Brand-Bound: Hallowed Be The Menu [Rivals-to-Lovers Slowburn Fantasy Romance]

Searing pain cut through unconsciousness and a numbing, painkiller-induced haze. Calaf screamed out, only to find that his mouth was blocked by something. He bit down as the pain grew too intense, and discovered that he was biting down onto a hard, bone-like contraption. Soft cloth or fur lining prevented his teeth from cracking against the bone. Still, he heard a sound like a mallet coming down upon a long, flat scalpel, then another bout of pain scrambled all senses.

He could see only shrouded figures backlit by a glare streaming through a tent flap. There was a shadow stirring in the back. Pacing. Calaf focused on this silhouette through the pain and the confusion.

"Will he be alright?" asked the figure with a familiar feminine voice.

The strangers surrounding Calaf murmured something unintelligible.

"Drying it out and keeping it?! I don't care if it's useful, that wasn't part of the deal…"

Pain faded into a background constant, with no further sharp spikes to rouse Calaf from his delirious slumber.

The next thing Calaf knew, he awoke tied to a thick sleeping bunk made of dire-elk hide and fur.

"This is…" his entire left side felt numb.

Someone had tied him into this sack. He felt his limbs, albeit with a fuzzy and numb feeling in both hands.

The Menu… the Interface. A System, originally a demonic method of control. A magical shackle that bound, but also enhanced, those so affected. Being Branded altered the very way in which a person interacts with the world. Calaf called this Menu up now, hoping to get his bearings and confirm his status.

No such Menu appeared.

Menus emanated from the Brand, located on Calaf's left wrist. It was likely blocked by the sleeping sack he found himself in. Calaf struggled out, no small feat, as the ties were wound tight around his shoulders. He just barely got his right hand out of the sack to help when a figure burst through the tent flap.

"Hey," Jelena began. "Finally, you're awake."

The relic thief had her eyepatch off, revealing the clouded, defunct Brand on her bad eye. Heavy bags wrinkled the skin under her eyes, like she hadn't slept in some time.

"I've been with you for days," she added with a tired smile. "Just went out for a leak, sorry. Let's… get you out of that."

Jelena moved slowly, clearly tired. She untied the sack slowly.

"Now, let's take this slow. Don't do anything that will open a stitch…" She was even talking slowly.

Calaf groaned. "Let's just… get this over with."

With one last wriggle, he squeezed his left hand out of the furs, revealing a further cocoon of absorbent furs bound by sinewy threads. One-handed, he unwrapped the bandages to reveal a stitched-tight and jagged stump.

The Brand upon his wrist was gone, as was the entire wrist itself. Everything was amputated, nearly to the elbow. There would be no access to the Menu. He was, well and truly, Scoured.

Jelena gently reached over and took his good hand.

"It was… already too far damaged, infected, by the time we got here," she said. "Nothing would have saved the Brand."

"That's not…" Calaf exhaled. "… what worries me."

Before Jelena could ask if he was feeling strong enough to stand, Calaf rose from his bedding. He pulled himself clear of the bindings and walked out into a blindingly white, frigid environment.

Most of the nomads huddled in their tents when they did not actively have to be outside during the coldest hours of the day. Calaf had been relieved of his ruined remnant of armor and placed into warm furs common to this nomadic band.

Blinding ice carried on in all directions. Even overcast, the glare of the sun shined right into Calaf's eyes. Even Jelena held a hand over her good eye when she left the tent in pursuit.

Jelena wore fur coats over her more standard adventurer's gear. She shivered against the cold. It was 'midnight', though the sun was still the same constant brightness that it had been since they were sent here via a portal.

"Look, I've been in this situation before," Jelena said. "I'll… I'll help you, learn to interact with tools and the like without the Interface."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Digging, mining, and skinning a dire-fish. These were all Interface-compatible actions. By simply selecting the warm blue Menu that appeared, Branded could effortlessly perform many tasks essential to a medieval society. Scoured, everything would have to be done manually now.

The thought stirred something in Calaf. Not despair for a life without the labor-saving tools of the Menu, but determination.

A series of ice-digging utensils waited on a dire-whale bone shelf. Nobody came out to stop them, so Calaf awkwardly grabbed them all with his remaining hand. Tucked between his shoulder, he walked out into the ice.

"Might as well start now," he said with a frown.

Have to keep focused. Calaf got down on his knees and spread out the tools over the ice. Keep moving forward.

"We can…" Jelena shivered. "… do this when everyone else is awake."

"Eh, better start now." Calaf took a bone-carved ice pick in his offhand and rammed it into the ice.

This would have been an Interface action, he thought.

Still, Calaf kept digging, avoiding any use of the stump of his left hand, until he had a sliver of a hole plummeting down to the frigid, colder ocean.

Calaf's arm muscles ached. He could still feel an equivalent ache in his missing left hand. Like the fingers were still there, at risk of frostbite.

"There," Calaf said. "going to have to get used to this eventually."

Sharp winds burned the Paladin's fingers, even through thick gloves. Jelena took his remaining hand in both of hers.

