The next three days passed rather quickly. True to his word, Gram gave Tommin’s unit a full 3 days of rest. Almost everyone took their time and used it as they willed. Even though they weren’t allowed to leave the camp there were plenty of options to pass their time. In a war camp such as this not everything had to be centered around war.
All throughout camp soldiers without orders would spend their time doing a bunch of various tasks. The main thing that most of the soldiers did was train. For the most part most of the army was untrained conscripts or volunteers. The average level of the army was most likely around 7 or 8 when they first started this war against the invading spiders; now it was likely closer to 13 or 14. The levels were great at covering a lot of the areas that they were lacking, but it was no true substitute for knowledge and skill with a weapon. After all, a level 1 person could still kill a level 80 dragon if they were lucky enough. They would have to be the luckiest bastard in the world, but it is still theoretically possible.
Another thing that soldiers did to pass their time was play games. There were a bunch of various games that they would play. Two of the most common games involved a deck of cards, although the decks didn’t look like anything that could be found on earth. The decks had 72 cards to the deck and a bunch of different symbols on them, none of the decks seemed to be near the normal 52 card standard playing card deck.
There were also games of chance, those games involved sets of dice. As it turns out geometric shapes are pretty uniform across dimensions, as most of the dice were either 6, 8, or 10 sided dice. Though the 6 sided dice was the most common dice. One of the more popular dice games was actually one that Bjorn was familiar with, liars dice. The rules were the exact same and people really got into it, turns out with super-human level of stats it was both easier and harder to succeed in liar's dice.
They also liked to play board games, there were 3 common board games that almost everyone knew how to play. Oddly enough Bjorn knew two of the games. The first one was backgammon, the other was chess. Apparently the rules and set up for the games were so simple that they were created here as well. The last game though was similar to chess as it was played with a board and it had an equal number of pieces that each player controlled, but that was where the similarities ended. The board was a large octagon which was made up of hundreds of tiny hexagons. Each player controlled 30 different pieces that seemed to have their own rules as to how they could move and attack. It was also played with 4 people. If Bjorn was to relate the game to any game that he knew it would be an odd mix between chess, checkers, and warhammer.
The last two major pastimes that the camp partook in was both eating and drinking. The only major downside to those pastimes was that food and drink were rationed out. Feeding an army of several thousand underground was an impressive feat of logistics, as the amount of food that could be transported down was limited. Especially when you start to think about the fact that more than food and drink needed to be brought down to supply the army. New clothes, fresh blankets, additional weapons, new people, and hundreds of other small necessities took up space as well.
As to why drinking was limited, that should be fairly obvious. They always had to be at the ready just in case the spiders decided to do some sort of counter attack. You can’t be sending drunk soldiers into battle, that is an easy way to get hundreds killed if not the whole army. In the early days of the conflict the spiders often did just that, they would attack and try to push back the force of humanoids with actually some success. But it seemed that as they drew closer and closer to the main lair of the spiders those attacks became less and less frequent.
Most of Tommin’s unit took part in all of the various activities that they had access to in camp. That is except for two, Bjorn and Meira. Alaric, Tayla, and Rickie all took two days off before they grew too stir crazy and had to do something. Tayla returned to her tasks given to her by Gram and gathered information throughout camp. Rickie and Alaric got bored and both spent the last day at the training grounds sparring with anyone that was either brave enough or stupid enough to challenge the two experienced fighters.
The morning after the big fight Alaric had some big news that he wanted to share with everyone so he sat them down. As it turned out Alaric had actually gotten a profession as well. He was a professed knight, it came from his skill book usage before the last assault, and he actually had the profession before they went into battle. The skill book had allowed him to get his block skill well past the level 40 requirement for him to get his profession. For the time being he spent all of his talent points on passive talents which increased his blocking chance, and effectiveness of blocking.
He did get a single active talent called reposition. Which when activated allowed him to dash 20 feet to a close by ally, the translation was almost instantaneous. After translation was finished Alaric would be in between his target and the attacker and his shield would already be in position to block the skill. The only downsides to the talent was that the target had to have an attack heading towards them and Alaric had to consciously decide to use the skill, and lastly that it had a rather long cooldown. But everyone agreed that his active talent was well worth the talent points.
