Make no mistake; the Lords of Salazar have earned their name.

We don't call them privateers or sailors, but pirates. There is a reason that our charter allows a captain to surrender peacefully to rival merchant houses, but demands they fight to the death when a Salazan vessel comes calling.

I grew up here, just as you boys and girls did, so I know the stories as well as any other. Red-Beard and his Handsome Hundred, sailing the 8 oceans looking for plunder and adventure. The Harlot-Queen and her Chain-Breakers, who bring damnation and liberation to the masters and slaves up and down the Ionic Coast. Even Grimmer the North has been given a romantic twist by some of the more enterprising bards in our dockside taverns.

I'm here to take those dreams and crush them under the weight of truth. There are no good men in Salazar. Not all will rape and pillage, but to rise up through the ranks of that shit-bitten country requires a cunning and ruthlessness that leaves no place for compassion. Each and every one of the sons-of-whores has killed more men and women than you can count, and the ones that haven't just ain't yet had the chance.

Weakness is no excuse – any one of them could flee through the Wandering States, take up with one of the settlements or rambling clans. If you surround yourself with killers, it don't matter if you pick up a blade yourself. You're one of them.

- Johannes Bitter, Retired Captain of the Rendition Fleet, giving a speech to graduating class of .165 of the Merchant Navy of House Inheritor

As my gaze moved from the hulking skeleton below my feet back up to the rock face above, Guerrilla Warfare prompted me, subtly drawing my eye to certain sections of the rock and allowing me to notice weaknesses and fault lines within it.

I marvelled at the complexity of the system in this world, supposedly setup by the gods in eras long passed. It baffled me. I knew, and had been told many enough times by Jorge, that the system relied on intent. I now wanted to use the rock itself as a weapon, and the system recognised that and decided that it fell within the purview of one of the simple Skills that made up my merged Guerrilla Warfare Skill. Therefore, the Skill would exert its influence and aid me.

I could only assume that the system had complete and total access to my thoughts, possibly my unconscious ones too, and likely knew more about me than I did. It certainly seemed to act on my thoughts exactly as I noticed them.

It also seemed to not only know my intent, but my ability too. Afterall, I seemed to only be noticing flaws that I could reasonably exploit. If I had invested an extra hundred attributes points into strength, I would be able to drive a fist into the solid rock and rip entire sections out with ease, just as the massive skeleton chasing me did. The fact that I discarded the solid sections, larger cracks, and other features far beyond my strength confirmed that I was at least partially correct.

The errant thoughts were nothing but distracting though, so I pushed them from my mind as I rested my eyes upon a small ledge, jutting precariously from the rock face above me and slightly to the right.

I said a silent apology to the slim, twisting tree that had taken root in the crack that the ledge jutted from, and fervently hoped that its roots were not any thicker than the finger-thin trunk. With a last glance at the skeletal colossus crashing its way up the cliff face towards me, I gripped the ledge and heaved with some of my strength. There was no use dislodging the skeleton if I was to fall with it, after all – no suicidal moves for me today, thank you very much.

The ledge slipped from its perch and my heart soared with triumph, only to gutter a moment later. There was a brief moment of hesitation, as the small tree clung on for dear life, grasping roots digging into the stone like flexing fingers. It was only a moment, however, and gravity would not be overturned by the puny efforts of a tiny tree. The ledge looked suspiciously like a paving slab as it fell from the wall, and I had only a moment to angle its fall.

A skilful nudge set it on a collision course with the skeleton below, and as gravity exerted its power over reality, the stone dropped like… well, like a stone. The skeleton didn't even look up as its doom descended towards it, and I revelled in the glorious sight of the large rock slamming into armoured bone. It hit an extended arm around the elbow joint, and its momentum sheared straight through. The skeleton flailed its other arm, attempting to shoot out towards the cliff face without success before plummeting down into the darkness of the ravine below.

All that remained was a single forearm dug into the rock up to its wrist joint. I watched in fascination as the arm continued to twitch and strain, no noise present except for the frantic sawing of my breath in and out. I counted thirty of them before the animating light faded alongside the system notification in my mind.

Skill 'Heart Of The Hills' has increased in level. Heart Of The Hills – Level 4.

I dismissed the delayed notification from my earlier efforts in mastering my mental Skill in the caverns below, and focused on the new ones.

You have killed an Unknown (Level 42). Experience gained.

Skill 'Guerrilla Warfare' has increased in level. Guerrilla Warfare – level 8

You have reached level 24. Attribute points available for allocation.

I turned back to the cliff with satisfaction, assuming the fall had destroyed the skeleton before a terrifying thought hit me. My knowledge of mathematics left much to be desired, but I ran some quick calculations. For something to fall for that long implied, what, ten thousand feet? That was a deep deep chasm indeed. The climb before me suddenly looked a lot more intimidating.

