The Sons of Gods

Drawing in spirit was an interesting process to Sorin. When he killed something containing spirit, some of it would enter his body. That spirit would be within him, but not within the Divine Conduit. Because it was within him, Sorin could easily sense the spirit and draw it towards his Divine Conduit where it would increase the potency of his powers, mind, and body. Spirit would eventually leave the body if it was not drawn into the Divine Conduit. The Divine Conduit kept it all contained within him until death.

Pertaining to spirit outside of the body, it was difficult to sense. It had gotten easier to sense when Sorin ascended to Acolyte, but it was still difficult. What was more difficult was extending the reach of your Divine Conduit to draw spirit from outside of your body into your body and then finally into the Divine Conduit.

Sorin thought of it as a whirlpool in a tiny pond. The Divine Conduit was the whirlpool where it sucked up everything in the vicinity, the vicinity being his Divine Conduit. The water that was further away from the whirlpool was affected and drawn towards it, but incredibly slowly until it got into the vicinity of the whirlpool. The spirit within Sorin's body was the water that was far away from the whirlpool.

The spirit that was outside of Sorin’s body would never enter the whirlpool without his conscious effort of farrying the spirit into his small pond to be drawn into his Divine Conduit. However, since Sorin had killed someone and released a vast amount of spirit into the surroundings, it could be said that his whirlpool had been placed in a lake rather than a pond. There was more water and therefore the whirlpool could absorb more water.

That was the reason that despite being so close to the camp of people who were probably his enemies now, he risked mediating. A little bit of meditation to absorb some of the high density spirit in the area before it dissipated into the rest of the world was worth it. There was no reward without risk.

Approximately an hour after starting his meditation, Sorin stood. The spirit in the area was beginning to dissipate and he could not afford to wait around any longer. Sorin looked up into the sky through the trees and caught a glimpse of the moon. He noted it was far past midnight which meant the bright side of the moon’s face would be pointing east. He turned in that direction, cast Shroud of Shadows, and then set off once again at a faster pace.

Sorin noted to himself while jogging through the woods that he would be getting very little sleep for the foreseeable future until he was able to gain some distance from the crime scene. Sorin normally slept for a few hours in the morning then traveled and hunted the rest of the day and the entire night. He did not need a lot of sleep, but resting was definitely worthwhile when he spent the entire day walking.

It was a few days of traveling through the forest before Sorin had noticed signs that he was being followed. Sorin had managed to rest a few hours a day during that period of traveling. On the third day of traveling, Sorin was napping up in the branches of one of the massive trees when he noticed a few men passing beneath him. They were dressed in the mismatch clothing that was prevalent in the thieves camp that he had observed. The men were chatting between themselves.

“I am starting to get tired of this goose chase,” One of the men complained.

“You’ve said that three times today already. Once we find the bastard, we can gut him and go back to operating as normal. You don’t want to piss off Marcus do you?” The second man asked.

“Whoever it was killed Hannah. We owe it to her to avenge her,” The third man stated. He was the youngest of the bunch.

“Oh quit acting righteous. You are only mad that they killed Hannah because you were her favorite screw at camp,” The first man chastised.

“You take that back you son of a bitch. You are mad that she never gave you the time of day or night. Probably heard that you had a small pecker,” The young man shot back.

The conversation quickly devolved into a fist fight between the two while the third man tried to break them up. Sorin stayed silent and watched the whole affair from where he was perched in the trees. Sorin was amused by how universal the male gender could be at times. He had witnessed several fights between men over women or insults to their manhood in the village. He didn’t fault the men, he probably would have done the same in their shoes. A little bit of self awareness about the situation made it funnier to Sorin however.

Once the men had left, Sorin studied the trajectory of the sun in the sky. The men were following him directly east which meant they had found a clue or something to track him this far. Additionally, based on their conversation, they were not the only group out searching for him. Sorin would need to adjust his course if he was to avoid a fight where he was outnumbered.

