Reborn as a Fire Mage!, page 4
The cube began to float around me slowly as if he was scanning my body. “I will be happy to answer any questions you may have, but that will need to be delayed until you reach your destination. There will be a small group of fiends emerging from the forest to your right in a few moments. I see that you have a weapon already, so that is good. I am unfamiliar with that construct.”
I squinted at Echo in confusion, before looking at my left hand and where I held my halligan bar.
“Oh, this is my halligan bar. It's not a weapon. It's something I used to enter places forcibly. I used it during my old career as a firefighter. That is why I’m wearing this turnout gear as well. It keeps me safe from burning up in a fire. I used to have a helmet, but I lost it during my death on Earth.”
“What is the material the halligan bar is made of, and what are the parts?”
I moved the bar horizontally, holding it with both hands. I admired it before responding. “I got this one a couple of weeks ago, and it kicks major ass. It is made out of titanium and is much lighter than the others I have used in the past. This end is called the fork, and the other end has two parts. This flat part is called the adz or duckbill, and the sharp spike is called a pick or pike. This thing is very close to being indestructible.”
“Ah, fascinating. You say it isn’t a weapon, but it will make a splendid melee weapon against fiends. I advise you to use it for that as well as its intended purpose of opening doors,” Echo turned 180 degrees quickly. “Look, we have a visitor. The fiend is alone, so this will give you an excellent chance to kill it with your halligan bar.”
I looked where Echo directed, and my blood ran cold. The silhouette of a slim figure moved slowly toward my position from the center of the clearing. The figure walked, but it dragged its left leg behind him. As the fiend got closer, I could hear snarls and growls, which were the most terrifying sounds I had ever heard. I lifted my halligan and held it like a baseball bat. My arms shook in fear as the monster approached to kill me. The fiend was similar to a zombie but looked more alien than what I had seen in a billion zombie horror flicks. The fiend had no clothes on. The body resembled someone that received full-body burns in a house fire. I had seen a few over my career, and those sights haunted my dreams at night. It was bald with bright yellow eyes with no pupils. Its mouth stood agape with a chunk of bloody meat that dangled from its bottom teeth. The fiend had sharp pointy ears like a demon, and it had no nose, just a triangular back void. A horrid stench filled my nostrils. It smelled just like a decomposing body that had laid in a hot house during summer. We had done our fair share of wellness checks to find swollen corpses waiting for us. The fiend smelled like this but much more pungent which is saying something.
Long, slender arms were hoisted in front of the fiend, reaching toward me as it advanced. Three-inch black claws or fingernails showed themselves from the creature's five fingers. “How do I kill it?”
“Heavy trauma to the brain or decapitation will kill this type of fiend.”
My arms shook as I held the titanium bar. The creature would be in attack position in a couple of seconds. I held the bar like I stood in the batter's box at Fenway Park. The outstretched arms of the fiend would make a body shot very difficult. A swing to the head from the front would be a brutal attack but a challenge with the arms obstructing me. I quickly moved to the side and then darted behind it. It was slow at reacting, so it gave me an opening to attack. I swung the bar as hard as I could—the pike on the end of the bar sunk into the side of its head. I pulled hard to retract the pike from the dead fiend's skull. It took me two hard jerks to free the bar. Bright red blood squirted from the hole and splattered on the sleeve of my turnout coat. Its insides smelled worse than the outside. The sudden whiff of the horrendous smell resulted in me puking on the ground.
You have slaughtered a fiend!
You have acquired 100 reward points!
I looked at the blue screen, perplexed. “Reward points?”
“Mason, I can explain all of that later. There is a group of six emerging from the forest. I don’t think you are ready to take on a group of that size.”
I turned to see six lanky fiends moving slowly toward me from the tree line. A chorus of growls caused the hair to stand on the back of my neck. “Okay, let’s get out of here. I need to follow the arcane trail, right?”
“Yes, that would be correct.”
