Aria traveled by horse-drawn cart for about a week to reach Felsen the city she had Kendra had originally left from. Aria had rented the items she needed and set off to the city. Kendra lay wrapped up in the back under the cover of blankets and wrappings. Her chills had gotten worse as Aria was unable to actively take care of her while they traveled. She had grown paler, and her lips were now blue as they entered the city. It may have taken less time if Aria didn’t have to stop to feed Kendra. Her supplies from the doctors had run out halfway through the trip on the road so she was forced to take a more active role in preparing food that Kendra could eat. Other than a few stops here and there the two of them made it to the city.
Felsen was built around the mountain range that stretched from the human kingdom all the way north to this city and a little beyond. Carved stone walls greeted them as Aria directed the horse down the roads. The streets were busy with other horses and people in the afternoon. They passed many markets and shops as Aria made her way to her destination. People occasionally called to her to try their wares, but she ignored them.
Aria turned down a side street and saw an old worn-down sign that was no longer legible. She pulled the cart to the side next to the building and entered. She pushed aside fabric serving as the doorway and inhaled the familiar scents of the room. Knickknacks for sale were littered around the wall. In the center of the room lay a large carpet with an old elf woman sitting quietly not facing Aria. Smoke trails from incense on either side of her blew upwards.
“I have returned master,” said Aria as she bowed.
“Are you here to finish your training or are you back here because of that damned war?” she responded not turning around.
“You already know the answer. I would not have returned if it was not important. I need your help.”
“Then have you forsaken your training, uninterested in what may lie ahead for you?” she asked.
“I took in the visions you showed me, and I want no part in learning to manipulate the mind like that. It is not who I am or want to be.”
“Even if it is the only way to save your sister. Use the power you don’t want to use?”
“How did you know…”
“I can feel her presence outside the door however faint it may be now. Bring her inside so that I can see her, and we will continue in my back room.”
Aria’s master stood up and walked through a doorway behind the shop and left Aria. Aria ran back to the cart and put Kendra on her back. She brought her inside and into the back room. Aria’s master had candles burning in the back room and boxes of trinkets in her as well. Aria lay Kendra on the table in the center. She looked worse than when she had seen her hours before.
“She seems to have continued to live by sheer force of will alone, but she is unable to heal. Tell me exactly what happened. I can sense some of the problems but need a better idea if we are to find a way for her body to restore itself.”
“We just returned from the dwarf kingdom. She has been like this for a month now. We fought an ice dragon and killed it, but not before she was encased in a block of ice. I began breaking her out almost immediately and after five minutes got assistance melting the ice and healing the most immediate problems. Since then, I have been feeding her herbs and medicines given to me by the dwarf doctors to stabilize her but from what I have observed they have only treated the symptoms and not the root cause. She has definitely been getting worse over time.”
As Aria spoke her Master was observing Kendra with her magical senses and some tools she brought out.
“I think I have some fire stones to keep her warm and fight back the cold. The dead ice dragon’s mana seems to continue to rampage through her veins and organs. She mind has shut down external stimuli and some bodily functions to focus solely on fighting back the foreign mana within her. If we are to help her you will need to collect some things for me and then help me perform some mind magic. I wasn’t joking when I said that the magic you dislike the most will be needed to save her.”
“If it must be done then I will cast the spell with you to help her.”
“Would you look at how quickly your mind changes? Maybe you should continue your apprenticeship with me.”
“Those mind tricks no longer work on me.”
“Most of them anyway,” her master responded.
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“Tell me what I need to get to help her, and I will retrieve it.”
“You only need to get two things. The others I should be able to get in the markets and alchemy shops. We need to have something take the ice mana away from her and another item forcibly restart the fire mana circulating through her. Now because it was a full dragon that injured her the mana core of something similar will be required. Bring me back the beast core of a fire drake and an ice drake.”
“But I can’t take either of those on my own. I would need to assemble an adventurer’s party of five or six to take them on. I don’t have the money on me for it or time.”
