The Eldritch Underneath : The Splintered Five Saga (Outworlder's Blood Book 2), page 1
The Eldritch Underneath
The Splintered Five Saga
Outworlder’s Blood
Book Two
WillPowah
Contents
Summary
Shadow Alley Press Mailing List
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
End of Book Status
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The Adventure Continues…
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Dedication
Afterword
Patron Thanks!
About the Author
Summary
In the heart of the wilderness, a ravenous hunger lurks…
After a narrow escape from Tumbling Rapids, Kay and his mentor, Eleniah, embark on an exhilarating journey into the unknown. Eleniah has grand designs for her new protégé and plans to mold him into a force of nature, capable of withstanding whatever the world can throw at him. And her chosen classroom? A monster-infested stretch of wilderness, where no one would be stupid—or crazy—enough to venture.
But when a motley crew of refugees and adventurers unexpectedly intrudes upon their solitude, Kay's training takes an unforeseen twist. Leadership is suddenly thrust upon him and, like it or not, he now has an entire settlement to look after.
Juggling his new responsibilities while simultaneously advancing his Classes and Skills should be challenge enough, but unfortunately there's a far more ominous threat lurking beneath the surface of their new home. Something hungry. Something vicious. Something bloodthirsty. And Kay’s idyllic little hamlet looks like the perfect meal…
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Prologue
Rivers of flowing light and landmasses of unimaginable size flashed past as he rocketed through the unending starscape. Or was it a thick forest and he was flying past trees? Or were those millions of hands reaching out to grab him? Between one second and the next he was somewhere else, he was doing something else, he was someone else. The endlessly changing, shifting, growing, shrinking, warping view of existence and himself started to crush in on him and he could feel his very existence being stripped away by his sandpaper-rough passage through this impossible journey. Soon there wouldn’t even be a him, whoever that was. There would be nothing at all.
Something was rushing at him, a world, a face, a mind, a tree, a sword, a writhing mass of tentacles, his own face, a million bees. A voice that wasn’t a voice rang out, shaking him to the very foundations of his being as it addressed him. The sourceless not-voice was speaking to him. It said—
“...ay! Kay! Wake up!”
Kay’s eyes snapped open, and he threw himself to the side, his hand grasping for a weapon. His sword and halberd would both be too long, he’d aim for the punch dagger even if he didn’t use it as often and his Skill with it was lower—
A hand wrapped around his wrist, almost faster than he could see, halting him completely. He pulled against the grip, trying to break free, but he wasn’t strong enough. He’d have to—
“Kay!”
The familiar voice jolted him out of the all-consuming panic and desperate need to defend himself from whatever doom he’d felt approaching him. He followed the line of the arm grabbing him up to the face of Eleniah, his teacher and friend. She’d helped him after his random arrival into this new, magical world, and also led him into stepping out into the wilderness, ready to start something new.
“Eleniah?”
“Yes, it’s me. Are you okay?” She peered at him closely in the barely lit confines of Kay’s small tent. “I could hear you moaning and choking, and you were thrashing around like crazy. I tried shaking you awake and then...” She gestured with her free hand at the one clutching his arm.
“I... I had a dream?” He frowned, the already faint memories of the vivid sights he’d seen fading into nothing as he tried to sort them out. “Something was happening... and it was terrible... but... It’s all gone now. I don’t remember.” He slowly reached up and touched his forehead. “There was something with my head and my... Me?”
“Okay.” Eleniah let go as she relaxed. “A nightmare, and then I woke you up so abruptly you jumped straight to defending yourself.”
“I guess, yeah. Sorry about that.”
“Pfft.” She brushed away his apology with a waved hand. “I’ve socked more than a few people who woke me up during a bad night. Don’t worry about it.” She maneuvered herself to better crawl out of his tent and headed for the exit. “Try and get some more sleep, and we can talk about it in the morning if you want to, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll see if I can.”
Kay turned over and wrapped himself back into his bedroll. Closing his eyes, he tried to let himself drift off again. He managed to get a little sleep over the rest of the night, as the unintelligible nightmare never returned, but the faint feeling of doom and unmaking kept him from truly resting.
When he woke up in the morning for their first full day of travel out of Tumbling Rapids, there was nothing to discuss about his nightmare. He couldn’t remember a single bit of it. Even the tiny piece of him that had whispered through the night that it wasn’t a dream, that it was a memory, drifted away as the anticipation and call of a new adventure took hold.
