Common Clay

By the time he’d gotten himself bandaged and purged of poisons, the noise of battle had died down in the woods beyond the ruins. If his friends had lived or died, he wouldn’t be able to help them now. Not by fighting, at least; he doubted a spiderling would have all that much trouble with him in his condition.

Battered and bleeding, Clay turned towards the Lair itself. The Guardians were dead; that meant the Curse inside would prepare to go dormant. If Olivia’s research was right, he’d only have a short time to try to destroy it completely. He might not know the [Chant], but perhaps there was some other way. Clay couldn’t waste the chance.

He limped towards the webbed tower, trying to ignore the agony seeping through his body. Clean Heart had hopefully cleared out any poisons lingering, but it didn’t heal the wounds, and he couldn’t be sure that it had been completely effective.

Clay made his way through the webs, using the survival knife that Adam had sold him to carve his way through the wire-like threads when they blocked the path. More and more, he suspected the webs had just been a kind of fence, meant to hem people in and prevent them from progressing too quickly. Then again, maybe there had been a deeper purpose that had vanished with the death of the Guardians. He could live without knowing.

It took a few minutes to push his way past the curtains of web to reach the doorway. Once, it had been covered by an elaborately carved wooden double door. Both sides had collapsed inwards, as if yanked from their hinges by something inside.

Clay paused at that entrance. Something about the darkness within was as threatening as the Guardians had been. Then he gritted his teeth and continued forward, using his spear as a crutch now as the pain worsened.

He felt a brief burst of terror as he looked up at the inside of the tower. Layers of webbing covered it in an obscene tapestry that covered every inch of the walls. Any wooden floors that had existed were now gone, allowing him to stare up into yet more layers of it stretched across the gaps. There were glistening batches of eggs within all the webs, already straining with the maturing occupants. Clay felt a bone-deep revulsion and nearly started the Flame-Tongued Song. Only a reminder of his true purpose kept him from trying to burn everything inside the tower to ash.

That reminder, however, redirected his attention to the center, where a bright light was shining. It almost reminded him of the glow from the Heart Light [Chant], but there was something…wrong about it. A stretch of web that had broken free drifted near it, and Clay’s eyes widened as the web seemed to twist slightly as it passed by. When it landed on the ground, the spidersilk was blackened and torn.

As Clay stepped closer, he noticed that none of the webs came anywhere near the center of the tower. Most didn’t even get near the floor, as if the spiders had been afraid of setting foot on it. Dust covered every square inch, and beneath that dust…

There were bones. Skeletons, human ones, that had somehow remained untouched by the thousands of monsters that had existed here for countless years.

Clay circled around the chamber, seeing more and more skeletons lying around that strange light. As he did, he noticed one skeleton that was nearly at the foot of the light. This one had remained propped up in a kneeling position, its arms outstretched toward the light as if preparing to embrace it.

The image made him shudder slightly, and he looked away from it. There were desks and bookshelves scattered around the room, though most of the volumes were nothing but ruined leather and rotted parchment now.

One place was an exception. It was some kind of stone altar, located just behind the kneeling figure. There was a book there, one that somehow seemed untouched by time. It glowed slightly, and he took a step towards it. His aches and pains faded as he approached it.

The writing was surprisingly legible, despite the dust he had to brush away from it. He read it with a growing sense of horror.

The fools of the Guild! They will understand my power. The strength of my Soul will amaze and astound them. The members of my Coven gather now; they provide all the power an [Occultist] could ask for. Now all that remains is to perform the Ritual, so that I may call down the greater Power promised me. The [Chant] is prepared, and my mind is ready. They claim only a [Paragon] may challenge the gods in this way, but I have surpassed such superstitions long ago. Let them curse me if they dare!

Clay looked back at the Curse, still hovering over the fallen skeletons. The thing hadn’t just happened; it had been called here.

Not just by a random person, either. An adventurer had done it.

The realization shook him for a moment, and he leaned heavily against the altar. Suddenly, Leonard’s worries about a Rogue made far more sense. If an adventurer could summon a Curse into being, that would mean that any of them could cause monsters to break through anywhere. Anywhere. If anything, the capital was in the most danger; the most powerful adventurers always gathered there, after all.

