “Yes!”
“One and then two!” He pointed towards to trinket.
“What? You want the trinket now?”
Trynzen nodded.
Feeling desperation taking over me, I nodded and said, “Fuck it.” I pulled the necklace off and held it out to Trynzen. “One and then two. You got the necklace, now get me the damn key!”
Trynzen snatched the necklace out of my hands and placed it around his neck. He immediately activated it and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as the magic poured into him.
“Trynzen go, man! Go!”
The Barbaros lunged his head forward as if he were about to burp after a night out drinking. He turned around, rose high on both of his feet, and for the first time he almost looked something like a normal Barbaros. He scratched his unarmed claw against his chest and let out a loud, lion roar.
Both men looked startled as they turned to the sound.
Trynzen scurried across the room and leapt in the air, driving the long razored claw into the chest of Dutch.
Dutch cried out as he fell onto his back, and Trynzen raised his claw again and again, stabbing it into his chest and neck.
Alexander reached for the sword and swung it at Trynzen, but Trynzen saw the attack coming and raised his claw to intercept it. The steel of the sword chinked against the metal of his claw, and Trynzen raised his unarmed paw and sliced heavily across Alexander’s arm.
The Barbaros jumped from Dutch and slammed his claw into Alexander, then repeated the same motions he had on Dutch, driving his bladed paw into the Sparrow again and again, throwing blood everywhere.
Whatever I thought about Trynzen changed at that moment. He was decrepit and a little mad, but he was a dangerous fighter. I made a mental note to remember Big Dutch’s words and never again judge a book by its cover.
Trynzen reached for his trinket again and activated it. He paused and leaned back on top of the dead bodies as he absorbed the magic.
“Trynzen,” I hissed. “The key! One and then two!”
He relaxed his shoulders and started fumbling in the big man’s pockets.
“No! The other one probably has it!”
After a several seconds of more fumbling, he eventually managed to pull the key out of Alexander’s dead body.
“Yes!” I yelled. “That’s it!”
“One and then two…” Trynzen said. He pulled himself away from the dead men, and walked back over to my cell. As soon as he held the key out to me, I grabbed it, unlocked the door, and stepped out.
Trynzen’s dirty white mane was covered in blood, and he looked confused about what was going on. He turned back to his cell then looked to me. Then, he looked back down to the bloodied claw that was on his hand. After several seconds he turned and started hobbling back towards his bed.
“No,” I said. “We’re going to escape.”
“No escape!” Trynzen said. “No one escapes!”
“Stop that!” I yelled. “We’re getting the fuck out of here now!”
“Haha,” a voice laughed from behind me. I turned to see the Faithsworn grinning at me. “You think you can do this and just walk out of here?”
“What do you mean?” I asked awkwardly.
“Two dead bodies and a prison break?” He moseyed up to the cell door and placed his face against the bars. “Even if you get out of here, I’m telling the whole world who did this. You’re fucked… Reborn.”
“I didn’t kill…” I paused, realizing that my reasoning was not on point. There was no reasoning to be had with the Faithsworn. The problem he had with me wasn’t the fact that there were two dead people. It was simply because I was a Reborn. Basically, he was going to rat on me, no matter what.
I inspected the Faithsworn.
Name: Faithsworn Initiate
Race: human
Level: 26
Health/Mana/Stamina: 2200/150/180
Status: aggressive
I shook my head. “You know what?”
“What?” The Faithsworn raised an eyebrow.
I strode over to the dead bodies, lifted my sword off the ground, then returned to the Faithsworn’s cell. I lifted the prison key in my hand and stuck it in the door to his cell. “Fuck you too.”
The Faithsworn took a step back, and his eyes went wide. “What are you doing?”
I didn’t feel like a murderer. I mean, I had purposely killed other humans—Sparrows, bandits, and baddies who stood directly in my way of achieving a greater good. But there was a time in the Sands where I had taken things a little bit further. I had slain innocents, cut out their hearts even, but only because I had no other choice.