"Come. They have a tent reserved for us. It's warm." Jelena kissed an exposed bit of skin on his right wrist. "You did well. You're a natural."

Tomorrow, he would have to learn how to fish.

"It's not manual labor I'm worried about," Calaf rasped. "The Brand… demonic slave shackle. It would've had to come off eventually. I'm not… knowing what we know. I'd never pass it on."

Jelena nodded understandingly. She rose, urging him to rise in turn, but Calaf remained kneeling.

"Can't hold a spear. Right hand's only half a dexterous. Will barely be able to hold a knife…"

Calaf grimaced. Day-to-day activities were one thing. Leveling under the Menu allowed for mortal humans to reach prodigious strength above and beyond what was possible with mere flesh and steel. For what they would have to do. Fight and best the Arbiters. Kill Bede. They would need all the power they could acquire.

"It'll be okay," Jelena said softly. "Come to bed. We'll have to dress your wounds. The village healer constructed a sleeve for you to place over the arm until the stitches heal."

Jelena helped him gather up the collection of tools and return them to the bone shelf. Then, she led him to their tent.

"Night" passed, though Calaf scarcely slept a wink. They'd been marooned on the ice for many days, but it was never dark.

Bede. Bede. Every bone in Calaf's body cried out for revenge. His tendons in his phantom hand clenched.

Every Branded in the realm would be looking to Archpope Breakspear and praying for his reign to be fortuitous and fruitful. Paladins would actively take up arms to defend the new archpope's honor. Defending the honor of someone who had none. Just the thought left Calaf's jaw clenched in a way that would not abate.

And with Bede Breakspear's ability to control the Menu, many perfectly honorable people might not have a choice but to fight and die to defend the new Archpope.

Jelena slept mostly out of exhaustion. Calaf did not. The vestigial pain in his ruined left hand only clarified his thoughts. Despite the cool arctic air sneaking through the tent flap, he was actively sweating beneath the furs. Scouring the Brand saved him from further Menu-based manipulation, at least. All he needed was to get the archpope into throttling range. So long as he still had one good hand for strangling…

I'm going to kill Bede.

They let Calaf's hand heal for a few more days, not that Jelena or Calaf still had a useful barometer of time anymore.

When the stump of Calaf's left hand had mostly healed, the pair went out onto the ice with the nomads to engage in ice fishing.

Calaf's practice served as a proof of concept. With Jelena's help, they dug a hole through ice twice as thick in half the time.

"Let me handle this." Jelena prepped a fishing line.

There was little in the way of ropes or threads to be had here in the north. The line was formed of animal sinew. The nomads used sinew from dire-walruses to acquire dire-fish. Which they in turn use as bait for more dire-walruses. Fish were useful, but the walrus or, especially, a dire-whale could feed the encampment through an entire winter.

Unlike the fishing poles of the church lands, these ice fishing poles were meant to dangle bait just below the water's surface. Down south, poles were made of wood and lines were designed to be retracted or reeled back once prey bit down. Here, a second fisher was to wait with a tusk-carved spear in hand.

A long-whiskered fish tentatively came to the surface. It nibbled furtively at first, dancing away. Then, a mouth opened up twice it usual size to swallow the bait whole.

Calaf reared the spear back and brought it down. His right hand was not his dominant hand—well, it was the only hand he had left now—but the spear wobbled only slightly as it thrust down and speared the fish through just below the gills. The dire-fish writhed, but the damage was done. Jelena helped the injured Paladin to haul their catch up.

"First time," Jelena said, triumphant.

The Menu would have information. Fish were seldom Branded, but the Interface could determine weight and size. Now they had to estimate.

"Enough for a meal." Jelena shrugged. "Let's try another."

They fished for hours. Calaf's offhand lunge cost them a catch or three, but by the session's end, they had a hefty haul of six fish. More than their fair share. The nomads called them 'Arctic Dire-Catfish.'

They traveled back home on another large sled, wide enough to comfortably fit the entire fishing party. Domesticated dire-hounds pulled the sled. It was the first time Calaf noticed this form of transportation, though Jelena claimed to have seen them before.

Back in camp, the crew stopped by the smoking and drying station. There, the fish would be preserved and stored. A chance look at a special shelf caused Calaf to find, by pure chance…

"Hey, that's my arm!"

Calaf handed the rod over to Jelena and marched over. His severed, shriveled hand was on a dedicated smoke-shelf!

"Brands are valuable, even severed," said a nomadic cook. "This will be useful should the holy child return or a new elder be appointed."

A blackened left hand, roughly half the size of Calaf's healthy hand, was held in place by four bone-hooks. There would be no reattaching it. Still, just seeing it there left Calaf looking queasy.

"What are you going to use it for?" Calaf tried pointing accusingly at the designated chief preserver, only to remember too late that his fingers were on the preserves rack.

"It's medicinal," said the chief-preserver.

Though Calaf wanted to argue some more and take the hand back, if only as a keepsake, Jelena dragged him back to their tent.