Free How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis: Book Three by V. Moody

thought, everyone they know and love would be killed by you .
     
    “So by sending us, they saved themselves?”
     
    “Such is our agreement. We allow them to live in the crypt above as long as they provide us with contestants on a regular basis.”
     
    After a nerve racking half-an-hour of wondering if he was leading us into another trap, we finally came to a large cave with an exit to the outside world. We were all very relieved to feel fresh air on our faces. Raviva remained in the mouth of the cave and waved us off.
     
    “Come back when you fancy a real challenge!” he called after us.
 
    Yeah. No chance.
     
    Kaceyton led the trolls in a heartfelt rendition of  ‘ I love bad bitches… ’ as we walked out into the bright sunshine. There were no more horrible surprises. The trolls turned out to be gracious in defeat, although I’m not sure that made up for them being homicidal maniacs.
     
    There was a large meadow ahead of us and a forest beyond that. I knelt down and put my ear to the ground. I could hear the distant thrum of the lizardmen still on the move.
     
    Raviva had pointed us in the direction of Dargot with assurances we wouldn’t encounter any lizardmen on the way, but I wanted to make sure. After every hour of walking I put my ear to the ground again to make sure the sound was getting further away, not nearer. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he sent us directly into the midst of the lizard army just for the lulz.
     
    We proceeded carefully, everyone on full alert. It wasn’t until we hit the main road and found it completely deserted that I was able to relax a little.
     
    “I can’t believe Jespert  betrayed us,” said Claire.
     
    I could. Sacrificing us to protect his own people made total sense. Although, agreeing to the arrangement in the first place was pretty cold. Knowingly sending two of your people to their deaths can’t have been easy. Mind you, if I had to make that kind of choice I already had a couple of names on my list.
     
    “I thought he was so nice and helpful, but he was just using us,” said Claire.
     
    “He was never nice or helpful,” I said. “You just saw him the way you wanted.” I didn’t mean it as a criticism of her, just a statement of fact.
     
    “If you knew he was deceiving us, why didn’t you say something?” Claire asked in a needlessly aggressive tone.
     
    “I didn’t know. I’m saying it didn’t matter if he was nice or not. He made us an offer and we took him up on it because why would he lie? And now we know why. His personality had nothing to do with it.”
     
    “It was still a shitty thing to do.”
     
    True, but it was also very useful, for me at least. Next time I got into it with Claire, I could say, “Remember what happened with Jespert?” and argument over. Nice to have in my back pocket.
     
    Mandy, who had been watching me like a hawk ever since we had won our freedom, walked up next to me and said, “Do you have some kind of special device that allows you to heal?” She’d obviously been giving it some thought.
     
    “Something like that.” There didn’t seem any point trying to deny it, but I didn’t want to reveal any more than I had to and tried to cut the conversation short.
     
    “Let me see it.”
     
    “No.”
     
    “How does it work?”
     
    “Let it go, Mandy.”
     
    “Then show me.”
 
    “No.” And so on. She also tried getting answers from the others but they simply shrugged and stammered incoherently. Sometimes it pays to be a social misfit (not very often, though).
     
    Eventually she stopped asking, but from the look on her face I could tell she had no intention of letting it go. It was my own fault for making it so obvious. I would have to be more careful in future if I didn’t want people finding out.
     
    The road to Dargot was long and straight, with nothing on the horizon. We had been in this position before and it was just a matter of keeping going until we got there. Our only