I followed the trail in a jog while Echo followed me in the air. “Are they moving any quicker?”
“These type of fiends are slow, but when you are surrounded by several of them, things get much more difficult. However, one on one, they are fairly simple to kill if you are focused.”
“Gotcha,” I replied as I entered the treeline.
The terrain became much more uneven after a few minutes. There were fallen trees to traverse with dips and holes all over. The glow from Echo and the arcane trail lit up the forest enough to prevent any tripping or falling. I breathed heavily, and the muscles in my legs burned. I was in good shape, but turnout gear and fire boots are heavy after a while.
A fiend showed itself as it passed a tree from the thick vegetation. “Grrrrr.”
I tripped over a root and went headfirst into the forest floor. My forehead slammed into a pine comb resulting in a cry of pain. I felt a warm trickle of blood run into my eyebrows. I wiped the warm blood from my forehead with the back of my turnout coat sleeve. I flipped onto my back only to see the fiend lunge toward me. I raised my leg into the chest of the fiend, stopping it from sinking its teeth in my face or neck. Instead, the creature began flailing its claws My turnout coat sleeves, and Kevlar gloves blocked any penetration. I stabbed the claw end of the halligan into its eye socket, covering me with more bloody goop. The yellow glow dissipated from the fiend’s remainging eye, and its body went limp falling to the ground beside me. Blood began to puddle underneath the monster, causing me to roll over and push myself up to avoid getting covered in the nasty substance.
“Excellent, Mason.
“Why didn’t you help me? You have some sort of weapon, don’t you?”
“No, I do not have any weapons other than my intelligence.”
“Great, so you would have just floated there as I was eaten alive?”
“It would not have been enjoyable, but there is nothing I can do for you without a weapon.”
“Can’t you just go in front? You can light the way and use your senses to tell me when a fiend is around the corner.”
“I could do that. However, you would not complete the quest and receive the reward. Do you want me to do it? Reward points are precious here. It would be smarter to continue as we are now. Just do a better job focusing.”
“I want you to explain these reward points as soon as you freaking can.”
“I will be happy to when we reach our refuge.”
Chapter Four
I spent the next half hour following this winding arcane trail to God knows where. I was expecting our journey to be much quicker than this. However, the constant fear of a fiend jumping out from behind the trees made the trek even more painstaking. Echo was supposed to be my assistant, but he was doing a piss poor job so far. He couldn’t help with the fighting, and he didn’t know the distance till we reached our destination or refuge, as he called it. I grew tired of trying to pull information out of him. Finally, he was determined that we wouldn’t get into the meat of the situation until we reached the refuge. The temperature dropped exponentially as the minutes went by. My body was warmed due to the turnout gear, but my head was too cool for comfort.
Echo broke his silence. “Mason, a few yards ahead, there are three fiends. The arcane trail goes directly through the spot where they stand.”
“Whoa, whoa, are you offering actual help right now? Damn!”
“Yes, I am. Are you listening to what I am telling you?”
“Can’t we just go around?”
“No, you cannot. Through those trees is a swinging bridge across a large canyon. There is no going around. That bridge is your only way to the refuge.”
“Alright, can we just wait behind a bush or something until they pass?”
“Yes, but they are eating the bodies of two people they killed trying to cross the bridge. So they will be there for quite a while.”
“How do you even know this? You don’t know how far this refuge is. How do you know that there are three fiends up ahead? They are completely out of sight.”
“I ascended above the treetops, and I spotted them from above. Do you want to fight this trio of fiends or wait? Waiting can create a much bigger issue if we are approached from behind by fiends. We will not have an escape route.”
“It would be fucking helpful if you could do something besides float around.”
“I can be more helpful eventually through upgrades. We can discuss this later. First, you must keep focused on your surroundings.”
“Why do you even give a shit? We just met each other. You can go help someone else if I kick the bucket.”
“That isn’t true. If you die, I will die as well. I have committed to the Celestial Architect that I would assist you in your journey.”
