The wildman rounded the corner, his face a mask of vicious contempt. His sword and eyes gleamed in the torchlight, making him look all the more monstrous. Riley braced, grimacing behind his mask, as a horrid hooting shriek tore from the beast’s lungs.
He raced at Riley with his sword held overhead but Riley countered by summoning a burst of Swarm from his staff. A haze of mosquitoes, green and luminous, burst from the tip of his staff and sent a wave of pressure rolling through Riley’s body.
The wildman hissed and tried to recoil, his naked feet clipping and clopping along the dusty floor. But the swarm crossed the distance with impressive speed, coming at him in a two-pronged assault. And soon enough a fleet of them were sticking his arms and chest with their stinging needles, earning more shrieks from the creature as he slapped and clapped at them to little avail.
Yet Riley could only keep the spell going for a brief period, the stain on his muscles building until he was forced to stop. He reeled backward, his arm aching fiercely.
The swarm vanished seconds after the spell ended, taking with them the ominous hum that had been born from their wings. Blood seeped through a myriad of fresh wounds that had been opened along his arms and neck, but this had not been enough to slow or halt the wildman. If anything he glared at Riley with newfound baleful hatred burning in his eyes.
He sprang at Riley in a terrible burst of speed, his blade a blurring whirlwind. “Shit!” Riley hissed, reflexively raising his torch to block. Yet his attacker inched forward and swept his curved blade upward.
Pain, white hot, lanced up Riley’s arm. His torch clattered to the ground, casting misshapen shadows across the walls. His left hand went with it, and now there were continuous spurts of blood pulsing from the stump of his forearm. Riley howled into his mask and staggered away, while his attacker hooted and cackled. Blood dripped from the curve of his sword, steaming in the chilly interior of the catacomb.
“You son of a bitch,” Riley hissed, his eyes widening in his mask. That laughter... that mocking, sadistic laughter. Somehow it stung harder than the ferocious ache in what had once been his wrist. He aimed his staff again, the glint of Noxium putting an abrupt halt to that horrid laughter. Rage burned through the pain and fatigue he felt, and his magic blazed to life in his chest with newfound fury. “FUCK YOU!”
Flesh-Rend erupted from his staff like a shotgun blast, slamming into the swordsman as he tried to sweep in for another slash. He recoiled, howling in white hot agony, while blood blisters erupted along his exposed flesh. The wounds he got from the swarm enlarged and split apart, strands of skin and muscle tissue becoming unwound and pustule-filled.
Lumps formed around his throat, blacker than coal, and chunks of his face began to rapidly peel and rot. In the span of seconds he went fro an imposing killer, to a crumbling and diseased wreck.
Riley, still rife with rage, stepped forwad and seize on the advantage. His staff thrust forward, the sharpened tip driving into his throat. Blackened, crumbling flesh with the texture of pulled pork tore around the Noxium. The beastman landed with a thud, his sword clattering away, and he breathed his last in a shallow gasp as blood pooled from his obliterated throat.
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Riley shuddered in the firelight, the pain in his severed stump burning with a growing intensity. He dropped his staff and fumbled for his Lodeshard. It radiated a flash of white light, and his injuries swiftly mended shut. Then, to his shock, bone and flesh burst from his sliced wrist. A whole new hand assembled itself right before his eyes. A new glove even appeared in place of the bloodied, discarded one, and even his sleeve repaired itself.
“Whoa...” Riley mumbled. He huffed and shuddered, the phantom pain slowly eeking away. He stared at the Lodeshard, now dull and devoid of light. “The healing properties of this thing are way stronger than I thought.”
Catching his breath, he retrieved his torch, leaving his staff propped against a cobweb-coated wall as he lifted the discarded sword up to examine it. Upon closer inspection, to his confusion, it looked like two lengths of steel that had been woven together into a single arm-length blade.
Woven Grass Scimitar
A long blade wielded by the enigmatic wildman of the Pictish catacombs. Light and swift, it requires an exceptional amount of finesse to effectively wield.
In the land Chithay, across the Shadow Sea, there grows grass so long and sharp that it can hew through human flesh like paper. Properly treated and woven, the silvery strands can match any steel.
Riley stared in disbelief. This thing was made of grass?
“Are you well?” Arubis asked from somewhere in the darkness.
“I’m... I’m alright. Thank you.” He examined the stats of the sword. It had his shotel beat in damage and range, but it required 28 Nimbleness to wield. He pocketed it in his inventory, and then checked his Essence.
9500 in total. That swordsman had been worth a healthy bundle. He put an extra point in Nimbleness, giving himself 18 in total.
He stopped, seeing something glinting on the corpse’s finger. A silvery ring. He lifted it off the finger, far beyond the point of daring about robbing the dead, and inspected it.
Ring of the Cat
A strange silver ring, lifted from the corpse of a peculiar wildman. Boosts the Nimbleness of the wearer, and gives access to uncanny agility.
Words engraved on the inside of the band read as follows: ‘The Brotherhood of the Cat welcomes you.’
“Ominous.” He pulled his left glove off and slipped the ring on, regardless. The ring gave him a flat five points to Nimbleness. “Alright... that’s pretty good. But where’s the uncanny agility?”
He jumped, and was surprised by how light he felt. He did so again and again, and found his body moving with some of the swiftness he had seen from his attacker. An idea came to his mind as he thought back on their fight, the backflip he had seen.
On a whim, he leapt high and did the same. And, to his shock, he pulled the flip off cleanly in the air. The world tumbled briefly in his vision, yet he landed with perfect balance and felt no dizziness. A grin broke out across his face, and he found himself flipping back across the length of the room, springing his body off the floor whenever his palms touched them.
Gah! C-cease this! I’ll be ill!
Mequard’s exclamation made Riley skid to a halt. In the chaos of everything that had just happened, he had forgotten about the rat almot entirely. “Oh!” he laughed nervously “Sorry, Mesquard. I got carried away.”He cleared his throat, retrieving his staff and torch.
The rat groaned from inside Riley’s robe. I believe I shall refrain from your pocket going forward.
“Might be for the best...” But Riley couldn’t help but be excited. He’d barely been able to do a cartwheel in his old life. Now he was flipping around like a damn superhero. He could get used to that. And even if nothing else came from his time here, the ring was a fine boon to pull from the catacomb.
He pressed on, guided by torchlight, to the singing that still echoed from the heart of the catacomb.
