George Knows Best [Mud Wizard LitRPG]

Bob was the wind. Bob was the darkness. Pain was only a shadow on the edge of his mind. Anger, fear, vengeance, they were the Furies that ran behind him and whipped him forward. They were the evil faces in the night that haunted him as he rushed back towards home.

Too late, maybe.

The call. Loud and stark in the silence. Little George's call. The sign Bob had taught him. Two short blasts followed by a long drawn out whistle. How piercing and echoing it sounds in the night!

Was Ali fighting on the walls? Had the gate been taken? Had the enemy swept into the city like the horses of apocalypse and left only ruin? Ruin and devastation and the end of the world. Bob would find out. Bob would see. Bob would stop it—how do you stop what has already come to past? And what ever happened to Uruk in the storybooks? After their hero was swallowed under by the death he could not escape? Ruins in the desert. Lost to sand and time.

Sophie, where was Sophie? Safe in the underground bunker? Maybe. Maybe not. Why had he avoided her? And it might have been the last time. He had never even apologised. Maybe she was cut down in the streets. Maybe he would stumble upon her in the gutter. And it would be his fault. His alone. He, who had decided to lead away the city's two strongest fighters while they were surrounded by enemies. There were spies everywhere. He should have been smarter.

Bob streamed forward. He was the mud-dark knight. He controled Harry with his mind. Levitate himself forward with as much force and power as he could imagine. Bob darted through the night. Cutting through the rain. Hurtling over the empty grasslands. Too fast for thought or caution or regret.

There, on the horizon, towering over the hilltop, Uruk, the city of heroes, its dark mud walls and the unmistakable flicker of firelight. He was almost there. He picked up speed. Maybe, maybe, he would make it in time. He zoomed up the hilltop—he crashed down in front of the gate, rolling through the mud and leaping to his feet.

But there were no red flames. No siege. No bandit attack. Bob had seen only the bonfires at the gate. The hum of torchlight as sentries walked the wall. He sighed out, clutching his heart. "They're safe. All safe." That stupid boy had pranked him. Bob would give little George a piece of his mind. The boy wouldn't know what was coming for him.

And then the call came again. Desperate and pleading. And it wasn't coming from the city. It was coming from the grasslands.

"Oh no, Oh no."

Bob had promised. Bob had promised only this morning. He wrestled himself up. He scooped up George who'd been flung out of the makeshift backpack. Not yet. Hold on. I'm coming. He took flight. He honed in. The sound was close. Very close. Deafening in his ears. Maybe he would make me. Surely he would make it. And then the whistle cut short. Mid-breath.

"Oh no, Oh no."

Time and space stretched and bent. Bob didn't know what he was thinking or feeling, where he was, but somehow all the same he knew that he was too late. That he hadn't made it. That everything, everything had gone wrong. And then, all of sudden, he had arrived.

A battleground. His best company. The flower of Uruk's adventurers. And in their midst, a little twelve year old boy with golden hair and a red cord about his neck. Sir George. He was lying in the mud, face-down. The rain beating against the back of his head.

Stolen story; please report.

"Oh no, Oh no."

And he had promised. Only this morning he had promised. He had let it happen again. He had failed again. And he had tried so hard. Why does it always end this way? Is this the soul of the world?

The bandits hadn't even had time to flee. They hadn't even had time to grasp what was happening. One moment and a black shadow had burst into their midst. A shadow that unfolded into a dark-faced man and a dog glittering with golden fire.

The man walked over to the body of a little boy. The man turned him over. He cupped his head in the crook of his elbow and looked down into his face. The boy had blue eyes that made you think of the summer. He looked fine and brave. He was still. Quiet. Empty.

None of the bandits moved. It was too sudden. Too strange and terrifying. They didn't have words to express what they were seeing.

And then the dog pawed over to the little boy. He licked his face. The boy was dead. The dog licked his face again. The dog tilted his head. Why didn't the boy speak? Why didn't the boy greet the dog? The dog licked his face. And the cheek was grown cold and pale. The dog whined.

The dark, hooded man, gently, ever so gently, laid the boy back down into the mud. The rain beating over him. He closed those summer eyes. He folded one hand into the other. He cleared a little space about the body. What else was there to do? And then the man screwed up his eyes. Like he was trying to fight back some overwhelming agony. And there was blood all over his face. His nose a tattered mess. His cheeks scored with ugly gashes.

And then suddenly he was standing over them and glaring down at them. With eyes that said more forcefully and more terribly than any words ever could: death is not enough.

The bandits broke immediately. Every single one had felt those eyes on him. They scattered to the winds. Hoping, praying that he wouldn't find them. That he would hunt some other. That they might somehow escape into the wilderness. That death was a fairytale and it would never ever find them.

Two men suddenly dropped away into the darkness. Swallowed under by some invisible god. The very landscape had turned against them. God after all his centuries of silence had finally decided to stretch out his hand and punish the evil of the earth.

A pearly white missile crashed into another and he fell to the ground gurgling. Blood waterfalling out and mingling with the mud. Barely able to croak out a "help me," before fading into the darkness beyond the world.

The dark shadow batted around the field. Merciless, all-seeing. Vengeance given flesh and fangs. One moment you'd be scot-free, tripping away into what seemed like freedom and then he would appear behind you and jam a dagger through your throat and you would know that there was no freedom, that there was no safe place on the earth.

Their leader, a Rank-D lieutenant, managed to spin around just in time. Blocking away the hungry dagger. He was a hammer-swinging infighter. Tough, with a hardened shell ability and a grip-strength multiplier. He jerked forward and pincered around the shadow's neck. It was over. He squeezed and squeezed. But it had already dissolved away.

The enemy was behind him. The dagger bouncing back as the leader activated his harden ability. The hammer came hurtling around. But the enemy dodged easily, weaving among the strikes, managing vicious thrust after vicious thrust in the space between attacks. The leader was coughing out blood, fighting on borrowed time. There was no comparison. His chest a ravaged battleground of wounds, the leader toppled over and died.

Nobody escaped. The man could track them in the darkness. The ones who hid. Lying still and quiet in the tall grasses and wet mud. The ones who bolted. Dashing towards that invisible safety that always lies just beyond reach. The ones who fought. Rank-E, Rank-D nothing mattered. He was unstoppable. Flittering around the scene. Seeing everything. Wielding that awful white dagger that seemed to melt away the flesh it touched. Exuding a graceful, haunting close-combat mastery that didn't match up with anything they'd ever heard of him.

The whole company was shattered into the ground, slaughtered, massacred. They couldn't put a scratch on the man. It took five minutes. Five minutes of blood-frenzy, of murder and vengeance.

And when everything was silent. When death reigned over the night, the man came back to the boy and the dog who was sitting beside him, still whining and howling. Little George was dead. And it was Bob's fault. All Bob's fault.