That dark time had passed, but in a way, I was glad that I had the experience. It had hardened me to death and dismemberment. When I worked under Dryden Bloodletter, I realized that sometimes you had to cross a line in order to achieve your goals.
Dryden Bloodletter painted his lawn with the blood of those who disobeyed him. And while I promised myself I would never be like him, I wasn’t about to let a Faithsworn—a member of a cult who had caused hell for me in the Arena—live to snitch on me.
“I’ve got no weapon,” the Faithsworn said as I slowly pulled open his door.
“I don’t care…” I said coldly. I stepped into his cell and flicked my sword down with my hand.
“No, don’t kill me!”
I reached my hand out and cast a Fireblast, aiming directly for the Faithsworn’s eyes. He screamed, and grabbed his face with both hands, squirming in blindness. As he held his face and stumbled around, I swung my sword up, slashing him across the chest, then rotated the sword and swung diagonally in the other direction.
He staggered back, removing his hands, and I could see the melting mess that had become his face.
I took a step forward and aimed for a decapitating blow, but with his staggering, I only managed to catch the front half of his neck. Blood spewed from his throat, and he made a gagging noise as he reached up, placing one hand on his eyes and another on his throat. He fell forward into a heap, and a pool of blood started forming under his body.
You have gained 1800 XP!
Advancement! You have reached level 23 and gained 3 ability points. To assign your ability points, open your status page. You can also increase any of your known skills by 1 level. Choose wisely, as your choices cannot be undone.
You have gained 10 HP!
When my health shot up to 100%, I reached behind my back to touch my wound, and realized that at some point my bleeding had stopped. The health potion and regeneration effect of the claw had been enough to keep me alive, and maybe I was getting a little stronger to be able to withstand the pain I had.
I didn’t bother to check the dead Faithsworn or the two other men that we killed. I was pretty confident that neither of them would have anything useful on them after being locked in prison.
“Terrible… blood. Terrible…” Trynzen said.
I turned around and saw Trynzen trembling in fear. “Sorry you had to see that.”
“Why human kill human?” he asked.
I glanced back to the man. “This was a bad man. He was very, very bad.” I swallowed, trying to find the most convincing words to give to the Barbaros. “He would’ve killed you if he could,” I lied.
“Kill Trynzen?!”
“Yes.” I nodded. “And we need to get out of here before more bad men come.” I noticed out of the corner of my eye another old prisoner watching what was going on from his cell. He looked terrified and famished as if he hadn’t eaten in weeks. But… he wasn’t a Faithsworn. I pointed my sword towards him. “Anyone else want to squeal or cause trouble?”
The old man shook his head and took a step back. “I won’t say a word.”
Moving my attention back to Trynzen, I asked, “Are you ready to get out of here?”
“Out?”
“Escape,” I said. “Go home.”
“Home?” He looked down to the trinket on his neck and grabbed it. “Trynzen want to go home. How go home?”
I cautiously reached my hand out and grabbed Trynzen’s shoulder. “Follow me.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
2/5/0001
Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong while I was trying to get Trynzen out of his cell, so I was feeling extra nervous as we crossed over the dead bodies and approached the prison’s main doors. I had been in the jail long enough that I was certain that the guard had returned, but what if another guard had joined him since then and had another key? What if he simply didn’t respond to me trying to get him to open the door?
Noise was common in the prison. It was normal to hear people bang on the cell bars, scream, or freak out. Living in a cage will make anyone feel crazy. So, there was no reason why the guard would be alarmed by any noise up until then. But if the guard heard sound coming directly off the main door, he would know something criminal was going on.
I held my palm out and cast a Fireblast on the door. When it struck, it made a booming noise.
“What the hell?” I heard the guard say from outside.
As soon as I felt I could cast the spell again, I fired it off again.
