As Lucas staggered from the wreckage and through the smokey haze, he almost ruined his whole escape plan by running into someone. He’d been so busy using his very limited level of focus to watch where he stepped so he didn’t leave behind footprints that he almost ran right into the first person on the scene, an elf in war paint.
Wait, that’s not an elf, he realized after a moment. It's a man dressed up to look like one. What in the…
The near miss and the strange observation stunned him just enough that, for a moment, he lost concentration and faded into view. Lucas cursed silently as he fixed the mistake instantly. It was enough to make the man whirl around. He’d obviously caught a glimpse of Lucas out of the corner of his eye. Still, when he saw no one standing there, he was confused for just long enough to worry before he headed toward the carriage.
That stressful moment did nothing for the pounding in his head, and even as someone else came toward the burning wreckage, Lucas watched the second man for a moment and was sure that he looked familiar. Before he could decide where he’d seen him before, the need to get further away overpowered him, and he staggered toward the treeline on the opposite side of the road.
He wanted to linger to get more information about what had happened. He wanted to know who these people were and why they were trying to kill him. He wanted to know a lot of things, but more than any of that, he wanted to keep breathing more.
“What the hell was that,” one of the men yelled at the other. “I told you a small explosion! We don’t want to kill the bastard. We need him alive!”
“Relax, man, just relax, he ain’t here!” the other one said. The sound of wood being shifted or kicked rang out loudly after that, but Lucas was more worried about staying upright and invisible to turn around and see what they were doing. His adrenalin was fading, and his consciousness was going out right along with it.
Fuckers must have given me a concussion, he decided, as his center of balance started to lean hard to his right.
As soon as he got behind a thick fur tree, he let go of the spell, which helped a little, but that was only so he could pull out a healing potion. What he found in his bag was mostly just broken glass, though. He cut his hand and cursed but ignored it as he pulled out one remaining potion at a time while his would-be kidnappers continued to talk in the background.
“I’m telling you, if this is a decoy, then they know,” one of the voices insisted. “They already know, and they’re just testing us!”
“The Boss ain’t gonna be happy about this,” the other answered.
“We should get out of here,” the first one said.
“We can’t go until we lay out the bodies like we planned,” the second one insisted. “We can’t have none of this pointing back to us!”
There were the sounds of other people, too, but Lucas couldn’t quite make them out.
While they argued, Lucas tossed aside his strength flask his agility flask, and he was about to toss away his stink bomb before he thought better of it and very gingerly set that down. If it went off, it would give him away for sure. The last intact potion in the bag was a healing tincture, and he drank both doses of that greedily. It made him feel better immediately, but not so much better that he thought standing was a good idea.
Lucas stayed right where he was, burying his legs with pine needles to hide himself a little more while he listened to the sound of whatever it was these bozos were doing. At first, he was pretty sure they were dragging bodies around. After that, they fired a few arrows off at random into trees. One of them hit a tree not twenty feet from him, allowing him to see that it did in fact look like elven fletching, even if it was hard to get them in focus.
After that, they fled into the forest from wherever they’d come, leaving him to lay there. What Lucas wanted to do more than anything them beat the shit out of them and get some answers. There were only half a dozen of them, and he thought he could probably take them.
“They don’t look so tough,” he told himself as he willed himself to stand. “Especially not that second guy. He looked a little soft and…”
That was when Lucas remembered where he’d seen him. When he’d desperately been holding back a heart-seeking dagger with a book.
“That was the fucking mage!” he said, louder than he meant to, as he realized what happened. “Mother bitch!”
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That invigorated him for a moment, but it also took all the wind out of his sails. As bad as he wanted that man dead, there was no way he was hunting a mage that could tear down whole buildings. Not when he felt like this.
That was his last coherent thought before exhaustion took him. He was still bleeding from somewhere. He could see it in the bloody snow around him, but he wasn’t sure where, and at this moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
Lucas didn’t wake up until it was almost dark. That was when someone in proper armor and the Prince's livery nudged him with his toe.
“I found one over here,” the man yelled. “He’s still breathing, too!”
Lucas wanted to ask him which side he was on, but his mouth was too dry, and no words would come out. Instead, he looked past him, noting that snowflakes were falling from the sky now. They had been for a while, he supposed. The blood was gone now, and he was half buried in a blanket of freshly fallen snow.
