Road to Remore

It was a little past noon and the inn keeper was getting worried. Her late night patron had not yet come down for breakfast. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't have bothered but these weren't exactly normal times.

About a month ago many of her patrons were killed in the night. It was only after a visiting soldier had managed to scare away the necromancer that the killing stopped.

Cayde woke to the sound of knocking at his door. Stumbling out of bed he opened the door.

"What is it?"

His voice was deep having just woken up.

"Oh my apologies"

The inn keep blushed at the sight of the toned man in nothing but trousers.

"I just wanted to check that you were alright given that it's past noon and you haven't exited your room, but now I see you must have been tired from your travels"

She apologized again and mentioned a complimentary breakfast for having been woken. At that news he perked up.

Closing the door to his room Cayde quickly got dressed, breakfast sounded heavenly especially since it would be the first food he ate that wasn't bread and dried meat.

Glancing in the mirror attached to his desk his jaw almost dropped. His fisherman clothes were baggy and hid his new body but that wasn't what shocked him. His hair, which hung just over his eyes in a terrible fashion, and had been dark brown, now looked tinted with a deep red.

Stepping closer to the mirror to better analyze it he noticed something else. His eyes which were previously green, now had specks of red in them as well.

This must be arcane propagation. Not much could be done about it now. He was to addicted to the high of blood magic to stop.

Strapping his bag over his shoulder he heads downstairs to see about this free breakfast.

Leaving the inn Cayde knew it would take him roughly another week to reach Remore assuming he didn't get lost. He planned to run as much as he could testing his new limits. All the while further improving his physical body so that he wouldn't have to once he joined a guard and to avoid standing out.

If the sign on front of the bridge was accurate he would reach Remore tomorrow. It was a couple hours past noon and he had many more miles to cross before he could rest.

As he crossed the wide stone bridge, which crossed a swiftly flowing river, he heard a chuckle behind him. There stood two rough looking people.

"Alright then, no fast moves or Howy here will put an arrow in you"

The bandit who spoke motioned to her partner who had a crossbow aimed at Cayde. Looking over his shoulder toward the other side of the bridge there were two more bandits, though those two only had clubs like the bandit who had spoken.

"What do you want?"

Cayde tried to sound defiant but his voice trembled causing all for bandits to chuckle again.

"That pack on your bag looks to have some supplies in it, we'll take that"

Cursing under his breath Cayde took off his travel bag. He was almost out of rations anyway and would soon be resorting to hunting. But he would miss his bedroll. Though not enough to risk his life.

Tossing the bag toward the figure he assumed was their leader he raised his hands and slowly started heading towards the far side of the bridge.

"Not so fast, that bag on your shoulder, we'll take that too. We'll let you walk away with the clothes on your back though."

The bandit grinned

Cayde had never felt such anger well up in himself before. The thought of losing the Blood Tome made his vision haze over slightly, and his fists shook. The bandits assumed his hands were shaking in fear and outright laughed.

Slowly Cayde took his bag off and held it in both hands, but to the bandits surprise instead of handing it over or tossing it to them he dropped it at his feet.

The leader scowled and took a step to claim the bag. But his scowl turned to confusion and then fear as blood poured out of the strangers hands and took the form of a small shard.

"BLOOD MAG-"

The bandit was cut off as Cayde's blood shard shot through and lodged inside his neck. He was less then twenty feet away which was much closer then the width of the river Cayde had practiced on.

The other three bandits realized they were not robbing a traveling fisherman, but a lethal blood mage. The two with clubs ran forward while the one with the crossbow shot piercing Cayde's torso, the arrow resting between his ribs.

The shooter smiled thinking he had avenged his fallen comrade, but his smile turned to horror as the blood mage seemed completely unphased by the arrow piercing his stomach. Not only that but by the sight of another blood shard having been formed and shot towards him ripping his face open.

The two bandits had reached him and both swung their clubs, one at his hip and one at his head.

Cayde knew that he had an arrow inside of him but it didn't hurt in the slightest. After killing the second bandit he felt his bones crunch as his body was flipped. Now laying on his back he didn't care if he wasted any blood, Cayde quickly forced blood to flow from both his hands forming two shards at once and shot them into the bandits the extra blood flying as well though only as liquid droplets.

He got one of them to shoot up underneath the bandits rib cage into his heart. The other went up through the jaw into the bandits brain, both dying near instantly.

Cursing Cayde lay back down. Bones took longer to heal then skin. Skin was so quick, even muscle didn't take too long. But bones where a different matter.

His hip and shoulder had both caved a little. They would be fine by sunset. But as he tried to stand up he couldn't help but scream. He may have been immune to slicing and piercing pain, but it seemed caved in joints would be un usable until they got better.

Sitting up, he opened his bag which was laying a couple feet away. Grabbing the Blood Tome he opened to the page he'd marked. The spell on corpse draining.

The spell was fairly simple. All he had to do was physically connect an open wound between himself and the corpse. Then send a bit of his blood into the corpses circulatory system pushing it all out the other side and absorb it directly from there.

Taking his dagger out of his bag he crawled over to the nearest of his two most recent kills. Making a small cut, three inches long on the bandits thigh and a matching cut on his palm, he pressed his hand onto the matching cut. Sending blood through the wounds he immediately started absorbing the leaking bandit. Mentally making the his blood trace through all of the bandits arteries and veins. When he reabsorbed his own blood he knew the bandit was dry.

Crawling to each fallen bandit and repeating this process he gained six gallons of blood.

Still unable to stand he sat against one side of the bridge rereading the spell to make his blood more dense. It was a multi stage spell. The first step was to take hold of all the blood inside his body. The next step was to force the blood down so that some arteries and veins would be completely empty. Once satisfied the blood could be released to flow all over the body, newly produced blood would match the density of the blood but took longer to make and therefore longer to fully recover.

The entire process would require a constant flow of blood from the casters pool to maintain control. This was the most dangerous spell Cayde had read, if not all of the blood was taken hold of the spell would not work and the mixture of blood densities would become volatile. If his circulatory system could not handle the pressure it would burst which the book said could take up to a whole week to heal given proficiency in Blood Healing.