“Alright, everyone! Hello, I’m Zalia. I’m sorry to do this to you so soon after being freed but we have to get to work immediately while the Astar are still regrouping and putting out the remaining fires in their town. We need to find and bring together the rest of the freed slaves as soon as possible and begin making our way back to Endaria.”
There was some mumbling amongst the people and one spoke up.
“How are we meant to find anything in this mist?”
Zalia tapped at her leg in thought, trying to find a good answer to that. The woman wasn’t wrong.
“I have a drink that can help your bodies adapt to the environment, if only temporarily. That should help. Otherwise, the young cats here all have developed abilities to see in the mist. Some of you will be able to pair up with one of them and protect them as they search for others. They are trained in tracking so they should be of good assistance. Aylie and Ember will stay here to greet returning slaves while Boreal and I shall also head out into the mist to try to find them. Try to keep track of where you are and which direction you have walked while out there.”
It was a risk, a large one at that. It was quite possible that some of them could get caught out there or even just get lost, but it was also important to find and help as many others as possible. Zalia knew that as Silver rank people, each of them would have a good sense of direction and an incredible memory. That should help in finding their way back at the least.
Each of Boreal’s children found themselves a human and wandered off into the mist after a stern word from Boreal. She made it clear that they were to protect her young with their lives or else face the consequences, which would just happen to come in a sharp, quick and furry manner.
As the unchosen people grumbled and made their own way off into the mist, Zalia gave Ember and Aylie a quick farewell hug and ran off.
It didn’t take her long to start finding people.
The first man she found was stumbling over a stretch of rocky ground with vacant eyes and she quickly stopped him in his tracks. Where the others would have to bring stragglers back to camp, Zalia held an advantage.
Using the keyword of the portal back in the clearing as a guide for her magic, she prepared a ritual that teleported the man straight back to camp. Simple and easy as that, she went on her way again.
Over the course of several hours, Zalia tracked down dozens of people. It was easy for her, the tracks left by their mindless wandering easy to see for her trained and enhanced eyes. Each person she found was quickly sent back to camp where she hoped Ember and Aylie weren’t getting too overwhelmed.
After the first few people, Zalia made sure to make her way further out from the camp as the others would have a harder time bringing these people back. She had a rough idea of how many had escaped the town in the general direction of the camp and would just have to hope that the ones who had fled out other avenues would find their own ways back to the kingdom. It was a long shot for many of them, unfortunately, as it was quite a long journey.
After the first hours, she went back to the clearing to see how everyone was doing, looking through the few rank-ups from the fight while she did.
Congratulations! Hunter’s Sight has reached Silver 7.
Congratulations! Herbal Magic has reached Silver 11.
You have fought many battles, each a powerful struggle in its own right. Throughout many of them, you have worn Druidic Armour, Blessed by Nature.
Congratulations! Druidic Armour, Blessed by Nature (Blessed Heirloom) has ascended to Silver rank!
The final notification had taken Zalia by surprise, as she hadn’t felt any changes at all. She was so used to ignoring and dismissing messages during fights as not to be distracted that she hadn’t noticed this one was different.
Druidic Armour, Blessed by Nature (Blessed Heirloom) - Deeply bonded Silver rank.
Tin - wearing the armour applies Shadows Veil to you.
Iron - Shadows Veil gains a new effect called Partial Intangibility.
Bronze - When intangible, you may step through Flora to move out of similar Flora within a limited range.
Silver - Your affinity for ritual magic has made its mark on your armour. You may have three rituals imbued into your armour that are constantly active without any upkeep cost. Changing one of these rituals requires many hours of work.
Shadows Veil - Shadow Veil suppresses the wearer's aura and magical signature, making it challenging for magical beings or entities with heightened senses to detect their presence.
Shadows Veil now muffles any sound you make while wearing the armour, making your movements silent, even when moving quickly or engaging in combat.
Partial Intangibility - Shadow Veil grants the wearer partial intangibility, allowing them to phase through thin barriers or objects, such as walls, fences, or closed doors, as long as the barriers are not too thick or magically protected.
She gave an appreciative whistle. Permanently active rituals?
It took her a matter of seconds to decide on which ones she would use. With a seemingly inevitable war with the Astar coming up, she would need anti-teleportation protection. If she could design a ritual that didn’t stop her own teleportation magic then she would do that one. The next would have to be the Dodge-vine and Adastem ritual that provided adaptive protection.
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Her first thought for the third was to be the ritual that gave her the wings for flight. Then she realised she could already maintain that ritual on herself indefinitely without mana use, and already did. It would have to be something else then, but what?
Her mind turned to less combat-oriented things. A ritual that enhanced her stealth, perhaps. There was time to think about it anyway.
For now, she put her armour back into storage, then brought it out in front of herself rather than equipped. She quickly cast the Dodge-vine major and Adastem minor ritual on it and saw the magic imbue itself into the armour. A couple of runes etched themselves into different pieces of the armour and Zalia admired them closely, recognising them as the runes from the ritual. Could she do this kind of thing without the ability? Enchant items?
