Even those adventurers that didn’t know what was transpiring outside the city’s walls could tell that the mood inside Rosie’s inn was heavy ever since Anastacia had left, and for every passing minute, it somehow became ever more so. No one dared to make a single peep as the usually rather jolly giant of an adventurer stared at the table in front of him while massaging his forehead with one hand and almost crushing his bottle of mead with the other.
Among the few that knew the newest addition to the inn’s habitants, he was the only one who could even remotely grasp how terrifying it was to face off against a necromancer. Every second that passed felt like an eternity and gave Gilbert more time to retrace the trip back from Mournvalley and doubt every choice he had made when trying to conceal their tracks.
Emilia’s willpower was under a constant test as well, and for every hopeful glance out the window to see if Anastacia was returning yet, she glanced at the bottles behind the counter as well – a tiny swig to calm her nerves had rarely been as appealing.
Rosie handled the stress of her new kitten being in danger by cooking. After a while she had already made more than enough snacks to last for the entire evening, but that didn’t stop her from carrying on, just to have something to occupy her mind with.
Gilbert had shared the news with the rest of Xamiliere’s party as well, and though the nature spirit was no pushover, both Dammar and Maximillian were obviously worried for her as well as for Anastacia.
When Anastacia finally appeared in one of the windows and dragged herself inside, it was as if a great weight had been lifted from everyone’s shoulders. She slumped down next to Gilbert and leaned back to take some deep breaths. “Whew, I haven’t ran this much since- well ever, probably. Can I get some water?” She sighed and glanced at her party mates. “Well, I was right about the skeleton belonging to a member of the Red Inquisition. Good news is that Xamiliere and I were able to kill this one, but he was the rookie of the team and there’s six more left; all of them trained to cut down other necromancers, and two of them are able to use living material to a degree.”
Gilbert’s experience as an adventurer made him to immediately start looking for solutions or stopgap measures. Among the first ones of his ideas was traveling through Valor, and sneaking out from some other gate to look for help from other people capable of taking on necromancer inquisitors, such as other spriggans. However, for a more detailed plan, he needed some more information about the threat they faced. “Are they strong?” He asked, as if there was a chance that people who were called inquisitors wouldn’t be.
“I mean, yes? If we go by the innate ability, they’re not quite on my level, but they are all trained to use their abilities far more than me – I’m just a dropout that didn’t finish almost any of the basic training they give to all children.” Anastacia explained what she knew of the inquisitors as individuals. “One on one, I can maybe go against them with some chance of success, or at least almost all of them – maybe... But unless there’s something else they’re needed for; I’m not seeing them giving me that chance after I already defeated one.”
Emilia had yet to be filled in on the necromancer’s circumstances and she only knew that there was some trouble in the horizon, but nothing of the details. “Inquisitors? The necromancer ones? They won’t attack the city, will they?” She worried.
Anastacia shook her head. “They’d have to be desperate. I haven’t been here for long, but this place is filled to brim with people that have the skills to go toe to toe with one of us, and maybe live to tell the tale. This is maybe the one place in the world they can’t just walk into.”
They briefed the priestess about the ordeal that was getting Anastacia to Valor in the first place, and then moved on to make some rough outlines for their plan of action.
Still tuckered by the marathon of a fight she had, the necromancer retired for the day as soon as she had eaten her fill of Rosie’s excess cooking and left the returning spriggan in charge of retelling the details of the fight to the rest of the regulars. The unconventional nature of the fight as well as the rare team up of a necromancer and a spriggan made the slightly embellished story with an extremely romanticized ending rather popular that evening, and Xamiliere spent hours upon hours making sure that everyone knew how she saved Anastacia, and at least according to herself, got rewarded for it appropriately.
Returning to her room from the baths, Anastacia could hear the usual laughter and merrymaking from the tavern but was far too tired to even consider rejoining the crowd there. She still had a hard time believing the beds could be as comfortable and warm as the one she now had, even if it would have seemed rather basic for most people that hadn’t spent their youth in Mournvalley. It definitely helped her forger about the unavoidable clash between her and the Red Inquisition for long enough for her to almost fall asleep.
Suddenly, an all too familiar, gut-wrenching feeling came over Anastacia. The unmistakable presence of another necromancer who had somehow snuck all the way to the other side of her door as she had rested her eyes. The overwhelming power of the unwelcome guest was enough to make the adventurer feel physically ill just by being nearby, making it clear that the inquisitor she had faced earlier couldn’t even begin to hope to be in the same weight class as the one behind the door.
As the lock gave up from what seemed to nothing more than a slight push against the door, Anastacia prepared her daggers, immediately launching one at the crimson-robed figure that revealed itself when the door swung open.
In what seemed to be an effortless move, the figure caught the dagger with their hand and jabbed it into the wall. Though the attack had been ineffective, it managed to confirm what were probably Anastacia’s worst fears: the dim light shining through the window into her room had hit the inquisitor’s hand and revealed it to be entirely skeletal.
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“Coquelicot!” Screamed the adventurer and lobbed the other dagger by hand in panic, horribly missing the target and making it smack against the wall, pommel first.