He shook his head. The [Occultist] had obviously thought themselves ready for the spell, but the skeletons scattered about told a different story. Especially the kneeling one. Something had gone wrong, and the Curse had killed them all. So how did he stop it?

Clay turned the pages of the book, feeling as if the parchment were staining his fingers just by touching it. There were more rantings on the other pages, interspersed with promises of revenge on other adventurers, likely long dead. He kept searching until his eyes fell on a page unlike the others.

The page was covered in writing, obviously written with much difficulty. He recognized it; the characters were the same ones he had seen in Olivia’s handwriting, the language of the [Chants]. Beneath the unfamiliar letters, the unknown writer had scrawled something in the same pronunciation-based shorthand that Olivia had used. Syllables sprang into his mind easily, and he shook his head as the words tried to implant themselves in his mind. There was no part of this book that he wanted to remember if he could help it.

Then he looked back at the light. The [Occultist] had mentioned a [Chant]. He looked back at the page, his fingers tracing the writing. If a [Chant] opened the door for a Curse…

It took some work to tear the book away from the altar; age and damp had nearly cemented the thing in place. Once he succeeded, he limped towards the light, his eyes tracing the characters. He started at the bottom and began to memorize them in reverse.

Unlike the first time, the words seemed to struggle against his attempts. He took that as a good sign and bore down stubbornly. The way his eyes kept trying to slide in the opposite direction wasn’t helping, but Clay hadn’t come this far to fail. Not when everyone was depending on him.

He didn’t know how long it took him, but he finally reached the end of the [Chant]. Then he started again, feeling the words settle more deeply into him. By the third time, he felt more confident about the order and the pattern.

When he looked up, something had shifted in the room. The light had withdrawn slightly, somehow wrapping itself in wisps of power that trailed from it. Clay gritted his teeth. It was trying to retreat, to go dormant. He would not let it.

Holding the book up before him, Clay began to read the [Chant] aloud. The words echoed in the space, muffled slightly by the layers of webbing that swathed the tower. By the time he’d finished the first line, the Curse flared, as if fighting back against the syllables that filled the air. A low growl seemed to pierce through him, and a wave of malice washed over him.

The [Chant] fell to pieces, and Clay was left shaking his head in a daze. Did the tower seem darker now? He tried to clear his head and started again.

This time, he made it past that first surge of ethereal hatred and continued. The Curse began to pulse with each syllable, the wisps of power lashing out like whips. One of them cracked across the kneeling skeleton, and the bones crumbled to dust. Clay ignored it, and kept going, fighting to keep the writhing pattern of the [Chant] stable.

He made it two-thirds of the way through before he nearly collapsed, the [Chant] beginning to falter on his tongue. How had the air grown so heavy? What was he doing? Someone else could finish this. He was a [Commoner]. Just a [Commoner]. Why should he try to be anything different?

A moment of despair flooded over him, nearly stilling his tongue.

Then he looked up and saw his friends standing at the entrance. They were battered and bloodied, but they were all alive. The light of the Curse made them pale, as if they were washed out versions of themselves. All of them were staring at him; some of their mouths were moving, but he couldn’t hear them. Enessa and Charles were both trying to step further in, but the others held them back.

At the sight of them trying to reach him, Clay turned back to the page. Stubborn determination filled him, and he fell back into the [Chant]. He was going to finish this, or die trying. His friends deserved the chance to have this be done. His family deserved to be safe, as did the village. As did Olivia.

He forced the syllables from the page into the air and saw the Curse pulse against them. Energy lashed the platform, pulverizing the ground and turning the scattered bones to dust. Clay felt the finish of the [Chant] approaching, the magic building within him like a fountain of power. With trembling limbs, he struggled to his feet, shouting the last line of arcane words like a warcry.

As the last searing syllable of the [Chant] filled the air, he felt the world freeze. The power of the Curse welled up in front of him, filling the tower with darkness as the light gathered around it. Clay grit his teeth against that feeling of wrongness, his every muscle straining against it.

Then the darkness suddenly snapped back and away, as if it had never existed. The Curse furled in on itself, as if gathering the strands of its power around itself for one last pulse—but instead, the strands simply fell into the center of it, the light growing fainter and fainter until it sputtered and vanished from view. No trace of it remained.

