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PW Chapter 49: Blood Shed
🕑 Added 2025-06-25 05:10:42 +0000 UTC“I have a letter for you. I apologize, I was unsure of which of the two of you it could be.”
“Sure.” Astrid shrugged, forcing a smile that she hoped would tamp down the frustration. A courier in charge of mail delivery couldn’t tell who was which person? She accepted the letter and the nondescript man turned and strode from the inn. She recognized the precise handwriting as her father’s, and smiled as she held it in her hand and walked towards Anders’s office. Muti walked alongside her, as she had been for the past two weeks. Every day she asked him the same question, and every day she got the same answer. Maybe today would be different, though, and Astrid hoped for everyone’s sake that it would be.
As they approached, Maria, Anders’s guard, called out, “Come in.”
Astrid pulled the door open, stepping through first as Muti had eventually explained to her that that was what she would prefer. The Barbarian had taken some of her anger out on Astrid these past weeks in sparring and practice sessions, but she was also a steady teacher, if a violent one. Every time that Astrid failed to perform while grappling, she was swiftly taught a painful lesson, and since Muti knew that Astrid could heal herself for very little cost… Astrid found herself incentivized to be better, especially since their training sessions were frequently observed by other delvers.
Anders, as always, sat behind his desk, working on a dozen papers at the same time. How there was so much paperwork that this small branch of the Guild needed to go through was entirely beyond her understanding. On top of that, Astrid didn’t want to know. Instead, she just nodded at Maria and hefted her bag in her fist.
“Are you ready?”
“Of course. That is my job.” Anders replied dryly. “How much should it be?”
“74 today.”
“A busy day, and you still have time before the final meal. Congratulations are in order, I suppose. Now, if you would?”
Maria stepped forward, glanced in the bag, hefted it, and nodded at Anders. He took note in his ledger as he pulled out their payment. Three stacks, one of which was notably smaller than the rest, a few copper tenners, no more. Astrid took her and Skandr’s payment and pocketed it while stepping back and allowing Muti to speak.
“Is this enough?”
“Now, finally, it is enough.” Anders didn’t mince words, and Muti’s face lit up as she raised her fists and cheered loud enough to set Astrid’s ears to ringing. Anders’s face fell, but Muti didn’t care. Instead, she bounced where she stood several times before then being unable to ask her real question.
“When will it be ready?”
“It is now. Maria, if you would?”
The guard escorted the two delvers to the door and once they were there, she pushed them out the door and closed it. The lock clicked behind them, and Astrid and Muti looked at each other. Though confused, Muti remained as excited as Astrid had seen any child on any holiday, and she couldn’t help but smile widely at her friend. Maybe two minutes passed before the lock clicked free and the door opened once again. Muti was the first in, and she giggled in excitement as she saw what she’d been waiting for.
On the day of their first real delve together, the party had slain an irregular. Its scales were valuable, and Muti had requested as many of them as she could manage to buy. At some point when Astrid wasn’t around, the Barbarian had explained her plan to thread the scales onto her existing leather armor to Klara. The Guild’s representative had better ideas, and Muti liked them. As such, she’d spent two weeks hoping she’d finally made enough to pay for armor made from the gnoll’s leather.
Now, the time had come, and the chestpiece was complete along with the leggings. The green scales faced out, though they seemed to have been treated somehow to keep them from glinting in the light of the room. A full cuirass of green leather and scales would fit Muti’s torso, while the leggings were only leather instead of covered in scales as well. Muti gathered them both into her arms and ran out of the room without another word. Then, she returned, said, “I will prepare the armor,” in a way that seemed to mean something beyond those words, and disappeared again. Despite her excitement and speed, there was no sound as she rushed up the stairs to try on the armor.
“Would you collect the rest of the payment?” Anders asked, his impassive face somehow communicating his exhaustion with the situation. “It would appear that it was left on my desk.”
Muti had forgotten the rest of her money in her excitement, a stack of nearly a silver in tenners still laying neatly on the desk. Astrid nodded and pocketed them as well, though she looked at Maria as she did so. As their eyes met, Maria’s eyebrows rose in curiosity.
“How do you do it?” Astrid asked.
“I’m going to need more from you than that.” The woman’s soft voice had a teasing tone to it.
“How do you know how much is in the bag of spoils?”
Maria’s laughter rang out, but after about ten seconds, she stopped as she spoke. “That’s my secret. Maybe I’ll tell you some other time, but it’s just something that I can do.”
