Lucas spent a lot of time in his own head as he and the party made their way across the countryside. Their stop at the shack turned out to be an outlier; they saw multiple abandoned settlements over the next few days, but the group showed no interest in checking them out.
“The Guilds stopped running salvage quests into this part of the country decades ago,” Wick explained the first time they saw a spattering of squat buildings on the horizon. “There was a reason for that: there’s nothing out here worth salvaging anymore.”
“And even if there was,” the Skycloak said, “our objectives do not involve petty loot.”
Progress was therefore swift, likely covering more ground than Lucas had in his solo travels. Every day took them closer to the overgrown city and Lucas’ apprehension grew. He was forming a few ideas about the dynamics of this group he’d found himself recruited to and the world he’d found himself in, and questions were clawing at his mind. Working on his magic was only so much of a distraction, his work on his pathways settling into a monotonous routine that didn’t really require much of his attention and his floramancy experiments following a mostly linear improvement.
Lucas dithered over what to do for quite a while. Making incorrect assumptions about the world could turn out to be detrimental, but it could be equally problematic to give himself away to these people with questions. He was relatively confident that a huge burden of expectation would be placed on him if they knew who he was, and there were worse scenarios than being seen as a saviour to consider.
Eventually, Lucas decided he would gather his courage and approach each of the four directly, catching them on their own when he could, and just… strike up casual conversation. Maybe ask them questions about themselves. If he was lucky they’d spill more tidbits about the world without him having to ask directly and reveal his ignorance. It was a less suspicious method of information gathering, he hoped.
He took some time to formulate some questions that could yield relevant information without arousing suspicion, and settled on keeping things simple. No point overthinking it.
Four days after he’d awoken following the battle, he found an opportunity to talk to Wick alone. He found himself pleased with that; so far, the shieldmaster had seemed the most amiable out of the party. The giant of a man was assigned first watch for the night when they settled down to camp in a sparse grove of thin trees with long, thin leaves beside a lake large enough the details of the far shore were blurry, and he seemed in good spirits after a hearty stew. The night was overcast, but Wick was smiling when Lucas sat down on a log beside him.
“Trouble sleeping, Ser Rian?” he asked, voice soft by his standards. It sounded almost a growl. He was still in his bulky armour, and his attention was on their surroundings.
“Sometimes my mind won’t turn off,” Lucas said, smiling back. “So I thought I’d keep you company.”
Wick snorted. “Well, I’ll not turn down some conversation on a dull, still night. But the Skycloak will have my balls if I neglect my duties, so try not to distract me to much, eh?”
Lucas looked back over his shoulder, eyeing the Skycloak where she was curled up on the ground, wrapped entirely in her cloak. She looked like a cocoon. “She’s the leader of your party, right?”
“Ostensibly,” Wick said. “It’s unusual for a commissioner to take part in the quest they’ve ordered, but since it’s her coin, I’ve no issue letting her be Star as well as Sword. It helps that she’s been competent.”
Lucas thought back to the battle. “She seemed more than competent to me.”
“Oh, she’s far more than competent as a Sword, for certain,” Wick said with a grin. “Quite the talent, for one so young. She is… impressively deadly. A frontline warrior, no doubt. I’m surprised the Order allowed one such as her to chase this fool’s errand.”
Lucas paused. “You think this quest is hopeless?”
“Hopeless is a strong word. But what does it matter? I get my coin either way.” Wick shrugged, his breastplate shifting with the movement, somehow soundless. “I personally enjoy the theory that the Summoners made a mistake somehow, and Lucas Brown arrived deep in the Blighted Lands, where he’s been fighting alone for the last hundred endless winters. It sounds appropriately heroic.”
That sounded awful to Lucas, and he didn’t even know what the Blighted Lands was. From the context he’d picked up, it was obviously a bad place where the beasts came from and demons resided, but that was about it. He spent a moment to come up with a question that might clarify things without revealing his lacking knowledge. “Do you actually think anyone could survive there on their own that long?”
