Orphan at the Edge of the World 10 OEW 9

Orison took a deep breath and continued, "Skip forward a bit more and I had to kill a man for the second time in my life or I would have lost my mother. I don't feel proud or happy about it. Every time I think about it I get scared to death because I was lucky. You might even call it blessed because if she had died I would be alone again."

"Every day I feel closer and closer to the edge of a cliff that someone's just going to decide to throw me off of because it's just easier that way. Why? Because I don't know how bad it's going to be where we're going but I know the chances of it being all good are so flush next to nothing you can't tell the difference... I just want to be a kid, you know? But if I did that, just be a kid, I likely won't get to live long enough to be an adult. I'd like to be one of those too someday.

"I distract my self, keep myself busy so I don't have to think about how I'm a twisted ball of fear and anxiety inside. I try to be brave for the woman who seems happy I call her Mamma Yaya so she can be strong for the boy whose happy she calls him, little cub and sweetling. I'm trying my hardest every day to make one more friend, grasp one more spell, get a little more skillful. I do it all for a small chance at happiness.

"Maybe I read too much into what the server lady said but as one person the world doesn't seem to want to be happy to another, maybe go see this lady's friend, when you're ready, because a small chance of happiness is better than nothing."

A small hand with light callouses reached out to give a reassuring squeeze to a larger scarred one. Orison felt the tension drain from the frame behind him as the slightly trembling large hand flipped over and squeezed his hand back.

The ensuing silence as they finished touring around the rest stop and returning to the others was only broken once long enough for the scout to say, "Since you have a hard time with my name, call me Gan. Some people I still miss used to call me that."

Orison tried hard to focus on the possible opportunities his thinly veiled emotional manipulation attempt for another ally could bring Gan. He tried even harder to stop his mind from supplying all of the possible tragedies that surrounded small chances for happiness but failed. As he silently endured Droya's awkward attempt to show support for his efforts to win over the honor band while giving an unneeded sex education/child and adult boundaries lecture, Orison looked for a way to pull out this additional growing thorn of guilt from his mind.

Winding down, Droya finished what she had to say. "So, I know you're a smart and hard-working boy who will pursue the meaningful things in life and not chase empty pleasures, yes? Good! And you know that true friendship and loyalty is bought with sincerity not sly gestures and flaunting your wealth, right?"

Orison stopped numbly nodding his head. Suddenly inspired, he looked out the front of the wagon where Gan was saddling Trygve's horse and said, "Sincerity! It's so f- It's so simple, I looked right over it... I'll be right back, mom."

Orison dashed out of the back of the wagon and ran over to Gan. Seeing the boy running over to him, the scout wearily and said, "You heard the marshal. Next part has rolling hills and I gotta be sharp. We aren't expecting trouble but if there was-"

Orison interrupted, "I know. I'm not here to make things hard on you or anything. I just forgot to tell you something and I want to say it while I can before I forget to or start second guessing myself...It probably won't mean much to you, coming from a kid like me but wherever I am, you got a friend there and a place to be if you need it. That's a plus one invitation, you know, for if you find so-"

Seeing the solder who called him from the inn room approaching, Orison cut off the rest of what he was going to say and handed Gan a bandage wrap that hid a vial inside. Orison saw the scout frown in confusion when Gan tried to put the bandage in a belt pouch where the one that was used earlier in the day for a demonstration had been. Satisfied that Gan knew something was inside, Orison turned around and faced the approaching soldier.

Orison hastily said, "Sorry about that. I'm heading back to the wagon."

The band member smiled through his thick beard and said, "No worries. You got a good couple of hand and toe counts before Thorrinson's finished his business with the bushes... I'm surprised you haven't had your fill of this frosty mute yet." Turning to Gan, the man continued, "Got ten years on you, junior, and I don't need a boy to finish the job for me. Did your dagger get rusty because you never use it or so-"

Orison knew that the band member had misunderstood what had happened at the inn but he thought that he would be the target of the man's well meant but harsh heckling. He was even happy about it because it would provide more opportunities to ingratiate himself with the soldier. With Gan being a thin skinned person with secrets to hide, however, Orison had no doubt that things would turn ugly quick.

With a murmured prayer to all the social martyrs that came before him, Orison leered up at the solder with the cockiest Peter Pan pose he could make and said, " The nice lady you're talking about left my room with dark circles under her eyes and a blush. Yours looked awfully well rested this morning. A little oil can knock the rust off, but a dagger that can't hold an edge?... I think I picked up an herb or two that can help with that."

