Free The Forgotten King (Korin's Journal) by Brian Beam Page B

against her ring.  With a stomach-turning sizzle, the smell of burning flesh filled the air.  Kait’ only let out a weak groan in her half-conscious state.  She brought her hand back to my forearm, pressing the heated sphere against my sleeve. 
    Let me just say that my woolen sleeve didn’t provide as much protection against the glowing, fire-hot sphere of metal as I’d have liked.
    My arm involuntarily jerked away, and Kait stumbled forward, gasping.  With Kait’ down, I stood to attempt another retreat.  I didn’t even take my first step before a sudden burning pain sliced along my right shoulder.  It wasn’t until I saw the arrow tear through the canvas of one of the tents ahead of me that I realized that been a couple finger-lengths away from having an arrow impaled through my arm or chest.
    Whoever had shot the arrow closed the distance between us before I could even turn around, and I felt what I assumed to be their bow whip diagonally across my back, wrenching a scream from my lungs.  With a quick turn, I caught my black-hooded attacker’s longbow in one hand—mostly by dumb luck—and punched them in the face with the other. 
    As my attacker stumbled back, I could faintly make out his features.  He was a thick-bearded man dressed in all black, his torso covered with a hard leather cuirass that prevented me from knowing whether or not he also had a green glow coming from his chest.  There were two dead rabbits tied together by their hind legs hanging from a chain on his belt, making it seem that he’d been out hunting when the night’s ruckus had begun. 
    His hand reflexively went to his face, and as it did, I swept a low kick across the back of his knees, tripping him to the ground.  Without looking back, I started running in the direction Til’ had fled, confident that my escape was assured with Kait’ and the bearded man downed behind me.
    After a few loping strides, however, I saw the Oreph-blooded glint of one of Kait’s metal spheres arcing down ahead of me.  Oreph is the god of metal.  Big surprise, right?  Pain shot through the base of my skull.  Darkness followed.

Chapter 9
    Briscott to be Kidding Me
     
     
    I awoke with the sweetly acrid taste of rotten berries in my mouth.  My vision turned the world around me into a collection of shapeless multi-colored blobs.  If not for the fact that those blobs were static in my vision, I could’ve easily been convinced that I was spinning rapidly in circles, my mind in a constant state of dizziness.
    I was sitting on something soft, my hands firmly secured behind my back.  My legs were stretched out in front of me, but I could barely move them.  Apparently my muscles didn’t want to work just yet.  That was just fine; I didn’t feel much like moving anyway.
    “Ah, he’s awake,” a friendly male voice sounded from somewhere to my side.  I had no idea who’d spoken, where I was, or what in Rizear’s domain was going on.  I just barely had a grasp on who I was.
    I opened my mouth to speak, but the only thing that came out was drool. 
    “Don’t worry,” the friendly voice continued, “you’re still under the effects of the tashave leaf.  Now that you’re awake, it should begin to wear off.”  As the man spoke, he walked hunched over into my field of vision, a dark shape with a green glow coming from chest.  Something about that last detail tugged at my memory but stayed just beyond my mental reach.
    I tried to respond, but my jaw was still hanging open from when I’d first attempted to speak.   I couldn’t get it to close again.
    “Poor, blighted bastard,” the friendly voice mumbled.  The blurred man settled into a crouch before me and pulled up on my eyelids one at a time.  He held his other hand above each open eye, blocking the light for a moment before taking it away again.  “Pupils are still a bit sluggish.  Guess we’ll just have to wait this out a bit longer.”  With that, he stood and left my