“It would take a hero of legend,” Wick said, which wasn’t really an answer. “So maybe a prophesied saviour could. For any mortal man, I can’t imagine resisting the chaos for even a hundredth of that time. You recall when the beasts tried to corrupt you?”
Lucas nodded. He wished he could forget that feeling.
“Imagine that, a thousand fold,” Wick said, his grin dropping away, a haunted look appearing in his eyes. “I don’t know how those frontline Skycloaks do it, Ser Rian. Just an hour in that hell changed me in ways I still don’t understand years later. No amount of coin could get me to go back for even a minute.”
“You went to the Blighted Lands?”
“A quest took my party at the time just inside the border,” he said. “We weren’t prepared. I didn’t even have my soulshield then. It’s a miracle we all made it out.” He gazed off into the distance; North, Lucas realised. “Nothing could get me to go back. Even being this close gives me the shivers, and we’re days away.”
The look in Wick’s eyes then was a terrible thing to behold, and Lucas decided to steer the conversation away, feeling guilty. He cleared his throat. “Your soulshield was impressive.”
Life warmed Wick’s eyes, and he grinned. “It was a bitch to bond with, I tell you. Wearing a set of radiant armour made me arrogant, and I foolishly tried to claim a huge chunk of skymetal, thinking it would make me invincible to have a tool so large. It felt like it nearly tore my soul apart!”
“I didn’t know that could happen,” Lucas said.
“Oh, it can’t, fear not. It turns out, trying to fit something too significant into your soulspace just means a portion of the object breaks off.” Wick paused. “Assuming you have the will to overpower the object, that is. I don’t know what would have happened if I wasn’t so pig-headedly determined on the matter. It was still unpleasant, anyway!”
Soulspace, Lucas thought. “How do you bond with something? Is that exclusive to shieldmasters?” As Lucas asked the questions, he realised he knew the answer to the latter. “No, the Skycloak has a bonded sword too, doesn’t she?”
“And Jyn has a Wand,” Wick said, eyeing him. “I noticed you performed your floramancy without a focus. I thought at first it was your stick, but you cast magic without it.”
“Never needed one,” Lucas said quickly, then added speculation he didn’t think was true: “It might be a floramancy thing.”
Wick hummed. “My uncle taught me people need something to focus their mana, whether it be a wand, shield, sword, bow, or whatever else they give their heart to.” Then he shrugged. “But what did he know? He was a shieldmaster. I always thought he was the smartest man in the world when he taught me how to bond my armour and shield, but as time goes by, I realise he was ignorant of many things.”
They fell quiet for a while at that, Lucas feeling anxious after his slipup, Wick contentedly watching their surroundings. The night was still and quiet, the lake a sheet of glass reflecting the pale light glowing through the clouds.
Eventually, Lucas asked, “Is that why you became a shieldmaster? Your uncle’s tutelage?”
“I did look up to him as a lad, but I hit a growth spurt and he was looking at me by the time my age was in the double digits!” Wick chuckled under his breath. “I’m a big brute of a man, Ser Rian. I would have loved to be a swordmaster, slaying beasts with a mighty blade as tall as I am, but protecting people behind my bulk is my true calling. There’s no greater feeling than taking a hit meant for someone else, in my mind. The first time it happened… I’ve been chasing that warmth ever since.”
“That’s noble of you,” Lucas said.
“My uncle called it masochism,” Wick said dryly. “But he could hardly talk. He charged into battle with a shield the size of a dinner plate! Mad fool.” He shook his head as if in exasperation, but there was a fond look in his eyes. It suited him much more than the haunted look he’d briefly been afflicted with before. “Shieldmasters go underappreciated. How many stories of us have you heard, compared to tales of wizards and warriors carving paths through legions of beasts? But what out there is more valourous, I ask you, than a man whose mind is singularly focused on defending others?”
“We four warrior types would have been in deep trouble without you back on that hill,” Lucas said.
“You would have been thoroughly buggered!” Wick raised a fist to the sky. “The shield is truly the best tool! Anyone who would bond with another is a fool!”