Clay fell forward, dropping the book on the ground to catch himself on one hand. He took one shuddering breath after another as his entire body felt like it was on fire. Shadows gathered at the edges of his eyes, but he kept breathing and they retreated. Eventually he managed to read the words in front of him, in the ethereal text of the [Gift].

{Curse of Tanglewood destroyed! Soul increases by 1000 for all nearby heroes}

{Commoner reaches Level 7!}

{Maximum level for all Stats is now 22!}

{Experience gained (Mentor: Gain 5% bonus to all skills when leading lower level heroes. Allied heroes gain 20% bonus to all skills.)}

{Experience gained (Unseen: Gain 20% to all attempts to hide. Gain 10% to all damage and skills while hiding.)}

{Commoner reaches Level 8!}

{Maximum level for all Stats is now 23!}

{Experience gained (Banisher: Gain permanent access to the Chant of Garden’s Peace. Gain 10% speed and effectiveness for all Chants.)}

{Experience gained (Seeker: Gain Ethereal Sense skill. Gain 10% bonus to all skills when hunting monsters.)}

{Experience Slayer has gained power from destroying a Curse! Experience is now Slayer II: Gain 20% bonus to all skills when hunting monsters.}

Stunned, Clay looked from that text to where his friends were still staring at him. They looked just as shocked as he felt, if not more.

Then he grinned. “Well, how about that?”

It was late afternoon when the riders arrived.

There were five of them, and they looked like they’d arrived right out of a storybook. Any one piece of their armor or weapons would have been worth five times what someone would have paid for his farm. Clay imagined that such mundane details were beneath their notice, but in many ways, that just made them more blind. By remaining so focused on power, they’d lost track of the little things that could so easily trip them up.

He set aside the hammer he’d been using to drive posts into the ground. It was a little more…effective than it was normally, but that wasn’t exactly something to complain about. It only caused problems when he hit the pole a little too hard and cracked it, but he was getting better lately, and the broken ones occasionally made good firewood.

Then he sat on one section of fence he’d already finished and waited for them to finish coming down the road. While he waited, he recited a few syllables to himself, and whispered a few more in response to what he’d heard. By the time they reached his farm, he was smiling at them, even though the one leading the group was a person he knew a little too well. “Sir Leonard! I see you’ve come back. With…well, I won’t call them your friends, out of a courtesy to them, but—”

Leonard’s expression was one of barely suppressed rage. “Clay Evergreen, you are charged with resisting the authority of the Adventurer’s Guild and defying the will of the Council. As a Rogue, you have no right to continue your actions, no matter your [Class] or your intentions. You are to accompany us back to the capital, where you will be tried and sentenced for your crimes.”

Clay grinned. “Is that so? Speaking of crimes, weren’t you specifically banned from Pellsglade? Something about being an unwelcome coward who nearly got a group of fellow adventurers and the baron’s son killed.”

One of the others, a woman in shining armor, spoke up evenly. “His status is irrelevant. Whether or not you resist, the baron will not know of our presence until long after we leave. You would do well to come peacefully.”

“Oh, the baron already knows.” He let the surprise settle in on them before he continued. “Used the [Chant] of Distant Whispers. Useful little thing, if you have the [Stats] for it.”

Then he folded his arms and gave them a more direct stare. “Not as helpful as the Garden’s Peace, but still nice to have. Under the right circumstances.”

A silence suddenly followed, one where much of the certainty drained from the riders’ posture. Leonard’s face showed open fear, but one of the others, a man with a long lance and a full helm, spoke next. “If you know that name, then you know why you are wanted by the Guild. We cannot permit your reckless behavior to cause worse…problems.”

Clay shrugged. “I have no intention of causing any problems. In fact, I solved at least one of them for you, just east of here.” He pointed into the Tanglewood. “Leonard there can’t really show you the way, since he never bothered to get close, but if you ride over the hill, you’ll see where it used to be.”

The woman spoke again. “Where what used to be?”

“The Lair.” Clay grinned at their expressions. “Don’t worry, it’s destroyed. All of it. The Curse, the books, everything. We burned it all to the ground. The only things left are a few more spiderlings hiding here and there, but I imagine they won’t trouble you much.”

A stocky man in dark armor with a warhammer on his back snorted. “No, I’ll bet not.” He looked around at his companions. “Do we believe him? Or do we finish this here?”

