Chapter 19: Day Sixty-Eight
A bright beam of light streamed through the window until it was blocked out. She opened her eyes to see Markium's hand between her eyes and the window. Smiling, Eve rolled over and looked into Markium's eyes.
"Good morning, beautiful," he whispered, wrapping his arms around her naked body and pulled her closer. He placed small, soft kisses on her neck and around her collarbone, his manhood pressed against her leg and slowly growing.
"Markium," she giggled, pressing her hands into his chest.
"What?" He smiled and nibbled on her neck softly.
"Markium, we have to leave soon." She stood up and picked through their clothes, looking for her dress.
"That can wait," he teased and pulled her back into the bed.
A knock on the door made them freeze. "Crap, it's your parents!" he whispered in her ear and she started laughing again.
"Oh good, you are awake," Amerella's voice called through the door. "Markium, can you come downstairs?"
"What's going on?" he asked, handing Eve her dress and pulling his own clothes on.
"Just come down, quickly." She sounded worried and frantic. "Eve, stay in the room."
"What's going on?" Eve repeated and opened the door.
Markium put a hand on her shoulder and gently pulled her away from the door. "Stay here," he whispered and followed Amerella down to the tavern.
She waited a minute and snuck down the steps, just far enough to hear them talk but not enough to be seen, and a prompt appeared.
You have learned the skill Sneak lvl 1
You can now creep 10% quieter than walking
She listened as hard as she could, moving her ears slowly the way her brother taught her to hear clearer. 'Thanking you, Shawn,' she thought and heard the whole thing downstairs.
"Why would someone do that?" Markium's voice asked.
"We do not know," Amerella answered. "All I know is when I came down to open the bar again, Armand was on the bar." Her voice broke like she was about a cry.
One of Amerella's girls started up the stairs and saw Eve. Eve put her finger to her lips and waved her up. The girl came up and sat next to her quietly.
"Amerella asked me to come up and check on you," she whispered. "You are not supposed to be out here."
"As far as you know I'm not," Eve whispered back. "What happened to Armand?"
"Who killed him?" Markium asked. Eve froze and the girl put her arm around her shoulders.
"Do not do it," she whispered but it was too late. Eve sprang to her feet and ran down the steps, turning into the bar.
"Eve, no." Markium grabbed her softly and held her back.
She pushed him but he wouldn't let go. She thrashed and pushed trying to get passed him, seeing a short figure under a sheet laid out on the bar. She screamed and cried hysterically, banging her fists on Markium's arms.
"Eve," he hollored over her shouts. "Eve, stop, stop."
Amerella's girls came over and gently took her from Markium, instantly calming her screams and surrounded her in gentle words and touches. They walked her back upstairs and kept her there.
"How'd they do that?" Markium asked.
"All my girls have high charisma," Amerella explained. "Their professions include calming incidents between customers and their hysterical wives. She will be fine." She looked over at Armand's corpse on the bar. "Thank the god's she did notsee him. I do not know if anyone could have calmed her after that."
"What's gonna happen to his wares?" a gnome asked.
"We're gonna sell them," Markium announced. "All the money will go to his family."
"He had no family," Amerella informed him. "He came here alone, that shop was his home, his customers were his family."
A voice called from the crowd, "I think the money should go to Eve and the baby!"
Markium and Amerella looked out to the crowd to see nods and calls of agreement.
"Five gold," a woman agreed, handing the money to Markium and taking a quiver of enchanted arrows. The entire village showed up with their hard earned money and gifts for Eve. Apparently Armand talked with the entire village about "a poor girl who lived two days outside the village with a baby on the way." Amerella even spoke with the customers wives about "a struggling pregnant friend." Chim even brought her up with expectant mother's, so much so that they gave her first-timers advice after they bought some of Armand's wares.
A lot of their advice was things her mother would tell people with their first baby: if you want a girl, you should eat lots of milk and cheese. If you want a boy, you should eat lots of meat. If you sleep on your stomach, it may kill the baby before it's born. Once the baby is born, you want to hold it to you so they recognize you as their mother.
Eve took the advice with a smile but remembered something her father always told her brother when he pissed her off. "Never tell a woman how to handle her body and she won't castrate you in your sleep." The threat was influenced when they all went to a cattle farm one summer and her dad asked them if they could show her family how to castrate a cow.
They held the sale in front of the tavern so men would stop in and take a look around, some would send Chim to their house and let their family know about the sale, and everyone who walked passed always stopped and bought something, no matter how small it was.
Eve got in on the shoppers frenzy and looked around at the daggers and short blades, bows and arrows. She found some scrolls of magic and spells. 'Probably won't need these,' she thought but picked one up anyway.
Summon Worker Spell LVL 1
Summons weak land worker for 2 hours
Durability: 10/10
Rarity: Common
'That might be useful when I get further along, need someone to help with the garden,' she thought and looked over at Markium. He told her if she wanted anything to let Amerella know and she'd convince one of her customers to buy it for her for a discount on his "transaction". She glanced over at Amerella, selling a woven basket of Eve's dresses to a woman, and smiled. She put it in her own basket, piled with seed packets, blank scrolls and ink, and a skill book of hunting.
Markium walked over and looked in her basket, slipping a pile of coins into her coin purse. She didn't even know how much was in her purse but it always felt empty.
"Are we stealing over here, ma'am?" he whispered in her ear.
"Don't you start that ma'am bull," she whispered back jokingly. "I'm sweetie, or baby. Anything that makes me feel young."
"You're too beautiful to need to feel young." He kissed her head softly and put a hand on her belly.
She smiled sweetly and smacked his hand. She looked through the rest of the scrolls and her face fell. "How did he die?" she asked.
"Don't worry about that," he answered, rubbing her back softly.