“Keep it down, you big oaf,” a high voice grumbled from the camp behind them. Rena. “I can feel your voice through the ground.”
“I apologise,” Wick whispered, smothering a smile. Lucas couldn’t help but grin back. And then they were stifling giggles like a pair of school boys. It wasn’t even funny, particularly, but Lucas found himself afflicted with the classic ‘inappropriate time to laugh’ curse, and it was hard to resist its call.
They settled down after a few minutes, and Lucas felt lighter for it. Like he’d purged something heavy within himself.
~~~
His opportunity to talk to Rena came in the morning two days later, and he already had a question prepared for her. It was a direct one, but he had a feeling she’d be more amenable to that.
They’d navigated around the lake for a few days, and the Skycloak declared they’d take the opportunity to bathe before parting from the conveniently accessible water. Lucas was unsettled to find that none of the others felt any compunctions undressing in front of each other, and tried not to be too obvious about it as he averted his eyes from the naked women of the party as they stepped into the frigid water. Sometimes, making a big show of not looking was almost as awkward as staring. When he took too long, Wick bluntly informed him that he needed to wash as much as the rest of them. Lucas managed to beg off by claiming he’d keep watch and take his turn when someone finished.
It was an awkward wait. The plains were flat and empty, giving him a sightline but nothing to see for miles, and he was uncomfortably aware of the splashing sounds behind him. But before long, some footsteps approached, and the Bowmaiden appeared at his side.
“Have you never seen a naked woman before?” she asked.
Lucas gave her a flat look. She’d changed into a forest green tunic and brown trousers, her bow and quiver dangling from one wrist as she towelled her brown hair with a grey cloth in the other hand. Her honey eyes sparkled with mirth as she stared back at him. He decided to ignore her question, foreseeing teasing in his future if he engaged with her on that subject, no matter how he answered.
Instead, he asked a question of his own, as planned. “Why are you a part of this quest?”
Her face went blank. “What brought this on, Ser Rian?”
“You obviously dislike the Skycloak and the Order; you’re constantly trying to provoke her, talking down to her, even though she ignores it. Wick said this quest was commissioned, not commanded, so I guess I’m just wondering why you accepted the job.”
“I’m a mercenary,” Rena snarked. “Carrying out distasteful quests is what we do.”
“So it’s just… you can’t resist needling her?” Lucas asked, trying to wrap his head around that. There was also the other side to it: “Then, why did the Skycloak commission you for this? You don’t strike me as the type to keep your views quiet; she must have known you’d be abrasive towards her.”
“She didn’t seek me out specifically. I saw an advertisement for the commission and took it,” Rena said. “Apparently, she didn’t have a lot of options, and didn’t fancy going solo.”
“So… you’re here of your choosing? Then we’re back to my original question.”
Rena eyed him for a moment, searching his face. “What do you know of the fall of Duskpoole?” she asked.
“Uh, pretty much nothing,” Lucas said.
“It was known for months that the Demon Lord’s army was advancing,” Rena said darkly. “Beasts were ravaging the countryside. The frontlines at the borders of Duskshire had collapsed and retreated, and this was known. Commander Bray sent hundreds of messages to Dawnguard for reinforcements.” She chuckled, but there was no mirth in the sound. “The Order’s force only arrived when the city was a burning ruin, barely a thousand of us fleeing through the countryside with demons and beasts on our heels. All the rangers but me gone. And they expected us to be grateful. I could see it in their eyes. They thought themselves saviours, heroically coming to our rescue. They wanted songs about it.”
Lucas hesitated, unsure what to say. “Would your people have survived without their arrival?”
Rena pinned him with a glare. She tossed her cloth to the ground and shook out her hair. “A lot more of our people would have survived if they bothered to show up the first time we called for help. I’m not going to praise them for saving a thousand of us when hundreds of thousands were lost due to their dithering.”
“Okay,” Lucas said slowly. “That explains why you hate the Order. I understand that. Your feelings are valid. But why accept this quest, then?”
