Chapter 91: The Death Mage
Subject: Inis Location: Otemrest Borderlands - Trade Road
New voices filled the air of the formerly sleepy village. Strangers were making hurried preparations, unloading cargo and loading passengers.
I've spent so much of my time here cooped up in that room, I didn't even realize how bleak everything feels around here. I wonder why that is.
Watching the dirt road below from the grime-smeared window, Inis had already made the last preparations to leave. Mertalo stumbled through the door, seeming a little conflicted to find her ready and waiting.
"You're... awake."
Did he mean to leave her there?
"You made the preparations, right?"
"I did... yes. When I told them you were a seeker, they didn't even charge us to join at the back. Seems convoys leaving the village have been attacked more than once before, and they seem happy for adding any capable hands to their force. There's only the small matter of showing them your badge before we leave."
She glanced down at her badge, gleaming shamefully on her chest.
Was it those same bandits from before who were attacking the convoys leaving from here?
"Do you think it's too dangerous? They could come back."
"You really don't remember--? Never mind. It's not my decision to make. You're my client, you decide whether we go with them or not."
So that's how he was going to play it, was he? She wouldn't feel guilty if he agreed to keep her as a client. Once payment exchanged hands, some would never go back on their word, but "fools would die as fools could die" was Inis's thoughts on the matter.
"Then we go. I've wasted away in this region for far too long."
He helped her finish hauling her gear and, together, they retrieved the mechanized wagon where it'd been hidden, covered with layers of concealment spells. While they were activating the wagon, a tall woman walked up and greeted them.
"I hear we've snagged ourselves a seeker. That you, little miss?"
Inis activated her virasenses and studied the stranger. She was decidedly not a mage. Few people were, but you couldn't be too careful. She tapped her badge as an answer. The stranger didn't look all that closely at it. She probably couldn't tell a fake from the genuine article.
"And what is your vocation?" Inis answered.
"I'm just your average mercenary," the stranger said with a shrug.
"Mercenary captain," Inis corrected.
The stranger laughed.
It was hard not to notice the number of gazes on the three of them. Noticing things like this with greater ease was one of the benefits of rising virasense mastery. Apart from that, Inis noticed the captain following her eyes as they looked back at her.
"A seeker mage?" she exclaimed, sighting audibly. "I can breathe easier."
The still-recovering scholar was even less trusting of mercenaries than she was of seekers. At some point, many of them would come to believe that protecting caravans was too much trouble, and they would start raiding them instead.
"Do your job and I'll pull my weight."
"Fair point. I've been paid a good amount to push through the bandit blockade, skirting past the spinners, to get these people to safer lands."
Bandits and spinners. No wonder they're leaving.
It wasn't seeming so safe in Maliscade anymore either, but she wasn't going to tell the mercenary that. She needed these people motivated to reach their destination.
Somehow, the mercenary leader seemed to guess what Inis was thinking during the silence that followed.
"Maybe less favorable lands now? I'm not blind nor deaf to what customers tell me."
"More work for you and yours, then, right?" Mertalo added.
What a good companion this Mertalo was.
"Right you are, friend. We were thinking just the same thing," she answered boisterously, wrapping a thick arm around his shoulders.
He grinned back, unable to wrest free of her forceful grip, and unwilling to try.
"I'm Lois, let's be good friends on this journey."
Again, Mertalo nodded and smiled. The words were addressed at Inis too, but when Lois reached with her other arm, she was coldly rejected.
"Friends from a distance then?"
"Count on it."
"The journey has been hard," Mertalo excused, not wanting to offend their protectors.
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Subject: Inis Location: Otemrest Borderlands - Trade Road
Not a day into the journey, the convoy was attacked.
Flaming bottles shattered across the dirt road, bathing it in flame, and catching cleverly scattered brambles alight. At least fifteen dirty, rag-wearing humans skidded down the embankment to flank the convoy on the right.
The sound of blades clashing filled the forested hills. Inis flung herself from the wagon and cast off her robes.
She flung a viradart to pierce one human in the eye, who was easily finished off by the slash of a mercenary's blade. The convoy's side was already winning. Then, twice that number of bandits tumbled down the embankment to the left flank.