As for what Meira and Bjorn did was nothing exciting. Meira went back to the field hospital to help heal those who had been injured in the last conflict. She was making impressive progress in her healing magical abilities. So much so that one of the other healing mages decided to teach her two new spells. The first one was Cleanse Wound, the second was Summon Life Wisp.
The first spell was rather self explanatory as it was used to cleanse any wound. Her spell weak slow heal was wonderful but it had some drawbacks. It basically increased the body's natural healing by an impressive degree. The downside to that is that if a wound had any type of contamination in it the person's body would almost naturally try to expel it. Making it so that the healing magic wouldn’t be overly effective. There was also a decent chance that the body would just heal the skin over the wound sealing the contamination inside their body. Her new spell specialized in removing objects, poisons, and diseases that entered through the wound. This new spell was a force multiplier with her healing magic, making her a much more effective healer.
The second spell was more of a combat spell. It did exactly what the name entailed, it summoned a life wisp. The wisp would stay around for 5 minutes before its life attuned energy would dissipate back to wherever it came from. While it was around though it was amazing. The life wisp could float into someone’s body and it would constantly infuse its life-attuned energies into their body, giving them incredible healing while it inhabited them. It could be controlled by thought, and it had a slight will of its own. If not given direct command it will go to the nearest, most injured living creature and try to impart its life energy into them, friend or foe. It also had the ability to leave a body once inhabited making it so that the life wisp could spread its healing around as Meira or itself saw fit.
As for what Bjorn did, there was little surprise to be found there. He spent the entire three days off that they had he spent the entire time doing alchemy. He and Skarit spent most of their time making the spider bane poison. The process was surprisingly difficult and time consuming to do, which is almost the entire reason why they didn’t assign more alchemists to brewing the poison. The other reason was that the poison took some extremely valuable alchemy materials to make, they didn’t want to chance a less skilled alchemist to fail brewing the poison and losing all the expensive materials. So there were only two other alchemists who were allowed to work on the poison other than Bjorn and Skarit.
During the brewing process there were times where they had to keep an eye on reactions as they were happening, but not too closely. The other three alchemists would spend the time where they had to wait and observe helping the others with their tasks. Bjorn on the other hand decided it was time to do some light reading.
Bjorn pulled out the book that he found in the bag of holding, the journal, and started to read. Over the course of the three days he read it front to back once, he was able to get through it all in one day as the book wasn’t exceptionally long. After the first day he then went through the book slower trying to find and see if there was anything hidden or encoded inside the book that he missed the first time around. The book was exactly what he thought it was at first, it was a journal describing in detail how the settlement of Blackrock Bay came to be.
At first it was just a small settlement, but with its position in the world and where two major rivers met the settlement quickly grew into a small city. From there it grew into a large trade hub. As the kingdom of Escar came to be and started unifying the surrounding cities Blackrock Bay grew as well. The prosperity of the kingdom overflowed to its neighbors. For a time Blackrock Bay was able to push off the yoke of Escar, but eventually it too failed to keep them out and became a part of the kingdom.
As hard as he tried Bjorn wasn’t able to find any sort of code or cipher inside the journal that gave him a clue where anything else might be hiding like what he found initially. So he gave up on the book and returned it to his bag of holding.
On the morning of the 4th day Bjorn and the gang woke up relatively early and started to make their way to the command center. Tommin knew about their summons from Gram and so he promised he wouldn’t make a fuss when they didn’t show up for guard duty. He did ask them to show up once Gram was done talking to them, unless he gave them other orders.
One thing that was slightly annoying about how Gram went about asking them to attend him this morning was that he gave absolutely no indication as to when he wanted them to show up. So their only choice was to show up and wait for Gram to ask for them. Mentally they all were prepared to spend a rather boring day sitting around waiting for Gram to get to them.
As they approached the headquarters of camp they were met at the doors by a pair of guards, Bjorn recognized them, they were two from Gram’s personal unit. As they drew nearer the guards stood more at attention, but instead of blocking them like they did to most of those trying to enter they didn’t move to bar their path, nor did they say a word as the quintet moved past them and into the interior of the building.
Inside the building there was a large open central area that was filled with all sorts of official looking officers and Gram standing in the middle of the group. Ringing around the outside of the headquarters there were dozens of doors all leading off to unknown areas. There were a few doors left open and glimpsing inside each of them looked to be some sort of office. Making it a safe bet that the rest of the doors led to an office.