She looked over her shoulder, where the Skycloak was emerging from the water. Lucas quickly averted his eyes from that sight, not wanting to be a creep.
“Few Skycloaks still believe Lucas Brown will one day arrive. I was curious if there was something to this one, or if it’s blind faith,” Rena spoke softly, as if fearing being overheard. “If it’s the latter, no big deal. Just proves she’s a delusional idiot after all. If there’s something more to it, though, and Lucas Brown, by some miracle, turns out to be there?” She patted Lucas on the shoulder. “I’d love to have a word with our prophesied hero.”
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
She sauntered away, fussing with her quiver, and Lucas let her go. He’d only gotten to ask one question and hadn’t learned as much as he would’ve liked, but he decided he wasn’t going to have any more one-on-one conversations with the Bowmaiden.
~~~
It took a bit longer to find a good moment to talk to Jyn, which was a bit frustrating since it was arguably the conversation he was looking forward to most. His opportunity came on a stormy night. Dark clouds had built for an entire day, and the Skycloak had hurried them on until they found shelter in an abandoned hamlet that had been halfway reclaimed by a forest. They arrived as the sun was setting, and rain was pelting them hard as arrows by the time Lucas had finished coaxing nearby trees into leaning over the least collapsed building, giving them shelter for the night.
The rain was an endless hiss on the impromptu roof. Distant thunder rolled. Mist rose from their every breath, the air inside their shelter frigid. Jyn watched them all, huddling in their cloaks, and let out a sigh.
“Would you like me to light a fire for you?” he asked no one in particular. The stars on his dry-looking robes were faintly glowing, and steam was wafting from him. He radiated heat.
The Skycloak shot him a disapproving stare. She’d wrapped her blue cloak around herself, hood up, and only her eyes were visible.
“Rain often affects beasts. They may be inactive, even if it's dark out,” he justified himself. “And you people are going to freeze in those wet clothes at this rate.”
“You yourself said their behaviour cannot be predicted,” the Skycloak replied. “A light in the darkness may attract them.”
“Anything about our presence may attract them,” Jyn said. “Even after all this time, we still don’t know how, exactly, they sense our presence. I’ll be fine regardless, but surely the rest of you would rather be warm too?”
Wick and Rena were staring at the Skycloak with near desperation.
The woman bore their attention for a moment with blank eyes. “Do you have a technique to create heat for us without fire?”
“Of course I do. But I’d have to be awake to maintain it, and I do not wish to be up all night. Better a fire that burns naturally, lit by my magic.”
“You can maintain it just until we fall asleep,” the Skycloak ordered, and it sounded final.
“As you wish,” Jyn said, his lips in a neutral line. “You’ll have to all stay close to me, then.”
While the Skycloak was content where she was, Rena, Wick, and Lucas huddled close to Jyn with their backs to the wall furthest from the crumbled stone building’s door, where wind and rain were blowing in through the cracks of the wooden barricade Lucas had formed from tree branches. Jyn tapped his wand against his sternum, and started radiating heat, and soon Lucas found his eyes drooping. However, he forced himself to stay awake, using the ache of mana flowing through newly-opened pathways to fight off sleep.
Jyn had pulled out his smoking black book, wisps of smoke wafting out from the pages and drifting under his hood. It looked like a lump of charcoal vaguely in the shape of a large tome, and there were no pages to turn. However, Jyn would periodically move the book as if turning invisible pages, and the trails of smoke would change the way they curled through the air.
“Your magic is incredible,” Lucas whispered, soft as he could. He was on his lonesome on Jyn’s right, while the other two were on his left. Rena had reasoned she wanted to be enclosed between two people for extra warmth.
Jyn heard him. “Many consider pyromancy a brutish art, good only for burning things. Fools, the lot of them. There’s no such thing as a limited branch of magic. All disciplines have hidden multitudes. I don’t have to see them with my own eyes to know that. Did you know a master hemomancer can learn your entire life’s history through reading your blood? They don’t just swing around red swords..”
