Outsiders 15.2

The Axe of the Chosen, Part 2

Even days into traveling with him, List was having a very difficult time figuring out how she felt about Kaleb. Arden was a stick in the mud who admittedly usually knew what he was talking about. Valerie was her sister, and she would die for her. Xigbar was an arrogant, self-absorbed piece of garbage, and she was going to kill him as soon as it was socially acceptable.

But Kaleb. He wasn't outright friends with the self-absorbed piece of garbage, but he was allied with it. And in every fight they'd been in together, he'd either gotten in her way—or saved her life, typically by doing something jaw-droppingly impressive.

Then of course there was the fact that the boy was absolutely fit. Between the chisel jaw, tousled hair, and roguish little beard, his face alone was distracting, to say nothing of the muscles on his muscles and the fact that he clearly knew how to use them.

But then he'd start talking, and suddenly he went from a dark-eyed adonis to a wide-eyed puppy that had already been kicked several times and was now stuck with the permanent habit of apologizing for its existence. He was a hindrance, until he was a badass. He was gorgeous, until he was pathetic.

There hadn't been much else to think about besides her feelings on her traveling companions that day, since they were literally the only things in sight besides uneven terrain and rocks. According to their best attempts at navigation, sometime tonight, they would reach the forest that bordered the Allune River. From there, they just had to follow the river north until they finally reached the bridge that crossed into Trandore. But until then, it was just grass, and rocks, and hills, and the others.

List wasn't exactly the most aware of her surroundings at the best of times, but when she was bored, she could truly lose track of things. That was why she was more confused than anything else when Valerie paused and asked, "Did you feel that?"

Everyone stopped, and List cocked her head. "Feel what?"

When the ground exploded beneath their feet, Kaleb was already moving. 

The landshark that erupted out from the earth was twelve feet long, with a sharp, armored snout, rows of teeth, and claws like a badger's. Dirt and rock came up with it like a geyser, blinding and pummeling all of them. Kaleb collided with it an instant later, gripping its jaws to hold them open as his heels dug trenches into the ground.

For an instant, he held the monster in place, until it thrashed to the side, and its momentum and weight threw him to the ground. Its claws were already moving, raking down his upraised shield, and its jaws came down after.

Arden's club came in, already glowing with the golden image of a mace, and he knocked the landshark off of Kaleb with a thundering blow. It only staggered back, angrier than ever, but by then, the others had recovered as well. 

List's whip and Valerie's crossbolts tore wounds into its snout, and it let out a warbling wail of pain as it retreated—for half a step. Then it spun in place, slapping Arden with its tail before whirling back around to dive teeth first at him. By some miracle, Arden managed to encase his body in golden armor before it bit down. But that only meant that now the landshark had him in its jaws, and when it registered that the prey in its mouth was still alive, it began shaking its head violently, trying to tear a chunk off of the priest.

Kaleb had just pushed himself to his feet when he saw this, and rushed forward without a second thought. He reached the shark at the same time the tip of List's whip did, and there was a flash of pain across his arm. He was pretty sure someone—probably List—swore.

Kaleb gripped the landshark's head in a bear hug and dug in, forcing it to stillness. It thrashed, and it took everything he had to wrestle against it and stay upright. He wedged his hands in its jaws again and steadily began forcing them open. It didn't take much slack for Arden to be able to pry himself out of its jaws, at which point Kaleb could have let go.

But instead, he kept pushing the monster's jaws open, further, and further, and further, until with a crunch and tear, he separated its bottom jaw from the rest of its body. He tossed it aside before driving the point of his shield into the side of its head hard enough to crack its skull. The landshark crumpled to the ground with a reverberating thud, and after one last twitch of its tail, it went still.

Kaleb's first thought was to check on the others. Arden was still half lying, half sitting on the ground, holding one hand to his ribs as he spoke a healing prayer. There was the unpleasant grinding sound of bones unbreaking. Xigbar was completely untouched, but Valerie and List had dirt and a few scrapes from the landshark's initial ambush.

They were all staring at him—Valerie and Xigbar in surprise, Arden in quiet contemplation, and List in some amalgamation of rage, confusion, and something else he absolutely couldn't place.

