CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Blood Oaths With Swashbucklers
I wanted the Crimson Corsairs to roll out ASAP, but I’d forgotten that Red Beard was a stubborn bastard. According to him, “You never start negotiations on an empty mug,” which I knew was just an excuse to get us to drink with him while he shared an old war story or two with Liara.
“See, we’re knee-deep in blood and guts when out of nowhere this orc comes in from my blindside swinging a jagged ax right at my neck. Would have cut my head off too if this tiny little boy fresh from sucking on his mother’s tits”—he looked over to me and grinned—“you were like ten around then, weren’t you, Will?”
“Thirteen… and I wasn’t tiny,” I grumbled.
No, I didn’t mind him telling her this story because it was about me saving his life, thereby putting me in a good light. I did mind that he’d wasted nearly five minutes telling it though. But I knew better than to rush an OG Dragon Flail member. These people tended to move at their own pace.
“Thirteen?” He raised a thick red eyebrow at me. “But you were so tiny then?”
“Call me tiny again”—this time, I pulled out the hunting knife I kept hidden at the back of my belt—“and I’m sticking this where the sun doesn’t shine, old man.”
“Ha-ha-ha! Now that’s the Will Wisdom I know!” Red Beard wrapped me in a headlock. “Crazy little fucker with a pair of balls the size of a dragon’s crown jewels.”
He let me go quickly enough, took a swig of his golden chalice—apparently the size of one’s chalice mattered to adults like Dwalinn and Red Beard—and then went on to tell Liara how I’d barreled into him at just the right moment and saved his head from getting decapitated.
What Red Beard didn’t know was that I’d watched him lose his head in a previous run, and then I died too, which was how I managed to save him in time during my next regression.
“Believe it or not, Miss, that wasn’t the first time I owed Will my life, and it wouldn’t be the last.” He reached over and ruffled my hair which was a darker shade of red than his. “And I wasn’t the only one in the guild who this smug little shit saved too.”
“They had a running tally,” I boasted. “I think Lady Jane’s at the top of the list.”
“Lady Jane, the Countess of Swords?” Liara confirmed, her brow furrowing slightly. “You saved the life of number ten on today’s adventurer top hundred ranking list?”
I shrugged. “Three times.”
“That’s because Lady Jane’s fucking reckless. Worst tank in the realmsverse. Great with swords though,” Red Beard guffawed. “Although I’m not much of a fan of all her blade dancing… too much twirling around.”
He wasn’t wrong. Out of all Divah’s old mates, Lady Jane Warton was the first one in and the last one out of every adventure. I’d seen her die three times, and, luckily for Lady Jane, her deaths usually preceded my deaths, which is how I knew how to save her afterward.
“In the three years Will tagged along with us, I reckon he saved half of the OG dragon crew at least once,” Red Beard admitted.
He toasted to my health and then took another swig of his chalice.
Of course, Red Beard could laugh and joke about it, because he didn’t know how hard it had been for me. I had died and got reborn so many times in those first three years as Divah’s apprentice that one could argue my master was a shitty surrogate parent. Although I would never agree with them. It’s not like she dragged me into deadly encounters. I did that all on my own. And the only reason Divah allowed me to even tag along with her was that she knew my secret.
“Yours will be a difficult life, kiddo. My advice is to just embrace it,” she’d once told me. “Use your curse to make yourself stronger in a way most younglings won’t ever become. And then, maybe one day, you won’t have to ever die again.”
Five years later, I proved Divah right. I’d proven that in my first raid. I was stronger now in a way most of my peers will never learn to be, and soon enough, I would prove it in the rankings of the Academy. For now, though, I’d settle for a rematch with that blue-eyed man in the patchwork cloak, which is why I needed Red Beard to get off his ass already.
“Listen, big guy, we can reminisce—”
“We’d started calling him our little prophet by the time we parted ways,” Red Beard chuckled.
“Prophet…” Liara gave me a curious gaze. “Interesting.”
Vargr, I wished Red Beard hadn’t said that. It was hard enough dodging Liara’s questions about my foreknowledge. I didn’t need her thinking I had some kind of special power to see the future, even though I kind of did.
“Okay~~y, I think”—I reached over to pull his chalice away from him—“we’ve had enough story time.”