It wasn’t time to think of that now.
She quickly re-equipped the armour, feeling it protect her just a little better now, and checked the description of that last ability again.
Silver - Your affinity for ritual magic has made its mark on your armour. You may have three rituals imbued into your armour that are constantly active without any upkeep cost. Changing one of these rituals requires many hours of work.
Imbued rituals:
* Dodge-vine and Adastem (Adaptive Protection).
* None
* None
Excellent.
When she arrived back at the clearing, it was to a scene only slightly less chaotic than she was expecting.
The number of people they had gathered so far spilled out of the too-small space and out, around and on top of the raised earth wall. Ember was having to walk around the perimeter, making sure none of the more vacant-looking ones didn’t wander off again.
Zalia quickly pushed inside and began expanding the walls, lowering them and building new ones further out. It was only minutes before she had a space more than big enough for the odd one-hundred and twenty people. Looking through their ranks, Zalia once again saw not a Bronze ranker in sight. There were even two Gold rankers among their number. If they could just get these people back to Endaria, they would undoubtedly be an amazing infusion of strength for the nation.
She wondered how much longer they should try looking for other people. How long could they wait, in reality, before the Astar brought stronger forces to find them? It was a hard decision to make.
Many of the people Zalia had sent back earlier were looking significantly better now, after the ministrations of Ember and Aylie. While it would be another day until Aylie could use her soul-healing magic, the emotional healing and basic healing that Aylie provided were still helpful.
Ember found her shortly after she had extended the walls, questions written across her expression.
“Zalia, I agree with what we’re doing here but how are we going to feed all these people on the journey back? For that matter, how are we going to keep them all safe?”
Zalia looked around.
“Many of them are still capable of fighting. As for the feeding, you have your Universal Wellbeing, remember?”
A light lit up in Ember’s eyes.
“Oh! I have only ever used it to help towns and the such, it completely slipped past me that it would apply here.”
Universal Wellbeing was an ability that Ember had developed long ago. Previously called “Help The Needy”, the ability was one that she used to provide a community of people with something that they needed. Previous examples of this were repairing buildings, healing wounds and most importantly, feeding towns. While it could only be used once a day, that would be all they needed to feed these people enough that they could make it back to Endaria, where the council could take over their wellbeing.
Zalia nodded, glad to have helped allay those fears.
“The question on my mind is how long we should wait before leaving. I don’t want to be here when the Astar finally decide to come looking. Worse even, if this mist really is made of the souls of enslaved humans, who’s to say that it is going to stick around much longer? I’d rather be long gone before we find that out.”
Ember nodded, looking worried again.
“Give it another hour, then we should go.”
Zalia had been thinking to leave straight away but agreed. She wanted to help these people as much as Ember did but they did have to be sure not to destroy any chance they had of actually escaping by leaving it too late. Being caught on their way back to Endaria could be disastrous, especially if they had hundreds of Astar using combined magic to make them all vanish from reality as they had just done hours earlier.
With a timeline in place, Zalia left the clearing again. There was no time to waste.
She spent the next hour as she had spent the previous few, finding stragglers and teleporting them back to the clearing for Ember and Aylie to look after. The anxiety and pressure of the situation made her stressed, yet she still felt better now than she had when Ember and Aylie had been captured. Nothing could come even close to that feeling.
With the hour done, she went back to the clearing.
Ember had been stopping people from leaving again once they had returned and they were now all there except for Breeze and the person that he had been with. Great.
Zalia found Ember again.
“Take them and go, Boreal and I will find Breeze.”
Ember gave her a nod and started collecting the people together and organising them. She began explaining where they were heading and how they could be found again if people got lost in the mist. Zalia only heard the beginning of the explanation as she and Boreal ran off into the mist once more.
Using Hunter’s Sight, Zalia was quickly able to track Breeze down. Glowing bushes, trees and patches of ground marked where Breeze had been, the tracks obvious to her now that she was on the right path.
Despite that, Boreal saw them before Zalia did.
Breeze was on the ground, writhing in pain as an Astar floated nearby, no expression on their face. There were two more who had the freed slave that had gone with Breeze in a similar pained mess on the floor.
Boreal was upon them in an instant, motherly love turned weapon as she attacked.
The one that was torturing Breeze had the tendons on the back of its legs brutally slashed before Boreal jumped up and grabbed its neck in her powerful jaws. She crunched down and threw the body against a nearby tree where it bent unnaturally around the trunk.
Zalia attacked the other two, arrows peppering holes in one Astar. As she did, the freed slave managed to break free of the remaining Astar’s grip and jumped to his feet. He grabbed the Astar’s skull as it tried to escape via teleportation magic and slammed it into his knee. Twice more had the Astar’s head explode in a gory mess.
While that happened, Zalia scooped up Breeze and began setting up the teleportation ritual. A few minutes later and they appeared back in the clearing.
She handed off Breeze to the freed slave and gestured for them to chase after the rest of their group while she slowly disassembled the clearing that had been their base.