“Well, it's good to know you are invested in my success. So you are bound to me as long as I live?”
“That would be correct.”
“Wow, we’re going to get to know each other very well then.”
“I have downloaded your life events onto my database. So I know you very well, Mason.”
“Well, that’s not very fair. I just know you as an annoying, floating ice cube-looking thing.”
“I am a construct of the Celestial Architect. Everything that I am is sculpted from the very hands of the glorious Architect.
My attention was directed to the sound of a twig snapping behind me. In my bickering with Echo, I forgot that I was in the middle of some kind of fiend apocalypse. Echo’s luminescent glow brightened, revealing three sets of yellow eyes.
“Fiends!” I screamed as I raised my halligan. I was expertly trained in the tool's intended use, but we never learned combat with the bar. I swung the titanium weapon wildly at the closest fiend, narrowly missing Echo, who promptly moved out of the danger zone but close enough to lighten up the area.
The first strike nailed the fiend in the shoulder, which only slowed it down a second. I kicked it in the gut and then bashed its skull. The other two fiends flanked me from both sides. They were too close for me to strike them with the bar. Each of them lunged at me like a snack, but I dove forward onto the ground. The two fiends attacked each other. It took them a few moments to realize that they weren’t munching on my flesh. That was my chance to strike hard. I plunged the pike of the bar into the back of the skull of one of them. I spun counterclockwise, smashing the other in the back, and knocking him to the ground hard. I raised the bar over my head with two hands and dropped the adz end on the monster's skull, cracking it open like an egg. Dark blood splattered all around and began to pool underneath the prone corpses.
You have killed 3 fiends!
You have received 300 reward points!
I gasped for precious oxygen as I held my gore-covered halligan bar. “Are we good, Echo?”
“I would wager that we are good. However, you are a little rude,” Echo replied.
I chuckled. “No, that’s not what I mean. Do you see any more fiends in the immediate vicinity?”
“Ah, I understand now. No, I do not detect anything right now. However, I suggest crossing the bridge before any more fiends cross the bridge from the opposite side. The bridge is quite narrow, and combat would be very difficult.”
I motioned for the cube to follow as I began to follow the arcane trail again. “Thanks for your help back there.”
“My help?”
“Yes, you brightened the area where I could see better.”
“Oh, I am glad that helped, but if I’m honest, I brightened the area so I could see better.”
I smirked and shook my head. “Well, thanks anyway. I’m sorry I almost busted you up with my halligan.”
“No worries, I was positioned very poorly.”
The bridges looked almost identical to the long swinging bridge in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It swayed over a dark crevasse. Unfortunately, the night and the darkness of the crevasse prevented me from seeing just how deep this hole was. I placed one foot on the first plank and took a deep breath. After that, I continued slowly, one plank at a time. Once my comfort level rose, I began to move across much faster. “How deep is this thing?”
“From my calculations, the crevasse is approximately twenty miles deep. So it is very shallow,” Echo replied.
“Twenty miles is shallow? Holy shit!”
“Of course. The Crimson Deep, the largest crevasse on Lelara, is 100,000 miles deep.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“It is quite deep. This is simply a mud puddle compared to that monstrosity.”
“Is there water at the bottom or what?”
“Heavens no, the bottom of the Crimson Deep is a dreadful place drenched in lava. The Infernus people reside down there. Very little is known about this tribe of people, but they are terrifying, to say the least.”
“Have Lelarans attempted to communicate with the Infernus?”
“A few have tried over the centuries, but none of them ever returned. The explorers traveled in fast aircraft to the bottom, but the aircraft nor the explorers have ever been seen again. There have been a few drones that have avoided destruction long enough to transmit some video and images, but that is it.”
“Have the Infernus made any attempt to come to the surface?”
“They either have no interest, no proper technology, or they are tunneling out of sight, and we are not aware. If the latter is the case, they would have to have started centuries ago. I find that unlikely. I feel they want to be left alone and that Lelara should abandon any more expeditions.”