At this point, we had less than an hour to get back to camp and set up for the ambush I laid out in my text to Mistress Lorelai. Obviously, I assumed my dökkálfar instructor had finally quit trying to get in touch with me and Liara and was now focusing her efforts on the changes to camp that I’d recommended in my text. There was a good chance of this too as Mistress Lorelai didn’t strike me as someone who was too proud to ignore a warning from a semi-reliable source.
The fact that my status bar had stopped vibrating in my pocket—because I’d put it on silent mode—wasn’t a good sign though. It possibly meant that our dökkálfar instructor was done with threats, and I would get impaled by Gin or Kin as soon as I stepped foot in camp later.
I had other worries to occupy my mind though. Chief of which was how much time we had left.
“So, listen, I’ve got a proposition for your Crimson Corsairs that I think you’ll like,” I began.
I gave Red Beard the cliff notes version of my plan, and he wasted another minute thinking about whether it was a good plan or not.
“First, you give me back my drink.” He reached over and took his chalice back. “You never take a man’s drink, Will. That’s just not decent.”
“Um, it’s also not decent to make someone wait when there are lives on the line,” I countered.
Red Beard emptied his chalice in one long swig. He belched, apologized to Liara, and then gave me one final discerning look.
“So, you want the Crimson Corsairs to return to your camp with you and help destroy the horde of monsters that are coming to kill your little friends, but you can’t tell me how a monster horde can sneak into this region without anyone noticing or why they’re aiming for your camp specifically…” Red Beard got a refill of his drink from the tavern’s barmaid. “Fucking Hel, Will, you’ve had one of your visions again, haven’t you?”
I wanted to deny it. Especially with Liara looking intently at me. But there wasn’t any other word I could use to explain my ability without admitting to my curse. So, I just sighed, and asked, “Will you help us?”
Red Beard downed his drink one final time. Then he slapped his hand on the table and yelled, “Oi, Flint, how many Corsairs we got in town tonight?”
The busty blonde woman with a scar across her nose who’d been sitting in the bar behind us glanced over her shoulder. “About fifty mates, boss-man.”
Her gaze took in the crowd of adventurers who’d been gathered around Red Beard’s table while listening intently to his stories of a past life with Dragon Flail.
You are reading story Adventure Academy at novel35.com
“Give or take two to three shit-faced drunks who’ve already turned in for the night,” she added.
Red Beard glanced around our table. “You men and women ready for a fight?”
At his words, the catcalls and cheering began, proving once again that this rowdy bunch was exactly what I was looking for in reinforcements. You’d have to be a little insane to want to take on a horde of monsters, right?
“There you have it, Will… Fifty of the bravest drengr to walk this Earth are available… So, let’s talk payment.” Red Beard reached into his pocket and pulled out a small wooden box that was about half the size of his palm. “Now, I know that I owe you, but it wouldn’t be fair to my mates if they didn’t get paid for services rendered. And, well, I also know Lorelai Lindisfarne won’t pay a bill she didn’t ask for herself… I’m going to need you to settle this tab when we’re done.”
He slid the wooden box over to me, and I glanced down at it with a furrowed brow.
It was made of polished mahogany and painted a garish red. A red teardrop was emblazoned over the box like a crest, but it was more like a curse.
“That’s a blood phylactery, isn’t it?” Liara was frowning now too. Her gaze moved from the box to Red Beard who was gazing back at her with a somber look. “You want him to make a blood oath?”
Per realmsverse lore, the blood oaths were among the most sacred pledges an adventurer could trade because an oath made in one’s blood meant that whoever held their phylactery had the right to demand a single task from the oath-giver. One that couldn’t be forsworn because an oath breaker’s soul was damned to the Curse of the Wraith—never dying, but not truly living either, while forever being shunned by all the peoples of the realmsverse.
“Think long and hard, Wisdom… A blood phylactery isn’t a small thing,” Liara reminded me. “If you do this, you’ll bind your soul to the blood oath… and whatever they ask—”
“Won’t be any less dangerous than the task you’ve commissioned us to do, Miss,” Red Beard reminded her.
None of the adventurers gathered around us made a sound. They’d all gone silent in recognition of this grave thing their master had just asked of me.