The soldier turned from Gan to Orison with an edged smile and said, "Boy, your berries are so green they haven't even fell in the basket and you're already trying to take credit for another man's hard work. See these scratches? You best save them herbs to put some grease in that little pencil nub of yours and..."

With Orison succeeding in bringing the full force of the soldier's cheerful fury onto himself, Gan finished adjusting the straps on the saddle and with a grateful nod at the boy, he took off. With the scout out of verbal harm's way, Orison loaded back up into the wagon while quipping and parrying for all he was worth. Journey once again underway and back in Droya's earshot, he started losing ground quick until Thorrinson and the other soldier joined in to muddy the waters.

With a game of words occupying idle time, the hours flew by. Under the disapproving gazes of Droya and the marshal, the game steered into less controversial waters and continued with Droya as the unsurprising leader. Trygve was giving a particularly scathing retort about Thorrinson's 'full moon' being a lodestone for stinging insects but better than a skunk at driving all else away when he was cut off by the sound of a signal arrow. The shrill whistle flipped the honor band's jovial mood into grim, murderous determination in an instant.

A few quickly barked orders later and the rest of the band, save Thorrinson who was driving the wagon, rushed off to support Gan against whatever threat the scout had encountered. The ensuing eerie silence in the wagon was occasionally broken by Droya or Thorrinson adjusting an armor strap or doing test draws. For lack of anything better, Orison summoned Stupid Horse and readied his own short bow.

Under the bloody light of the low hanging sun, Thorrinson said, "If what comes over that hill isn't our friends, I want you to take your mom and go back to that last village and send message to Whiteriver. That right there in the corner's my satchel. I'd be grateful if you'd stick it on your horse and give it to my wife and daughter."

Before Orison could say anything, Droya said firmly, "If there's three or less, we're better off fighting with cover and advantage than running. If there's more than that, there's no point in you staying here to slow them down so you might as well stick it to your own horse and follow."

A little frustrated at having his resolve to die for them questioned, Thorrinson said, "The horses are winded. Even if I had the time to-"

Droya cut him off with, "You blockhead. Aren't you still carrying that scroll my son gave you? Worst case, you're better to us as a moving shield than a blade of grass that-"

On instinct, Droya swung her dagger in a wild arc toward the sudden dip of weight at the back of the wagon. Confusion turned to horror on Orison's face as a dagger appeared, dug into her shoulder a finger's span from the spine at the base of her neck. Quickly following, a man materialized into view with Droya's dagger buried in his left hand, inches from his throat. Orison had a moment to register the macabre waltz pose the two were locked in from her sudden twisting before he split the man's head in half with a reflexively summoned axe.

Sword drawn, Thorrinson jumped down from the driver's bench and circled the wagon while Orison braced Droya to draw out the dagger. Her roar of pain eclipsed Thorrinson's one of anger as he initiated an enemy out of Orison's view. Orison nearly dropped the vial of healing potion he had began pouring into Droya's wound when the canvas flared into angry flames.

Orison passed the rest of the vial to Droya as he braced them behind a spare shield, assessing the situation through the quickly widening hole in the burning canvas. He had just enough time to register Thorrinson and the honor band soldier's assailant before an arrow bloomed into existence in Thorrinson's back. Seeing that the arrow wasn't stuck in overly deep, Orison lobbed a fire shot into the black garbed assailant's face, giving the band soldier a chance to adjust to the presence of an archer Orison didn't have a sight on.

Grabbing the shield with her good arm, Droya covered them as she eased them toward Stupid Horse who was standing next to the back of the wagon. Orison was able to see the very top of the archer's head behind a boulder when they popped up to aim as Droya mounted behind Orison on the horse. From behind the shield that Droya held in front of him as she held on to his midsection, Orison lobbed a fire shot at the exposed head. It was a glancing blow off the top of the boulder but it managed to catch the archers hood and hair on fire.

As Orison's errant thought about pop stars and pop commercials formed in his mind, he felt Droya suddenly shove him off the horse into the grassy hillock beside them. Momentarily dazed, Orison barely registered a thud of impact into the ground and the heated air that billowed around Stupid Horse before the construct disappeared. Two more thumps and two more screams later, Orison's eyes were able to focus enough to see a man in a red robe with gold embroidery on it.

"If you were one of my apprentices, little worm, I would have taught you to never neglect the spaces above you. You can pity not having proper tutelage on your way to The Abyss. I was going to send you there quickly but for killing my student, I will make sure you and your two companions suffer greatly in your last moments of life," the resplendent hooded mage said as he gently touched ground in front of Orison.