They came to a stop half way into the large room as one of the officials stopped them. “Stop right there. How did you get in here? Do you have someone you are meeting?” The official said rather loudly.
Bjorn nodded his head and spoke up. “We are here to meet with Captain Gram. He asked us to be here.”
The jumped up almost prissy looking official’s face turned into one of disgust. “As you can see Captain Gram is rather indisposed at the moment, you will have to come back later.” Once he finished speaking he turned his nose up slightly at the 5 people standing before him.
“I hate to break it to you.” Alaric started. Meira, who was worried as to what Alaric was about to say, put her hand over the dwarfs mouth. Rickie took up right here Alaric left off. “Captain Gram specifically asked for us to meet him here today, right at this time. So unless he wants to change our meeting time we will not be going anywhere.” Rickie towered over the little weasel of a man.
By now their conversation was starting to draw the attention of those closest to it.
“Can’t you see that he is busy. He is running an army, he doesn't have time for the likes of you.”
Tayla was about to speak when Gram’s deep voice cut through the room. “I would like to think that I, and the good Duke Dornan, are the only two people who get to determine what I have time for.” He said to the official.
As soon as Gram’s voice cut through the room the man's expression changed into one of determination and loyalty. The official turned around to meet Gram’s intimidating gaze and bowed his head slightly. “Of course Captain Gram.”
“You are dismissed. As for you guys, I have to finish up here and I will be right with you. Ustes, can you take them to my office please?”
“Yes sir.” Another official said as he hurried over to where Bjorn and company were standing. The first official they had talked to turned back around so that Gram couldn’t see him. Once he was no longer facing the captain the previous look of disdain and disgust came over his face again. The arrogant prick started to leave the command center.
“Right this way if you will.” Ustes said, as he started to usher the group through the room. As they passed through many of the army officers and officials gave the group a through once over.
Ustes got them into the room quickly. After they were all inside he promised the Gram would be with them shortly and then shut the door behind him as he walked away.
“Why did you stop me?” Alaric asked, giving Meira an accusatory look. “That arrogant little shit deserved exactly what I was about to give him.”
Meira gave Alaric an apologetic smile. “You are right of course and I agree with you, he deserved every little thing that you were about to give to him. There is only a slight problem though. We don’t know the political situation here and we have no idea who he was. We have no power here, so little in fact that we were press ganged into joining this little army. The last thing we need is to piss off someone who is in charge of his army or has influence in this city. We have stayed out of any political mess so far, I would like to keep it that way.”
Alaric’s shoulders slumped. “You’re right of course, as always. Thanks for stopping me, Meira.”
Tayla put her hand on Alaric’s shoulder in solidarity. “It’s alright. If you want me to, I can find out who he is and then drop something into his food tonight. Mind you nothing enough to hurt him, but just enough to make him have a terrible night.”
Before Alaric had a chance to respond the door was rather roughly thrown open and the armoire with legs that Gram was crouched his way into the room. Once inside it had barely enough room for him to stand upright. Gram rather unceremoniously slammed the door shut behind him and made his way over to his rather impressive chair behind his desk and threw himself into it. The wood groaned under the weight but surprisingly held.
The half centaur and half minotaur but full man took a deep breath and let out a deep sigh. He looked over to his guests. “I hate aristocrats.”
“I get that. Why do you have to deal with them on a military expedition?” Tayla asked him.
“Unfortunately they do serve their purpose. I am sorry you had to deal with that jackass though. Thank you for taking his provocations graciously. Thankfully you shouldn’t have to deal with them much if at all. As long as you stay off their shit list they have no reason to mess with you.”
Alaric looked a little sheepish as Gram spoke. “You have Meira to thank for that. She stopped me from doing exactly what you just warned me not to do.”
Gram chuckled. “It’s alright, many have made that mistake, and countless others will after you. I just figured I could save you some pain in the meantime. As for the particular aristocrat that you had to deal with, his use is feeding me information in the middle of battle. One of his two talents gives him incredible vision and so we put him high up during the fight so he can see how the battle is going. He was the one who warned me about those massive spiders that you got sent to deal with.”
“Ah, even a giant pile of shit has its uses.” Bjorn said in a sagely tone. He and Gram held each other's gazes for a few seconds before the entire room erupted in laughter.