“What choice do we have, Liara?” I opened the tiny wooden box and pressed my thumb to the needle within. “This is the only way…”
A drop of my blood fell down the needle which began to glow with the telltale signs of magic at work. With my oath given, I shut the blood phylactery and slid it over to Red Beard’s side of the table.
“You’re not going to ask me to commit mass murder or anything batshit crazy like that, right?” I asked.
I was confident that Red Beard hadn’t joined the dark side in the two years I hadn’t seen him, but one could never be too sure with adventurers. The things they experienced daily could quite easily change a man’s alignment and set him onto more chaotic paths.
“You know me better than that, Will.” Red Beard placed the wooden box back into his pocket. “That would be a waste of an oath made by Divah’s only apprentice. Isn’t that right, mates?”
Their cheers made me blush because I realized that it wasn’t just Red Beard’s idea. The Crimson Corsairs valued my oath just as much as a chest of silver sceattas. And, knowing Red Beard as well as I did, I figured he’d filled their heads with fanciful tales about how Divah’s apprentice had the gift of prophecy or some similar drivel that made me worth investing in—and they would be right in that belief. I kept my promises.
“Truth is I’ve got a map to something special at a place that any fool would be insane to visit without the kind of aid you could provide, Will,” Red Beard revealed.
‘Die for us as many times as it took to find the uber special buried treasure’ was basically what I was agreeing to. I didn’t mind it though as I was always willing to answer adventure’s song when she came calling.
“And if we can’t do that”—Red Beard shrugged—“you could just get Divah to cooperate with us on a quest of ours.”
“Um, let’s go with option one,” I pleaded. “Option two would be a sure death… Just saying.”
“He’s not going without me either,” Liara chimed in.
“Of course, you’re coming along, Miss.” Red Beard flashed Liara a wide grin. “Far be it for me to separate you two lovebirds from going on adventures together.”
This got us a lot of jeering and catcalls. Meanwhile, Liara and I looked away from each other while our cheeks flared crimson. On that embarrassing note, Red Beard finally sent his people out the door. Liara and I followed after them while avoiding each other’s gazes.
Out in the street, the Crimson Corsairs with their variety of mismatched armor looked more like a ragtag bunch of pirates than high-ranking adventurers. Their weapons gleamed with the telltale signs of enchantment, however, and there wasn’t a single nervous expression in the sea of faces around me.
It was an encouraging sight.
“We’ve got less than thirty minutes left,” Liara reminded me, prompting me to ask Red Beard about their transportation. “You guys have cars, right?”
Red Beard pointed up. “Who needs a car when we’ve got that.”
Liara and I looked up, and both our eyes widened at the sight of the thing that was floating on a stray cumulus cloud that seemed to be anchored right above the Wild Clover tavern.
“When did you get that?” I asked.
Sitting on that stray cumulus cloud was a two-hundred-meter ship with a hull made of a large-scale Yggdrasil hardened leaf and a keel of what I assumed was a wyvern’s spine as bones from an adult wyvern were known to have a strange weightless trait.
“Is it a twin mast frigate?” Liara asked.
“It’s got three masts, Miss,” Red Beard boasted. “With enough wind and cloud, we can get her going at around six-hundred miles per hour. That’ll be fast enough to get to your camp in ten minutes.”
“And I assume it’s battle-ready?” Liara guessed.
“The Red Pearl’s got a single gun deck with thirty rune cannons, fifteen to each side.” Red Beard gave Liara a curious look. “Are you an airship enthusiast, Miss?”
That was easy enough to deduce as Liara’s eyes were glittering while she gazed up at the Red Pearl.
“My mother was a crew member of the Jolly Roger,” Liara admitted suddenly. “I grew up on stories of realmsverse pirates, buried treasure, and sky battles that lit up the heavens…”
Wow, I did not expect that confession to come so soon. And, apparently, Liara wasn’t just the daughter of a racist cultist murderer. She was also a pirate’s kid. Well, in hindsight, she did mention having been to Neverland, which, from what I remembered of the old tales that the Pan story was based on, feature a pirate crew that sailed on an airship called the Jolly Roger.
“This will do, Wisdom.” Liara was sounding hopeful for the first time since she realized what we were up to. “This will do nicely.”