“Shit!” the guard yelled. “Someone’s escaped!” There was a rattling noise and the shuffle of feet, and then the guard huffed loudly. “Where’s my key? My key! Shit!”
I stepped closer to the door, trying to get make sure I could hear as much as possible.
“My key! My key’s gone missing!” he yelled. I heard the quick, hard footsteps running off in the distance.
I counted off in my head, trying to give the guard just enough time to get out of range, but not far enough to reach the front of the King’s castle. 1… 2… 3…
I used the prison key to unlock the prison door and pulled it open. For a moment, I considered dropping the key on the ground so that the guard could find it, but then I thought better. What would I do if I were in an MMO back home? As Sung would say. I’d keep the damn key!
I didn’t even bother locking the door.
“Come on!” I grunted to Trynzen, but at that moment, I got a good look at the leper Barbaros under the last bit of sunlight in the sky. What the hell would people think seeing this strange, bloody, dirty humanoid running through the streets of Highcastle? I yanked my shroud off and handed it to him. “Put this on.”
Trynzen stared at the shroud I handed him for a moment.
“Put on!” I said then purposely dumbed down my language. “One and then now!”
Trynzen rattled his head then threw the shroud over his body.
Once he had the shroud on, I grabbed the hood and tossed it over his head. “Just follow until we’re out of here. If you wanna go home, don’t do anything crazy.”
“Follow…” Trynzen repeated.
“And fast!” I said before turning and bursting into a quick, hard walk.
To my relief, Trynzen ran after me without giving me any more pushback, and though he hunched, he wasn’t walking on all fours.
We powerwalked past the path that lead to the King’s castle, and just as we passed, I could hear the boots of soldiers running towards the prison. Once past the Arena, and into the market, I thought we would go unnoticed.
“Hey you,” a low snaky voice said. I turned to see Windell, the illicit goods dealer who had once sold me kroka, grinning at me from behind a tree. “I’ve got more for you.”
I felt a small tingle in my loins telling me to stop and have a chat, but with nervous blood pumping through my veins, my urge to get the hell out of Highcastle was a much greater pull. We walked by ignoring the man.
We cleared the gate that led to the central part of Highcastle without any issues, and I was beginning to feel like we were going to make it out of the city without incident.
When we reached the bottom of the slope, someone glanced at me and yelled. “Hey! Hell, you’re that Reborn from the Arena!”
Several people nearby heard him and glanced towards me, and a couple of them ran or jumped into the nearest building. Others just stood and stared.
“He’s the Reborn!?” someone asked loudly.
One person, in particular, seemed star struck. His eyes lit up and literally glued to me. “It’s the Reborn! The same one I saw! I knew I wasn’t imagining things!”
“Fuck,” I cursed. I turned to Trynzen, grabbed his shoulder, and squeezed. “Run!”
Trynzen bolted back toward the slope that led to Inner Highcastle.
“No! Run with me!”
He turned, and immediately ran back.
I shook my head before bursting into my fastest sprint through Outer Highcastle. At that rate, it only took a good twenty seconds or so for us to find the city’s perimeter, but there had to have been at least ten other people that noticed me and hollered something or another about Reborns as we passed.
We crossed out of the city’s edge near an unguarded area where we had entered, and after another 20 meters or so of running, I saw Jeremy standing behind a tree petting Rarri. Sung was right beside him.
“Go!” I yelled.
“Damn dude,” Jeremy cursed. “What the hell took you so long?” He scanned me up and down. “And why aren’t you wearing your shroud?”
I jumped forward and landed on one knee, slamming my hand into the ground. “Sora!” As I rose back to my feet, I turned and pointed to Trynzen who was timidly waddling behind me. “I didn’t want anyone to see him.”
“Yeah, makes sense…” Jeremy said.
Sung bobbed his head as if he were trying to get a good look at the Barbaros under the shroud.
Sora came running from the distance, and I could hear a bit of commotion behind me. There were several mentions of the word, ‘Reborn’, and footsteps of people coming towards us.
