Revenant's Resolve Chapter 7

Reznik watched the north gate from the roof of the large, central concrete structure with a frown.

Even through the rainy haze, he could see the tension on the shoulders of the increased guard detail. Now, what had once been guarded by two was guarded by four. Two wore the hodge-podge black and dark brown “uniforms” of what Reznik now understood was the town guard. The other two wore the trim, well-kept uniforms of the river guard.

The patrols inside the town had also increased in number since the bandit attack three days ago. Now, Reznik counted six groups of three making their way to and fro under torchlight through the city streets, looking for any signs of disturbance.

‘Odd… from what I can tell, I’ve managed to slip by undetected so far.’ Reznik noted, his body shaking a drop of water from its brow. ‘Perhaps Sir Botezatu understands what I am from the reports, and is taking precautions.

‘Damn.’

Reznik felt almost sour at that connection, then remembered that were he in Sir Botezatu’s position, he would most likely be taking very similar steps to protect the townspeople from the Revenant in the woods.

‘Well. Time for us to be off, then.’ Reznik sighed internally and lamented that at least for tonight, he would not be exploring and eavesdropping on the town. ‘Back to our spot in the woods we go.’

Reznik’s body stood and darted over to the short parapet on the other side of the building, closer to the palisade wall. With a short hop, it jumped up onto, then off of the side of the building. Wind whistled through his ears for a moment that felt just an agonizing moment too long, then his body slammed into the ground with a roll.

It came up from the muddy ground and began to sprint before leaping up to the roof of a thatch home, finding the beam at the apex, and running along it. Reznik’s body leapt out and over the palisade before landing on the dark stretch of grass beyond.

* * *

Reznik’s body pulled, twisted, and then shoved the head of the bear against the side of a tree, and was rewarded with a disgusting crunching, snapping sound. The animal that was easily twice the size of him ceased struggling, stiffened, and then went slack.

‘See? This is what you get for sniffing around my bandit body.’ Reznik huffed at the dead animal that had become yet another source of food for him. ‘If you had just left as soon as you saw the pale, angry Revenant in front of you, you would have lived.’

Reznik’s body grabbed the bear by a tuft of fur and jerked it back. It fell with a loud flopping sound to the ground as it evacuated its bowels directly onto Reznik’s leg and foot.

‘Really wish it would rain. We could use a bath.’ Reznik’s body shook most of the bloody, liquidy stool off his leg. As his body looked back up to the trees and let out a wild, prideful howl at its kill, Reznik realized just how far they’d come from where the fight had started.

‘Goodness, that bear really hustled its way out of there as soon as we threw the first punch, didn’t it?’ Reznik thought as his body knelt down beside the animal. With a closed fist, it slammed down on the ribcage with a loud snap. The motion caused not only the breakage of bones within the animal, but also for Reznik’s hand to rip through the flesh and open a cavity that his body began to immediately pull pieces from.

Reznik’s head snapped up at a loud caw from the tree he’d killed the bear on. A solitary crow watched him from a low branch with its head rolled far to one side. It cawed again before its head turned the other direction.

‘Hello friend.’ Reznik thought at the bird even as his body let out a low, territorial growl at the corvid. The crow hopped to a slightly lower branch, leaned forward, and let out an aggressive, loud caw, as if responding to the sound Reznik’s body made. ‘No. Stop growling. If the little bird wants to have a snack, it can have a snack. By the time we’d actually be able to eat all this bear, it would be far past rotten. Leave the bird alone.’

Reznik’s body let out a discontented rumble, but eventually went back to ripping hunks of flesh from the abdominal cavity of the animal and consuming them. With another squawk, the bird hopped from the branch and fluttered to a landing on the bear’s head several feet away.

It flapped its wings once, cawed aggressively at him, and then jumped backwards to the bears snout as Reznik’s body pulled a large section of intestine free. The bird pecked at the bear’s eyeball, quietly glanced at Reznik, and then continued to peck before pulling a long, stringy piece of flesh free.

“Come on! I thought I heard the scream over here!” A male voice shouted through the trees behind Reznik.

Reznik’s head turned to look in the direction of the voice, as other voices responded to it, though significantly quieter.

‘Hide. We can leave the bear and hunt something else later,’ Reznik commanded his body, jerking at the mental chain that lashed them together. ‘Stop eating and go!’

Finally at that order, his body complied.

It darted up and leapt into the brush beyond as footsteps became audible, stomping through the underbrush behind him. Reznik’s body crouched low to the ground upon landing, and scuttled up behind a tree to poke its head out and watch the clearing beyond the thin hedge.

