TBE Chapter 63
Ezekiel could see that Robert told their friends a lot of things but he was doubtful that his young brother could convey to his equally young friends the seriousness of the danger of the haunted mansion. He was proud of his brothers for doing all they could to make sure their friends were safe.
He could see from Robert and Luke’s friends’ behavior that they didn’t believe Ezekiel’s brothers but in the end, the only thing his brothers could do was to give out all their toys to their playmates. He noticed that they gave everything, including all of the books, their crayons, and even their backpacks. When his brothers finally said goodbye Ezekiel was amused and touched to see that all the kids including his brothers were crying.
It had only been a couple of days but they were able to form a good relationship with other children. This situation alleviated Ezekiel’s concern somewhat that his brothers might develop twisted personalities due to them being isolated in Eagle Village. This also proved that his brothers had what it took to befriend people their age and the only reason why they did not have any friends in their previous village was the outright discrimination the Eagle villagers did towards them because of their parents. This made Ezekiel hate that village even more.
Robert and Luke climbed the cart while still sobbing. Their snot-filled faces made Ezekiel laugh but he quickly hid his face to not offend his brothers. After a couple of hours on the road, he told something important to his brothers.
“Robert, Luke, prepare yourself. We might be attacked tonight or even earlier. I earned a lot of coins in the village and some people noted that down and would probably try to rob us.”
Ezekiel didn’t tell his brothers that his reasoning came from the glint in the innkeeper’s eyes when they left the inn. It was also understandable that some people would try to rob them since they were three very young boys and looked defenseless and they had coins.
Yuki Onna was patrolling the surrounding area since Ezekiel wanted to make sure that he would be aware if somebody followed them from the village. He also made sure to command his Familiar to circle the area with the cart as the center since there was a chance that any followers might take a different route.
“Are you going to kill them using your magic?” Robert asked.
“It might come to that since I’m sure that for the gold in our hands, they will not spare us either.”
Ezekiel stopped the cart by the side of the road when lunchtime arrived so they could eat and after that, they continued.
At around four in the afternoon, he was about to find a location where they could camp for the night when Yuki Onna sent him a message that four people arrived in the owl’s vicinity. They were riding horses and through the Familiar’s eyes, Ezekiel was sad to note that one of them was John, the stableman.
He thought that the stableman was just one of your average inn’s workers but now there he was, one of the people who would probably kill children for gold. The innkeeper’s bandits would probably arrive in ten minutes so Ezekiel used that time to cast 4 Tiny Servant Spells on 4 of the butcher knives that he purchased before and uses in the Haunted Mansion.
Ezekiel then commanded Tiny Servants butcher knives to lie down inside the cart and would only attack once the possible robbers attacked. He then prepared the spells that he would use against the attackers.
At first, he thought of using mild spells like the Sleep Spell or Minor Illusion but decided that he would be cruel since if the four men truly decided to attack children, that meant that they were very cruel themselves and deserved to be killed.
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Ezekiel parked the cart by the side of the road to wait for the arrival of the men and Yuki Onna flew near them and hid behind one of the trees nearby ready to attack. He then went down the cart but told his brother to remain in the driver’s seat. He walked towards the back of the cart and waited there.
Soon, they saw the four men riding fast horses in the distance. The four men stopped when they saw Ezekiel standing by his cart by the side of the road. He then heard John the stableman telling his companions, “There’s the kid! Kill them! He’s got a lot of coins!”.
Ezekiel felt sad for a moment then buried that emotion and decided to act first. When the four men were near enough, he cast the Sleep spell on one of them so he would only have three remaining targets. The one affected by the Sleep spell fell from his horse which surprised the other three causing them to stop their horses. He then commanded Yuki Onna to attack one of the men and the four butcher knives awakened by the Tiny Servant spells sprang up and attacked the remaining two men.
He decided not to cast the Magic Missile spells even though he knew that it was the most effective way to kill the bandits but he wanted to know the capability of his familiar and the butcher knives that were moving because of the Tiny Servant spell. He also wanted to diversify his spell casting because becoming a one-trick pony when it came to spell casting could be dangerous for him in the long run.
From the information that he found on the internet, Wizard’s familiar supposedly can’t attack then he read further that it would depend on the animals they were based on and it would also sacrifice an action. Normally, he wouldn’t bother trying to find ways for a familiar to attack when he was playing Dungeons and Dragons tabletop games since there were other more effective ways to attack enemies but in real life, in that specific situation, he thought that it would be nice to test the capability of his actual owl familiar.
Ezekiel was highly surprised when he saw Yuki Onna attacking the scalp of one of the robbers. He guessed that it was truly different in real life since Yuki Onna was a large bird of prey capable of attacking and it was doing so right now. Another point in his favor was since the enemies were regular folks, the damage of his owl which was supposed to be minimal was considerably large against regular folks. Not only that, both the Familiar and the Butcher Knives were safe since the Familiar couldn’t die and the butcher knives were things that were given temporary lives.
It didn’t take very long before Ezekiel’s minions killed off the bandits since when the man that was attacked by the knives was killed, they attacked the others immediately, and finally, they killed the one who fell asleep due to his spell who was about to wake up.
The knives and Yuki Onna’s attacks were gruesome and he asked Robert and Luke to turn their eyes away but unfortunately, the kids didn’t look away and observed what was happening carefully.
Ezekiel knew that this was a different world with different ideologies and he should accept the fact that he and his brothers needed to get used to the grim side of this reality but he felt a twinge in his consciousness regarding allowing his brothers to see the violent side of this world as young as they were.
He didn’t know what was more violent and gruesome, exploding the heads of his enemies using the Magic Missile spell or allowing the Butcher Knives Tiny Servants, and Yuki Onna to wound the enemies until they were all dead. Regardless of which was more violent, the fact was, that the men were now dead.
Ezekiel asked the tiny servants to check the men and they didn’t find anything, even coins. At first, he was expecting to see some sort of letter like someone commanding them to kill off the children but there was nothing like that. There was even a chance that the villagers turned bandits were illiterate.
He then commanded the butcher knives to gather the men in one place so he could place them on top of a Tenser’s Floating Disk and the knives went to work immediately. Ezekiel then called Yuki Onna and cleaned it using his Prestidigitation spell. After that, the Familiar flew up to patrol the area to make sure that Ezekiel and his brothers were safe.
Ezekiel was glad that it was easy for him to swap out the spells that he wanted to use in his spell slots since now, it was filled with the spells that he would use to clean the area. The first thing that he did was use the Tiny Servant spells on three of the shovels that he purchased before then he brought the corpses that were on top of Tenser’s Floating Disk inside the forest and commanded the shovels Tiny Servants to dig a hole on the ground that would fit all four of the bandits and soon there was a grave deep enough.
He then dispelled the Disk on top of the grave causing the corpses to tumble down the hole then he commanded the shovels to fill it up with soil. After that, Ezekiel returned to the scene of the crime and cleaned all the traces of the battle using his Prestidigitation spell.