Chapter One
“That’s all the basics you need to know to set up camp.” Eleniah gestured around at the tent, fire pit, and basic latrine she’d made while Kay watched and helped a little. “You remember it all, or do you need another refresher?”
“I think I’ve got it, although more practice wouldn’t hurt,” Kay said, “I know the basic supplies we need, what we can or need to forage along the way, when to change up the normal routine, and the various warning signs or dangers to look out for. I’d say I’m covered for now.”
“Good. We’ll go over everything together a few more times before I leave you to it.” She wandered over to the rocks they’d commandeered for seating. “Now we’re going to talk about your training.”
“You waited a while before bringing it up.” Kay sat across from her.
“We needed the right environment for it.” She glanced up into the tall trees. “You got taken in broad daylight in the middle of an at least somewhat busy street.” She waved off what he was about to say. “I’ve lectured, you’ve apologized and promised to do better, I’m just saying this as a fact.”
Kay nodded and shut his mouth.
“We’re going to be training out here in the forest where it’ll be harder for you personally and easier for you to learn. You’re from a city and you’ve spent most of your time in cities, so the new experiences of dealing with ambushes and other surprises out in the wilds will help cement what I’m trying to teach. There’s also no distraction from the extra people that would be around in towns or cities. We’ll work on your situational awareness and reflexes to deal with threats where we won’t get in anyone’s way and you won’t have to worry about the motives of each person who approaches you, then we can work our way up to having to pay attention to more people at once.”
He glanced around at the shadows made by trees of various heights in the light of the moon, the tangles of undergrowth and roots, and the way trunk after trunk seemed to line everything he could see until they formed a massive wall of bark to his vision. “Got it.”
“Good. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to be vanishing on you.”
Kay gave her a worried look. The last time they’d been truly separated had involved him getting kidnapped and her busting into a secure facility to rescue him. He’d done missions on his own for the Adventurer’s Guild before that, but after a harrowing experience of being ambushed and captured, plus the brand-new surroundings, he wasn’t happy about being alone right now.
Eleniah correctly read the look on his face. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tear off on my own or anything, I’ll just be trying to hide and sneakily follow you. If you catch me ‘escaping,’ then I’ll stay until I try again. When you inevitably lose me, I’ll follow along slightly behind or ahead, and ambush you. Your job is to detect me coming before I hit you. If you don’t manage to do that, I’ll attack. If I get you with what I consider a ‘fatal’ attack or manage to ‘capture’ you, you lose. Then we’ll go over what you did wrong and what you need to improve on, then try again.”
“What happens if I lose?”
“Well, I’m going to smack you around to simulate a real fight as best I can without actually hurting you too much, and your face is going to get ground in the dirt when I ‘capture’ you.” She glanced around the camp. “As for an actual punishment? I’ll think of something annoying but not too terrible to motivate you. Unenjoyable chores probably.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She shrugged. “It’s motivational.” She smirked at him. “You’ll get much better at it, eventually. And then you won’t have to worry about the punishment.”
“What do I do when you vanish?”
“What? You try and find me and not get ambushed. I just said that.”
“No, I mean like outside of the ambushing. Do we have a goal we’re after, a place we’re heading to, what are we doing?”
“Oh, right.” Eleniah straightened out her posture and looked directly at him with a serious expression.
Kay instinctively mirrored her.
“Congratulations!” She burst out with a cheesy smile and some jazz hands. “You’re now in charge of our two-man expedition into the wilds!”
Kay stared at her. “What?”
“You’re in charge. Take us wherever you want to. See something cool and you want to check it out, do it. Randomly decide to change directions? It’ll be your call.”
He shook his head. “Why am I suddenly in charge? I don’t know anything about what’s out here!”
“I don’t know anything beyond some general information and wild supposition either, and since I’m literally going to be following you around trying to get the jump on you, it only makes sense for you to pick where we go.”
He scrubbed at his face with his hands. “I just go?”
“Pretty much.” She pulled out a pot from her travel bag and started sorting small pouches. “We’re out here looking for adventure. We’ll find some eventually.”
“What do I do if we run into enemies?”
“When you run into something that wants to fight, deal with it however you think is best in the moment. I’ll always be close by, so I’ll jump in as necessary. But if you don’t need my help, I’m not going to join in. Act like you’re alone when you’re making decisions.”
