Chapter 9: The Weight of a Promise
The march out of the hall was a funeral procession. Ryley walked beside Borin at the front, his senses screaming at the exposure. Every shadowy alcove, every crumbling doorway, was a potential ambush. The group behind them was loud, their footsteps echoing, their whispered fears a constant beacon.
They moved through grand, corpse-like plazas and down narrow, claustrophobic streets where the rust had grown so thick it formed a brittle, metallic canopy overhead. The air grew heavier, the faint, psychic hum of the corruption more pronounced. Ryley's hand never left the hilt of his sword.
It was his sharp eyes that caught the anomaly first. A side alley, choked with rubble, but beyond it, the architecture changed. The stone was less corroded, the veins of rust thinner, as if this place had some innate resistance. And there, at the alley's dead end, was a intact, ornate public fountain. A statue of some forgotten, robed figure stood in its center, and from a crack in the stone base, water trickled into the basin below.
"Hold," Ryley said softly, raising a fist. The column behind him stumbled to a halt.
Borin followed his gaze. "A fountain? Out in the open like this? It's a trap."
"Probably," Ryley agreed. "But the water looks clear. The rust hasn't touched it here." He could feel the desperate hope radiating from the people behind him. They could see the water. Denying them now would cause a riot.
"We check it," Borin decided. "You and me. The rest, form a perimeter. Elara, be ready."
Ryley and Borin advanced into the alley, their weapons drawn. The silence was absolute. Too absolute. As they neared the fountain, Ryley's eyes scanned the upper windows of the buildings overlooking the space. Nothing.
It was the ground that betrayed them.
With a sound like grinding teeth, the flagstones around the fountain shifted. Not a fissure this time, but something more deliberate. Four humanoid figures clawed their way up from shallow, hidden pits. They were players. Or they had been. Their armor was a hodgepodge of rust-fused gear, their skin pale and waxy, their eyes glowing with the same sickly light as the corruption. These were not mindless beasts. These were the Forsaken who had fully succumbed.
One of them, a woman with a rusted spear grafted to her arm, spoke, her voice a dry rasp. "The toll... is a piece of yourselves. Leave one... for the Rust... and you may drink."
Borin didn't hesitate. "No tolls. We take what we need."
"Then you become... part of the toll," the Forsaken hissed.
The fight was swift and brutal. These were not the skittering horrors from the courtyard. They fought with the grim skill of veterans, their movements economical and deadly. Borin's shield rang with the impact of their blows. Ryley found himself dueling the spear-woman, her attacks unnervingly precise. He couldn't match her skill; he could only match her ruthlessness. He let her spear-tip graze his arm, a searing line of pain, and used the opening to get inside her guard, driving his sword up under her ribcage. She gasped, her glowing eyes wide with what looked like relief, and crumpled into a pile of ash and rust.
When it was over, the four Corrupted were gone. Borin was bleeding from a gash on his brow. Ryley's arm throbbed.
The survivors rushed forward, ignoring the corpses, swarming the fountain, drinking and filling their containers with frantic, desperate hands.
Borin wiped blood from his eye, looking at the spot where the Forsaken had fallen, then at Ryley. "You held your ground."
"You called in your favor," Ryley replied, his voice tight with pain and the aftermath of adrenaline. "I pay my debts."
It was a transaction. A brutal, bloody one. But it was complete. The promise was fulfilled. As Ryley watched the survivors drink, he understood the true cost of that promise. It wasn't just about risk. It was about being bound, even temporarily, to the fate of others. He had saved them, and in doing so, he had become, in their eyes, a pillar of this fledgling community. It was a role he didn't want, a weight he had never intended to carry. The silver ring in his pocket felt colder than ever, a small, hard reminder of the solitary path he truly wished to walk.
The fountain did not solve their problems; it magnified them. The clear, cold water was a blessing that quickly curdled into a curse. It sustained life, but it also sharpened hunger and illuminated the brutal hierarchy of their new world.
A new order was established in the plaza they now occupied, not by decree, but by the grim, unspoken logic of survival. The fighters—those like Borin and the dozen others who had bloodied their weapons against the Corrupted—formed the inner circle. They drank first, and they drank their fill. Their canteens were always full.
Around them orbited the supporters: the handful like Elara, whose healing light was deemed a strategic asset, and a few crafty individuals who could mend armor or had a knack for setting rudimentary traps. They received a smaller, but consistent, ration.
Then there were the rest. The non-combatants. The clerks, the students, the artists, the simply terrified. They were the outer ring, a shivering, hollow-eyed mass of over fifty people. They were given water only after the fighters were satisfied, and their share was a miserly sip, just enough to keep the worst of the dehydration at bay. Their thirst was a constant, gnawing presence.
Ryley existed on the fringe of the inner circle. He was a fighter by Borin's acknowledgment, but he was not part of their camaraderie. He took his water, drank it in silence, and retreated to a high, broken wall that gave him a view of the entire desperate tableau. He saw the way a man in a business suit, his tie still knotted perfectly, begged a warrior for an extra mouthful for his coughing wife. He was shoved back with a curse. He saw a young girl, no older than sixteen, try to sneak a drink from the fountain and get caught by a hulking axeman named Gregor, who backhanded her so hard she fell and didn't get up for a long time.
No one intervened. Water was law.