“I didn’t,” Lucas said honestly. “What does it feel like to you? Your pyromancy?”
“Like I’m on fire,” Jyn said casually.
Lucas took a moment to digest that. “All the time?”
“Oh yes. Don’t worry, I’ve gotten used to it. Pyromancy is all about lighting and tending an inner flame in your soul at the novice level—they call it the heart’s flame, because that’s where it begins. Many keep it there, because that’s all they need to throw some basic fireballs around, and they lack imagination, creativity. Fire can do so much more.” He closed his book, fanning out a puff of smoke that billowed away into the air. “At this point, my entire soul’s on fire. My mana is fire. It’s been this way so long I don’t remember what it’s like not to be burning.”
“Is your body real, then? Or is the form you showed against the beast pack the real you?”
“They’re both me,” Jyn said. He was smiling, which wasn’t something Lucas had seen often. The room felt warmer. “My body and soul are fire, but they weren’t always so. Mana is life, but it’s also memory. It remembers what my body was. The shape I’m supposed to be, and how that shape works; thus, I breathe, eat, and sleep. It’s no easy feat to shift back once I’ve given myself to the flames, but I managed it, after a fashion, and it’s gotten, ah, less harsh since.. What you’re seeing at this moment is the real me, but it’s also an illusion, from a certain perspective.”
“That’s a bit contradictory,” Lucas said.
“It’s magic,” Jyn said with a shrug. “Defying the conventional logic of the world and bending it to our will is the whole point.”
“That’s true,” Lucas said, mulling over Jyn’s words for a moment. Conventional logic. “Is it easier to command fire when it’s acting as it’s… supposed to? I don’t know if that’s the right word.”
Jyn seemed to understand. “Fire wishes to burn. The simplest technique an amateur can learn is to use their mana to fuel an existing fire, making it larger, hotter, and so on. It’s the same in floramancy, I imagine?”
Lucas nodded.
“Most arcane arts are that way. Theoretically, a Wandmaster could pursue basic competence in every branch of magic, merely using their mana to encourage the natural order of the world to do more. Grow plants faster without sunlight, stoke fires hotter without kindling. Useful tricks, but most men want to do more than that. Us included, yes?”
“So… if you go beyond basic techniques, you’re locked into that branch of magic?” Lucas asked, a little alarmed. It came out louder than he intended, and he winced, checking he hadn’t woken anyone up. Everything seemed fine, but his relief was short lived, overcome by disappointment.
Floramancy was amazing, but he’d been really liking the idea of pursuing multiple magical disciplines. But then, with the way he’d been able to work with bones… Didn’t that mean he’d started down two paths of magic already? Or were they just similar applications of a basic mana technique?
Lucas thought of the Gift, and what the Skycloak had said about Stars. It felt like he should be able to explore more than one magic.
“You’ve not had much of a magical education, have you, Ser Rian?” Jyn observed, frowning. With his pale skin and blue lips, the expression was oddly cartoonish.
“There weren’t any Wandmasters around where I grew up,” Lucas said. Of course, there wasn’t even magic where he grew up. Though some modern technology might as well have been, as far as he was concerned.
“Hm. From a certain perspective, that’s a good thing. Quite apart from how you would’ve been treated for your affinity for floramancy, the College would have pushed you down a rigid path of discipline and order, more likely than not. Those old fools can’t stand a bit of creativity.”
“You’ve mentioned the college a few times,” Lucas said slowly. “You don’t like them?”
Jyn’s frown abruptly flipped into a wry smile. “You do not want me to start listing my grievances with the College, lad.”
“I’d like to know what the College is, at least.”
“You’ll have to tell me about the backwater hovel you hail from someday, where people hear of the spoils of the Lost City and not the College of Wands.”
Lucas just shrugged, heart suddenly thudding in his chest.