After a second, two men burst into the clearing, one being a river-guard, most likely from those patrolling the town. The other was clearly not a soldier, wearing a leather apron and holding a large sledge as he watched the ground ahead of them with wide eyes and a concerned brow.

Several seconds after the first two broke into the clearing, six more followed - some soldiers, some not.

“A… a bear?” one of the carpenters asked, lifting a long hatchet up to his shoulder and glancing around the clearing with a raised eyebrow. The man looked young, maybe in his early twenties at most.

“Might be the one Andrei was complaining about.” The older man with the sledgehammer replied, stepping forward to prod at what Reznik assumed was the bear on the ground. From Reznik’s hiding space, he had a very limited view of the clearing through a small hole in the hedgerow ahead of him. “Last I heard, he was actually considering putting a bounty out on it. It killed seven of his goats, to hear him tell it.”

“What killed the bear?” the river guard questioned quietly, almost to himself as he panned his rifle around the clearing, having not lowered it since arriving. The other river guards in the eight-man group also held their rifles aloft. The crow squawked from its new branch, apparently having moved at the same time Reznik did.

“Clearly it was little Kronid up there!” the young carpenter with the axe pointed at the bird above before a nervous chuckle came from most of the members of the group.

“Well, either way,” the river guard grunted and tapped the shoulder of the carpenter before nodding backwards. “That scream wasn’t a person, and I don’t want to be around when whatever killed this bear comes back. I’ll report it to Sir Botezatu, but this is a good reason to pick up the pace on the palisade.

“Well, a good reason beyond the obvious.”

The first of the river guards was the last man to leave the small clearing where Reznik had killed the bear. His eyes searched the hedgerows for a brief moment as he was alone, before turning and finally exiting.

Reznik waited in silence for a few more minutes before regretfully telling his body off of the bear corpse. If the river guard had, in fact gone to get his leadership to investigate the bear, or more likely, Reznik’s howl, then it was in Reznik’s best interest to make himself scarce.

Come on then, it’s time for us to leave…

Reznik’s body sniffed the air curiously once, then twice. Then, it took a step towards the corpse of the bear, rising from its crouch.

No. No bear. We leave, understand?

With a mournful groan, his body turned and began to trudge in the direction of the setting sun. Then it slumped its shoulders.

Drama queen.

When the night fell and Reznik felt like his body had been walking for several miles of dense, overgrown forest, Reznik noticed a flicker of orange light peeking distantly through the trees ahead of him. Near instantly as he set eyes on it, his body changed its stance and gait. Like a switch being thrown, his body hunched forward into a predatory stalk, slowly approaching the flickering light.

Odd.

There’s bandits about, right?

Or at least were before we helped the guard and saved the caravan.

But the rumors would still be wild, which means that these people either don’t know, or don’t have good intentions to be setting camp this far from the road.

Reznik began to detect voices on the edge of his hearing, eliciting a quiet growl from his body as he crept from tree to tree, ever closer.

Though… perhaps the opposite is true.

If you didn’t want bandits to find you while you slept, setting up a camp away from the road a ways could be in your best interest.

Though.

Where is the nearest road. We past one a ways back, but maybe there’s a junction or something nearby.

Been walking for a while, after all.

Deciding not to immediately command his body to leave, Reznik approached, curiously watching and listening.

As he got closer, he realized that the reason he couldn’t make out what was being said was because the people in the camp weren’t speaking his native language. Or even the bastardization of it that had emerged over the years, but was still close enough to be recognizable.

The language that was being spoken sounded equal parts harsh and flowing. As if two completely unrelated languages had been piled in on top of one another. Syllables felt like they intermingled and tripped over one another.

I wonder who they are…

As Reznik approached a gap in the trees, he laid eyes on the camp. Seven men stood, crouched, and sat around a campfire in midnight blue outfits that all looked identical. Pursing a pair of proverbial lips, as he had no actual control of his real ones, Reznik watched the odd group. Three were human.

The rest weren’t.

There was a large, green-skinned muscular man who looked to be all-too concerned with sharpening the edge of an axe, as well as two dark-skinned men with elongated pointy ears.

The last two were both Centaurs.

Reznik had never seen a centaur before.

However, he did remember hearing about them long ago in a time he couldn’t remember. Remembered the name, the general description of “horse-man-thing”.

While the Centaurs might not have worn pants, they did wear the same midnight-blue tops as the others in the encampment, with a small green and red insignia on their shoulder.

I wonder… can you squint at those patches for me?

His body didn’t reply, but did remain blessedly still and silent, watching what it was sure to believe was its prey.

Shame, but at least I can tell, given the weapons of these people, they clearly aren’t your everyday traveler.