By now, the bandits to the right were dead, so the mercenaries darted across the road and met the bandits before they arrived at the convoy.
They're exceptionally disorganized... Inis remarked. She held back to defend the rear, resting her heels atop the wagon once more to gain a better vantage, not wanting to hit her own side in the melee.
Before Inis could decide to join the mercenaries on the right, who were outnumbered but not outmatched, more arrived to the rear flank, closest to her.
She turned around and cast a hasty solflame's embrace spell. The spell did little more than force the advancing bandits back a pace and focus their attention on her, but that was what she was hoping for.
Normally, faced with a mage, a human would reconsider the decision to fight, even heavily outnumbered as she was, but these bandits were compelled by a powerful desperation. They fanned out and prepared to launch themselves into a suicidal charge.
"It's her!" one of them suddenly cried out, falling onto his backside.
Not wanting to exhaust herself prematurely, Inis stepped forward and scanned the group with her virasenses. None of them were magically inclined nor exceptional in any observable way.
The fallen bandit kicked backwards with his tattered boots, displacing a great deal of dust in the process. He pushed himself up and ran screaming back into the trees.
"The 'Death Mage' is here!" another called out, horror in his eyes. "Abandon the charge!"
He, too, sprinted far from Inis, who stood in place, confused. What had she done to earn such a title?
She looked to the remaining mercenaries, which was all of them save for a few wounded, and they too had been abandoned by their attackers. They regrouped around her, staring in awe.
"The only mage here is you," Lois remarked out of nowhere.
Inis looked down at her and shrugged.
"I don't know what just happened."
"Maybe they mistook you for someone else?"
I'm sure I must have hurt them when they captured me. That must be it.
"Probably."
She was in no shape to fight that many of them, so it was good that they retreated. With any luck, they wouldn't cross paths again.
Inis hopped back into her wagon and slunk into the back. Mertalo, trying to be discreet, stole glances at her out of the corner of his eye.
"What did I do to those bandits to make them so scared of me?" she asked in a low voice, so no one in any of the other wagons and carriages could hear them.
"You killed the few around me, and then left for a while. When you came back, you were alone. You were strong. Maybe they didn't expect that?"
"Maybe."
She felt disappointed that she couldn't kill any of the bandits. She'd been dying for a way to vent. Killing would do just fine. So long as she was dealing "justified" death.
That thought, and her overall reaction to being left out of the battle, was... concerning.
By the time the convoy started up again, her thoughts were elsewhere.
This new information about the Guild forced Inis to see the world in a new way. She understood that most people would panic in the face of such news, but it is too late to close her eyes to it. It reminded her of her mother’s death. Had this been public knowledge, her mother probably wouldn’t have died, Not so soon at least. It was personal.
That said, a cold understanding kept Inis’s anger in check. She acknowledged the virtue of suppressing a panic. The masses would make matters worse if they knew how insidious this foe was. Inis couldn't argue against the logic.
That said, Inis was anything from the average citizen. She needed to know this information, and she resented having to steal it.
And that last, Violet Crown log was anything but benign. She wondered how far the greed had spread in Arlcadia's Seeker Branch.
"When you're settled in this other city, and well rested, conduct another experiment."
A strange thought occurred, suggesting a possible solution. She should continue injecting herself with Blightseed Solution, and then use that power to kill the people trying to get in the way of her research. Her goal was to understand the Blight, and they were interfering by hiding the information away.
"Trust Mertalo, and trust yourself. Trust those who know the person that you truly are, and deal with the Guild if it would harm you."
The thoughts came and went organically, in her confused haze, but she mentally retraced her steps and decided that they didn't belong. She had never thought of killing a person before. Not like this, at least.
Her quest to understand the Blight had the ultimate goal of eradicating it. Suddenly, she felt the compulsion to preserve it forming in her mind. These fledgling urges could easily be shaken off, but she didn't know where they were coming from. Perhaps, it was disgust with people driving her to temporary madness?
Inis restrained herself, reasoning that the Guild could be handled in another way. Rationally, she shouldn’t kill the people in her way just because she thought they are doing it wrong. It was too extreme a solution, and she could still get what she wanted without resorted to it.
Even so, she'd gradually become more comfortable with these violent thoughts.