After everyone had calmed down Gram wiped a tear from one of his eyes. “Thanks, it's been a while since I have gotten a laugh like that. Anyways back on topic, I bet you are wondering as to why I asked for you to meet with me.”
“The thought crossed all of our minds over the last three days.” Bjorn agreed.
“I have actually been keeping tabs on the 5 of you. Your list of feats and accomplishments are growing quite long. I was wondering if you would be willing to join my personal unit and fight side by side with me in the next engagement. It should be our last one. If our maps are correct this next battle should be the last room that the spiders have infected. Which means we will have to take on the queen.”
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Gram’s offer took them all by surprise. They started to look around at each other kind of dumbfounded. On one hand this was quite the honor, being asked to join the best unit in the army by a long shot. On the other they would be the first into combat and they wouldn’t be able to stop until the battle was won.
“What would happen to Corporal Tommin?” Alaric asked.
“We would have 5 people to replace you in his unit. He won’t be going into battle 5 men short.” Gram stopped talking for a second as he thought. “I am sorry that Corporal Jenkins did so poorly, he has done well for me over the years in the city guard. I had no idea that he was so incompetent.”
“What ever happened to him?” Rickie asked.
“He was demoted all the way back to private and then he was assigned a position in unit 5. As far as I know he is still alive. I was angry when I found out how he treated his men under his control and by extension you 5. Then to seal his deal, he went and got most of the men under his control killed as well as his peers. If he somehow makes it out of this next fight I will personally see to it that he never sees the light of day again.” Gram said that last part so matter of factly that it caused Bjorn to pause.
Over their time traveling together they got pretty good at reading each others expressions, as for Rickie he was an open book, he was terrible at hiding his thoughts. Bjorn surveyed his travel companions and saw the exact same look on all of their faces, it was the same one on his. Grim determination and steadfastness.
“We appreciate your offer Captain Gram, but unfortunately we will have to decline. In that last battle several more people would have likely died if we weren’t there to help stop the rampaging spiders. Tommin has been good to us and has gained our trust. We would not like to abandon him right before this last battle. Besides we have gained a few friends in our unit, we would like to keep them alive to the best of our abilities.”
“Are you sure?” Gram asked. “I knew you would be in the very front lines of the battle, but at the same time you will be in the safest place you could be. Duke Dornan will be with us, I have the best fighters under my control, and I can promise you that I will die before I let any harm befall you in the last battle.”
Tayla shook her head. “We are sure, this is war. There is no way you can guarantee our safety. We knew that as soon as we came down into this blasted cavern system. I have little doubt that if it came down to protecting us and protecting the Duke you would pick him.”
“We are some of the best fighters that Tommin has, he needs all of the help he can get. Our skills, abilities, and fighting prowess are better used elsewhere. We will have more of an impact helping protect those weaker than us than we would in your unit plowing through the spider horde.” Alaric said.
“All of your points are true. And I respect your choice. I was just hoping that I would be able to provide you guys a little extra protection going into this next fight. After all you have endured more at the hands of Blackrock Bay than anyone has the right to. I guess my offer was a way to try and apologize for how you have been treated while here.”
“And we thank you for that Gram.” Bjorn said. “Even though we have some hard feelings for the city itself and those in charge, we don’t blame the people, we understand that there are many good people here who are fighting for something they believe in. We feel like it is our duty to try and bring as many of them home as we can.”
“That is a very admirable position to hold. I suppose there is little use in me trying to ask you guys to stay behind once this is all over and help protect this city?”
Alaric let out a mocking laugh. “Ha, fat chance at that.”
Meira shot him a scathing look. “As my friend quite rudely pointed out, there is little chance. You have said so yourself that we have endured more than most because of this city. Once this is over and our mandatory cooperation is over we will be moving along.”
Nodded for a moment, then his face said that he had an idea. “You know I do have the power to send anyone back to the surface that I want to. If the 5 of you want I can get you discharged and let you leave the city.”
This time no nonverbal conversation was needed. “We appreciate the offer, but as we previously stated we have people we would like to see through this. Thank you but we will stay.” Rickie said without hesitation, and everyone else was in agreement.
