Witness (2)

“Ow…”

We’d fallen a few feet after the carriage magically disappeared and found ourselves on a forest floor. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to push off from the base of the carriage as it was disappearing, so I managed not to crush Annabelle. It didn’t make landing any less painful, but at least I was the only one injured. I’m gonna fucking rip these off the moment I get a chance, this stupid armour.

As I was struggling with pain, meanwhile, Annabelle had gotten up without a hitch. She surveyed her surroundings, and, quickly concluding we weren’t in any immediate danger, turned her attention to me. She panicked a little bit as she stood there watching me writhe on the floor like a confused sperm cell, but quickly calmed down once I stood up.

The noises of fighting were significantly more distant than earlier. Perhaps Soren and the girl were taking the fight away from us? Whatever the case, we were now surrounded by a thick, hilly forest instead of flat plains. Golden shafts of light poked through a canopy of towering oaks and birches, and a soft glow lingered over the bed of ferns and tangled undergrowth we stood on. My attention was drawn to one side where I could see the incline of a steeper cliff beyond a few trees, and at the base of it, the carcasses of two horses… as well as the unclear status of our stagecoach driver. Given we’d survived the fall, it wouldn’t be surprising if he did as well.

Annabelle and I sprinted over to investigate. Every step we took was punctuated with crunching wood. Finding her staff near the carnage, she quickly picked it up and casted something to heal the man—if not for the fact I’d interrupted her.

“Don’t waste your important spells.”

“But—”

“At least let me check if he’s alive first.”

It wasn’t looking good. His face was completely drenched in blood, and there was a streak of red indicating the path he and the animals took—probably cracked his skull on the way down, like a worse version of my injury. He wasn’t visually breathing either. Just to make sure, I put two fingers around his neck, and pressed slightly. He was warm to the touch.

Dead.

I picked up a hand that was still tightly clenching the ropes of his horses and pressed on his wrist.

Dead.

“Yeah, there’s no point.”

“A-are you sure? How can you tell?”

“He has no heartbeat.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if biology wasn’t a concept in this world, and Annabelle seemed confused. But seeing as I was right about the rubble, and I had told her about being a “doctor” before, she quickly put her faith in my diagnosis.

Suddenly, my voice choked. “God… fucking damnit…”

This guy is dead. He was clearly screaming on the way down. And his hands are clenched so tightly they’re charred… You can see hints of bone where the fat completely burned off.

I’d studied cadavers probably in the double-digits in my life, and briefly shadowed a trauma surgeon before I went off the deep end. And obviously, I’d seen my fair share of horrors both in real life and over the screen. But seeing it in person with a completely normal mental state, fully alert, and with this level of brutality… it felt different.

Annabelle put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay, Primot. It’s not your fault.”

“I know… but still… ah, whatever.”

I turned away from her and gathered my thoughts on what happened. Highcrest was in a mountainous region. That’s obvious in hindsight given its name, but it wasn’t in retrospect since I couldn’t see out of the carriage. We’d gotten attacked early in our journey, and our carriage barreled down the hillside and into this forest. There wasn’t any crash site to inspect since the evidence was all magically safekept, but we didn’t have time anyway, and I doubted that it’d reveal anything much. The key points to investigate would’ve been at the top of the hill. In addition to that, the sounds of fighting got softer as we ran here, so it was clear Soren went the opposite direction—either chasing our enemies, or the pair had decided to flee.

It was enough to work with. Just enough.

“We should catch up to Soren and the girl,” I said.

“Agreed,” replied Annabelle. “But… maybe it’s not a good idea to go after them? It’s lucky enough that you survived, and you aren’t—”

“No, they owe us an explanation.” I cut her off before she could point out I was a liability. This whole exercise was to change that. “Besides, we’re in a forest now. I wouldn’t doubt our ability to survive here, but navigating out of it quickly could be annoying. Our best bet is to follow them.”

“...Right. Mhm. Okay, I trust you.”

She obviously wasn’t fully on board, but if there was one thing I’d learned about Annabelle so far, it was that she was incredibly loyal. Within seconds, she’d willingly accepted my explanation, and eventually convinced herself it was what she wanted as well.

“Let’s get them, Primot.”

After conjuring a new set of robes, she took out her holy book and passed it to me.

“What for?”

“For you to look at the spells I have. I’ve cast them enough, I don’t need to look at them in a fight, but maybe…”

“Don’t need to,” I said, handing it back over. “I’ve got all of it memorised.”

“...Alright. What’s the strategy, then?”

I considered our circumstances. We needed to catch up to Soren, so we wanted to summon something that we could ride—but also keep some of Annabelle’s quanta in her back pocket just in case we needed to respond quickly to something with a spell. Floating, as people called it in the TCG. Spells were a one-time cost, but summoning creatures required a turn by turn quanta upkeep, and my training with Annabelle informed me this was still the case. In other words, we didn’t want to dump everything into a single summon. Although the full extent of how quanta worked was still a mystery to me, it still roughly followed the rules of the game, so these were the two cards I was considering in my mind:

First option: [Cockatrice].

Cockatrice
1 Life Quanta
Creature — Bird
2/2

Transport.

This was just a massive flightless bird. According to Annabelle, any villager who saw this and was ignorant of magic would allegedly scream in terror. Ergo, it was probably gigantic enough for the both of us to ride, and she could cast an emergency [Primal Infusion] or [Thornbolt] things as necessary. Option two was [Razor Hound].

Razor Hound
3 Life Quanta
Creature — Druidic Spirit
4/4

Barbed Thorns — When taking damage from any source, Retaliate 2. Fleetfoot.

This was an Advanced or 3-cost summon, so it’d require Annabelle to use her pendulum. She’d also basically be as useless as me and unable to cast spells, since her limit was roughly 2 Quanta, and we’d be relying entirely on the idea that stats in the card game and this world translated accurately. For reference, [Paladin Soren] was a 3/4 — 3 Attack, 4 Life. But I sincerely doubted this was the case… partly due to my bias, partly due to intuition. The idea of a creature Annabelle could summon being stronger than Soren was just silly.

Actually, now that I think about it, I have no idea how strong Annabelle is. Is she a prodigy, average, or behind the curve..? If she was really at Apprentice level—the equivalent of being unranked—was taking her into a fight really the correct play?

I discarded that thought. I’d already told myself I wouldn’t run anymore. While [Razor Hound] would’ve been the faster of the two given its Fleetfoot keyword alluding to some sort of immense speed, I opted to be conservative in the end.

“Cook up a Cockatrice, and let’s go. Tell it to follow the loud noises.”

“Right… Okay.”

By the way, did I mention Annabelle could talk with animals yet?