He took a deep breath, then let it go. “Alright. It’s more of a safety net than I had back when I was running jobs by myself.”
Eleniah made a quick face but glanced away before Kay could really tell what kind. “Yeah, it’s always nice to have some backup available. Once I think you’re getting better at situational awareness, I’ll start traveling with you like a regular person instead of acting like some kind of creepy stalker, and we’ll start getting you used to being in charge of more than one person.”
“Why?” Kay moved a little on his rock seat to get a sharp point out of a sensitive part of him. “When will I ever be in charge of people?”
She gave him a serious look. “With your title? It’s basically guaranteed.” She held up a finger to stop his reply. “You are going to be powerful enough, both in personal strength and influence, to lead people. The only situations where you aren’t going to be the person in charge are if you’re alone, if you’ve been captured and made to serve your captors, or if you willingly subordinate yourself to someone else.” She waved him off again. “The first one might happen, but I’m hoping and assuming we’re going to stick together, so that’s out. Getting captured and bent to service is something we want to prevent, and there aren’t a lot of people that both of us would be alright with bending the knee to. I’m saying that’s unlikely to happen.”
“Wait, why aren’t you in charge if it’s just the two of us? You’re way more experienced,” Kay complained.
“Because I don’t want to be.” Eleniah smirked at him. “And,” she continued with a more serious look, “I’m pretty bad at it. I can identify what attributes a person needs to be a good leader and teach someone to be a leader, but when it comes to leading? I’m just not that good at it. If it was just the two of us, it’d probably be fine. But we’re likely to gather more people as time goes on. That’s just what tend to happen around Class Line Progenitors.”
Kay frowned. Why does she say that so much? Wait, had he ever actually asked her? “Why do you say that? It’s not the first time you’ve mentioned it.”
“Because people are going to want to learn from you.” She pointed at him with the cooking spoon in her hand. “You’re going to be the teacher for Blood Manipulation, as well as anything else you discover and are willing to teach people. You will be the only place they can learn those Skills without just randomly trying things and stumbling onto the Skill. Which is possible but doesn’t happen much. You already had that healer from Tumbling Rapids asking to be taught Blood Transfusion. You’re going to have students, unless you never teach anyone anything, which I don’t recommend. You’re going to be in charge of your students, because you’ll be teaching them. That alone is a reason to learn how to lead. Then there’s the fact that there will probably be an organization that springs up around you, in one form or another.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s like the Rune Master. They started as just a hermit on an island experimenting with what they discovered. Then they got a student, then more students. All the students needed places to live and food and such, and a town popped up. The town grew into a city and then a city state that controls that entire island. Unless you go the hermit route and only take one or two students at a time, or never teach anyone, which again, I don’t recommend, you’re going to be in charge of a small group of people at minimum. People gather around power, then infrastructure comes because not many people want to live completely off the wilderness in tents.” She shrugged. “It’s better to start now and learn how to be a good leader so you’re ready when it’s too late to learn.”
Kay looked at her with a furrowed brow and a frown. “I don’t know if I like that idea.”
She shrugged again. “Then be a hermit who only takes a couple of students or teach no one. I’m not going to command you to take one path over another. I’m just going to teach you the skills you’ll need for the most likely outcome, then the ones for the successively less likely outcomes. What you do with what I teach you is up to you.”
“That’s...” He sighed. “I want to complain because I don’t really want to be in charge of a bunch of people, but that’s a good approach to problem-solving.”
“Thanks.” She chuckled. “Dealing with things in the order that they’re most likely to happen isn’t the most imaginative problem-solving or teaching style, but in my opinion, it works the best.”
After a dinner of soup made from dried meat and spices, Kay sat cross-legged in the tent staring at the dimensional bag from the Nelamians, when a thought suddenly hit him. “Hey, how are we protected from attacks right now?”
“Huh?” Eleniah glanced up from the stitching she was doing on a blanket. “Oh, I put up a barrier when you were scrubbing the dishes.” She opened the tent and pointed at a glowing purple stone in the middle of the fire. “See that? It creates a barrier that makes it harder to detect us and prevents people from getting inside. Anything that wants to get at us would have to destroy the barrier, and if that happens the stone screams loud enough to wake the dead.” She closed the tent flap. “We’ll practice camping without barriers or other helpful enchanted items later. In the wilderness with no real idea of what’s around us, I want to use every protection we have. Once we have a good place to set up a base for a while and get to know the local threats, we’ll work on things like that.”
