“You’re blaming the corpsevines on me because I lost a brooch?” The Commander was clearly trying to deflect the accusation, but it was just as obvious that he wasn’t sure where to start.
“Enough, Commander.” Mage-Chancellor Ansari interrupted the man’s bluster, then turned to the Registry Master. “That’s why you brought up the theft, isn’t it? You think the geodes are related to the corpsevines somehow and you think they were part of what was stolen.”
Master Jessamine nodded. Despite the fact that she was responding to the Mage-Chancellor, her eyes didn’t leave Commander Matt Walsh. “I don’t want to kill the Commander until he tells us who else was involved. If he won’t, we’ll have to find out through other means.”
“I can’t tell you because I wasn’t involved!” Commander Walsh protested. “I didn’t do any of it!”
“Uh huh. Then maybe you should start-”
Commander Walsh leapt towards the Mage-Chancellor. A glint near his right hand told Sophia he had a weapon. She reflexively started to cast a barrier Skill, only to realize that she didn’t actually have one yet; that was a Skill from Earth that she hadn’t replaced yet.
The Registry Master moved quickly, just barely fast enough to interpose her body between the Commander and the Mage-Chancellor. As she moved, the shield pattern on her left shoulder brightened and seemed to grow. By the time the Commander smashed into it, the shield was more than half Master Jessamine’s height and glowed with a bright yellow light that made it difficult to see.
“Shield of the Sun,” Amy whispered. “I never thought I’d see it, that’s incredible.”
When Jessamine threw the Commander backwards, he landed on his back almost exactly between Sophia’s position next to the geodes and Samuel. The fire mage reacted slower than Sophia; she pulled her sword from its sheath and threw herself forward, Imbuing the blade as she stabbed with it. Her sword met the Commander’s shield at almost the same moment his knife met hers. It was a more than fair trade as the tip of his knife skittered off the scales that covered her armor, while her sword tore his clothing and managed to open a small but bloody wound in his shoulder.
Sophia didn’t know how powerful the Commander was in a fight, but she did know that this wasn’t his type of fight. It wasn’t her preferred distance, either, but at least it was one she was trained for and her armor put her at a significant advantage. He might well have a higher Body than she did, but she was used to fighting people who were stronger.
“I’ll kill her!” the Commander yelled. “Stop or I’ll kill her!”
Sophia thought it was ridiculous of him to claim he could kill her when he was the only one who was injured. At the same time, it made her action easy to decide; this time, she went for the throat. The Commander accepted the injury, mostly blocked by his shield, and kept moving forward. One arm grabbed her and pulled her towards Matt’s chest, while the other brought his knife towards her throat.
The knife stopped when it hit bare flesh. Commander Walsh snarled at the others. “Open the door or I will kill her!”
Sophia was confident this was his plan all along, he’d just planned to capture the Mage-Chancellor instead of a low level girl. Sophia wasn’t about to let it work, low level or not.
He wasn’t in armor. She was. That meant he was wearing soft shoes, while hers had a hard sole. She let go of her sword; it would only get in the way for this. She immediately stomped on his foot, then let herself fall downward as she pushed up on his elbow. The wince at the force that made it past his shield and into the delicate bones of his foot loosened his grip enough that she slid right out of his hold; his knife didn’t even cut her skin as she slid past it, which was a trade she would have happily accepted.
A moment later, the Registry Master slammed into the startled Commander. The impact knocked Sophia over as well, but that was fine. She staggered backwards in time to see a furious Master Jessamine snatch Sophia’s sword from the floor and impale the Commander through his chest. She had to have pushed right through whatever Shield he had left to do that, which impressed Sophia more than she’d expected. It meant the Registry Master was significantly more powerful than the Commander, in addition to being someone who specialized in strength-based close combat.
Sophia backed up a step, but couldn’t go farther without landing in Halven’s lap. Despite the fact that Master Jessamine seemed to have things under control now, she pulled one of her knives off her belt and Imbued it, just in case. With that and the Imbuement still active on the sword in the Commander’s chest, she had options.
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The Commander coughed, then seemed to dissolve into flame. A bird made of fire flashed from his location to the now-closed entrance. He tried to fit through a crack, but wherever he went, he splashed off the stone wall.
A moment later, a cage made of fire floated around him. The phoenix flailed a wing at it, then seemed to flinch backwards as the part of the wing that hit the bars of the cage seemed to flash into a more natural fire, then dissipate as smoke.
“I never thought I’d have to use this on your firebird Ability,” Samuel stated sadly. “But you know I can’t let you run now, not after what you just did. I want to believe that you attacked out of fear and had nothing to do with the corpsevines, but I don’t. If you didn’t, you’d have protested your innocence and let us look into it. I know you that well. Now, are you going to talk or should I just collapse the cage?”