Lucas stayed conscious long enough to be loaded onto a stretcher and into a wagon, though he faded in and out the whole time. After that, things were more sporadic. Another healing potion was shoved in his mouth at some point, and he woke whenever the wagon hit a bad rut. After that, he only remembered looking out the window and seeing Blackgate rising up ahead of them at a turn in the road.
It wasn’t until he was in his bed that he finally awoke with a start and full clarity as a priestess stood above him, mumbling a prayer that was too quiet to hear. Even if he couldn’t hear it, though, he could certainly feel it. His skin was glowing as magic swirled around him.
The healing potions he’d drunk had done him some good, but compared to this, they might as well have been shots of tequila. This was something else, and when it was over, she bowed and left the room, leaving Lucas with only a glowering gnome sitting on the side of his bed.
“I didn’t do it,” Lucas said, yawning as he slumped back into bed.
“Didn’t do what?” Heisenburgle asked.
“Whatever it was. Why ever they wanted this. I didn’t do it,” he answered. He didn’t know what had just happened, but he was lucky to have survived it without ending up in some new hellhole.
“Annoying as you can be, I doubt very much that you did anything to upset the elves,” the gnome said, “But this only underscores the point that they know we’re getting close and—”
“Elves didn’t do this,” Lucas interrupted. “They were playing cowboys and indians, that’s all. It was men that did this.”
“You took a pretty bad blow to the head, Lucas, so I’m not surprised that you don’t remember, but the scene of the attack is very clear,” Heisenburgle explained. “There were arrows, bodies, and what looks to have been at least one fireball spell; you’re lucky to be alive.”
“How bad was I hurt, exactly?” Lucas asked.
“Three broken ribs, what was probably a broken arm, a mild case of frostbite,” the gnome said in a remarkably clinical manner, “and, of course, the skull fracture.”
“Skull fracture?” he asked, reaching up to the side of his head, where he found only dried blood.
“Yes,” the gnome agreed. “You got off light compared to the other men in the carriage. The two guards in the back with you died in the explosion, and the driver and his guard were both killed by the elves. Truthfully, I’m surprised you survived at all. How did you manage to get away in your current condition?”
“They weren’t elves,” Lucas repeated again. “I saw them. Two of them, at least, from my hiding place. One of them was dressed like an elf and wearing warpaint, but the other one… he was a mage that almost hunted me down once before. Back before I got tangled up with the Whisperers.”
“A mage? Dressed up as an elf? Why?” Heisenburgle blurted out. Lucas could tell that the gnome didn’t believe him. “The mage guild doesn’t seem a likely choice to cross the Prince. Elves, on the other hand…”
“Will you drop the elf shit already?” Lucas sighed, too tired to fight. “This is politics. Whisperers probably, or maybe the Prince, or—”
He felt whole but utterly exhausted by whatever the priestess had done to fix him. As much as he enjoyed the experience, he preferred to stick to potions. At least he understood those or thought he did.
“The Prince has not ordered your removal,” Heisenburgle said with enough conviction that it put Lucas’s mind at ease. “If he had, I would know. No, you are vital to his plans regarding Skylara for the foreseeable future. He will be greatly disturbed to hear about this unfortunate incident.”
“Well, you let me know what he says,” Lucas nodded. “For now, I feel like maybe I should nap.”
“You’ll have the chance to tell him yourself,” Heisenburgle retorted. “Skylara is coming to a ball this weekend, and she’s requested your presence.”
“I’m not sure I’m up to dancing right about now,” Lucas answered with a shake of his head.
“And I’m not sure you understand your place in all of this yet,” the gnome responded. “When I request that you do something, that’s one thing; I might have you beaten for your insolence or imprisoned. I lack the authority to execute you. When the Prince makes a request of you, it's only your life on the line, but when it’s Skylara… well, as long as she holds the kingdom hostage, you will do whatever she asks.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lucas said, “We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. For now, I’d have your men search the wreckage of that carriage again and see what they can find about who really did this.”
The gnome looked like he wanted to continue arguing, but instead, he just nodded and left. That made Lucas more concerned about the state he’d been brought here in than the man’s description of his injuries. He wasn’t the type to leave an argument without the last word, so he must really believe that Lucas needed his rest.
That night, his dreams were troubled and stormy. He dreamed that he was searching for herbs in the snow, but every time he found one, it burst into flames. Still, he kept trying, and when he came home with only a basket full of ashes, he sought out Danaria to explain what had happened, only to find her corpse shredded by hobgoblins.
It was terrifying, and he woke with a start to find morning light streaming in through the window.