The area around the mage's right hand glowed an ominous white with orange and red borders as he reached for the boy. The left hand, glowing a brilliant blue tinted white, seemed to be responsible for maintaining the envelope of force around him. It was the right one that reached towards Orison's face as a weakly thrown dagger glanced off the radiance emanating from the murderous magic user.

Looking away from the hand approaching his face, the heat already palpable against his skin, Orison saw Droya slump in despair on her badly burnt legs. Clutching a blistered hand to her chest, she let loose a keening wail.

A primal rage bubbled up from Orison's marrow and blood, slightly diminishing the magic heat and leaching away some of it's potency into him. It was as if a feral beast, a manifestation of his pain and hatred barely contained within his skin, desired to rend and devour the mage before him. With a yell that nearly ruptured his vocal cords, Orison channeled all his available pool of magic to forcefully activate the kinetic model he could not control. It held for less than a tenth of a second before raw magic force exploded from it, squashing Orison mercilessly into the hillock and knocking the mage back while disrupting his field of force.

Unable to temporarily force air back into his lungs but hearing the mage muttering something about ancestors around wet coughs, Orison ignored the black spots flashing in his vision as he pushed himself up and wobbled forward. Swinging his bound axe in a nearly blind panic, he heard a chilling cry among wet crunches. The ghostly visage that was forming collapsed and it's ethereal wisp went to join it's summoner's in the darkest corner of Orison's inner space.

After his first weak whistle of a breath forced his lungs back open, Orison broke out into a coughing fit that caused him to black out long enough to fall back on his butt. The jolt of pain brought on from multiple hairline fractures in his chest and abused organs kept him from passing out, however. So crawling back onto his feet he assessed the area.

In front of Orison, the mage's face and chest were mangled by his wild swings but more crucially of note was the sword tip protruding from an area near the mages heart. With a quick glance over to see that the teary eyed Droya was well enough to be lapping up the remaining healing potion from the cracked vial in her hand, Orison irreverently knocked the mage's corpse out of the way to find a badly burned Thorrinson beneath. Senseless and in unimaginable pain, the stubborn Northlander still refused to pass out.

Under the impetus of the three newly acquired crystallizing souls within him, Orison guiltily opted to heal with magic as it trickled in instead of busting out another healing potion from his dwindling supply. No sooner did he have Droya and Thorrinson barely back on their feet with the worst of the burns taken care of before Gan came stumbling back leading a partially maimed horse with a corpse and a barely alive Trygve draped on it's back.

While Orison stabilized the band marshal and did what he could to reattach Trygve's half sheared off hand that Gan thoughtfully retrieved somehow, Thorrinson asked, "Where's Chuckles?"

Gan's pale face looked up somewhat vacantly and said, "They ate him. There were nine of them in all. Only four of them were alive, Ashlanders. The other five were... not alive. I- I managed to play dead until Trygve and the rest got there... I think they were planning on making me one of the others or I would have been eaten too, I think.

"We managed to kill the controllers but not before losing one of our own. The marshal was hit with some kind of spell that nearly sucked all the life out of him too... Funny that I never knew his nickname was Chuckles but I instantly knew who you were- Anyway, after Marshal Trygve took the last controller down, er, Chuckles saw that the not alive ones were just milling around, looking confused. I think he planned on blowing off some of his anger from them killing his friend."

Gan's haunted eyes stared off into space for a moment before he shook himself out it. After taking a deep but shaky breath, he said, "As soon as he hit one of them, all five rushed at him and tore him apart. Whatever piece they managed to get their hands on, they started eating. While they were... It's like they didn't care I was there or maybe they didn't know but I got the marshal and Hvass on the horse and made my way here... You know, I didn't really like Hvass. Always jabbing at people's sore spots but I didn't want him to be eaten too."

Thorrinson handed Gan his flask and said, "Take a swig and focus, man. They might come this way and we got a good lad and lady over there who we still need to get to Whiteriver... somehow." Thorrinson walked over to Orison and whispered, "The scout's shook up bad. I know we're leaning on you hard for someone we're supposed to be taking care of but he could still be hurt in a dangerous way and you're the only one I got to turn to. The uh, the horse too if you can."

Looking up at Thorrinson's guilt ridden and anxious face, Orison smiled weakly and said, "Trygve wasn't nice until he was practically forced to be and here I am trying to save his hand on top of his life. Gan was actually nice to me. So, of course I'll do what I can for him. No need to even ask. Now the horse... Just kidding. What's a little animal doctoring between we, the fellow roasted ones."

Chapter end