Booth hooked his flail onto his belt and angled his shield so that he was ready to intercept whatever the incanter might try to do to Nildeyr. Striding forward, Booth dropped his free hand onto Arra’s shoulder. The warmth of his goddess’s magic flowed through him. Red-gold light seeped from his fingers and into Arra’s flesh.
[You heal Arra for 9 points.]
His movement and primary action were used. He had no secondary actions, still. But he was positioned to use his Voshell’s Protection ability to save Nildeyr if necessary, and he’d increased Arra’s chances of survival as best he could.
It wasn’t a bad turn. Booth felt proud of it, even though he hadn’t hit anything. He ended his turn.
More arrows flew, then. Karon’s voice chanted sharp-edged words, and light receded and flowed, carrying the scent of pine needles and rot. The Scourge Incanter’s chants were hisses of steam, but his Fog of Wrath faded under the onslaught.
The fog fell away from Arra. She straightened and lifted the greatsword she bore. Under duress and unable to retreat, the Scourge Incanter lifted his bare hands, like he thought he could block Arra’s blow with them.
Her blade sundered him entirely.
[Scourge Incanter has died.]
As soon as the death message drifted past and the turn paralysis faded, Booth strode past the fallen enemy, shield raised and hand going to his flail. But no one else came down the hallway at them, and after a few moments, they gathered and stood over the incanter’s body.
“We won?”
We won.
“It would seem so.”
But another thing nagged at Booth. His narrator had claimed the image of steam and the hissing speech of the incanter seemed familiar. He turned his attention inward, silently asking for more details.
Iraekh, homeland of the Irais and other water-related Shining Ones, lies to the far south of the Mindet Valley. The varied races living there are together known as the Iraekhi. Since the people of Iraekh are historically hostile, your studies as a Tilier covered them. The Irais themselves are a combination of fire and water energy—steam and ire—and the speech and imagery you just witnessed fits that profile. It is quite rare for a lone Irais to have anything to do with a human organization, however, so this one’s presence is likely a fluke.
Booth took a few moments to process that, and then another moment to decide how much of and how to share what he’d learned.
This roleplaying shit is harder than I expected. It was one thing to decide he was just going to become someone else. That was way harder when he didn’t have all the knowledge or experiences that actual person would’ve had. If he’d been real.
He is real. He’s me, and I’m real.
Booth shook off the by now familiar circularity of that line of thinking and spoke up.
“His language. It might have been Iraekhi.”
Karon had been leaned over the dead man and doing the deep-thinking frowning thing he did, hands clasped behind his back and short blond ponytail falling forward on the shoulder of his fancy green coat. His head tilted back and forth as he studied the scene.
When Booth spoke, Karon straightened and turned to look at Booth. He arched a single brow. “You speak their language?”
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You don’t have to sound that surprised, smart guy.
Booth flushed and shook his head and tried to cough up the rest of what he was told in a natural-sounding way. “No. But given their history with the Valley, Tiliers certainly study them.”
Lora sidled up alongside Karon and frowned at the dead man. “There’s no way to know if he’s full Irais or even touched.”
“Mmm.” Karon didn’t shrug, but his tone made it sound like he was. “Still, Tilier Greenfield has a point. The sibilant nature of his incantations could certainly be Iraekhi. It’s troubling.”
“Anything to do with Iraekh is troubling, yes. But just one man using Irais magic is probably not an invasion. It’s been nearly a hundred years since the All-War.”
Booth waited. The narrator delivered.
The All-War began in 1232 WD when a massive Iraekhi army emerged from the south and laid waste to all but the most strongly fortified holdings along its path of destruction. Before the war ended, it encompassed all of the Mindet Valley and reached north into Vithtak territory, the first such Iraekhi threat to that empire.
Booth was learning that very little happened which was entirely coincidence. But what all of this Iraekh business might have to do with anything, he had no clue.
“What do you think they’re doing down here?” Nildeyr strayed a few steps toward the closed doors at the hallway’s end. “The Scourge, I mean, wherever they’re from.”
Karon tilted his eyebrow at Booth once more. “Perhaps we should go find out.”
Booth nodded. Flail and shield in his hands and the stink of blood in his mouth and nose, he led the way to the closed doors.
Even with all the experiences of the day had taught him, Booth exerted a great deal of effort in remembering to move cautiously and make absolutely sure the room beyond the closed doors held no immediate dangers before he or anyone else entered. He checked and double-checked.
The room was empty. In contrast to the bloody scenes they’d left in their wake since entering the shrine, this next room held only serenity. Another statue, identical to the one in that very first entry where they’d come in, rose in the room’s center, surrounded by a circle of lit braziers instead of a fountain. The walls themselves curved around it all.
“Circles within circles within circles,” Lora murmured. The way she said it was like it was a quote, but she didn’t elaborate. If the narrator had more information, it wasn’t talking, either.
Incense emanated from resin chunks within the burning coals, and swirls of gray smoke carried hints of mowed hay and damp earth and warmth. What rose within Booth was a sense of motherly comfort and welcome that reminded him of Voshell and the things she was supposed to represent.
It also reminded him of his own mother. Or mothers, he guessed, since he now had two of them. He evaded the kneejerk thoughts about who and what was real.
They’re both real, now. It’s all real.
Light and shadow and smoke flickered across the folds of the Lifebringer statue’s flowing robes and played along the edge of her raised hood, warming the stone with golden light and creating a semblance of life.
Ignoring the statue’s outstretched arms, Booth paced around the room’s perimeter and kept trying to piece things together. “The Scourge are deadly and hostile, and they were up to something. But what? Why here?”
Will they come back? Is Traton any safer now than it was before?
“This is what they were after?” Nildeyr paced in Booth’s trail, neck craned and mouth slightly agape as he peered up at the statue. Whatever sullen anger he might still be nursing, it seemed gone now. “I don’t get it.”
The same geometric patterns they’d been seeing throughout the shrine continued here, carved into the statue’s base and etched into the rims of the braziers. A mosaic of veined stone covered the walls from floor to ceiling, black and white and rich tones of browns and greens, repeating the same series of triangles crossed with lines and rotated in alternating directions.
None of it seemed remarkable enough for the Scourge to have killed or died over.
Arra and Dorri took up posts to either side of the door through which they’d entered. Their physical appearances contrasted, Arra’s greater height and bulk and long beaded braids compared to Dorri’s smaller stature and mousy brown hair woven into an untidy knot. They both emanated a similar ferocity, though.
Karon followed Booth and Nildeyr into the room. The firelight of the braziers brightened the dark blond of his short ponytail and the deep green of his coat.
Lora breezed into the room last, the blue skirts swirling around her ankles incongruent with the silver beads of her mail shirt. She alone didn’t come all the way into the room. Instead, she stopped in the doorway and gazed up at the statue.
“Here.” Karon stood at the statue’s base, his gaze turned downward. With one hand, he traced a shape on the base’s surface. Booth strode from the room’s edge to its center and stood beside Karon.
Shallow indentations marked off four even intervals around the statue. Three of them contained tools crafted in smaller, golden versions of themselves, in a similar style to the scythe bundled beneath Booth’s cloak—a pick, a hand broom, a plasterer’s trowel.
The fourth slot, the one Karon traced with a finger, remained empty, but its outline clearly matched the scythe.