"No, tell me." She turned and looked at him. She was sick of people treating her like she was fragile.
He sighed quietly and turned her back to the table of scrolls, speaking softly. "His neck was broken and he was laying on the bar when Amerella found him. They think he got too drunk and tried dancing on the bar, tripped and snapped his neck."
"But?" she asked, hoping there was more.
"But nothing."
"There's a but, I can hear it."
He sighed deeply and closed his eyes. "I saw him before we covered him; his neck looked like it was snapped manually, not broken because of a fall."
"Don't dwarves have a high tolerance for alcohol?" She remembered her brother saying something about that when he tried teaching her how to play D&D.
"Exactly, that's why I don't think he'd fall over drunk." He looked around them to see if anyone was listening.
"Who would want to kill him though?"
"Think about it, he'd low ball his prices and ask for kisses from women, he was a notorious flirt and I'm pretty sure a few married men here are the jealous type. And I know of one person, an apparent god, who's the severely jealous type."
"You think Ronim did this?" She looked up at him, his face calm as his hand brushed through the scrolls.
"I don't know." He looked up at a woman holding a clear potion, waving him down. He kissed her head and walked over.
She picked up scroll after scroll but ignored the prompts. 'Why would Ronim kill Armand?' She looked up at the tavern and saw a dark shadow standing in a window. A growl escaped her throat and she dropped the basket with Amerella. "I'm going on a walk for a bit," she huffed and turned away. "I'll be back."
"You okay?" Amerella called after her but Eve kept walking, ignoring everything around her.
She skipped rocks across the lake, furiously throwing them a couple times and screamed into the sky, "Ronim! Ronim, get down here! Did you kill Armand!?"
A warm breeze blew from behind her and she felt his gaze on her back.
"Did you kill him?" she asked quietly. He didn't answer. A cool breeze blew around her and she threw a rock into the lake with a small splash. "Answer me!"
"I will not lie to you," his soft voice answered.
"Then tell me." She growled softly as another breeze blew her hair softly and the mark on her shoulder began to grow colder. She turned suddenly but saw nothing behind her, not even a mark of where he was standing. She looked back at the lake, the calm waters and small ripples from where the rocks landed, and stepped forward slowly, feeling the cool waters surround her feet. She stripped her dress and cover off, threw them back to shore, and walked further into the water.
She sank deeper into the lake until her chin touched the surface, her hair floating around her like a dark lily pad, kicked her feet up slowly and floated on the water.
She closed her eyes and let her senses go; seeing, hearing, feeling nothing. It felt like the sensory deprivation tank her girlfriends made her try when her clothing business started to pick up. Nothing else mattered but her breathing, calming her down slowly until a loud splash sounded by the shore.
Her eyes snapped open and she stood quickly, looking around her for the source of the sound. A large bird, a vulture, swooped down and grabbed a fish from the shoreline. It lifted the red, dripping fish up into the air and dropped it again. The fish landed closer to Eve and she saw it wasn't a fish at all; it surfaced and barked a high pitch squeak, poorly paddling back to shore. The poor creature was exhausted from running but pushed on, trying to avoid the flying predator as it dove down and snatched it up again. Eve watched as the vulture climbed higher and higher. She swam back to the shore quickly, picked up her short sword and swam back into the water as the small creature fell again.
The vulture dove again, ready to deliver the final blow, but Eve scooped up the small, tired animal and held it close to her body. The vulture screamed its defiance and dove faster, it's talons open and ready to take on the half-elf. Eve drew her arm back and swung hard, cutting off the vultures left leg, the right clamping down on her arm, digging its sharp talons into her skin. She screamed in pain as the vulture flapped faster, lifting her and the animal out of the water.
"Eve!" a voice called from below.
She looked down at Markium and Amerella standing at the waters edge, watching her. She tensed her body, held the shivering mass to her chest and swung her legs upward, kicking the vulture in the wing joint. It dropped her in surprise, she curled into a ball and held her breath.
A sharp pain crashed over her back as she plummeted into the water below, the creature squirming against her arms to get back to the surface. She pushed herself to uncurl and stayed under the water, swimming toward the shore. A splash sounded, muffled, behind her and when she looked back, she saw the bleeding figure of the vulture with an arrow sticking from its body. She pushed off the lakebed and broke the surface of the water, coughing the water from her lungs. Her vision grew darker as she rolled on to her back, floating exhausted toward the shore with the gentle waves. A shivering creature on her chest calmed when it saw the vulture was gone and collapsed with her.
Markium threw his bow and arrows next to Eve's clothes and ran into the water, pulling her unconscious body back to dry land. He and Amerella looked over her, saw her chest rise and fall slowly and saw the bleeding creature between her breasts. Carefully, Markium lifted the creatures muzzle and looked into the tired, delirious face of a baby fox. The poor thing was so tired from running, swimming and blood loss that it didn't even react to the humans around it. Its green eyes slowly closed as it drifted to sleep with its savior.
Amerella reached over and tugged at Markium's shirt, pulling it up over his head and tore it at the seams.
"What the hell?" he yelled and saw the blood running from Eve's arm and pooling on the ground around them.
She handed him half the shirt and told him to wrap up the kit before it bled out. She tore the shirt into strips and wrapped Eve's arm carefully as Markium carefully picked up the wet fox and wrapped it in his shirt. She took the fox from Markium and pointed to Eve. "Pick her up," she ordered. "We have to take them to a healer before something bad happens."
"Like what?" Markium asked, gently setting Eve's clothes over her bare body and scooping her into his arms.
Amerella didn't answer, just looked over at him and they both knew instantly what she meant.
They ran back into town, Amerella carrying the fox and the weapons, Markium carrying Eve, praying they got to the healer in time.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone