Beam POV: Day 44

Current Wealth: 10 silver 0 copper

Current Debt: 6 gold 44 silver 20 copper

It hadn’t been that long ago that we stomped Herngrard’s skull into a puree, but things already felt different. It was like we’d stepped into a new age. We’d gotten a good haul, rifling through his fortress in the chaos, and left with well over three gold. Things had been looking up.

They hadn’t stayed that way, of course. You couldn’t have silver lining without a cloud, and ours was a dark, grey one indeed. Not an hour after putting our affairs in order, while we were all sitting and enjoying a rare, hot and filling meal in a tavern that didn’t smell like piss, a certain someone approached us. Tall, robed, thin and old by this world’s standards. Corvan, miserable as ever.

“I’ve been looking for you three.” He snarled, flitting his eyes between me, Xangô and Solitaire as if he’d just scraped us off the bottom of his shoe. I remained neutral, not particularly caring what the old prick thought of me, Xangô forced his usual, friendly smile, and Solitaire hissed and stabbed a knife into the table in front of him. This did not seem to leave the magus any more annoyed than usual.

“How can we help you?” Xangô asked, moving into his diplomatic role as usual. The robed elder scoffed.

“Please, like you don’t know. It’s been weeks since you fools have paid me back a single coin, and your time’s run out. Fork over whatever you have.”

Xangô remained straight-faced, even while my blood boiled and Solitaire’s hands turned into compressive fists.

“We don’t have much-” He began, then shut up as the magus spoke over him.

“You looted Hengrard’s base without anyone to stop you, and spent close to half an hour doing it. I don’t think any of even your group are stupid enough to not have gotten more than a few coins from that, so hand them over.”

“We didn’t.” Xangô pressed, keeping to the story, meeting the man’s eye unblinking. Corvan sighed, and a dark look overcame his face.

“Perhaps you need to be motivated.” He began, quieter now, and somehow more dangerous. “You’ve seen me work magic, but not the killing kind, eh? Hand over half the debt you owe, this instant, or you’ll all see first hand what a magus can do when someone is stupid enough to draw his ire.”

I didn’t see much choice but to do as he said, and after a few moments it became clear that Xangô didn’t either. We spent a second dividing the coins, and realised that paying half the debt would cost almost everything we had. Corvan’s eyes gleamed as he accepted the gold and silver, practically drooling over the handful of currency.

“Is that all?” Solitaire demanded. His voice was hard with the same hatred that always flared up in him whenever someone crossed him. Corvan eyed my friend, as if he were some babbling child.

“For now.” The magus told him, coolly. “From now on you all pay me back a minimum of ten silvers each week.”

It was a big sum to be demanded, and Xangô was quick in arguing. Quick, and fruitless. Apparently we’d burned our grace period with the few weeks taken to secure even this much of a foothold, and the man couldn’t be moved.

“I don’t care how you get it.” The magus snapped, finally readying to turn after the fifth minute of arguing. “Just get it, or suffer the consequences.”

He soon left out through the door, disappearing from sight. Leaving us all to ponder, contemplate and talk amongst ourselves. I was the first to speak up.

There was an idea bouncing around in my head, and I wanted to see what my friends made of it.

“What if we learn magic from him?”

I was sure to keep my voice low, not particularly eager with the idea of giving away any plans we might have to the room. It might’ve been a scream for the reactions it got, thought from Xangô, and a knee jerk contradiction from Solitaire.

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“The bastard would bleed our wallets dry as a fee for being tested.” He countered. “And even dryer for tutelage, plus, letting him know we have magical abilities- if we have them at all- would only incentivise him to keep a tighter hold on us before letting us out of debt.”

Xangô thought about that, then sighed and nodded.

“He’s probably right.” He conceded. “It’s not worth the risk, not yet at least.”

