Tesem

What a mess. Completely and utterly botched on all levels, and everyone knew it. The chase was over. Anyone could tell the bat girl had a Breakthrough during their stay under the mountain. A minor one, but enough. Her new form would outpace them in mere hours.

Tesem paced the field of rocks, debris, broken beasts, and crushed Ice, surveying the results of the battle. The air stank of blood. He felt sick.

Sitting on a boulder, Verglas conjured a new beast mount from the corpse of the old one. Efficiency. Ordinarily, Vlam and the other mages would be blabbing about the fight by now, but no one could mistake Verglas’ mood. The Ice wizard worked in ominous silence. Tesem knew he’d have to report in sooner or later and decided to get it out of the way.

“You healed the boy,” Verglas said as Tesem approached.

With a lot riding on his response, Tesem chose confidence. “Would you rather he died?”

The other mages eyed Verglas warily, fearing their leader’s disapproval. The white wizard seemed to ignore this answer and asked a much more condemning question.

“You let them go.”

With little he could say to that, he stated a fact. “I couldn’t have stopped them.”

The battle was lost no matter what he’d done; Vlam and Rasant had demonstrated that. The group’s two best mages had resorted to lethal attacks in their anger and still failed despite their higher Realm and greater experience. A dead Wildling profited them nothing, and Tesem wouldn’t become a murderer.

To the others’ slack-jawed surprise, Verglas didn’t berate or criticize Tesem. Verglas kept working on his Glyphs, silent. The others trailed away with nothing to see and no sense risking the white wizard’s wrath.

When they were out of earshot, Verglas said, “You didn’t try to escape.”

It was true. Tesem had let that chance fly away, but he’d had his reasons. “I’m still in debt.” And the Bank had his scent. His joining those kids would be a millstone around their necks. Far worse threats than Verglas resided in the City. Like debt collectors.

“You’ve finally gotten smart.”

Tesem understood then where the mage’s change in attitude had come from. He’d proven himself intelligent and highly capable, the group’s failure notwithstanding. He’d tracked the target as instructed, fought admirably three times, hadn’t been the one to screw things up in the battle, and hadn’t made a poor situation worse through misjudgment or stupidity.

Then he’d recognized the truth of his circumstances and resolved to face them directly. Verglas spoke to Tesem almost as an equal, letting the others stew in their anxiety and mistakes—for which they’d all have to answer. Verglas was treating him like a partner. A good thing considering they’d be working together for quite some time.

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He decided to start acting like a partner. “What are we doing about Tommy Knocker?”

“I put him on Ice.”

The Guilds drilled teams on this before any mission or quest. Even after the heart stopped beating, there was a good three minutes before severe brain damage occurred from lack of oxygen. Of course, that was for a baseline human. Adjustment tables existed for mages of all Elements, body Realms, and levels of attunement, plus Ice and Wind could extend limits by chilling the body or supplying it with oxygen. Things got complicated quickly, but the long and short of it meant they had a lot more time to get a ‘dead’ mage into a spare Head Case than one might assume.

“He’ll live.”

“And Ansbach?” Tesem said.

Verglas grunted. “No head.” And who would dare chase the Wolf to steal its prize? “He was unstable.” The Ice mage tapped the Shew Stone in the clasp of his black capelet, “The recordings will bear that out.”

Each mage’s Shew Stone transmitted a continuous stream to their Faction and the mission’s Guild. Things like Daniel breaking the Ice field would add to the boy’s value, and things like the frog girl’s… yelling… would be cataloged. A lot of weird stuff happened in the Wilderness. “He lacked control over his Elemental. Mages like that have an expiration date. No great loss.”

Tesem had no reason to doubt Verglas’ word or suspect the man of lying. It wasn’t that the white wizard hated untruths or held himself to a moral standard. To Verglas, lies were a dagger and truth a sword. The truth was a far more effective weapon in his hands.

However, Verglas had vastly understated the consequences of the Wind mage’s death. The fact a mage died under his command, regardless of circumstances, would weigh heavily on the white wizard’s record.

This marked his first significant loss as a leader. From now on, fewer and less talented mages would sign on to missions he led. Regaining the lost clout would be an uphill battle. ‘How many mages have you gotten killed?’ was the first thing prospective sign-ons asked, and Verglas’ eye would twitch every time he heard those words.

“Excuse me,” Tesem said. “The smell is annoying.” He’d caught a whiff of a man’s death blood and almost lost it. Tesem couldn’t care less a terrible person like Ansbach died, but that body hadn’t belonged to the mage. Its true owner was probably a decent man in life. Tesem didn’t believe it right to leave a sapient being’s remains exposed.

Respect for the dead extended across the Progeniture as a common virtue. After all, the Underworld existed for a reason.

He shifted into his big dog form and dug a deep hole with his paws. A quick, unmarked grave for someone Tesem had never met. The trouble came when he grabbed the corpse with his mouth to place it in the hole. He got blood on his tongue and nearly convulsed with revulsion.

He managed to cover the grave somehow. There was blood on his fur. Tesem dissipated into mist and reformed clean, but the smell clung to him, and he couldn’t rid himself of the taste. Maybe he never would.

Tesem thought it’d be ironic if this were how he finally stained his hands with blood. He shrugged off the morbidity and went to work on what was left of Tommy.

“You aren’t seriously digging a grave for Tommy, are you?” Vlam asked, skeptical. “He’s not even dead.” Tesem didn’t expect a Nephilim to understand. “At least let me burn it.”

Though Tesem knew cremation served as a legitimate funeral right in many cultures, he doubted Vlam’s intentions and hated the thought of ashes in his nose. He growled low, and the mage retreated.

When he finished, Tesem returned to Verglas, acting as if the interlude hadn’t happened. The white wizard allowed him that. “What will we do now?”

“First, we’ll recover the cache,” Verglas said. They’d had the Bear bury the wagon of Cintamani they’d already harvested for safekeeping. Unearthing it would be tedious but might salvage their mission if they were lucky.

“Next, we complete the patrol. Then,” Verglas’ tone darkened, “We plan our revenge. You have their scent. We won’t go after them on our next expedition, or the one after that, but we won’t forget.”

A man like Verglas never forgot and never let it go.

“I won’t forget,” Tesem said.