Chapter 5 - An old-forged soul (Rookie Games arc)

　　With a million and more questions on his mind, Cedric sat down some safe distance away from the ominous hunchback. As he did, the huntress looked at him with round, sad eyes. Streaks of yellow paint marred her rugged torso. The remnants of a makeshift caltrop clung to her right ankle—fragments of jagged metal, eight in total, bound together with strips of torn leather hide. There was little blood, for the caltrop was a work of some skill, designed to force submission without wanton violence. Still, the huntress` leg seemed swollen, presumably from ligament damage. Cedric had a passing knowledge of field medicine—he could help her if she seemed keen enough to obey. It would not hurt to start building his army as soon as now.

　　"What, you... like her?" the hunchback quipped, seeing Cedric`s enduring interest in their captive.

　　The huntress bristled at being made a fool of, her muscular frame tensing as if ready to spring into a brawl... but she, or her instinct, thought better of it—she was in no shape to put up a fight. With a derisive snort she turned away.

　　Cedric had a good mind to reprimand the hunchback, but he knew full well: he would only embarrass himself. And besides, the enigmatic bastard had already detached from the exchange, resuming his craftsmanship—peeling away at the splintered layers of wood he had salvaged from the huntress` spear. He had arrayed four large shafts around his calf, then tied them round with sinewy rope.

　　Witnessing this forced the prince to think and rethink. Here was a hatchling goblin with the wits to remedy his physical drawback, drawing the wood in a tight coil around his clubfoot. Like affixing a brace.

　　This was no ordinary goblin. As savage as he looked... the green bastard seemed to possess a serious intellect. Beyond the realm of mere beasts.

　　Here was something to respect. But not to trust.

　　The artisan—that`s what Cedric would call this hobbled greenskin from now. The ally thrust upon him by fate and the games, the rules he did not quite gather.

　　"For shield..." said the artisan, rousing the prince from his inwardness with an unsolicited offering. A piece of anchor rope, long enough to make a harness for the buckler that had been weighing him down. With a wary hand, Cedric accepted, keeping his eyes trained on the artisan`s bent frame. He would utter a token word of thanks were he able, but the princely dignity remaining in his reborn self prevented it—he could not speak without guttural embarrassment. And so a nod in acknowledgment was all the courtesy the prince could offer.

　　The artisan laughed. A big, roiling stomach-churning laugh.

　　"Pride... before and after the fall?" Hoisting himself upright, the artisan discarded his yellow dagger, standing unarmed before the former prince as he cast a knowing glance—a glance that bored straight through Cedric`s eyes and into his soul. It was an admission of greater knowledge. Not an invitation to conflict. So it seemed at least to Cedric as he struggled to retain his composure, some semblance of it. He felt naked despite the baggy brown overalls covering his form. Or powerless was perhaps a better word. Humiliated yet another.

　　An hour or less into his new life, and already his guise might have fallen. This shrewd artisan had some deep intimation of Cedric`s past life—he would not otherwise have committed to such a daring remark. But precisely how much had been laid bare... that remained uncertain.

　　Cedric relaxed or tried do, willed himself to be in the moment, in the world of bodies.

　　"Brace will do... not good but good enough," said the artisan then, as he turned away with a laborious grunt, exposing the bulging shape of his back to Cedric. "Strike me down if you want... a coward`s blow... or is that beneath you?" Swinging his brace-fastened foot forward, the artisan took a lurching step away, stomping down hard one measured pace towards the forest. Then another, an equidistant stride with his good leg. They were calculated steps—the artisan was counting, charting his path to some unknown destination.This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

　　Unknown to Cedric that is.

　　Clutching the yellow-tipped dagger in a tight grip, Cedric could confess he had considered it. Was considering it. Striking the man down. Ending the intrigue right then and there; no more guessing, no more games. It would only stand to reason: the former prince of Lothrian could not abide such an unpredictable element. This man—ah, there it was again... Cedric caught himself in the act: he had started to think of this out-of-place goblin as being something more. Not merely a rotten green animal. The flashes of culture and reason he had observed... it had got to him. Perhaps this one here was like him. A man once. Not some feral monster surging from the void.

　　It would be closer to sin than salvation, ending the artisan`s life now. And though Cedric`s hands were stained from a former life of bloodshed, these acts were born of order and justice—an instrument of the royal will he would have come to inherit. Had it not been for Landsbury. Had it not been for that oathbreaker Gendrin Honikom and the veiled darkmage.

　　No—he would not slay the artisan. Not yet at least. Not without cause beyond his own self-satisfaction, sheltering the secret of his shattered legacy. Cedric cast his dagger aside like the man had before him.

　　"... and ten!" Tipping forward at the waist, the artisan carefully lowered himself to the salty earth, fixing his weight on the knee of his good leg to ease the strain. He studied the packed sand, nodding to himself as he plunged a clawed hand into its depths, digging away with a zealot`s fervour. Sweat coalesced in thick beads on his brow—dripping, then pouring under the accumulated strain of his efforts.

　　For all the fickle alliances Cedric had endured, and for all the mistrust he had gathered for this shrewd man already... he could not merely stand and watch. Not as the artisan sat there engrossed in defenceless toil, digging his heart out for some untold reason... but it had better be a good one, Cedric thought as he approached.

　　Sinking to one knee, a gesture unbecoming to a prince of the reigning line, Cedric joined the man in wordless pursuit of whatever lay buried there.

　　Looking at the artisan up close, Cedric glimpsed his profound exhaustion, otherworldly almost—an ageless strife, momentarily waylaid by the strength of his conviction. Here sat a man of eroded virtue, a man of sin and saintly sorrow. Hollowed-out and righteous, self-righteous to a glorified excess—superlatives alone did this sovereign soul justice. Golden was his hue.

　　Cedric lurched back, astounded at his own skill in glancing beyond the earthly pale. Farsight—that is what the mystics of the East called it, or Soulgazing. Sinful is what the mages of the West judged it. A forbidden art since time immemorial, Cedric had never made the faintest inquiry into its lore, let alone its inner workings. There had been little cause. Like all Blackrose men, his latent insight into the forces of magic had been limited, and he had never learned to harness its might. His training as a warrior and defender of the realm had focused purely on defence against the arcane fury of enemy mages. After all, as a prince, he had but to accede to the throne—that was his birthright; that was his duty.

　　But now he was here, and he was himself and he was not. He had a new body he did not yet master, and a new mind, likewise foreign to the ingrained patterns of thought that had served him well as a prince. That had sheltered him from things beyond his reckoning.

　　"Look like... you`ve seen a ghost." The artisan leaned back in the sand, panting from exertion. He shot an appraising look at Cedric, to confirm what he already knew—the prince had seen far and deep into his true being.

　　There was a striking discordance to it all—here was this goblin infant who ought, by all that is right and good, to have been mewling like a newborn babe... but even now a worn essence clung to him. As if he carried the weight of ancient years within his diminutive frame. Settled in absent recline against the wet sand, the artisan had every bit the air of a high noble sitting a throne, like a steward for a vagrant king who...

　　Cedric grimaced, his thoughts grinding to a halt as a rhythmic throb pulsed through his fingertips—the sharp pain of impact. His hands had been working as well as his mind, digging in the artisan`s stead... and he had found it now, whatever the man had been looking for. Something solid and hard buried deep in the sand.

　　"Good," the artisan said, edging in close as he waved Cedric off. He pulled out a small wooden box, adorned with faded carvings and dulled metalwork.

　　"This here... gives us a fighting chance."