The Small Village in My World

I think the worst part about my trip up and around the top of the continent was the lack of a straight path. I constantly had to dip and dive around passing patrolling military vessels, fishing vessels and the occasional shark. It meant that I never got to take in my surroundings, and my poor familiars were gripping onto me for dear life. Overall, it wasn't the worst experience, but I would love to come back here to take in the sights. Running into a fishing vessel wouldn't be the worst—unless they were secretly some sort of divinity wielding crazy priest. Even then there was a good chance they would just ignore me, with the death of the priest there was no real way for me to practice the daemonic arts (unless I was crazy enough to try it on myself which The Voice seemed to imply was what a smart person would do). While my plans seemed to be chaotic evil at the very least, I didn't want to look the part of a disfigured chaos spawn terrorizing innocents, I mean c'mon that is what my minions are for right?... but I digress.

The point was that I didn't have to be too careful, but I was technically on the border and there were constant military patrols and running into them would be a little complicated. I wasn't technically doing anything wrong but to be frank I was suspicious as hell and just avoiding the problem in its totality seemed to be the smarter play.

The only way I was able to do this was to use my sense mana and sense water abilities, but being in the ocean pretty much negated the latter and the former was a lot harder seeing as I had to differ between the mana in the atmosphere and the mana held within people. While it was true not everyone had the aptitude to control their mana everyone had mana within them in some form or fashion. It's like living in a house made of wet paint, no matter how hard you try some paint is going to get on you. It was the same with mana, it was all around us, so no matter how hard we try we would intake some into ourselves. The difference between this mana and the mana outside was very minute, much more minute than the water outside and inside our bodies, so my sense mana ability drained me greatly.

The point was by the time I reached the northern tip of the continent I was dog tired. I had planned on staying on the water until I reached the far end of the East coast and settled in there, but I would probably die of exhaustion first.

Instead, I decided to make my camp here at the northern tip of the continent.

The holy continent was a massive one, so big in fact that I had only seen a map of the whole continent once when I went to the capital city with father when I was little. It was so long ago that I only remembered that I had seen it—I didn't even remember what it looked like. The land was massive, and I figured that there was probably a lot of abandoned/animal infested land in between villages. I planned to clear out a little land outside the village and "spirit away" some fewer savory folks in town to do some testing.

I planned to try and learn and grow my daemonic powers, ideally I would stay as far away from anything remotely damning such as that, but seeing as I had a ticking time bomb in my head that spoke to me from time to time, I decided to all in this whole daemonic thing and hope that it wouldn't come back to bite me in the ass.

To do this I needed "live" participants for my studies. Death was something everyone feared and I recognized that my participants would most likely not be willing, and while I didn't empathize with it, I imagined when I met my end I would also have the same look of terror on my face. What I'm trying to say is while I recognized what I was doing wasn't "right" I knew that if they were in my position they would gut me out of necessity—so while I would try not to enjoy the work, work was work and must be done.

I basically flew into the shore and careened into the woods directly behind it. I hadn't slowed down as apparently the dock for the patrol vessels was nearby as I could sense four to five paladins in two different boats coming from either side of me. They didn't seem to be chasing as they moved at a reasonable steady pace straight ahead. I relaxed, but not for much.

Dusting myself off and checking to make sure my familiars were alright I extended my sense mana and sense water to its maximum trying to find the nearest settlement. About twenty miles in front of me (which was the range of for my abilities at this time) there was a road that seemed to be between two cities that passed through this forest as there was a steady line of people heading either which way. About ten miles directly to my right was a smaller settlement. It seemed extremely small, half the size of my hometown, with this tiny village being made up of some twenty odd shacks. I couldn't tell how many people lived there from this range and it was entirely possible that there were a little more or a little less shack then I had sensed. That village seemed to be extremely damp for some reason. I decided to make my way over to check out the village and see if it would be possible to scout it out for potential "volunteers".

Something I had noticed ever since The Voice had entered my life, I had become more and more impulsive. Not planning out my actions but instead just going with "the flow". I had never been a big planner before, so it wasn't that much of a difference but the thought of me doing something impulsive and dying for it still existed. Pushing these thoughts out of my mind I started making my way towards the village on foot.

The woods were dark and dank, it seemed that there was a permanent wetness to the air, like no matter how dry or hot it became everything here would remain wet. Something of concern for me was that this forest was brimming with mana—while this meant that meditating here would be more effective it also meant that I wouldn't be able to use sense mana as effectively. On top of that the air here was so wet when I used my sense water -everything- was water so it was basically useless. It was like looking for a solar flare on the sun, your eyes would burn up before you saw anything.

I was moving blind and it was slightly uncomfortable. If I moved outside of the forest, I could see past it just fine, it seems that the village was just on the outside of the forest but seeing in it was just simply too bright. It unnerved me and I moved at a snail's pace trying to be as stealthy as possible. I could hear animals moving about and calling out around me but either they feared me or deemed me not worthy of their time because they simply avoided me. It was a vexing feeling, but I simply ignored it and pushed forwards.

Frankly while I wasn't from the city, I basically was a city kid compared to where I was at right now. I lived in a big fishing town that had well maintained roads and when I went out (which was rare in of itself) I just took them and rarely ventured off the "beaten path".

That led to my direct confrontation with a group of hunters from…somewhere? They had simply emerged from my surroundings, five of them pointing spears at me in a semi-circle with the front being covered by the sixth, apparently their leader with a sword sheathed at his waist.

"Halt! Who are you? Why are you in this forest you should know it is cursed!"

This apparent leader is the leader of this group, but he seems to be following someone else's orders, a military man. They are too organized for village guards especially for one all the way out here in the sticks. Something is fishy here, and I seemed to have stepped in provable dog shit. Curse my ass!

Looking at the guards surrounding me their army was dirty, but not chipped or even had that many scratches on them, instead it was muddy iron army, like they had told the finest craftsmen to make a matching set of iron armor and throw it into the mud. Their spears are the same way too, and not only one of them had a crossbow and bolts attached to his back and the rest had swords at their waists. They were way too kitted out to be nobodies and it would take a noble's wealth to kit them out…

[Shit… you're kidding me right]

<…What you're thinking is probably right what are you going to do about it?>

Every couple of decades a couple of northern nobles would get too big for their britches and declare an open rebellion, and they would get absolutely destroyed when the empire would inevitably send their private death army of templars to quash the rebellion.

This seemed a little bit different as they were even better kitted out then the conveys of certain priests I had seen passing through town. This meant that this time it was probably more serious than normal. This made me angry, very angry. Not because I was a staunch supporter of the empire but for the direct opposite reason. I was going to take down the empire from the shadows and I didn't want some two-bit noble from some backwater fiefdom claiming credit for it! It was like starting a video game only to come back for your incompetent neighbor to have finished the rest of the game for you.

Thank me later your holy scum, I'm going to end a rebellion for you. Thank me later.

Snapping my fingers, the six guards around me simply fall to the ground like the strings controlling them have been cut.

"What did you do to them?!"

The "leader's" eyes widen, and he draws his sword and starts to back away from me slowly.

I start to smile and walk towards him menacingly trying my hardest to look intimidating.

"Now you are going to tell me everything you know rebel"

A loud scream rang out through the forest as I reach out to catch my prey…