Clay rolled his eyes. “I might be a bit tougher to deal with than you expect. Besides, the baron was out with the others hunting the last of the spiderlings down, which means he’s not that far away from here. He’ll probably be riding after us with the others soon, so unless you’re going to add ‘killing a baron’ to your problems, maybe you should rethink your approach here.”

A robed woman at the back of the party had been murmuring something under her breath. When she stopped, she gasped in shock. Clay turned a grin on her. “The Orison told you something surprising, Syr?”

The helmed man glanced back at her. “Syr Elisa?”

“He’s a [Commoner]. Level eight.” Her voice faltered a little, and when she continued, she seemed mildly dazed. “He’s killed hundreds of monsters, and…he’s not lying about the Curse. He was there when it fell.”

Leonard broke in with an exasperated snarl. “You must be joking! There is no way a [Commoner] could ever manage to—”

“I’m not the one whose life he saved, Sir Leonard. And the Orison never lies.” She looked back at Clay, who shrugged. “It may be blocked or interrupted, but it is always accurate.”

Another silence fell. Clay watched them shifting on their horses and knew he’d probably pushed as far as he could with these people. They still likely outranked him by quite a bit; even if they were all Leonard’s level, he was just one man. [Defiant] and [Valiant] would not stretch things that far. So, unless he wanted to be dragged down the road by his heels, it was time to offer them a way out.

“You know, I understand your concerns. It’s not like I can deny the risks involved. That’s why I burnt the book with the [Chant] in it you know. Too risky to keep around.”

He had, too. As soon as the entire tower had been burning merrily, he’d thrown the book into the deepest part of the inferno and watched the pages crisp and blacken. Then he’d added a little fire of his own on top of it, making sure it was ash before the whole building had come down.

“At the same time, it’s not like I can forget the other one. The [Gift] literally burnt it into me. I can tell you I won’t ever, you know, turn it around, but it’s probably hard to trust someone you don’t know at all.”

The armored woman nodded slowly. “A tidy summary of the problem, Sir Clay.” Leonard’s head snapped around, but she ignored his astonished look. “Do you have a solution?”

Clay stretched. “How about instead of arresting me and getting into a fight about it, you decide you are just here to congratulate the village on their victory? You missed the feast, but I’m sure the rest of the village will still buy you a few drinks.” If there was any alcohol left to drink, of course. Given how everyone had been swimming in it the past three days, he actually kind of doubted it. “You can talk to people, check things out, and negotiate the fine the little weasel’s going to pay for trespassing.”

“By all the gods, I’m going to—”

“Silence, Sir Leonard.” The helmed man nodded slowly. “And then?”

“Then you say you’re going to escort me back to the capital to join the Guild. I attend the Academy, learn a few things that might have been left off the normal lectures, and march back out with your seal of approval. No more Rogue, and you can get to know me in the process.” He smiled. “Most importantly, I get to say my goodbyes to family and friends, and nobody has to kill each other when we could be fighting monsters instead. How does it sound?”

The stout man chuckled. “And if you turn out as we fear, young hero?”

“Then I’m sure you can arrange for something in the capital.” Clay grinned. “You’ll need to be pretty good, though. After what I’ve survived…well, let’s just say I’m not worried about it.”

Throwing his head back, the stout man laughed. “Sir Alfred, I say we take him up on it. If only because I’m going to love seeing how this turns out.”

Alfred, the helmed man, nodded. “I agree, though my concern is for the realm. Killing or capturing him seems like it would bring instability. Syr Elisa? Syr Verity?”

Elisa nodded. “He’s right. Better to deal with things out of prying eyes… one way or another.”

Verity shifted her shoulders in her armor. “I am uncomfortable with the idea of a simple peasant making demands of us.” Then she paused. “Then again, he is not quite so simple, is he? I agree.”

No one asked Leonard, a fact that left him muttering darkly. Clay just ignored him and gestured to the farmhouse. It didn’t look any more impressive, but it was all he had. For now. “If you want to rest yourselves, the baron and the others should be along shortly. Until then, I have a bit of work to take care of.”

Then he hopped down and went back to driving the fence posts. If he was going to be gone for long, it would need to be done before he turned things over to Olivia and his family. He trusted them to take care of the place, but he didn’t want to leave them too much to worry about.

After all, that wasn’t what a hero did, was it?