Mercifully, Jyn let it go, more eager to air his grievances with the apparently famous organisation. “The College of Wands is an organisation dedicated to the research and teaching of magic. Their competence in either of their stated purposes is questionable, in my humble opinion, but that’s neither here nor there. They hoard knowledge, and only one inducted into their august ranks by slaving through the schooling program, then an apprenticeship, then a mastery, can have access to it. It’s unconscionable.”
It sounded like a magical university to Lucas, which he supposed was implied in the name. “You think they’re too rigid?”
“In both research and teaching, yes. Forbidding avenues of magical experimentation is just pathetic. Magic is personal. It’s yours. Your experiences, your understanding. No one should be able to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do with it. My best teacher was a Wandmaiden who merely pointed out what had been proved to work before and directed me away from paths that she knew led nowhere, then let me pursue the ideas that most intrigued me.”
“I guess it’s a question of what they actually want. What are the College’s goals? Why do they train people and research magic?”
“That,” Jyn said, “is a good question. If you ever manage to get a non-cryptic word out of the High Council, be sure to pass it on to me.”
“I’ll do that,” Lucas said. A cold wind flashed through the room, and he shivered, huddling a little closer to the living radiator without shame. Jyn didn’t seem to mind. “So what’s the technique you’re using right now to warm things up?”
“I’m merely taking the heat from my soul and letting it expand in a controlled manner,” Jyn said. “Is it a comfortable heat? I can provide more.”
“It’s fine.” Lucas waved him off. “I’m curious though, how do you even do it? What goes into forming a…”
“Heart’s flame?”
“Yes. That. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Well, how did you begin working your floramancy?”
“I felt the mana in some plants,” Lucas said with a blink. “Is it the same with pyromancy? Finding the mana in flames and copying it to your soul, somehow?”
“Somewhat. With work, one’s mana slowly attunes to the fire, making pyromantic workings simpler and simpler, while making other workings more difficult. Working with heat has granted me access to some brontomancy techniques, which in turn has some small overlap with ferramancy, enough for minor certifications from the college, but ultimately these are just creative applications of my burning soul.”
“Huh,” Lucas said. That sounded so simple. All of a sudden, he really wished the Skycloak had let Jyn light a fire.
~~~
The Skycloak was the last on his list, and frankly he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk with her at all. Out of all of them, she seemed most likely to realise who he was. The others were knowledgeable enough about the world, but she claimed that she had learned all she possibly could in order to act as a guide to the Chosen One upon his arrival. It felt like he was walking on eggshells whenever he was around her, waiting for the moment they’d crack and he’d go plunging through the ground.
It probably wouldn’t be anything so dramatic, he told himself. She was a believer, after all. In the worst case, she’d thrust him into a position of immense responsibility and expect him to rise to the challenge regardless of how he felt on the matter.
The problem was, he wasn’t willing to trust someone who was part of the organisation that had brought him here. That had brought Claire, Rian, Jamie, and Aarya here. It didn’t matter how desperate they’d been, he knew he was going to struggle to find any forgiveness in him for his kidnappers. Sympathy, yes, absolutely. He had empathy in spades.
But they could have simply asked. That was what bothered him the most. He probably would’ve been just as baffled that he’d been selected by who or what decided who the world’s saviour was to be, but he liked to think he was a good enough person that he would have answered the call. Snatching him out of his kitchen hadn’t endeared him to them much.
Lucas knew himself. He’d get involved in all this somehow since he had the power to take action and make change. But it would be on his terms.
All of that that wasn’t even mentioning how they’d evidently fucked it up. A hundred years had passed since they’d hatched their insane plan, and things had evidently gone to shit.
Still, Lucas knew she had information, and he wanted to get it.
They’d moved on the morning after the storm. The worst of the rain had passed, but it had still been drizzling and miserable, which set the tone for the next few days of travel. Cold and wet, Lucas hadn’t paid much attention to his surroundings whether they were walking or resting, focusing instead on shaping his internal mana, opening up as many pathways as he could. The ones at the top of his arm were far wider now, almost as wide as his main channels. There was a massive disparity compared to the rest of his body; he felt like he was wearing overinflated armbands in his soul.