It made no sense, since a fall of thirty feet would be more than enough to kill me – anything beyond that was quite literally overkill and made no difference to the end result. For some reason though, the thought of ten thousand feet of dark abyss beneath me was unsettling in the extreme. Although I also couldn't deny a bizarre feeling of excitement at the thought of the unexplored depths. Just a hint, not enough to overpower the fear certainly, but it was there, nonetheless.

I invested my recent gains into agility, strength and endurance before I chanced a final look down at the now inert forearm sticking out from the chasm wall. I took a deep breath and considered again the climb before me.

Well, when you've got a task to do…

It took me only a couple of minutes to carefully scale the chasm wall, and before I knew it, I was exploding over the lip, shield held protectively in front before my feet had even hit the ground, arm cocked back and ready to strike or intercept a blow.

As it turned out, neither was necessary and I relaxed as I examined the open ground before me. The familiar red dust eddying across the hard-packed ground in the breeze, the howling call of the wind sharing its now familiar song once again.

Without an enemy in sight, I oriented myself towards the area we had set up our camp and started to jog back. Nathlan was still out there, and I needed to find him.

Half an hour of running and fighting was more tiring than it sounded.

Bones littered the land in my wake, and I'd received another two levels over that time, investing my gains fairly equally across my attributes, albeit still with a focus on strength. I wanted to end fights before they could really get going, and while I had no desire to become pigeon-holed into a single style of fighting just yet, I couldn't deny the confidence that strength granted. Check-Step had received another level up as well, but none of my other Skills increased.

As I drove a heavy rock into the skull of a final skeleton, ending its un-life and signalling the end of the skirmish, I finally heard a noise that had been obscured by my own struggle. The clashing of steel caught my ear, and I dashed off towards the sound. I'd tried my best to head back towards him after emerging from the chasm, but had been continually waylaid by dangers myself.

Now that he was within hearing, I began to catastrophise. It was an objectively good sign that I could still hear fighting – silence would have implied far worse, after all – but my stupid brain wasn't having any of that logic nonsense; it was busy playing out Nathlan's desperate last stand before I'd round the corner to see him go down beneath the blades of leering skeletons.

Rounding a stone pillar, I burst out behind three of the shambling bone monsters, two with atlatls and one with a few short javelins. I couldn't see what they were aiming at, but they were clearly loosing projectiles intermittently, and I'd seen no evidence to suggest the skeletons fought each other.

I increased my pace to a flat-out sprint, barrelling towards them from behind. The noise should have given them plenty of time to turn and face me, but these skeletons on the surface seemed to hover around the low twenties in level and were heavily strength-based, with other attributes mostly ignored as a consequence. Cloven-Hooved helped me prevent the thumping heavy strides that would make so much noise, and so I flew over the ground between us lightly. Combined with their obviously lower perception scores, and the speed granted to me by training, at least one movement focused Skill, and over thirty attribute points in strength, the javelin wielder had hardly managed to jerk around before I hit them all like a charging rhino.

The javelin in its hands went spinning out to the side, and with my momentum and weight behind my shield, it's ribcage practically disintegrated when we hit the floor. I rolled to my feet smoothly and turned to face the two remaining skeletons.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

The rock left my right hand like a dog slipping a leash, speeding towards the left-most skeleton with all the deadly power I could give my throw. I closed the distance to the second one, turtling behind my shield as I ran, and managed to avoid their attempt at turning me into a pincushion. Even so, the impact of the arrow reverberated through my arm and shoulder as it bounced off my shield.

And then I was face to face with a leering skull and eyes of blue-white fire. An arrow came at my face, and I latched onto the wrist that held it, pushing it down and past my side. Stepping in, I crouched and twisted my hips, planting a leg in front of the skeleton's leading foot. With a wrench, I threw the unholy creature over my shoulder while straightening at the waist.

Again, I had forgotten how light the animated creatures were, and rather than being thrown to the ground, it sailed through the air and crashed into the stone pillar opposite. I had no time to follow up though, and dove to my right, coming up from my dive in time to see the other creature, now sporting a nasty crack on its skull from my rock, pulling back its arm once again. I had nothing to throw this time to distract it, so I grit my teeth and ran straight towards the creature, hoping the pressure might throw its aim off a little.

In hindsight, assuming a re-animated skeleton would hesitate due to fear was a silly mistake, and my eyes widened as the arrow darted my way like a swift in a warm evening. I activated Check-Step, the process now so smooth it took barely half a heartbeat before the world slowed, and I juked to the side, ducking under the arrow by mere inches. It was a foregone conclusion by that point, and soon enough the blue-white glow lighting up the pillars of stone all around was fading from the world.