And from their uniforms, they’re clearly not your run-of-the-mill bandits either.

They’re a cut above.

Maybe a parallel group to the riverguard? I remember Sir Botezatu referencing a king that rules over the land, perhaps they’re in his employ?

The thought felt decidedly wrong.

These men weren’t speaking the native language that had derived from Reznik’s own language all those years ago.

Their outfits were clearly uniforms of a type that Reznik couldn’t recognize.

Oh, if only I could talk. Or even control my legs.

Okay big guy, we should wait for them to leave, then take a look around their camp. See if they leave anything of note.

If they’re planning something bad for the town, then I can… well, I probably won’t be able to stop it, but you can have a snack and delay whatever they’re planning.

Reznik didn’t have to wait long, as the entire group save for one of the Elves left the encampment a short while later. From what little he understood of military operations, Reznik understood that they probably wouldn’t be gone long.

Or far.

They left their bags, bedrolls, and foodstuffs at camp.

Wherever they were going, they either needed to be extremely light, or quick. With a continual internal string of “no”’s at his body with the goal of holding it still, Reznik managed to remain behind the small clump of underbrush long enough that he felt confident the rest of the group wouldn’t return.

Or at least, wouldn’t return quick enough to stop him.

Still need to deal with the last one.

I wonder if I can just hit him hard enough to knock him out.

Reznik immediately quashed that idea as he felt his head tilt in an oddly threatening way, like his body was responding to the prospect of violence with enthusiastic glee.

No… that wouldn’t end well. I don’t have enough control to do that.

This is a one or the other question, here.

I either kill him, or leave.

Reznik halted on that thought for a moment, a sense of desperate curiosity overwhelming him. It’d been so long since he’d had the opportunity to truly think, be presented with a real puzzle to pick through.

Usually, his questioning was rudely interrupted by a shriek, a howl, and then immediate carnage.

Now he felt almost spoiled by choice. The mysterious Elven telepath who’d eluded his search. The Baron in the town. The bandits, and now… whoever this lot was.

Despite his desire to know more, to understand how the world operated outside of the wasteland full of undead, he now had the ability to stop his body dead in its tracks. The ability to say no.

If he killed someone that didn’t deserve it, he was culpable.

He wouldn’t be able to wash that stain free with an “oh, sorry, I wasn’t in control” anymore.

Ah, I remember how much having morals sucked, now.

No, I should sit, watch, and leave before dawn.

The remaining man at camp sat down on an upturned log and grabbed a nearby rucksack. After setting it on his lap, he reached in and pulled out a brown-paper wrapped object, and then a small wooden box before setting the bag aside.

Opening the wooden box, Reznik watched as the man pulled out a long piece of string that he could smell even from thirty meters away. It smelled like death, and made his stomach gurgle.

What?

I… that’s a necklace of… ears? I think those are ears. That’s what the smell is.

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out another two ears that he began to thread onto the string with a quiet hum.

Okay… the world’s gone to shit, but a necklace of ears usually doesn’t bode well for someone’s moral compass.

To be fair, we eat people so…

Can I really throw stones?

Well, fuck it.

Alright body, let’s see how you feel about this.

Run into the camp doing the whole howl thing, if he runs we let him go.

If he doesn’t, we chomp down.

Reznik’s body crouched slightly lower to the ground before leaping forward at a dead sprint, heading straight for the man. As was its habit, his body let out a screeching, raspy howl that pierced the night air like a veritable warning siren.

Reznik burst through the trees around the camp as the man, still affixing the ear to the necklace leapt back, springing off the small log that served as his chair with wild, fearful eyes.

“F-fuck wh-“ the man got out before stumbling backwards over a root, letting out a startled shout a fraction of a second before his head slammed home into a rock.

Like the sound of something being slammed against an empty crate, the Elf’s head made a small, hollow thwack and crunch as it struck the corner of a large steamer trunk.

Well. That was anticlimactic.

Reznik’s body slowed as the man fell, but didn’t stop, instead taking the opportunity while Reznik was distracted with the rather slapstick death and agonal breathing of the man to dodge around the fire before leaping on the mostly-dead Elf.

Nonono, wai- ugh.

Fine, whatever.

He’s dead anyway.

I think.

As Reznik’s body slammed a fist down into the Elf’s face, Reznik decided to momentarily check out. To let his body do its thing and wait until it began ripping bits off to chow down on.

At least then he could use the opportunity to look around the camp, even if he couldn’t direct his body to pick anything up or investigate things.

Hopefully the other’s don’t return before I get a good look around at things.

All I can see is squashed red paste and swinging hands.