Chapter 85: A Mage's Story

Subject: Inis Location: Arlcada Territories - Western Trail

Mertalo turned back to face her, a glint of curiosity in his eyes.

"This story you're gonna tell me have to do with that young miss who hired me?"

"Hers is not a story I can tell, but this one will interest you."

Inis launched into a story from the distant past. Distant for her, at least, but maybe only five years ago? Time was harder to gauge when you spent your days in festerfonts and your nights camping out in the wilderness.

She introduced the pleasant relationship her parents had in her home city, setting the stage.

"I always thought my mother was strong. My parents were the strongest people in the world growing up. My dad was a scientist and lecturer, and my mother, as you know, was a Blight Seeker. As I got older, I came to know that my mother wasn't just strong, she was the city's hero too. Not that everyone knew her name or anything, but she was one of the highest ranked seekers in the local Guild Branch."

Mertalo listened politely.

"Maybe only about 90 or so seekers were on her level. She pushed herself in her training, but she always payed attention to me. I didn't get it then, but that wasn't exactly normal for a seeker. Most of them didn't have families because they knew they could die at any moment at the fault of a defensive formation, at the drop of a blade, at the slip of a step. So many ways to die."

He was nodding now. Maybe at his age, he understood more than most people.

"She came came to one of my classes one day. I still remember the lesson: 'faith and duty, the moral duty of every citizen'. When she saw me, she was smiling. I asked her what was wrong, but everyone else thought the question was strange. When she heard me, she only smiled harder. It scared me. At this point, there were maybe only 50 seekers at her level."

"Was it the training, or..." Mertalo trailed off, anticipating the point she was driving.

"Her body had limitations. Sure, she'd surpassed some of them, but most just died."

He didn't say anything.

"Two years pass. She's still alive, she's still strong. My mother gets caught up in a negotiation between the Blight Seeker Branch and the city government. They mobilize forces to purge a difficult festerfont."

Inis paused to take a sip of water. Mertalo tried to convince her to stop telling the story if it was too difficult for her.

"You can stop, girl. I think I understand."

"No, I'm fine. And, no, you don't. My mother survived the journey to the festerfont's core layer and back. The festerfont ceased to be in the time in a week, but she was one of three survivors. A month after the mission, one of the survivors starts acting strange. He kill his entire party and started yelling at their corpses in full view of the Guild hall. I pieced it together from witness testimony, so it took some pruning to get what I believe to be the truth."

"Danger," a soft voice whispered, like static in her consciousness.

"'They were blightbeasts', he kept screaming, after killing them with no hesitation. 'I don't understand why they're still here!' he continued, as if to imply they should disperse like a blightbeast would. After the Guild Defenders failed to bring him to bear, the commander of the Guild Security Division finally disarmed the lunatic. They interrogated him, thought that he might be an assassin from the government, or a sleeper from somewhere beyond The Wall."

"They didn't think that maybe he'd taken all the blight and death a man could handle?"

"His words were coherent to the end. His story never changed. 'You can't see the signs, but I can. Festerfonts are sleeping everywhere, waiting to awaken.' The festerfont they'd purged was particularly difficult to kill, you see. A festerfont grows more saturated with age, and it drinks death to accelerate that growth. Festerfonts grow big enough and then new ones appear nearby. He was describing what's already been observed, but the root cause of pestelgenesis is hard to prove."

"Is that so... I wouldn't know."

"Finally, he started he stopped speaking normally. He would only mumble to himself, saying the same thing over and over. 'The world seed will blossom into one majestic festerfont. This grand festerfont will devour all the stars in the night sky. We were chosen. We were chosen. We were chosen.'"

Inis couldn't blame Mertalo for not knowing how to react. He wasn't of this world. The blight was too foreign.

"As he repeated these words over and over, his body changed like the body of a bearer would. Instead of blue or red, his skin patterning was green. He was executed once the marks covered his throat, but he probably only had a day left in him before he would have died from dehydration."

There was more.

"Nearly three weeks later, the second survivor began to change. Her behavior became erratic. She was clearly hearing things, but she didn't admit it to anyone. She took her meals alone. She hunted alone. She left her party's shared residence and lived alone. They found her after two weeks, carving symbols on the floor, whispering to the empty air. There were fewer witnesses this time, but I think it was something like: 'Please tell me what it means. Please tell me why we were chosen.'"

Inis couldn't see the driver's face, he didn't turn toward her, but she could tell he was uneasy.

"My mother, the last survivor, was dead not long after that. This is why I study the Blight. This is why it matters so much to me."

Mertalo nodded, glancing at the surrounding trees. Tree populations had gradually shifted from Arlcada natives to species Inis had never seen before. They were still a long journey from Maliscade territories, so these were largely unnamed borderlands.

"These are dangerous roads, so I thought a story might be good for the nerves. I was wrong."

"I'm a mage. That you know, right? We don't tell stories that will confuse you at the best of times, unsettle you if you're lucky, kill you if you're not."

"I know you're a mage. I also know what a mage is."

"Mages are different things."

He nodded silently.

"Well I like to think I'm a pretty decent one, but that doesn't mean much. Even if I was average, that would just mean I'd be burnt out slightly later than the others. It's little comfort when you fight alone."

"Out in the wilderness, we're all outnumbered and outmatched."

"Right. Well, part of the reason I'm interested in this rumored mage in Maliscade is that I want to see if they're someone I can trust. If they are, I might share a new method of... training... that I've discovered. If he's even alive. Maliscade was attacked recently. They defeated the threat... but I imagine losses were severe."

"Are you saying you're stronger than most?"

"Not yet, but I will be."

Up ahead, the road abruptly ended. Freshly chipped rock and dirt covered the well-trodden path at the base of a cliff. Inis, still viewing the world through her virasenses, noticed suspicious signs of sabotage.

She found herself thinking some decidedly crazy thoughts.

"We'll have to take the secondary trail. It's a more indirect way, but what else can we do?" Mertalo suggested.

"We'll do no such thing," Inis answered.

"Excuse me?"

This is risky.

It was between taking a risk and falling into a definite trap. Maybe that peculiar Hexknight had exacerbated her already retributive personality, but she did not feel like falling for someone else's tricks.

"You're going to keep what I do a secret if you value your life. That isn't a a threat from me to you, it's a promise to protect you if you agree to my terms."