“Except you can kill it on your own. I have seen you take on a beast of its power once before when I shared with you some of my power through the visions. [Dominate Minds] is a powerful spell that you have cast only once before but will do the job. You won’t be able to get away with only using simple fear and illusion magic to get this job done. You must use all of your training and make the illusions built by your hand come to life. I know you can access the final level of illusion magic and meld it with mind magic. You have known how to do it since you stepped out my door for the first time and ran off to train the golem. Now go. You have wasted too much time already bringing her to me. I must prepare.”
Aria’s master shooed her out of the back room and took her out of the horse before wishing her goodbye. Aria stood there for a minute before unhooking the horse from its cart so she could ride.
‘Annoying witch. She didn’t even say where to find the drakes. At least Kendra will be safe for now. I know what I need to do to save her, and I have the magic to do so. Mind magic is a vile thing and I know that even more so after I watched it be used to train Arthur. I wish I had never helped them with the runes required for the control sphere. I hope you will forgive me Arthur wherever you are.’
Aria got on her horse and rode towards the adventurer’s guild. If anyone was going to have information on where to find the drakes or their cores it was going to be them. The adventurers, mercenaries, and professional monster hunters. She rode up to their large two-story building. A silver embossed sign hung above the doors with the words ‘Adventurers Guild’ written on them and to either side banners hung with their symbology obscuring the front windows.
When she entered the adventurer’s guild it was loud with conversation and drinks. Like all guild buildings for adventurers, it was full of drunk swordsman wasting their metal earned in battle by buying more drinks at inflated prices. Her stave hung by her side as she walked through. Aria walked up to the desks with the mission boards next to them and waited for someone to help her.
“Show me your badge please,” said the bored office worker.
“I’m not actually part of the adventurers guild but am looking for other services.”
“What is it that you need to be done through the guild. I would still recommend registering through us for the perks that it offers. I can give you a list if you like. Maybe…”
“No thank you. I’m not interested in paying ten percent of all I make in perpetuity for your services. Now I need the information on mana beast locations. Can you tell me how much it will cost to get that information?”
“Well, that is something we don’t and can’t offer to non-guild members. If you are looking for specific beast materials or cores then you can put up a request through our mission boards for it. Depending on the items we can have them brought from our warehouses by the end of the day or have hunters bring them here within a week. I would again remind you that by being a guild member you can get these items cheaper after the initial guild registration fee. What say you?”
“I said I am not interested in your boy's drinking club and want to know the cost of buying the items or information. I doubt you have them all on hand, but you probably know where to find them in the mountains.”
“Well, if you insist on paying the extra fees we can see about retrieving the items for you. What are you looking for?”
“I need the beast cores from drakes. I will be retrieving them myself.”
“The items you want are on our higher tier list. The cost to retrieve will go for 20 gold per person on a six-person team coming to a total of 120 gold if you were a member but because you are not there will be a seventeen percent surcharge coming to a total of 140 gold, 40 silver. Now, how you like to pay? We have installment plans, or you can pay directly with gold or items,” he said looking at Aria’s stave.
“I have neither the time nor patience to wait for buffoons to collect the things I can do myself. I now know that you have the information I seek so I will have to go elsewhere. It would seem Master was right. I will have to use this a bit more than I would like to.”
“What?” said the clerk.
Aria activated two spells at once. The first was [Frenzy]. She had been eyeing some of the drunker groups and the spell easily entered their minds and a few others around them. In their drunk state, they would have no idea how they got so angry or that Aria had entered this building at all.
The second spell she cast using her stave. She quickly extended it and tapped the clerk’s head with stave as the spell activated. [Dominate Minds] activated and the man’s mental defenses crumbled. She quickly returned the stave to its spot on her side while the other clerks were focused on participating in or trying to stop the fighting that had broken out in the building. She released some of her aura in a bubble so that the two of them were not disturbed by the fight. Those around her fighting treated her as if she wasn’t there at all.
Aria focused on the man’s mind and searched for the location of the drake’s. He didn’t know where it was but knew where to find it. Aria waited patiently as she controlled the man and had him walk to the back rooms and collect the information she needed. The clerk copied the information on both of the drakes and brought it to her after putting everything away. Aria collected the piece of paper and tucked it in an inside pocket. With a final touch of her power, she removed herself from the minds of everyone as she left. If people investigated they would find no evidence of her being there at all that day and that the fight was completely natural, and an accident brought on by spilled drinks.