The Two Worlds – Short Story One – The Cultists and Talia
She ran between the buildings, the alleyway twisting ahead of her, thoughts of The World Eater plagued her mind. “Who would aid the damned thing?!” She thought while chasing the last cultist down. A block further along the alley ran a man in a red robe that faded towards black halfway down, heart beating rapidly in his chest as he fled the assassin woman.
Feet pounding and echoing off brick and stone walls while piles of refuse lay strewn about, visible as she rushed past them. After a few more blocks of running the robed man tripped over his own feet, panting heavily. “You cultists are all so doughy, you should exercise more.” The woman stated as she caught up with a nasty grin on her face, breathing heavily but not from panic as the cultist was.
The cultist rolled over and crawled backwards placing his back against the nearest brick wall at a bend in the alley, panic stricken face and lungs on fire, a incapacitating pain in his side. “You’ll pah.. pay foh.. for this.. DO Yah… YOU Knah.. KNOW WHO I… AM?!” He shouts breathlessly at her. Her only response as she threw her dagger, activating the skill *Sure Strike* to ensure her accuracy, into his throat was “Another dead man croaking.”
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The next morning found our assassin at the Two Worlds Adventuring Guild to collect her bounties. The receptionist, finished with her previous client, looked up and called out “Talia! Everyone has been freaking out about the cultists, that was you wasn’t it?!”
Pulling out a pouch that squelched as she set it on the counter Talia states “Hey Alina, Yep! That was me, I’ve been chasing them down for weeks now, had to catch them mid gathering so they would all be robed up and together.”
“You’ll have to tell me about it sometime, I always look forward to hearing about your adventures.”
“Can do, over beer tonight?”
“Oh, yea! That sounds great. Is the bag for the bounties?” Alina responds.
“Yep, collected the ID mark on their index fingers.”
Alina accepted the bag from Talia and opened it, making a discomforted look at the decaying fingers in the bag. She then pulls out a rectangular magical device to read the ID mark of the bounties. Three of the twelve actually had bounties on them and two of the marks surprised the receptionist.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“No way… are you sure about this?” Alina asked warily.
“Yea.. Both of them were in on it. Magister Lancaster and Lady Nora Bolten both seemed to be leading the cultists.” Talia said dourly. “It’s going to cause such a commotion.”
“No kidding! Hopefully the fallout doesn’t blow back on you..”
“Thanks, definitely something I’m not at all worried about.” Talia replied sarcastically causing Alina to laugh lightly.
They continued chatting for a bit with Alina finishing the bounty process and paying Talia for the three bounties, it wasn’t a large sum of gold she was handed but it would keep her comfortable while she worked the next job.
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Late that afternoon they met up at the Apocalypse Tavern, it’s full name was “Next To The Apocalypse Tavern” but everyone shortened it to Apoc Tavern, the owner had a sense of humor about living so close to the wound. The tavern wasn’t anything fancy – tables, chairs, a bar and bar stools. There was that Dire Moose skull out front though, gave it a bit of a spooky atmosphere, oh the purple lights and light mist magic didn’t help fix the atmosphere either.
The two ladies met up at their regular table in a corner of the tavern, each having already ordered their favorite brews and settled in to discuss Talia’s latest completed job.
“It took me a few weeks to track them down, you know. I had to put a lot of leg work into this one considering the two high profile targets.” Talia stated.
“Oh! I bet, can you tell me much about it yet?” Alina replied.
“Nope! The paperwork and documents are all hush hush at the moment, Guild Master Rolands and Captain Stentson are looking through my work still. I might be able to talk about it when they are finished, but there’s a large amount of financial stuff in there.”
“Oh.. What can you talk about then? The fight maybe?”
“Yep! The fight was over pretty quickly, I don’t think any of them expected to be caught. None of them knew how to fight either.” Talia laughed out as she said this. “There I was, sneaking up on their hideout. It was an abandoned shop a little off of market street. I came up and they were trying to summon some monster! It looked like a cross between a dire wolf and an octopus, it was so weird. The monster was already half phased in so I had to move fast.”
“I started running towards the group and threw two daggers with *Sure Strike* then I activated *Blink* and appeared between two of them. I used a short sword and Betsy, and stabbed the both of them. I turned having taken out four of them before they knew what was going on.”
“Then I quickly retrieved my short sword and Betsy as two of them rushed me.”
“I managed to bring the short sword up quickly enough to block the firsts attack as I back pedaled a little, I got lucky when the second attacker tripped over the corpse of his ally.” Talia laughed, “I overpowered the cultists sword with my own, tossing it left and down and stabbed him with Betsy, which gave me enough time to jump the second attacker while he was standing up.”
“*Blink* came off cool down then and I activated it again, appearing behind two others who were fumbling backwards trying to draw their daggers and stabbed them both. Having just appeared on the other side of the room, two of the cultists had to turn around and run the other direction to get to me, but tripped over each other. Laughing I strode over and stabbed them both as they were trying to get back up. I threw another dagger at what turned out to be Lady Bolten with *Sure Strike* while the Magistrate decided it was time to run.”
“I chased him down, and” Talia starts laughing again “He did that thing… Where they ask if I knew who they were. As if him being some big important person allowed him the sin of summoning one of those things onto our world. Thankfully I had disrupted their summoning rite and it faded back out. You should have seen that thing Alina, it was hideous!”
“You cleaned them up quick…” Alina said, a little sadly.
“Yea.. They weren’t combatants. I don’t think a single one of them was even registered with the guild.”
As the sunlight started to fade the angry reds and purples of the wound could be seen in the sky. An endless aurora as The World Eater devoured their planet, an unknown time limit hanging above all their heads.