“I think that would be wise,” I replied after placing my foot on the other side of the crevasse. The history lesson about the Infernus did a great job of taking my mind off the twenty-mile fall below my feet.
The other side of the crevasse continued to be thick forest. With my luck, the arcane trail continued to lead me through the darkness of the woods. I shook my head and sighed.
“Why don’t you do me a favor and go above the canopy and see how much further we have to go. I’m getting tired both mentally and physically. I want to get to this refuge in one piece.” Without speaking, Echo slowly ascended through an opening he found in the trees. Soon he was out of sight, but I could still see a faint glow through a couple of tree branches. I decided to just wait for a report from him before moving onward. Finally, after a couple of moments, the radiant cube descended toward me.
“We aren’t far, but you will confront a pack of fiends. You can go around them if you are quiet. However, I suggest defeating them for more reward points. You will soon find how important they are. You have dispatched the creatures easily so far. They are headed in our direction. If you decide to avoid them, the trail will continue to move with you changing course to get you to the refuge in the quickest time. Do as you wish?”
“You left out important details, dude,” I replied with a brow raised.
“No, I haven’t. I have told you what you need to know.”
I exhaled and shook my head. “How many fucking fiends are there?”
“Oh, yes. You are correct, that is very important. There are eight fiends headed this way. Are you going to be a coward and avoid them?”
“Coward? You’ve got a lot bolder with what you say. It pisses me off, but I like it.”
“You have rubbed off on me, Mason. You like to communicate in this rude manner, and I will change my approach to match yours.”
“That’s not necessary. You be you.”
“You are a peculiar creature if I may say so, Mason.”
“Alright, let’s shut the hell up. I’m going to attempt to kill all these things. Without your help, of course.”
“I told you that I would be able to help you in the future. Stockpiling reward points will be vital in accomplishing that. I can help you to see the fiends, of course, but I cannot attack or heal you.”
I grunted and continued with my halligan bar in the attack position. I call it an attack position since I am the inventor of halligan combat. I would admit that the halligan did make a hell of a weapon against these fiends. With it being titanium, I didn’t foresee durability issues. This thing was virtually indestructible. Fuck these fiend fuckers!
“Let’s go, these bitches are going down...downtown. You can quote me on that!”
“Are you talking to yourself or me?” Echo asked.
“Umm, both!” I replied as I raised the halligan bar over my head and shook it like the Tusken Raiders in Star Wars. I mimicked the battle cry of the sand people very poorly, but it was very fun to do.
“You are a strange man,” Echo added.
“I’m a wild man. There’s a difference.”
“You grew up uncivilized?”
“Nope, I am just saying I am a wild man right now.”
“I do not understand, but you do, so that is all that matters.”
“Can you please shut your invisible mouth for a few minutes? I don’t want to get eaten alive only a couple of hours into my new life here.”
“Affirmative.”
“I don’t get you, Echo, one second, you sound like an emotionless robot, and the next, you are a smart ass. You are a peculiar cube thingy.”
“You asked me to be quiet so you could avoid death. Yet you keep talking. What do you want me to do? Answer or keep quiet, which is the most effective strategy to kill the fiends.”
“Zip it,” I replied.
“Zip it? I do not wear pants. How is this possible?”
“It means to be fucking quiet!”
Echo and I finally decided to quit bickering and focus on the deadly monsters headed our way. The glow from Echo lit up the area ahead just enough to faintly see silhouettes headed toward me. I backed up against a tree to hide, and I peeked around. Echo followed suit and moved to my position. The glow he emitted made it impossible for him to conceal himself fully, but hopefully, the intelligence of these fiends was low enough that they wouldn’t recognize that it could be something or someone behind the tree. Then I quickly realized that the zombies were always attracted to light in every zombie flick I had ever seen. I’m a fucking idiot.