It was as they were exiting a dark, damp forest and Rena called the group to a halt that he realised time was running out for him to talk to the Skycloak. The Bowmaiden pointed out something on the horizon, her keen eyes having spotted it through the rain before anyone else.
There, between two grassy hills, five green fingers reached to the heavens, towering over the landscape for miles around. They were all too familiar. Barely a few weeks ago, Lucas had solemnly wished he’d never see them again, and here he was. The city couldn't be more than a few miles away, all of it wild grassland. Not a long trip at all.
The emotion he felt then wasn’t fear, exactly. He wasn’t scared of the place, confident enough in his floramancy to see him through even before the improvements he’d made since leaving. It was more a kind of dull dread. The apprehension of knowing you had to do something you really didn’t want to do.
The group moved on into the grassy meadows, buoyed by the fact their destination was finally in sight, and Lucas slowed so he was walking alongside the Skycloak. She regarded him with an arched eyebrow, waiting patiently. Her blue hood was up, and droplets of water were cascading down the back of her head. None dropped over her face, somehow.
“Can you tell me anything about this demon I’m going to be facing?” he asked grimly. He didn't feel particularly inclined to try the smalltalk tack with her. She didn't seem like she'd be receptive anyway.
“Not much is known about the demon itself, truth be told. Just the history,” she said, somewhat absently. Her gaze kept straying to those five distant towers. “According to our records, first warnings of its appearance were noted in the summer of 1048AC. At first, it was limited to plants growing too fast. But soon they started to realise the plants were trying to connect with each other, and when they did, they would share traits. Floramancers were called in, but couldn’t find the root of the issue.
“Matters escalated rapidly. Pentaburgh boasted world-renowned glass gardens full of exotic plants, and we believe the demon managed to gain influence there some time in the winter, plants there growing rapidly despite multiple floramancers present to tend the gardens. Most all who have studied the fall of Pentaburgh agree the outbreak could have been stopped here, but the city faced catastrophes on multiple fronts.
“Plague afflicted the city despite the presence of master biomancers. The walls fell to a demon attack despite the presence of a large cadre of geomancers. The waterways were spoiled by rotting creatures despite the careful tending of hydromancers. The city was poised to fall even before the outbreak of the plant demon; it was just the final straw.
“In a way, it can be seen as a boon. The people were forced to evacuate, and the demon filled the city with its plants, preventing the greater demon horde from tearing the place down and salting the earth. It attacked them as surely as it did anyone else.”
Lucas frowned as he took all that in. “That doesn’t tell me much about how to deal with it.”
“If we knew how to deal with it, Ser Rian, we would have a long time ago.”
“I get that,” Lucas said, frustrated. He already knew he could at least survive it. It would've been nice to gain some insight on how to exorcise it, if it really was a demon. He wasn't so sure. “Can you tell me the difference between beasts and demons?”
She looked at him. “You’re quite ignorant of commonly known things,” she said. It wasn’t quite the last thing he wanted to hear from her, but it was down there among the worst things she could have said.
At least he’d prepared a response for it. He tried not to let the alarm show on his face as he spoke, affecting indignance instead. “I’m a country bumpkin. I know. Sorry for being uneducated.”
“I apologise. I meant no offence,” the Skycloak said with a shallow bow, her right hand held to her heart. “To put it simply, a beast is a construct of mana that has been warped by chaos, and a demon is a being that uses chaos to warp mana.”
“That’s…” He was going to say unhelpful, but it did succinctly explain. “So demons create beasts?”
“They do.”
“And so the Demon Lord is the guy who’s best at that, I suppose?”
“That is also common knowledge,” the Skycloak said mildly.
Lucas ignored her. “And the Demon Lord and his demons live in the Blighted Lands.”
The Skycloak looked at him steadily.
“Wick implied you might have fought there. On the frontlines.”
“I have.”
“What exactly is the Blighted Lands? What’s there?”
“Chaos,” she told him, and would say no more on the matter.