George Knows Best [Mud Wizard LitRPG]

Achievement: Toxic

Relationships are hard.

Suffer a lethal poisonous backstabbing twice,
in the same evening, from the same person

Effects:

Major resistance against all poisons

Sharp increase to natural mana corrosiveness

Romantically Cursed

Sophie was fallen on the ground before Bob's feet. Helpless before him. In his power. At his mercy. To live or die at his whim. At his pleasure. Powerless.

She was shaking, trembling, as she looked up at him, as she begged, as she held up her hands to ward away the sword-fall. Like we can ever protect ourselves against the inevitable. She appealed, she entreated, she pleaded. He had promised her forgiveness. Yes, so he had. So he had. But that was before. And now was now. And now was not before.

She had tried and failed again. He still breathed. He still walked. He could still cut her down. The poison was resisted, the dagger thrust immaterial. The dagger wasn't even mana signed. He was hardly injured. Just as strong and dangerous as before.

What should he do with her?

There was the question that hung heavy between them like their doom. The two of them, alone together in the night. The young witch fallen into the hands of the mud tyrant. And the night tells no secrets.

The knife was warm in Bob's hand. Warm and sticky with his blood. He had to do it. He had to. He kept telling himself that. She would never trust him again. There was no going back. Things would never be as they once had been. The before, oh, the great before, that illusion which poisons all our presents.

She would always be afraid of him, always jumping at shadows, looking round corners, plotting and scheming, hating him for reminding her of herself. And she was clever. And she was resourceful. And she had no scruples and her powers were insidious and frightening. She could make a man murder his own brother. The beautiful blade. A dangerous enemy. He had to do it. Now, while he still could, before the flush of anger, the heartbreak of a second betrayal trickled away.

Bob gazed down at her. And there was no warmth in those eyes. They were not the eyes she had known. Those half-amused, half-floundering, those I'm-trying-my-best-and-the-world-just-has-it-out-for-me eyes. The eyes she had liked. The eyes she had trusted once. No, those, there, were hard eyes, eyes that had seen death, murder, betrayal. The eyes of one who walks ahead and faces the wind and the cold and the great, awful unknown.

He will it do, she said to herself. He will actually do it, she couldn't help herself. She was afraid. Afraid of the hooded man, with the sharp bloody dagger. Afraid of old Bob.

Bob stepped closer. She flinched. He was remembering that he had killed a little girl just like this. His breath rattled out as he tried to sigh away the regrets that weighed down his shoulders. A monster. He was a monster. But monsters aren't born, they're shaped. The world had shaped Bob. He hadn't wanted this. And yet that would be no comfort at all when next Bob lay down to sleep. May all his dreams be nightmares. Bob raised the knife.

"Sophie... Sophie, that's not fair. That's not fair at all. Change back. Please. Change back."

Bob choked up. He was sobbing. He couldn't see straight. He blinked and blinked again and the vision didn't change. Because there, under the knife, was little George. A boy with frightened eyes, cheeks dirty with tears, lips trembling. It was little George. That boy, mischievous and warm-hearted, with sunshine-blond hair and sea-blue eyes.

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George. The little boy, Bob had cradled in his arms. The little boy, Bob had sent cooly into another's war. The little boy, Bob had carried back, cold, to his father's empty house. The dead little boy that Bob still saw whenever he closed his eyes.

He had to do it. Sophie had gone too far. There was no reconciliation, no happily-ever-after. She had to die. She had to. And he, he had to do it. But the dagger dropped to the ground. His will was broken.

"Go, Sophie. Go now! Go as far as you can and don't come back!"

The little boy, Sophie, hobbled up to her feet and started off into the darkness. Bob should have killed her. He should closed his eyes, screwed up his courage, and done it anyway. That's what she would have done—had done. That's what she would have told him to do. That's what the great leader would have done. The man at the pinnacle. The god-king. Bob was not that man.

Bob smiled as he sobbed. What a weight off his heart! How much easier to be good and weak than evil and strong! How much better to die than live a bad life! No, Bob was not that man. That's why he had been exiled from his own city, why he'd been betrayed by the woman he'd saved, and why the bandit king thought he could come for Bob's head.

Bob swayed where he stood. It wasn't the poison. It was the exhaustion. The gut-wrenching emotions. What he had seen. What he had meant to do. Oh, how he wanted to drop there and then and sleep, sleep forever and ever.

"Took you long enough."

The bandit king had surfaced. Bob had missed his chance to end things quietly and boringly. All his plans were ruins. Bob wasn't surprised. This was the way of things. The heavens always asks for more. It keeps pushing and prodding you towards the edge, until one day you'll fall and the sky will ring out with laughter. Well, today was not Bob's day. Bob was on his feet. Bob was still fighting. The world would know that the mud magician was someone to be feared.

The bandit king leapt forward. He'd learned lesson. They'd be no standing still in one spot. They'd be no thirty seconds to craft a complicated mud spell. The king pressed. He pressed relentlessly, wielding his axe like a Viking Iron-Heart, laughing and shouting, dancing around the field of battle, playing at blood-sport.

But Bob was a finalist of the Full-Moon tournament. A student in the Way. He could hold his own. He sighed and blanked out his mind and settled into the empty cup. There was peace here. There was silence. A place without thought, without feeling. The space between spaces. The sky. The night. The moon's reflection.

Bob dodged, and parried, and fought back. The bandit king was euphoric. He howled his head off. He pounded his chest. This was what he wanted. A fight worthy of the name. A battle for the ages. A duel of kings. The axe shimmered in the air, right, down, back, each swipe a crack of displaced air. And Bob was ahead of it each time, left, up, forward.

The battle raged around the camp, backwards and sideways. Wild axe strikes carving through mud brick and squelching through corpses. The bandit king pumped up, faster and faster, finding his own mad flow, his ecstasy. He was born for battle. The axe-dance and the sword-drum. The rain and the night and the smell of wet blood on the ground.

The axe whipped across and Bob sidestepped; the king two-handed it down and Bob pushed the stroke away. The king jerked the haft around and Bob caught it on his forearm. The king spat in Bob's face. And Bob took it full in the eyes. The king roared and kneed forward, but Bob had already twisted away and his arm flashed out to throw the king back a step.

The king was panting with the mad, rabid breathes of the exultant. But he didn't tire. He didn't slow. There was a fire in him that seemed to feed on itself and grow hotter and fiercer every contact. The axe whistled around and Bob barely got his head out of the way. A punch thundered forward, but the empty cup is the silence around the roar. Bob slipped inside.

And then the axe was reeled back. Its double-headed mouths clattered for blood. Bob hammered an elbow into the bandit king's side, but the man tanked it like he couldn't feel a thing. Bob had to use the rebound to catch the axe handle just before it garroted him. But the bandit king laughed and leaned into the attack. His was the strength of the mountain avalanche. And Bob barely managed to duck away, stamping on the bandit king's foot as he did.

In the end it had come to this. Two men in the rain, battling one against another, hearts blazing, blood boiling, each determined to drag the other down, down, into the under-gloom, to turn a living, breathing man into carrion for the crows, to prove himself the one true king, to wear death's crown and conquer!

In the end it could only come to this.