I weaved between a final few stone formations, staggering as I tried to calm my laboured breathing, to find that things were not quite as urgent as I'd imagined. Nathlan was positioned between three pillars, his presence such that they seemed to have been placed there just to hold him in. He flowed from one movement to another, in constant motion as he gracefully countered and parried blows from a score of skeletons clustered around him.

While surrounded, he was not locked down, and was able to slip between the creatures seemingly without a care in the world. His sword seemed to move in a blur to even my enhanced perception, but he seemed to only be countering attacks sent his way rather than going on the offensive himself. Every few breaths though, a bright light would envelop his blade and he'd cut out, severing a creature's head from its bony body.

I hadn't realised I'd been so entranced until a voice shocked me from my staring.

"Switch."

Jorge's call cut across the impromptu training ground, and after a few moment's delay, Nathlan's blade took on a darker hew, whispers of shadow emanating from its blackened edge. While the golden blade had parted bone like butter, where the ebony blade moved, skeletons dropped without visible damage. Each cut severed the strands of icy blue light binding the creatures together, and they immediately ceased functioning. It was devastatingly effective, but after only a half dozen attacks, the colour faded from the blade and steel once more shone in the grey afternoon light.

Nathlan was panting and seemed to slump slightly. I recognised the signs of mana exhaustion, but before I could even begin to worry about the remaining skeletons taking advantage of his winded state, Vera appeared before him, turning aside blades and blunt weapons with her own sword, and often enough her gauntleted hand and greaves. She didn't strike back either, simply giving Nathlan protection as he gathered himself for another effort.

Seeing all was in hand, I searched for Jorge, following the direction of the voice I'd heard moments before.

"What happened to your spear, Lamb?" Jorge asked as I ducked behind the pillar he was leaning against, looking so relaxed I expected him to pull out a pipe and start puffing away at it.

"Ah…" I began cautiously. "I chucked it at a skeleton."

Jorge quirked an eyebrow at me. "You threw away your main weapon in a fight, lad? Not very wise, that," he remarked.

"I wasn't completely defenceless," I replied. "I had my shield still, and I've been using this rock in the meantime!" I hefted my rock proudly. It was actually Smashy Rock Number 3, since I'd thrown Number 2 at a skeleton just moments before, but he didn't need to know that.

Jorge simply held my gaze for a few moments. "Did that seem like a good trade to you, lad? Your spear for a rock?"

I puffed up indignantly in response to the slight rebuke. "It wasn't intentional! I needed a distraction so I could have time to climb down without getting a stone to the skull. Besides, a spear isn't very useful against skeletons, is it? Running one through doesn't seem to pose much of a problem to the bony bastards."

I almost managed to persuade myself with the words. As the seconds ticked by and Jorge continued to stare silently at me with that vaguely disappointed look though, my indignation rapidly faded. Still silent, he summoned a plain infantry spear from his storage device, much like the one I had recently lost. He stepped out from the stone pillar and into the charge of an approaching skeleton and shoved the bladed tip straight through its ribcage.

"See? Useless!" I shouted, as he made my point for me expertly.

He slipped his head out of the way of a swing from the skeleton currently impaled on his spear without even looking, eyes still locked on mine. He then lifted the spear in one hand and slammed the end, skeleton still lodged on it, directly into the stone pillar. He repeated the motion a few times, alternating between the pillar and the ground, and never took his gaze off mine as bones crunched before he, almost delicately, shook the spear. The skeletal remains tumbled off the weapon, light fading from its eyes to leave nothing but a pile of bleached bones.

He made no move to speak, but I could see the rebuke clear in his gaze. Disappointment and exasperation shone in the set of his brows and curve of his mouth, and only after a solid few heartbeats did he sigh and let out a tired laugh.

"I can't figure you out, Lamb."

I cocked an eyebrow at him, and he continued, "You're either a flaming idiot who's so incredibly lucky it boggles the mind… or a smart, resourceful, and capable man who is so far out of his depth that it comes across as stupidity."

Jorge had an amused lilt in his voice, but there was an air of a genuine question beneath the gentle mocking that I felt I had to respond to honestly.

"Couldn't it be both?" I asked with a crooked smile.

The compassion that statement elicited on his face was unexpected, and I turned away at the surprising swell of emotion I felt within my chest at that. I was so alone, and while I wanted friends, what I really needed – desperately – was people I could trust. That the immediate reaction to my show of vulnerability was empathy went a long way to lowering my guard.

I didn't know how old The Shepard was, but considering the magic I'd seen so far alongside his title, I suspected there may be a significant difference between us in age. He looked not much past fifty, though powerful and full of vitality for that age, and yet he exuded such a calm and comforting aura that I'd began to look up to him and think of him as a mentor figure almost since the moment I met him. Given the state of things here though, it could just be another bloody aura Skill.

I shook my head and opted to deflect rather than confront that problem. "In my defence, I didn't know you could use a spear like that. You never showed off that move in one of our spars."