Sorin left the tree and began to travel to the north east. It would make his journey longer, but it would hopefully put him out of the path of the thieves. He also decided that he would have to skip out on some more sleep to attempt to get further ahead of the group.

Over the next several days, Sorin had a few close calls to being caught. He had run into a few different groups that were clearly searching for him. Sorin had surmised that someone in the hunting party had a way to track him and coordinate the groups to search his general vicinity. Sorin’s saving grace was that he had not encountered another person like Hannah, who he had killed, who was able to pierce his Shroud of Shadows easily and reveal him.

The search teams were becoming denser and denser with each passing day and Sorin was beginning to panic. He had a sinking feeling that whoever had the ability to track him was closing in and he was surrounded on all sides. He needed to change the status quo and change it fast.

Sorin needed information if he was to escape so he drafted a plan. The next time he encountered a search party, he would need to capture and interrogate one of the members. It would be risky as he had not spotted any search parties that contained less than three people. That and with how many people were in the vicinity any loud fights would be heard. However, it was a risk Sorin had to take.

Sorin got his chance that night. He had passed two groups consisting of four and five members respectively and had forgoed the opportunity to attack them. Sorin waited patiently and eventually encountered a group of three men. Ironically, it was the same group that he had come across originally. It's the group that got into a fight about the magnitude of their manhoods, Sorin thought. Then he corrected himself, they had gotten into a fight about Hannah and their manhoods. It was an important distinction.

Sorin snuck up behind the three men who were meandering along and only keeping a cursory eye on their surroundings. They clearly did not expect to find anything and had long stopped looking for him seriously long ago. Sorin crept closer under his Shroud of Shadows. If one of the men had bothered to glance over their shoulder, they would have spotted an abnormally large shadow that was moving towards them like a predator stalking its prey.

Sorin crept into striking distance. He had observed the group for a while before choosing to strike at them. He had gotten a feel for their Ranks and Degrees. Two of the men were in the early Acolyte Rank while the younger boy was an Initiate. Sorin’s plan was to quickly kill the two Acolytes and then interrogate the Initiate. The Initiate would not be able to pull any funny business with various unknown powers like the Acolytes would have been able to.

Sorin got close enough to one of the Acolytes, the one that was levelheaded and broke up the fight the last time he observed them. Instead of drawing his sword and striking out, Sorin quietly drew a knife he was holding in the sleeve of his shirt. With the knife in his hand, he jabbed outward and firmly planted the knife in the back of the man’s throat. He gurgled and instantly collapsed to the ground. The other men turned at the strange sound followed by a muffled thump.

The young man jumped and yelped at the scene of his dead companion at the feet of a large shadow. The other man, more composed, snarled and drew out two long bladed daggers. Sorin stepped back from the body and drew his two swords from his back. Since stealth was over, Sorin should utilize the weapons he was most familiar and deadly with. His swords also had an advantage in reach over the daggers the other man wielded. Sorin did not want to give the two men time to get over their surprise. The Initiate would only be startled for a few seconds more before remembering to draw his own weapons.

“You look like you have never satisfied a woman before with your tiny pecker,” Sorin taunted the older man. The older man’s face immediately went red and he flew into a rage. This appeared to still be a sore point for the man’s ego and short temper.

The man leaped towards Sorin, striking out with both daggers. Sorin swept away his strikes with one sword and counterattacked with his second. Sorin’s counterattack was a downward chop that cut through the man’s forearms. His hands and weapons fell to the ground while the man screamed in pain with blood gushing from the stumps that remained at the ends of his arms. Sorin then spun and cut the head off of the man, silencing his scream. Sorin cursed to himself. That scream would surely draw the attention of others in the area.

Sorin ignored the blood pouring splattering over him from his recently deceased opponent and turned to face the Initiate. The Initiate had managed to draw a single knife that he held out before himself with trembling hands as if it could ward away Sorin. It made Sorin feel like a monster for the briefest of moments before he shoved the feeling down. He could not afford to waste time pondering the moral ramifications of his actions.