Kaleb checked himself. His left sleeve, which didn't have a shield to protect it, had been shredded by the landshark's teeth, and there were some scratches on his skin and the surface of his shield, but truthfully the worst damage was a bleeding gash in his bicep, which he'd gotten from List, not the shark. He was fine.

"What?" Kaleb asked.

List let out a frustrated groan, leaving Kaleb confused and wondering what he'd done wrong.

Two hours later, the outsiders were making camp in the forest, roasting skewers of landshark over the fire. They'd been forgoing fire to avoid being spotted, but now with some decent tree cover, they could finally risk it, and not a day too soon. Their rations were running low, and while cooked landshark was delicious, raw landshark could very easily poison, and they weren't in a position where they wanted to waste Arden's power treating food poisoning.

They'd set up camp not far from the steep cliff of the river canyon, at the bottom of which flowed the Allune. Technically, if they wanted to brave the several hundred foot climb and ford the rapids of the water, then climb back up the other side, they could avoid the bridge crossing altogether. But they did have climbing gear, and only Xigbar and maybe Kaleb would have been justifiably confident in making the climb, let alone the crossing.

"I'm just saying, that thing could have taken your arm off," Valerie said to Kaleb.

"Forget the shark," List interrupted. "I could have taken your arm off."

"Sorry," Kaleb mumbled into his skewer.

"Well, at least you did something," List said, trying to soften her earlier harshness. The edge came back to her voice as she turned her sights on Xigbar. "Unlike some people."

"You guys had it handled," Xigbar said. "And what do you want me to do? Stick my arm down its mouth? Some of us actually have a sense of self-preservation."

"Our coordination in battle is lacking," Arden said. "We've certainly been in a few battles together now, but without any proper training or understanding, we aren't integrating each other into our tactics. At least, not all five of us."

"Okay, is everyone just gonna come at me tonight? Because if you are, I'm finding another tree stump," Xigbar snapped.

"I think he means that List, Arden and I are all used to fighting as a team, but not a team with you and Kaleb," Valerie said. "We go into every fight with two plans, and we get in each other's way."

"Honestly it's closer to three," Kaleb muttered. When everyone looked at him he shrugged. "Xigbar and I aren't really good at working together either."

"Traitor," Xigbar hissed.

"We're going to have to address this sooner rather than later. We will almost certainly encounter more violence before we reach Trandore," Arden said.

"I feel like you guys are blowing this out of proportion," Xigbar said. "We worked together well enough to bring down Glorg-glorg or whatever its name was, and take out that dragon statue, and fight our way out of that village. We're fine."

"Our standards should be slightly higher than 'fine,'" Arden said. "We've made reasonable time so far. Perhaps we should take tomorrow to train with each other."

"What happened to getting to Trandore as quickly as possible?" List asked.

"A day's delay will not make much difference in a weeks long journey. But it could make all the difference in combat," Arden said, and now it became clear the "perhaps" in his previous statement had not actually been a suggestion, but polite insistence. "First thing tomorrow, we'll see about building some cohesion. For now, the hour grows late. We should set a watch."

A hulking figure in black armor stalked the plains of the province, its boots leaving deep imprints in the ground with every thudding footstep. The figure’s armor clinked softly with its steps, as the scabbards and weapon harnesses strapped to it rattled.

It came to a stop a dozen paces from a massive hole in the ground, the sort left by a landshark when it tried to ambush its prey. The ground around the whole was gouged and torn up. A mess, and beyond the figure’s powers of deduction. But it was not alone.

An elfborn elite, small and stick thin next to the larger figure, stepped forward to examine the scene.

“Landshark attack. Doesn’t look like it got any of them—and they got it. It never made it back into the ground.”

The elfborn looked around, until he found what he was looking for, not far away.

“They dragged it off this way,” he said, rubbing a blood-crusted blade of grass between his thumb and forefinger. “Cleaned their tracks too well to leave a trail, but the shark would’ve been at least ten feet. If they wanted somewhere to carve it without being spotted, they’d go for the forest.”

The elfborn looked up. The sun was already setting, but the forest was only a few hours away. And thanks to their armor, they could all see in the dark.

He turned back to the hulking figure behind him.

Agnizzar, Axe of the Chosen, gave a single nod of his helmeted head, as his thick, armored tail lashed behind him in anticipation.

The outsiders would be dead before morning.