"Fair enough, lad. Did you want me to demonstrate now or later?" He asked in response.

I thought of the bladed tip of that spear lodging itself in my ribcage and winced, hurriedly adding, "No, no. That's fine, I get it. Excellent demonstration!"

He chuffed a laugh and threw the spear my way. "Don't lose this one so quickly."

I nodded as I caught it, and we both tuned to once again watch Nathlan reap a harvest of the skeletons.

"Did you find the ones who torched that caravan?" I asked.

"Aye, we found 'em."

His dark look told me all I needed to know about the fate of those mercenaries. "The real problem is that they won't be the last. No clue why they were out here, but they definitely recognised Vera. She didn't recognise 'em though, and she thinks the Academy must have gotten the memory stones out to let the young whippersnappers know who to look for."

He sighed and cocked his head to one side. "Can't for the life of me figure out the timing though. Why now? Why think it could even work? It's a fucking mess, honestly, Lamb."

I patted his shoulder in sympathy. "I'm assuming those questions are rhetorical, right?"

He chuckled tiredly. "Aye, may as well be. If I was waiting for a sensible answer from you to any question, I imagine we'd be out here all night."

He then held up a hand to forestall any questions from me. "I won't give you all the details – not my story to tell – but you deserve to know a little of why we're out here and what's going on. I'll summarise as best I can, but you know me."

"A senile old man that rambles around in circles whenever he tries to tell a tale?" I asked with a grin.

I saw him smile in response, but he kept his eyes on Nathlan, watching the way the man moved and fought and no doubt looking for minute flaws in technique that he could correct later.

"Anyhow, Vera's told you a little of her past, right?" At my nod he continued, "There's a bounty on her head as endless as the nine hells, and her death or capture is something of a political statement over in the Sunset Kingdoms. If one of the many competing polities and factions could bring her back in chains, they'd be able to leverage that into greater political power within the Kingdoms themselves.

"Duke Ryonic was a soldier – I think he might have even served with the Lions at one point – and he was the one Vera fought against. He's not a big player over there from what I know, but he controls the Western Marchlands – the gate into the Sunsets from the Riverlands to the east. More importantly, he hates Vera with a passion, as do all of the rulers over there, being honest. He's tried to have her assassinated a few times, but it's not an easy – or cheap – thing to do, and I'd thought his ambitions had mellowed with age. This recent attempt seems to suggest otherwise."

"But why is her capture or death so important? If it's been tried and failed a bunch of times already, how can throwing money and fighters at a problem and repeatedly failing be good for your political position?" I asked, confused about the mechanics of all this.

"You obviously haven't spent much time around nobles have you, Lad?" Jorge responded. "I won't pretend to understand all of it myself either, but the Kingdoms as a whole are surprisingly unified about certain things, despite their constant low-level conflict and politicking. To 'waste' money in pursuit of the Kingdoms' goals is seen as a perfectly good trait, whether the attempt is successful or not. There is also the consideration that by even making the attempt, the duke shows that he still considers Vera, and more importantly what she represents, to be a serious threat and is willing to spend his own coin to see it ended. It goes without saying that if he was able to succeed where everyone before him had failed, he would be heralded as a hero."

"Gods, they really must hate her over there. She didn't slaughter a whole bunch of innocents, did she?" I asked.

I was still watching Nathlan decimate his opponents with seemingly little effort, until he activated his Skills of course, which seemed to be fairly draining. He recovered quickly though, and Vera had less than no problem handling the low-levelled skeletons for him while he did so.

Jorge looked at me strangely for a moment. "Depends who you ask, I suppose."

I looked over at him sharply. I was once again reminded that while I instinctively wanted to trust this man, it could simply be an aura Skill influencing how I thought. Perhaps I was travelling with serial killers and murderers? Some of my uneasiness must have shown on my face as Jorge sighed and turned towards me, eyes boring into me with his implacable gaze.

"Lamb, I know you don't understand much of this world but know this; change comes at the edge of a blade. Vera was part of an attempt to change things and is perhaps the only true surviving part of that attempt. Look at her now – she's dressed for war, not poetry. She doesn't wield a sword for fun, or as an expression of the artistry of combat or anything fancy like that. Compare her movements and those of Nathlan – both incredible fighters but there's a difference in style there, in approach. I've known her for near on a decade now, and we've travelled together for many of those years. Talk to her yourself, find out what she did and why, and then make your judgement."

He turned back to watch the fight before shouting some feedback for Nathlan – something about his feet moving like an arthritic grandma – but I was wrapped up in my own thoughts so much that it hardly registered. Who were my companions really?

I still didn't even know who I was, being honest, but that wasn't something I could really uncover right now. I'd heard the expression somewhere that you are who you surround yourself with, and I needed to know who that was before I could decide who I wanted to be.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.