Before Sorin had time to come to terms with himself, the man stepped forward and thrusted his knife forward. The thrust was clumsy and overreaching, like the Initiate wanted to be as far away from the knife as possible. Sorin simply stepped around the slow strike and raised his sword above the man’s head. He then brought down the butt of his sword onto the man’s temple. With a thud, the man’s eyes rolled up into his skull and he collapsed to the ground.

Sorin was admiring his handy work, vastly pleased with himself that he pulled off a successful ambush that prevented the Acolytes from using whatever spells or abilities they had. Then he heard a shout from a far off distance. Sorin could not make out the words, but it was probably another search party who heard the scream. Sorin cursed a little bit as he realized he would have no time to meditate and consolidate the spirit he received from two Acolytes.

Sorin sheathed his swords and walked to the unconscious Initiate. He crouched down and frisked the man for weapons. He found a few more knives which he claimed for himself before slinging the man over his shoulder. Sorin grunted under his weight before steeling himself to run with the man on his shoulder. Sorin then had an idea. He pumped a bit more spirit into his use of Shroud of Shadows. His shroud expanded and encompassed the man on his shoulder.

“Well you learn something new everyday,” Sorin said to himself.

Sorin was incredibly pleased by the small discovery. Sorin was worried he would need to cast Eternal Twilight, which had a far larger spirit draw than Shroud of Shadows, to cover the man and himself in darkness. Eternal Twilight was also not primarily used for stealth as it covered an entire area in pitch blackness and was pretty obvious to an outside observer. Shroud of Shadows on the other hand, focused on covering the target of the spell and blending them in with the shadows in the environment.

Sorin spent a few hours running as fast he could with the man on his back. It made for a far slower time than normal, but that was to be expected with the additional weight. Once Sorin was confident he had put some distance between him and the other search party, he stopped at the base of a large elm tree. He slid the man from his shoulder and not so gently tossed the man to the ground. The man groaned at the impact of hitting the ground, but did not wake. Sorin surmised he must have really scrambled the man’s marbles.

Sorin took a few minutes to catch his breath and survey his surroundings. Sorin was in a tad bit of a bitter mood because he felt the spirit he had collected from killing the two Acolytes dissipate throughout the duration of his retreat. On a positive note, Sorin had not spotted any signs of the other search groups following him, but he did not know if that would hold up for long. It was better to interrogate the man and then continue moving.

Sorin looked down at the man. He had no idea on how to wake him up. He could dump water over the man, but Sorin’s water in his knapsack was precious and he couldn’t go wasting it while on the run.

“If might makes right, then violence is always the answer,” Sorin mused to himself half joking.

Sorin lashed out his foot where it directly connected between the man’s legs. The man was instantly awake and made a gasping wheeze of agony as his hands shot to his crotch. That worked, Sorin thought. Sorin knelt down and seized the man by the face, his hand over the man’s mouth.

“You are going to answer my questions if you want to live,” Sorin stated in a low tone. “You will stay quiet and not shout for help because the second you do I’m going to make sure you never speak again.”

The threat seemed to get through as the man frankly attempted to nod while his eyes were mildly crossed from the pain that radiated from the only jewels that the other men in the Forest of Thieves would never steal. Sorin nodded in return and removed his hand from the man’s face. He then stepped back from the man and palmed a knife in his sleeve. If the man even twitched strangely, Sorin would throw the knife directly into his chest.

“How are you tracking me?” Sorin asked the obvious question. The man took a few gasps of air and tried to compose himself while still wincing in pain.

“Marcus is tracking you. He’s uhhhh not really our boss, but the de facto leader of our little gang since he’s the strongest of us. He’s really pissed that you killed his sister,” The man tried to explain. Sorin rolled his eyes at the man stating the obvious.

“Okay Captain Obvious, you told me who is tracking me, but I asked how,” Sorin repeated his question.

“Oh, yes, that. I have no idea. It's a spell or ability that our Goddess Filchra bestowed upon him. I don’t know the details or how it works. I just know that it's pointing him in your general direction, but it's draining so he takes frequent breaks while sending us out to search for you in the direction he told us,” Captain Obvious babbled.

