Almost like opium. Or perhaps bitter hemlock.
Hemlock.
Your eyes widen. You reach down for your discarded scabbard and draw the blade. Paranoid ears pick up on dull noise. The sound of footsteps beyond your tent. Shuffling. Blades bouncing in scabbards. Axes bouncing against the hip.
You're back in Krorid. You're back in Krorid. You're back in the jungle, with the Erisians shuffling outside your tent.
Blade in one hand, bottle in the other, you wheel around to face the tent's entrance.
Just as two armed men barge their way in.
They're about as shocked to see you standing as you are to see them in your tent. But your paranoid mind doesn't stop to think. You act on instinct and adrenaline.
You whip the bottle at the one on the left. It shatters against his skull in an explosion of glass and ale. Before the second can even raise his mace, you cut across his legs, knocking him to his knees.
The second, still dazed, stumbles toward you and slashes down at you. You catch the sloppy blow with your own blade and cut across his stomach. In the same motion, you rotate your body to face your second assailant.
The soldier, still on his knees, is at the perfect height for your blade to tear deep into the side of his neck.
Both fall dying before you. You stab your sword through the back of the necks of the two fallen soldiers, finishing the job.
You clutch your blade with both hands, looking down at your handiwork. You have no time to reflect on what just happened as the sound of shuffling outside your tent grows closer.
You know your tent cannot protect you forever. You need to move. You cannot let the enemy trap you. You kneel down for a brief moment, tearing a shield from one of the lifeless body's arms and strapping it to your own arm.
Before you have time to put your armor back on, a familiar voice calls out, "Arthur Hornraven! I have your friend with me! Come out and surrender now, or I'll slit his throat!"
Fuck.
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