Chapter 2 An Explosive Visit #2
This soldier fell onto his back, gripping his foot in writhing pain.
Morfran hunkered down, half with curious anticipation, half with dread.
He’d only seen boomberry poison work once, and on a much smaller test subject.
The bushes were notoriously rare and really only grew in volcanic lands, notable due to their peridot-hued leaves.
It was sheer luck he found one down by the burbling stream.
Meanwhile, Jerry was starting to flop like a fish.
The men had halted in their spots, simultaneously realizing Jerry was in a seemingly demonic spasm and that there was something in the ground incapacitating people.
“Necromancy?” the largest man asked, eyes scanning the yard with growing panic.
“No, he hates that stuff, remember?” another man tried to reason. “This is just a trick. Our queen said he likes playing them. It’s just a trick and—”
And then the worst happened.
Jerry blew up.
Blew up might not be the right phrase for it, but Morfran didn’t know how else to put it. Spontaneously popped? Exploded in a horrendous manner? Either way, Jerry was now in several locations in the yard at once, and the horde of soldiers was in an outright panic.
“Don’t move!” the largest soldier began screaming, tossing all thought of stealth to the wind. Beside him, a soldier who’d been pelted in the forehead by a part of Jerry’s foot was lying prostrate on the ground. “Don’t move! He’s using some form of magic that’s fueled by spilled blood!”
Morfran sighed. There had once been a time that yes, he’d had magic.
Need a lightning storm to sweep over a group of enemy troops?
He could deliver, complete with a static charge that raised their hair in comical sights before electrocuting them.
Need shadows to spill dramatically around you while at a dinner party with difficult-to-impress friends?
His living shadows could smother the flames in the fireplace like two licked fingers pressed together and darken the room in dramatic fashion.
If anyone asked him (which no one did, as no one recognized the dirty goat farmer as their runaway Dark Lord), Morfran did miss it.
Magic was incredibly sparse in the kingdom, and he’d been proud to possess even just a tiny sliver of it.
But smashing his ring—which had contained said magic and also happened to be his wedding band—was a small price to pay if it meant Ravana couldn’t track him with hers.
As of now he had to rely on his savvy alone, and that meant noticing his surroundings: how countryfolk out here considered his cottage haunted, and as such, never visited.
The way couriers and traveling merchants approached his house across the grass from the main road instead of taking the stone path, a habit he sought to eliminate by throwing up KEEP OFF GRASS signs everywhere.
The fact that there was a legitimate boomberry bush by the burbling stream, which he’d stripped entirely of berries with leather gloves, then delicately transferred the berries to the barn where he ran his tests.
The large soldier was still screaming commands, but it was only when the second soldier blew up that the yard erupted into full-blown chaos.
Men fled back to the tree line as others stepped on more bolts Morfran had left studding the grass.
Then there were some screaming in horror at the detached appendages littering the area.
Someone’s head had landed in his chickpea garden; an arm dangled over a fence post; Jerry’s hand waved at them from a tree.
“What a waste,” Morfran muttered. Not just of soldiers, but of a yard that had taken him weeks to de-weed and spruce up.
Now it was just as gory and blood-soaked as any battlefield he’d fought on and sought to escape, and the burbling mountain stream was likely burbling red with their blood. A truly shameful waste.
Benjamin nudged his arm, a look of consternation (or not, she was just a goat) in her yellow-flecked eyes. You promised no more killing.
“They started this fight.” And as always, he’d ended it.
He’d once found his men admirable; they always sought out the biggest man in the room and looked to best him.
With Morfran’s help, they had. Now he was the biggest man in the room, and though they couldn’t kill him on their own, they had Ravana and her ruthless persistence.
He watched as the last of them scurried back towards the tree line as if they were an ant horde he’d just splashed water over. This would scar them, but they’d want revenge. Ravana would want revenge.
Which meant that if he stayed, the roots that he’d begun to plant here, the roots that were tiny and budding and promising, would be torn out by her. Maybe with just her bare hands. Maybe with a mace doused in something worse than boomberry elixir. Either way, he couldn’t be around to find out.
And if she did catch up to him, what would be left of him?
He’d already had to leave behind his horse, Skullthrasher.
His black monster of a steed was too distinguishable for them to travel together, and he’d had to tearfully part ways with her at Castle Atrago’s royal stables.
He’d accidentally broken his crossbow during a tussle in Shovstead between a barmaid and a mercenary, and he couldn’t fetch his bolts now, not with the soldiers still occupying the yard down below, and not with Benjamin and her two kids tethered to him.
His portable armory was dwindling, and now all he had was his sword.
His sword, his goats, and his wits. Those alone wouldn’t be enough to counter Ravana.
She had the swords of all his soldiers, her own magic, and no moral boundaries she wouldn’t cross to get what she wanted.
It was just his ill luck that the only thing she wanted was him.
“Come along, Benjamin,” he murmured, sheathing his sword. As he rose he shielded the kids’ eyes from the gore down below and quietly slipped away.