Sorin sighed. At least the skill cannot be used for long periods of time, Sorin thought.

“How close are we to the eastern edge of the forest? Where are we exactly?” Sorin asked, hoping that if the eastern edge was close he could escape.

“Oh, we are nowhere near it!” Captain Obvious said cheerfully, not really reading the atmosphere.

The man clearly thought if he answered enough questions he would be let go regardless of whether Sorin was pleased with the answers or not. Sorin almost faced palmed. He was planning to let the Initiate go as there was no reason to kill him, but someone else may not have if they were in Sorin’s place and were not pleased with Captain Obvious’s answers. This guy is an idiot, Sorin thought.

“Elaborate. I need details, how far, landmarks, something helpful before I lose patience and cut off your walnuts,” Sorin said in an exasperated tone. Sorin couldn’t muster the energy to sound threatening.

“Walnuts? Oh,” The man trailed off as he understood the threat. His hand instinctively sought to protect the threatened area.

“Directions yes, I can help with that! It's probably another week of travel by foot to reach the eastern end of the forest. As for landmarks, there is a small river a day or two travel to the northeast. It's on your current trajectory, but you don’t want to go there. It's a huge beast territory most tend to avoid. You want to travel to the southeast if you want to be safe and avoid the beasts,” Captain Obvious explained.

Now we are getting somewhere, Sorin thought. The information about his current location and that he was on course to run head first into beast territory was actually useful.

“The other search parties. How close were they to your position when we fought? What are their numbers and locations to the best of your knowledge?” Sorin asked.

“After you killed Devin and Weston, our group has about fifty six members now. Originally we split into groups of different sizes to form about nine groups, not counting Marcus’s group,” The man replied. That headcount matched up with what Sorin had noticed from his observation of the group almost a week ago.

“To be frank, I was incredibly surprised when you showed up without any other group spotting you first. We were almost in the dead center of the area we were searching. When we fought we must have been surrounded by the other groups,” The man continued.

“So you are telling me I was surrounded?” Sorin asked with a bit of disbelief.

Sorin had let a group or two pass him as he searched for a party with lower numbers, but he did not believe to be encircled at the time. If that was true then his ambush was incredibly risky. In fact, he was probably still surrounded considering that he had only run for a few hours and had not encountered the teams that had missed him due to his Shroud of Shadows.

“Yeah, pretty much,” Captain Obvious was about to go on talking when Sorin quickly stepped forward and socked him directly in the jaw. For the second time that day, the man’s eyes rolled up into his head and he took an involuntary nap.

“You are way too chatty and I do not have time to waste if I am encircled,” Sorin said to the unconscious man. Sorin debated killing the man, but decided that it would be cruel and unnecessary to his escape. The man had cooperated even if he was far too talkative.

“Well, fuck me I guess,” Sorin said to himself.

This was an incredibly bad situation Sorin found himself in. Sorin began to formulate different plans of escape. He could try to backtrack and break out of the circlement by retracing his steps. No one would expect such a plan. However, the handsomely mustached Marcus was in that direction. Sorin had no idea if he could beat Marcus in single combat, let alone Marcus with whatever backup he had.

Sorin could travel directly east or south and attempt to break out of the encirclement. However, with how close the various hunting parties were, he highly doubted he would make it out unscathed. He would end up bogged down by the mass of bodies they would throw at him before being killed. Sorin could easily keep up his Shroud of Shadows during his travels due to its small amount of spirit upkeep, but he could not endlessly use skills and spells like Eternal Twilight, Echoes of Fear, and Shadow Control.

There were no safe options and Sorin found himself considering a pretty risky plan of escape. If Sorin kept his current trajectory, he would find himself in beast territory. Sorin did not know the Rank of the beasts in the Forest of Thieves, but he was more confident in slipping away from uncoordinated beasts than an organized group of thieves and cut throats.