“That's what I thought, but I figured I would offer.” Gram sighed. “Unfortunately I do have somewhere I need to be. I will leave you with this final bit of information though. In 4 days we will assault the final spider stronghold. I would rather it be tomorrow but with Bjorn here and Skarit brewing a poison that works wonders on the spiders we decided to hold off and let them brew double the stock. The attack will be announced tomorrow morning, I figure you knowing a day in advance won’t hurt anyone.” Gram finished with a little wink. He then moved to stand from his seated position.
“Actually I have something for you.” Bjorn said. This got him a quizzical look from all in attendance. Bjorn stepped forward to Grams desk and pulled the small journal that he had spent the last 3 days reading from his bag of holding. He placed the book down on the desk in front of Gram.
The man looked down at the book and gently took it in one of his massive hands. “Oh? And what is this?”
“Almost a week ago when we attacked the underground town and then had to spend the rest of the day clearing out the spiders I found this book. It was tucked away in a corner in one of the houses we cleared out of curiosity. I took the book. It was the last one on the shelf that hadn’t rotted away, that was what drew my attention to it.” Bjorn lied. “I spent the last three days reading it, and it seemed to be a journal that was written by one of the founders of Blackrock bay. It seems to detail the struggles they had in founding this city and then growing it into what it is today. I figured it would be good in your hands, and that Duke Dornan would want to see it and read its contents.”
“Ah, I see.” The monster of a man used his other hand to gingerly leaf through the book that looked like a child's book in his hands. “Thank you, during your reading did you find anything that could be useful inside its pages?”
Bjorn shook his head. “No, I read it fully once and then started to read it slower and scrutinized it. I didn’t find anything inside that would be of use in our fight in 4 days.”
Gram nodded. “No big deal. Thank you for handing this over, I think you are right, Duke Dornan would like to get his hands on this and read it thoroughly.” Gram moved to stand once again and stopped sitting back down. He took out a quill and paper and quickly jotted down on the note. Standing back up he handed the note to Bjorn. “Give this to Tommin, it will give you free reign to do as you will until the attack. I have a feeling that you will want to spend the next few days doing alchemy with Skarit, so this will give you the freedom to do so.”
Bjorn took the slip from Gram’s hands and they were able to understand a dismissal when they heard it. The quartet left Gram’s office and into the large open room again. This time there were few people in the room. Most of the crowd that had been there had vacated the premises. The group made their way out into the main camp once again. They had to report for their assigned guard duty.
Together the 5 walked in near silence only light talking as they made their way to their assigned post. It didn’t take them long to make it to the underground city and then to where the rest of their unit was stationed.
When Tommin saw them coming he stepped forward and raised his hand. “How did your meeting go? Are you in trouble?” There was a look on Tommin’s face that Bjorn couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Rickie laughed. “No, we aren’t in trouble. It went well. Gram offered us a position in his own personal unit.”
That was when Bjorn figured out what that look meant. He was worried that something like this would happen. When Rickie said the words Tommin was fearing his face fell. “I suppose you are here to let us know that you will no longer be a part of our unit.” He schooled his expression, plastering one of resolution on his face. “It has been an honor to have you under my command, we wish you luck under Gram’s command.”
“No, we are here to report for guard duty.” Alaric said. “The last time I checked my unit was assigned this post at this time.”
The faces of their unit lit up. By this time the quintet were quite popular among the rest of the unit. It was more than just their fighting skills. Rickie’s strength and simple straightforward attitude, Alaric’s steadfastness and scathing tongue, Meira’s kindness and compassion, Tayla’s quick wit and sharp eyes, and Bjorn’s good nature and resolve. They each had traits that everyone had come to like, even in some cases revere.
Unbeknownst to the 5 friends the entire unit were afraid what the meeting with Gram would entails. Most believed that whatever happened the quintet would be leaving their unit. With the admission that they would not leave the unit many of the faces gathered before them lit up with elation.
“I am glad that you decided to turn him down, for personal reasons. I know I will feel better with you 5 going into battle by my side.” Tommin said. “But why would you do such a thing? It would be an honor to work directly under Gram.”
“That is simple.” Bjorn said. “As hard as it is to believe we have grown fond of a few of you fuckers, and we want to see as many of you make it through this attack as we can.”
This declaration brought a new round of smiles and cheers. The group dispersed slowly melding into the group of 95. The new soldiers stood towards the back clear confusion as to why the rest of the unit was so happy about this development.