There was a unique frustration to knowing that my friends were making sense, and knowing that the sense only served to remove a potential lifeline. Without magic, I hadn’t the foggiest idea how we’d keep ourselves afloat. Work had been scarce before the gang war, and that wasn’t looking like it’d change. We were barely halfway through winter.

Obviously they were thinking very much the same thing, because Xangô sighed, running a hand along his forehead in consternation.

“We might….We might be fucked. Unless anyone can think of something…We could steal?”

Solitaire spoke next, and his voice was even lower than mine had been. And harsher than Corvan’s.

“I think I have an idea.”

We listened, and swallowed, and felt the frigid chill of danger run down our spines. But in the end we agreed. Like so many of Solitaire’s plans, this one was dangerous, dark and twisted all at once.

And it was our best hope.

That night, we headed to Corvan’s shop. It wasn’t a big building, by modern standards, but it was large for Jhigral. That was good, it’d make the noise less likely to travel all the way through it. The howling winds were another factor in our favour.

Even still, I was nervous watching Solitaire pick the lock on the door, carefully step inside and gesture the rest of us in. We moved carefully, on account of the slumbering wizard upstairs, and started rifling around.

Of course, we found nothing of immediate value. No pure coinage, rather. We’d suspected as much- someone as untrusting as Corvan would’ve kept such wealth close to his own bedroom for security. Solitaire headed up for it alone. He was the stealthiest.

Minutes passed downstairs, the sounds from outside making eerie music for the theft. Every creak made us jump, every second slipped by was another chance for the magus to wake up and obliterate our friend. Eventually, though, Solitaire came downstairs. Empty handed.

“A lockbox.” He sighed. “Big, thick iron. Couldn’t get in without waking the bastard, looks like we aren’t getting our money back.”

That was a blow, but one we could recover from. Xangô spoke next, tentatively. “Should we-”

“Yes.” Solitaire replied. “You two go on, I’ll do it.”

We did, moving out of the shop. I glanced over my shoulder as Solitaire took the big barrel we had propped outside and rolled it in, lighting the fuse.

In the end, the second bomb hadn’t seen use in the gang war. That was lucky for us, because it meant we still had the few dozen pounds of black powder it held. And there was hardly anything better for faking a magus’ death than some giant, mysterious explosion.

The blast before had, after all, been quite an easy thing to convince everyone was done with wizardry.

Solitaire came out sprinting, and he reached us where we were sitting- some fifty yards from the building- just in time for it to go up. A big fireball, a big wave of pressure, then wood crumbled inwards and the whole thing collapsed.

A magus wasn’t tougher than a normal human, not unless they were actively defending themselves with magic, and there wasn’t much chance that a normal human could’ve survived what we’d just done. The three of us watched the fires lick what was left of the building, anyway, keeping our eyes on it until the guards swarmed around and started panicking. Their bodies made tiny little silhouettes by the bonfire.

“What now?” I asked.

Xangô shrugged.

“We can’t stay here.” He noted.

“Questions will be asked.” Solitaire agreed.

Our debt was gone, but we’d exhausted our opportunities in Jhigral. On the bright side, there was no mad old wizard to chase us down if we tried to leave, either. And we had enough spare coins to weather at least one days-long trip across a road.

“...That mercenary idea.” I began. “How exactly would you both suggest we get started?”

That was the question that seemed to stump them, but it was Solitaire who answered first.

“People always want each other dead.” He noted. “So long as there’s enough of them. And Wolney, as I hear it, has recently had one of their larger gangs crippled in some war. Seems like a good place to start looking for men, at least. And it’s a decently sized city rather than a tiny town. There’ll be nobles to get jobs from, jobs more lucrative than bloody gutter fighting, and proper armourers to get decent gear from…And we’ll even be able to learn magic, if we have the coin and ability”

The more he spoke, the more I and Xangô found ourselves nodding along. It made sense, it was logical, and for once it was both in a way that actually gave us more hope, not less.

I turned back to the fire, soaking in the sight one last time before I started climbing to my feet.

“To Wolney then.”