“What am I contemplating? Oh whatever, no great idea in history didn’t have a group of naysayers calling it boneheaded,” Sorin said to himself. Sorin took off at a run while hoping that the spirit of Magnus and his almighty father watching from above weren’t facepalming at his stupidity. If they were, then they could call him a smooth brain when he died.

It was early the next day when Sorin’s plans began to fall apart around him. Sorin, despite being careful, had run headlong into one of the hunting parties. The group had spotted Sorin a brief moment before he had noticed them and tried to hide using his Shroud of Shadows. Sorin had not had it active as a shadow moving at a flat out run in broad daylight was incredibly conspicuous. He attempted to hide behind a tree and blend in using his Shroud of Shadows, but it was far less effective during the day as there were less shadows.

The group drew their weapons and charged at Sorin while yelling war cries. Sorin quickly surveyed the group before him and realized he would not be able to outrun the two lead members of the group. He would need to at least kill those two before attempting to make an escape. Sorin drew his swords and cursed Fortuna, the Light Pantheon Goddess of Luck and Fortune, by invoking words that brought forth images of Fortuna engaging in violating acts with him while he was sideways.

“Vesperos help me,” Sorin said, partially praying before charging.

The two faster members of the hunting party picked up speed significantly as their bodies began to emit a soft green light around them. Must be an ability meant to increase agility, Sorin surmised. Then they were on him in a flash. One struck at him in an overhead cut with a sword while the second went low and attempted to stab him in the side with his knives.

Sorin knew he would be too slow to counter both of the men so he cast Echoes of Fear on them. Their movements grinded to a halt as they second guessed their senses that were suddenly flooded with fear. Sorin immediately capitalized and struck out with his blades. Sorin targeted the swordsman. He batted his blade out of his hands with his first strike and impaled him through the stomach with his second strike.

During the brief moment, the knife wielder regained his senses and threw a knife at Sorin. Sorin had not expected the man to shake off Echoes of Fear so easily and therefore did not react in time to stop the blade. He tried to dodge and mostly succeeded. The knife grazed his left arm, cutting a line of blood. Sorin shrugged off the injury and his surprise and leapt into action. He easily used his superior reach combined with the Warbringer sword style to slice a clean cut across the knife wielder’s throat. He collapsed to the ground, life quickly draining from him.

By now, the rest of the group caught up. A spear wielder, a man with two daggers, and another swordsman were bearing down on Sorin. The group, although put off by their two companions being dispatched, saw blood in the water as Sorin had been injured, although only lightly. Sorin wasted no time in casting Eternal Twilight. Darkness engulfed the group.

All three members managed to maintain a semblance of composure and began to attack towards where they last saw Sorin. Sorin danced backwards as the spear wielder thrust towards him. Sorin cut off the tip of the spear and turned it into a significantly less dangerous quarterstaff. The spear wielder had been effectively disarmed without his knowledge. Sorin was about to capitalize when the swordsman decided to expose his aspirations to be the dumbest man Sorin met.

The swordsman began to attack in wide sweeping arcs with his sword. It was not a bad plan to keep Sorin at bay away from the man, but the man had failed to take into account that he had two other allies in this battle. His sword in its first sweeping attack had missed Sorin by a mile and struck the spear wielder, who had moments prior become a quarterstaff amateur, in the arm. The sword strike bit into the bone and the spear wielder screamed in pain.

Sorin was surprised by the change in developments and incredibly pleased that he had found yet another excellent facet of Eternal Twilight. Having his allies accidently attack each other was fantastic. He sent a quick prayer of thanks to his father for such a kickass power. Sorin lashed out in the darkness and stabbed the swordsman in the chest, who he had named Friendly Fire in his head, while he was busy attempting to free his sword from his comrade in arms. Comrade in arm, singular, Sorin thought to himself after considering that the spear wielder did not have much of an arm anymore. Sorin chuckled to himself as he thought that Friendly Fire had created a whole new meaning to disarming.

