The Gifted (unfinished) by Lucas Guerreiro (read me a book txt) 📕

“What makes you so different? You’re not  cleanser either,” I rebutted him.

He looked almost offended, “The difference is that I can survive a week out here. I can walk into a bar and not have to worry that some morons will pick on me.”

I turned to look forward. I was angry. I wanted to draw my sword and prove him wrong, but there was some truth to what he said. He is clearly a better fighter than me, just because of experience. Nevertheless it was time to speak to him in the mercenaries’ language. Money.

“Look, how much do you want to help me get to the next town south of here?” I asked.

“Do I look like a bodyguard?”

“You look like someone who can handle cursed ones.”

He took some time to consider the offer. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed his help. The road would get fairly dangerous. I could not simply hope to find cleansers cleaning up the path.

“A hundred tripends and I will take you to Lightwaters, not negotiable…” He finally answered.

“Everything is negotiable,” I instantly responded. He did not turn to me, but I could see the death stare he gave me with the corner of his eyes, “40 tripends, and I will help you with any contracts you take there and on the road.”

“How could you possibly help me?” He jolted, somewhat angrily.

“I am a trained field medic,” I answered.

Merek took a moment to think and then said, “That explains a lot, why do you wish to head south then?”

“I finished my basic military training in Dragon’s Reach,” that was a lie, “However, they required me to spend some time in the college to aprimorate my healing spells,” also a lie.

“Alright, I have to finish a contract here, then we head out,” he said, “meet me outside after you eat something. From now on, you do what I say…”

“When you say it, yeah, yeah, got it,” I said.

Surprisingly, he did not give me another death stare. He went outside, and left me. I ordered some bread and water. I checked my coin bag. I had sixty-three tripends left. I was glad that he accepted to help me, even if it cost me. The road would be calmer, hopefully. I finished my food, left the money on the counter, and made my way outside.

III

Common Enemies 

“Alright… uh…”

“Lance…” I gave him the information he was missing.

“Listen, I have to clean up a corpse eater’s den,” Merek introduced me to his contract.

“Necropilters?” I asked, trying to demonstrate my knowledge of curse ones.

“Yes, they make their nests in caves, we destroy it, the monsters go crazy and die off. These are not so dangerous, no poison, relatively weak; they can’t kill you unless you let them slowly slash you to death, but they are still a threat to the townsfolk,” He said.

I knew some things about this kind of cursed ones. They were humanoid creatures, about half the size of a human. They had weak muscles. Their name comes from their hairy skin and the fact that they eat corpses.

“Alright, where is their lair?”

Merek pointed me in the direction. We walked into a small forest. While we moved, I took a moment to observe Merek. He carried a longbow and what seemed as a large hunting knife as weapons. His quiver had a good amount of arrows. Pieces of his clothing were ripped and he apparently had a hood integrated with his upper armor. What caught my attention was the way he walked. He was constantly scanning the environment, almost expecting an ambush. His footsteps were silent. It crossed my mind that he might be a trained assassin, but he was hunting cursed ones, it did not make sense.

We arrived at a rock formation, there was a large hole that opened downwards. Merek stopped and looked at me, indicating that it was there. He took a stick an dripped a few drops of what appeared to be some kind of oil. Then, he ignited it. A torch. He gave it to me to hold, and proceeded to inspect the hole. He sat on the edge and then jumped down. I heard some noises from the cave. We woke the cursed ones. I followed Merek, and drew my sword as soon as I landed. My bodyguard had already drawn his bow, and had three arrows fitted in his bowstring. He released them; one hit a Necropilter in his tiny chest, the other two hit two other monsters in the head. I was impressed. He readied another arrow, and fired it, increasing his kill count. I saw two corpse eaters crawling from a hole in my right. They charged at me, and I reacted. I slashed the first one with my sword, cut his arm clean off, and took a step backwards to dodge the incoming attack from the other. Before I could counter-attack, an arrow pierced his head.

“Nice shot,” I complimented his marksmanship, but Merek ignored it and drew another arrow.

Only then I noticed that his arrowheads were black. A strange material. He kept scanning the room, looking for more threats.

“Bring the torch here,” He ordered.

I moved next to him and held the torch close to the arrowhead of the drawn arrow. He used the arrowhead to scrape the wood where the flame was. This way he would get some of the oil that was burning in his arrow. It worked, and the arrow tip caught fire on his first try. He fired the shot through what I could only make out to be a hole, like the one the Necropilters crawled from. It ignited something in the opening, their nest. Soon I heard various cries from the creatures and what seemed as they rushing through the tunnels. Merek turned around and climbed out of the opening, I followed him out of the cave.

We took a moment to catch our breath, we could still hear the cries from the cursed ones. Shortly, smoke started coming out of the hole. We burned down their nest. Without uttering a word, Merek started heading back to the town. It was enough to see how he worked, efficiently. I tailed him. My goal was to befriend him, but that appeared to be a much harder task than I initially thought it would be. I wanted a sword to watch my back, and Merek was too expensive to keep.

When we arrived at the town, Merek went into a house and I stayed in the square, checking the notice board. A notice said that there were reported attacks of cursed ones on the Iris Lake. The road I was going to take was along the shore of that lake, which was worrying to say the least. There were no more cursed ones contracts though, Merek was doing his job.

Speaking of which, he came out of the house with a small bag, took one coin from it and tossed it my way.

“For the one you killed, Lancer,” He said.

I was almost sure that he said my name wrong just to annoy me, but I am not complaining about getting paid.

“Thank you,” I said, using the same sarcastic tone as him.

Publication Date: 05-05-2016

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