Astrid pursed her lips, but nodded, turned, and left the room without another word beyond her goodbyes. Klara’s office was silent as she walked past, and she made her way up to Muti’s room. She’d been up there often enough in the past weeks, but it wasn’t often that the Barbarian would leave her room unless invited as a guest specially by Astrid. It’d become their custom to have her invite Muti to dinner after delving, and they’d frequently spend that time in companionable silence or with short conversations. After their long first dinner, they’d seemed to come to the conclusion that it wasn’t necessary to spend so long talking about everything they could come up with.
“Muti, you forgot your money. Do you want me to hold onto it or what?”
To Astrid’s surprise, Muti answered the door quickly, and when she did, she didn’t have any ambushes prepared for her either. Instead, the Rogue threw open the door and grinned widely. Her long ears twitched in excitement as her sharp teeth seemed to glint in the light of the inn’s hallways.
“Yes! You were fast! Good!”
Muti grabbed Astrid by the hand and dragged her into her room, where she then locked the door. Muti had already stripped out of her existing armor and stood in a plain tunic and breeches, and she stood in the center of the room with her arms stretched out expectantly. Astrid looked at her, then at the armor spread across her bed, then back at the Barbarian.
“I… am going to assume that you want me to put your armor on you?”
“Yes! It will be a declaration of my trust for you!” Muti’s smile didn’t fade. “After all, I am presenting myself to you at my most vulnerable and allowing you to fasten my armor. It is something that bound companions do to express trust.”
“We talked about this briefly, that binding the warbraids is different from being bound companions.” Astrid said hesitantly. “What will this change about our relationship?”
“I will protect you. We will find victory together, and death will be defeated by both of us together. Our blood will become one and our affection will overcome that of the ordinary, becoming that of stavralta.”
“What’s a stavralta?”
“It is… family?” Muti’s voice was unsure. “It is different, but like that.”
Astrid nodded slowly. “Should I expect to help you every day?”
“No.” Muti said emphatically. “That is foolishness. Victory before death and blood before affection. I will bind myself to you conditionally, more than we have until now. I will not tie myself to you inextricably for the rest of life, but I will bind myself for as long as I wear this armor, and the vow of the stavralta can be renewed and strengthened at various times. Only the first time of my arming will your presence be necessary.”
“Alright then.” Astrid said, awkwardly standing in the middle of the room. “Is there anything specific I need to do?”
Muti cursed under her breath, but also smiled as she walked forward to the two pieces of armor where she flipped them both inside out. Then, pulling her knife from its place under her pillow, she cut the pad of her right index finger and made a swirling pattern along the lining of the armor. Somehow, though, it seemed incomplete when Muti stepped away. There wasn’t any symmetry to it, and something about the design felt lopsided.
“You do the same, but opposite.” Muti gestured.
“And it’s not offensive if I’m not perfect?” Astrid clarified.
“No. Genuine attempts at forging a bond are all that is necessary. Simply do what you can.”
Astrid nodded and cut the pad of her finger with the same knife that Muti had used. Then, to the best of her ability, she mirrored the sigils that Muti had painted. Before long, a bloodstained pattern remained on the leather, and Muti pulled a thin sheet of parchment from under her bed, which she laid on the still-drying blood. It left a mirror image of the pattern on the parchment, and she laid that to the side as well. Then, with a wide grin as she gestured with her hands, Muti asked Astrid to dress her.
She didn’t complain as she complied, and the cuirass was easy enough to put on. The leggings… were a little awkward, and neither Muti nor Astrid had any desire to do that again. Even so, Astrid could feel the subtle shift in the way that Muti held herself after finishing the little ritual. There was something in her that loosened, her eyes lost some of the tightness at the corner that Astrid only now realized wasn’t permanent. A realization filled her mind, and Astrid thought for a moment.
She’d mourned the lost opportunity to delve with her friends from childhood, regardless of if two of them had, in retrospect, been pretty terrible friends. Muti, though, had lost her people, her society, her culture, and any friends she might have had. What about family? Was that something that she cared about?
“Why do you do this?”
Muti’s voice pulled Astrid from her musing. When her eyes met the Barbarian’s, there was gratitude and something else in her face. Muti continued addressing her.
“Why have you done this?”
“What do you mean?” Astrid asked.
“You do not like me. You hate my people. Every time someone calls you ‘Barbarian,’ you wish to harm them. You wanted to hurt the man who struggled to understand you were human and I am Barbarian. Why are you now welcoming me? Why do you accept binding yourself to me?”
Though she opened her mouth to deny the statement, Astrid didn't lie. Instead, she thought about her own mind, her own thoughts. Why had she thrown herself so thoroughly into befriending this outcast Barbarian? She couldn’t just say that it was because she was delving with her. That wasn’t why she was practicing every day with her. She wouldn’t have grappled and fought and learned and taught someone that she loathed as much as she generally did the Barbarians as a people. So what was the reason under all the excuses?