After a few minutes of well wishes Bjorn extracted himself from the crowd and made his way over to where Tommin was standing. He handed over the sheet of paper from Gram, and explained the situation. Tommin was quite understandably nonplussed. He said “Good go make more of that spider poison, venom, thing.”
Bjorn took his leave and made his way over to the alchemy station, storing all of his gear and armor in his bag of holding well on his way. He then spent the remainder of that day brewing Spider Bain Poison with Skarit.
By midday Skarit excused himself so that he could go get some sleep. By now both he and Bjorn had the recipe for the Spider Bane Poison down by heart. Instead of them on the same rough schedule Skarit decided it was better for them to sleep in shifts. That way at least one of them was around to brew, direct the less accomplished alchemists who were helping, and hopefully they would never stop during the process of brewing.
Towards evening just when Bjorn was starting to get tired Skarit came back and took over for him. Bjorn quickly made his way back to the shared tent and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
The next day was much the same. When Bjorn showed up he and Skarit brewed together for a while before the runic stopped and went to bed. 16 hours later Skarit came back and Bjorn took his break. It was basically the exact same type of day he had previously.
There were two things that happened that were different. The first thing was around noon the army was informed on their impending attack and the camp became a flurry of activity. Even though everyone was expected to keep their gear in tip top shape, everyone had some sort of last minute preparation that they needed to do before the final battle. Spirits were high with the expectation that the last battle was finally drawing near.
The second thing that was different about that day happened after Bjorn got off his shift brewing and headed back to the shared tent. As he drew nearer to the tent he was none the wiser to anything going on. Once he reached the tent he was faintly able to hear the sound of skin slapping on skin. He didn’t think much of it, as he wasn’t able to pinpoint the source of the sound and it didn’t matter much to him.
By now he was extremely familiar with the sound, he had heard it coming from Tayla’s room often enough over the last year. He didn’t begrudge anyone in camp who was trying to get some final action in before the last fight. Ultimately it was good for morale and keeping the peace in camp.
What did surprise Bjorn was what greeted him when he opened the flap of the tent and walked in. Before him in full view was Tayla’s ample bare chest bouncing up and down and she rode a guy. In his exhausted state with his mental energy drained after a day of alchemy instead of turning around and immediately leaving he stood there transfixed for a few seconds. There was little doubt as to who Tayla was sleeping with, as the large frame, bulging muscles, and chocolate dark skin very easily identified the man as Rickie.
Upon hearing the rustling from the entrance to the tent Tayla turned around and made eye contact with Bjorn. She did not even slow down whatsoever upon being caught in the act. Instead she actually accelerated the pace. “Oh, hey Bjorn. I didn’t expect you to be back so soon. If you want you can join. After all, I still have two holes that aren’t in use currently.” To emphasize her point Tayla moved her tail exposing her butthole, and she stuck out her tongue leaving her mouth wide open.
As the words that Tayla used sunk into Bjorn’s mind a small line of drool dripped off the end of her tongue and landed on her gyrating ass. “Um, no. Sorry.” Was all Bjorn was able to get out before he fled from the tent. Now that he knew exactly where the sound was coming from, Bjorn left their area.
Bjorn slowly made his way through camp trying to distract his mind, but no matter what he tried to do he couldn’t get the image out of his head. Instead of wandering aimlessly he ended up in the mess and sat down with his food and slowly picked at it for hours growing more and more tired. All the while the sound just played over and over in his head.
After two hours he figured they must be done and made his way tentatively back to their shared tent. As he drew near the sounds that were in his head were no longer just in his head. With a shudder he took a seat at the table right outside and sat there listening to the activities inside the tent.
There was a lot to be said about his current mental state that he didn’t immediately think of the solution to the sound. But after 10 minutes of listening to both skin slapping skin and Tayla’s moans of pleasure the solution finally came to him. Standing up from his seat Bjorn walked to one of the corners of their tent and started casting his new spell, Silence.
He quickly summoned forth the feeling of mana condensing that he had grown so accustomed to over the last two years in the Eld. This time the feeling was different, each time he had summoned forth the mana to cast a spell he would get a different sensation, on top of the different colors that each spell school summoned. With his light magic his surroundings would become a little sharper, with dark a little dimmer, with earth magic he felt as if a weight was pushing down on him, with his water magic a sense of coolness permeated his entire body. This time it felt as if he was listening to an excessively loud song and the subwoofer hit. He felt as if a pulse of loud and deep sound hit him. This time on top of the different feeling he also saw a pale green light emanate from his hand.