While Sorin had been occupied with the sword and spear duo, the man with the daggers had not been idle and had casted a spell. A pair of green tinged transparent arms had sprouted from the man’s torso and had been reaching out an impossibly long distance while seeking out Sorin. Sorin recoiled slightly in surprise and disgust. It looked incredibly wrong to Sorin and there was no way he was going to get fondled by those weird hands. He had no idea what they would do and he was not going to find out.

Sorin decided that with the Friendly Fire dead and the spear wielder basically incapacitated, having been ‘disarmed’, he could focus on the knife wielder without any risk. Sorin circled to the left and attempted to get around the strange arms. However, when Sorin got close to them to pass by, they suddenly lashed out and grabbed fistfulls of his cloak. Sorin was startled and attempted to leap backwards out of reflex, but could not escape the grasp of the transparent hands.

“I’ve got you,” The knife wielder shouted as Sorin felt the arms pull him in close to his enemy. The knife wielder slashed out at Sorin. Sorin tilted his head backwards and narrowly avoided his Adam's apple being skewered.

Sorin swung his swords and attempted to cut the transparent arms to free himself. The attempt was completely unsuccessful as the arms flickered when struck, but remained. Sorin struggled and felt like the grip on him was mildly weaker. Given time, Sorin might be able to destroy the spell through physically attacking it, but Sorin did not have that kind of time. Sorin brought a sword up to deflect a strike from a knife. A sharp clatter of steel cried out through the air as the weapons met.

Sorin was too close to his adversary to fully unleash the Warbringer sword style. That kind of closeness with the current matchup of weapons was dangerous. Sorin decided that he could not afford to hold back and casted The Essence of Vesperos, Shadow Control. A shadow behind the knife wielder solidified and stabbed into the man’s knee. He cried out and tried to turn and lash out at whatever had attacked him from behind.

Sorin seized the opportunity and distraction to lash out his legs in a kick that would normally cause him to crash to the floor as his feet were no longer supporting him. However, the green hands kept Sorin upright as they held him in place. Sorin had utilized the knife wielder’s restraining spell to give him the leverage and stability to perform an attack that would normally fail and leave him vulnerable. The kick connected with the man’s jaw with a crunch causing his head to snap back. The man dropped to the ground unconscious, taking Sorin with him.

Sorin let loose a grunt of surprise and he toppled to the ground on top of the man. Even when unconscious, the man’s spell remained in effect and kept a firm grasp on Sorin. Sorin got over his surprise and moved his blade awkwardly to finish off the man by cutting off his head while still on top of his body. Blood sprayed and covered Sorin’s face. Sorin spat to get the blood out of his mouth and rapidly blinked his eyes to try to get rid of a drop of blood that landed in his left eye.

Sorin then rolled off the man in a grunt as the transparent green arms dissipated into a mist. Sorin stood about to celebrate his victory when he took a staff to the face and was sent sprawling, dropping his swords. Sorin cursed at himself for forgetting about the spear wielder who had apparently gotten over his injuries and began to attack in the direction that the scuffle had taken place.

Sorin did not know if the strike was a lucky one or if the man had managed to find a way to pinpoint Sorin in Eternal Twilight like a formerly living green armed man. What Sorin did know was he was not going to take a chance. Sorin launched himself from the ground and tackled the injured man. Together they went down to the ground, Sorin on top. Sorin then unleashed a flurry of blows onto the man. Striking over and over again with his fists, mashing flesh and breaking bones in the man’s face. The man attempted to fight back and struggled with all his strength, but with Sorin on top of him and his injuries there was not much of a fight.

Eventually, the man stopped fighting back and grew still. Sorin stopped the relentless assault, breathing hard. Sorin’s hands ached, but he did not believe he broke anything. A broken bone deep into his this ill fated venture would be disastrous. Sorin then came back himself and stopped thinking calculatingly. His breathing quickened as he realized that he had passed yet another line of morality as he had quite literally beat someone to death with his bare hands. Sorin felt panic rise up in him at the horror of what he had done. He squashed it down.