The caged bird opened his mouth, but only the crackling noise of a fire escaped.
“Hold him in place, Samuel,” Master Jessamine stated as she climbed to her feet. “Once I have a cell opened, you can encourage him to fly that way.” She paused, then held the sword out to Sophia. “Thanks for the weapon, but you’ll want to get it inspected. I can tell you have some sort of reinforcement on it, it would have shattered on his shield if you didn’t, but you should get it checked anyway. If it is damaged, Halven or Johan can add a replacement to the reward for this. Speaking of which, Halven, get a total for the geodes. We’re going to buy all of them; add the appropriate rewards for the Challenge and her actions here. Johan, make sure you direct the trio at appropriate tools; they’re going to need them. Rensyn, when you recover from your shock, they’re definitely going to need some advice. This is probably going to trigger another Feat for them soon, and you won’t be able to advise them much longer.”
By the time she finished talking, the Registry Master stood at the left wall of the room. She set her hand on it and an archway appeared. “Samuel, get the bird in here.”
The cage floated towards the opening. The phoenix tried to escape several more times, but after the fourth escape attempt completely removed its left wing, it lay on a seemingly solid fire “floor” as it was carried into the dark opening. Sophia was certain the Commander could have killed himself by ramming his head into the cage, but it seemed he wasn’t willing to go quite that far.
With the cage and the phoenix, there was enough light to see that the opening led to a stone room with no other visible openings. It seemed to be deeper than its width, but Sophia couldn’t really measure either dimension from the outside with the poor light she had available. Moments after Samuel set the cage down on the floor of the cell, a stone door slid smoothly and silently across the opening.
Jessamine relaxed. She looked tired and had a haunted look in her eyes. She shook her head slowly. “There’s a lot we need to do to clean up this mess, but that just means we need to get started. Aimiva, please open a way out for Rensyn and the group that finished the Leveled Challenge; they may as well move on to what they need to do next while the rest of us handle the situation. On that note, you should plan to leave Casterville. Normally, I’d say that your destination should be Innington, because they’re pushing out into some of the weaker Wildlands and would be a good place to hone yourselves.”
She turned to Dav and gave him a tired smile. “That’s not an option for you, I’m afraid. Your Warp is too obvious and Innington is too close to Hailport; you’d have to wear a mask. That might work, and it would still be better than the Long Road to Masiri. They may be one of our best trade partners, and they don’t care about Warps, but you have more women than men. They will assume things you won’t want to deal with. I certainly didn’t. That leaves Izel or Rockport. Izel’s likely too dangerous, but I believe one of you hails from there and may know the safer areas. Rockport would be my choice; while they do trade with Hailport, they’ll work with anyone with the money, Warped or not, and there are several stable Challenges near the city. Talk to Rensyn about it and make your choices.”
The Registry Master turned away from them and started talking to the Mage-Chancellor. Sophia started to listen in, but Rensyn called to them and ushered them outside the room and downstairs through a completely different, far grander, set of stairs.
Despite the Registry Master’s prediction, there was no notification of a Feat. Sophia couldn’t really bring herself to care; however good they were, there had been a lot of them right at the end of the Challenge. Whatever the Registry Master expected was probably included in one of the ones they’d already received.
Rensyn seemed tense, and Sophia couldn’t help but remember that he was the one who called in the Commander to help deal with the corpsevine situation. It was clearly in no way his fault; he’d been used by Commander Walsh to set things up the way the Commander wanted them to happen. Sophia still wouldn’t be surprised if he felt responsible or guilty for being used. She also suspected that they’d been friends, or at least friendly.
Rensyn led them back to the room where they’d first met Matt Walsh, where they showed him the geode and introduced Lillah Gardener. Sophia frowned; she hadn’t thought about the woman who knew about the corpsevines in days and she was pretty sure she hadn’t heard anything about her. “What happened to Lillah Gardener? Wasn’t she going to help locate corsevines?”
“She’s dead,” Rensyn stated as he dropped into a chair. His voice was rough with emotion. “The first day of the assault. Killed by a corpsevine she didn’t see, at least that’s what the report said. I’m not sure I believe it, now. One more thing to lay at Matt’s feet, whether he arranged it or simply didn’t stop it. My guess is that he put her somewhere dangerous and hoped something would happen. I’m not sure if I’m being too easy on him or too harsh, right now. Maybe he arranged it or maybe he just made a mistake, I don’t know. I can’t believe he planned this. Corpsevines?”
Rensyn closed his eyes for a moment and let out a breath. When he opened them again, he was still tense but seemed to want to move on. “Let’s talk about some more pleasant things for a while. You should have a lot of Wisps available after fully clearing a challenge; where are you thinking about dedicating them?”