This spell also felt different by the way that the mana flowed through his body. Normally when he cast his spells he would feel the mana condense on his outstretched arm and flow out of him and into the world around him causing the different effects. When he channeled spells he would feel the mana continually condense and seep out of his body in a torrent from his focal point. When he stopped the channel he felt the mana flow stop and start to spread throughout his body once again.
Instead this time he felt the mana condense in his fingertip just as normal, and the mana left his body as normal. But where it differed was when he finished the first casting of the spell he felt the same density of mana condense in the tip of his finger once again and he felt the rest of his mana flow throughout his body as if it was in an agitated state.
When the spell said that it left a small invisible post behind it wasn’t being entirely truthful. After the spell had been cast a small almost imperceivably distortion left his body, floated forward a foot and then stopped. The small distortion then grew taller and thinner making it near impossible to see.
Thinking about the feeling of the flow of his mana, Bjorn walked over to the next corner of the tent and cast the spell once again. And again he got the same feeling of mana leaving his body and then the mana re-condensing in his finger tip. He repeated the process two more times. On the fourth and final casting of the silence spell the feeling finally dissipated and his mana returned to normal.
The spell did exactly what it said it would do. Finally after 10 minutes of listening to the sound of Rickie and Tayla there was blessed silence. Bjorn made his way back over to the small table and took a seat. Very quickly he grew tired and he put his feet on the table and leaned back in the wooden chair, and fell asleep.
He woke up an hour later. When he opened his eyes he saw Tayla standing over him with her shirt clutched in her arm trying to cover her breasts. It was an exercise in futility as the shirt hung away from her body and one of her breasts was still exposed. “I said, what did you do?”
“Huh? Also just put your damn shirt on, I can still see your boob.”
Tayla gave Bjorn a knowing smile and stood back up, making a show of slowly putting her shirt back on. “There is something covering the entrance to the tent, and no sound is able to pass through it. When I was standing outside I couldn’t hear Rickie talking to me, but he could still hear me. What did you do?”
That was the first time he noticed Rickie standing in the mouth of the tent, thankfully he was in his normal state of half undress, but all the important parts were covered. “I got a new spell called silence that does exactly what it sounds like. I got tired to listening to you and Rickie fuck so I cast the spell so I didn’t have to listen.”
Tayla stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. “You didn’t have to listen, you could have joined.” She said teasingly.
“Fat chance of that.” Bjorn shot right back.
“Anyways, that is an awesome spell. Next time we do this we should hunt you down to cast it for us.”
“Tayla. I am not going to let you hunt me down to use me to silence your little sex sessions. Anyways leave me alone, I am tired and need rest. Go take a bath, you reek of sex.” Bjorn stood from his seat and pushed past Rickie, who let him pass.
“Sorry you had to see that bud. She was being honest, we didn't expect anyone back for a while.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Bjorn made it to his bed and laid down. “Oh by the way you too should go take a bath, you also reek of sex.”
From there Bjorn closed his eyes and quickly fell asleep.
The last two days before their final assault passed without further incident. The total count of doses of the poison that he and Skarit were able to brew were 131 doses. All but 3 vials made their way to Gram so he could divvy it up however he saw fit. Those last 3 vials made their way into Bjorn’s bag of holding under Skarit’s advice. The runic said that since Bjorn was the one to come up with the idea he should be well prepared for the upcoming battle.
Finally on the eve of battle Skarit told Bjorn to go back to his tent and get a good night's rest before they left to fight. Taking Skarit up on his wisdom Bjorn made his way back to the tent, where he found all 4 of his companions sitting inside talking.
Over the last two days the camp was filled with two emotions, elation that this was finally going to come to an end, and fear for what the fight will hold. Both emotions ran high as the days passed. Each passing day one began to grow while the other slowly faded into the background. By the time he was walking through camp that last evening the sense of fear was almost palpable.
Not inside their tent though. The mood was jovial and the night was spent talking, joking, and stories. After several hours they settled down for the night.
The final fight had finally come