Astrid opened her mouth. “I think that a big part is that I was so desperate to party with someone when I came here that, when Klara said that I was going to be partying with you and Skandr, I decided to do everything I could to make sure the party was successful. After all, I spent months alone, miserably delving all day all alone, taking my nights to spend time with the few people who didn’t hate me or see me as someone beyond them. Days spent in the dark forest, listening to the howls of the wargs and their snarls as I killed them.
“Months were spent doing just that, when all I’d ever wanted was to stand beside my friends and become a hero. Instead, I felt like a warg exterminator. I’d go to work, kill wargs, and then go home. It was monotonous, boring, and it made me miss my home more and more. Then, I got to level 6 and left Schteldt. I went home and saw that the short time I spent away has already changed me. Just a couple months, and… I’d seen death and failed in ways I’d never thought of before. I was alone, even then.
“I’m lonely, Muti. I need friends to survive, and delving with them? That’s something that’ll keep me going much further and faster and longer than the other option. I wanted a friend, and although you’re not the kind of person I ever imagined filling that role, you’ve always been honest. You treated me as one of yours, and when you learned I wasn’t, you opened your history and what’s most important to you up to me.
“I don’t know why you’ve given me that opportunity, but I seized on it because I needed it. Maybe I wouldn’t have done so without that incentive of not wanting to be alone, but it is what it is.”
Muti nodded slowly. “Your ways are different from mine. Humanity is… nothing like the Hordes. I do not respect your people’s love for money or their unwillingness to see the world for what it is. But I see the way that families exist. I have seen your people on the walls of the Bulwark, how they support each other at their own detriment. I have seen brotherhood forced in smoke and fire. That is something the Hordes lack. There is virtue in it.
“Astrid, I am glad to be your companion. My leader.” Muti grinned a little, her jagged, sharp teeth obvious as her ears wiggled from her smile. She stepped forward and took Astrid in a firm embrace, Astrid’s chain mail scraping against the scales of Muti’s cuirass. Then, Muti reached up, took her knife, and cut a small lock of her own hair free, the golden shimmer obvious even in the faint light of the room. She proffered the lock and the knife to Astrid who immediately mirrored the action.
“What’s the meaning of this one?” Astrid asked.
“It is a part of yourself. A demonstration of joining.”
Astrid nodded, and though she knew she probably shouldn’t enter such fraught territory, she asked, “What Class did you want growing up?”
“Berserker.” An immediate response. Then, she shrugged and added, “And when I grew up, I hoped for Warrior, Assassin, or Bladeswoman.”
“Did you resent me for having the Class you wanted when you learned it?”
“I still envy you.” Muti scoffed. “I would be unstoppable! A Warrior without equal! But I have been cursed by the Dungeon to be fast and weak instead of strong and unkillable. You live a life I and every one of my peers wished for. You would be trained by the Hordemaster directly, and that you gained Quick Recovery the way that you did? It is nearly unheard of. Even as a Human, you may be scouted by my people. There are ways to induce the mana’s mutations in people.”
“No.” Astrid’s response was more of a knee-jerk than anything else, but Muti laughed as she stepped back and sat on her bed.
“I knew you would not desire that. I merely wish to tell you that your Skillset and Class are highly desirable. Now, you asked to meet with our companion this night, did you not?”
“Yeah.” Astrid nodded and Muti cocked her head and laughed.
“I would not have thought you interested in one like him. Listen. Courtship is a battle, and you must win. If you do not, you will be the lesser, the mere concubine to their harem. Dominate him. Do not allow him to think of another woman, chain him to your bed if necessary until he submits.”
Astrid’s eyes widened, and she wasn’t sure to be horrified or embarrassed, but she settled instead on merely explaining.
“I’m not courting him, and for your sake, if you ever attempt to go on a romantic excursion with a Human man, do not do as you’ve said here, at least not within the Bulwark’s lands. If you do, you may end up imprisoned.”
“That is foolishness. How else can the pairing know who is to be the ruler over the pair? Who will be allowed to pursue concubines?”
“That’s not the point.” Astrid sighed. “I’m going to speak with Skandr about his money problems and then we’ll take it from there. Okay? Thank you for trusting me. I’ll be going for now, though, as there are many things that I have to do.”
“Very well, foolish Human.” Muti’s words were warm as she stood to escort Astrid to the door. “You will speak with our companion. And tomorrow, we will train once again, and delve, and train.
“It will be a good day.”
With that, Muti closed the door on Astrid and the Warrior looked at the door, looked down the hall, and sighed as she went to her room to get changed. Hopefully she’d have time to get clean before Skandr came looking for her. Her stomach growled in protest, but what else could she do?