The inquisitor stepped in and lowered the hood of her red robes. “Terribly on edge, are we?” The necromancer called Coquelicot asked with a slight smirk on her face.
The second in command of the Red Inquisition, Coquelicot, was a relatively tall woman, especially for a necromancer. Her short, neatly kept, black hair was somewhat uncommon for the denizens of her country as well, who tended to have lighter hair more often than not; but these were far from being her most unique features, as the strangest one had her wear a customized, six-sleeved version of the inquisitor’s robes. According to a story pretty much everyone in the land of the necromancers had heard, as a young student, Coquelicot had acted against all the warnings and tried to control her own arms through necromancy to increase their strength. As a result, both of them had gotten torn off under her immense abilities and she had been left crippled. Of course, this did nothing but fuel Coquelicot’s ambitions and she replaced the missing limbs with a considerably sturdier harness that supported six skeletal arms that could handle whatever she needed them for. Over the years, she had gained notoriety for being extremely violent and often going out of her way to literally tear into her enemies with her new arms.
Naturally, the next step for Anastacia was to try and wrestle the control of her arms away from the inquisitor, but that turned out to be a fool’s errand as she possessed nowhere near enough skill to do anything in the few seconds she had while Coquelicot closed the door and calmly sat down on the bed.
“Could you not?” The inquisitor asked and shook her arms as if to rid them of what little influence Anastacia had gained over them. “If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. If I wanted to kidnap you, we’d be in Mournvalley. So take a second to consider the situation before throwing your butter knives at guests.”
“What do you want?!” Anastacia asked and backed up into the far corner of her bed.
The inquisitor chuckled. “Mournvalley, I want a revolution.” She said bluntly and began explaining. “You and I both know that the cesspool of a regime that values their incestuous bloodlines far more than what really matters is overdue for a shift in power, and with a certain worryingly powerful brat out of their grasp, some of us have figured that maybe it’s time to show those royal weaklings that Mournvalley needs raw power far more than it needs the old ways and tradition.”
The adventurer couldn’t have cared less for the politics of the country she had left behind and couldn’t really grasp what the inquisitor was hinting at. “What… what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I’ve come here with a deal. One you can’t or wont reject.” Coquelicot sighed. “Mournvalley does not need an anchor or an immortal king, and with you out of the way, people are starting to finally listen to us. Your return would quickly revert any progress we’ve made, so I’ve come here to make sure you won’t come back.”
“So you’re here to kill me after all?!” Anastacia screamed. Despite the inquisitor not really doing anything threatening, she was having a hard time getting over the stories she had heard about Coquelicot.
“If you don’t calm yourself, I might.” Coquelicot said, clearly getting tired of trying to convince Anastacia of her peaceful intentions. “You see, among the seven members of the Red Inquisition, only Alizarin and I have chosen to abandon the old ways, this means we still need to deal with Carmine, Cerise, Crimson and lastly Amaranth in order for this coup to be a successful one. Frankly, Alizarin isn’t as much of a fighter as I’d like him to be and I have my own limitations when it comes to fighting other inquisitors, there are other matters that require out attention as well and we can’t spend our time hunting them down.”
“That’s where I come in, I assume?” Anastacia asked.
“Exactly. Right now they are busy dealing with the aftermath of what we did to ease your escape, but once the rest of the inquisitors learn what happened to Auburn, they will come for you regardless of your willingness to help me.” Coquelicot nodded and stood up. “So if anything, you should be thankful that I’ve come here to offer what help I can, but in return for dealing with my former coworkers, we also offer you complete freedom from the role of the anchor and whatever comes after.” She continued while taking out a book from a satchel she carried and placed it down on the small table. “This tome is the first bit of help we can offer, if I were you, I’d heed to it. Now, I must make my leave, as I’m being tracked. We will give you all the time we can, so feel free to consider your lack of options.”
With that, the inquisitor disappeared downstairs and her oppressing presence faded away just as quickly as it had appeared. Somehow it didn’t seem to cause any uproar in the tavern even though the bright red inquisitor was the opposite of inconspicuous.
Anastacia picked up the book she had been gifted and ran her fingers over the title. “Truth of flesh and bone” she muttered and flipped through the pages. Based on the titles of the chapters, she could tell that it dealt with combat-oriented necromancy, which was no doubt her biggest weakness, whether she wanted to admit it or not.
As she inspected some of the more interesting looking subjects, a small card fell from between the pages, which turned out to be a somewhat concerned sounding message from the owner of the book: “Dear Anastacia, this book contains most of the basics that are taught to all inquisitors, please study it thoroughly and you will at least be able to meet your opponents on equal footing. On a more important note, PLEASE treat the book with care, it’s the ONLY COPY IN THE WORLD and I wish to have it back.
-Alizarin”
The adventurer groaned and tossed the card onto the floor. If her newfound allies’ idea of help was trying to make her train, their ‘friendship’ would be off to a very rocky start.
Figuring that her party would probably appreciate knowing about Coquelicot’s offer for help as soon as possible, Anastacia wandered back downstairs into the tavern and sought out her friends. On the way she had to deal with a bit of fallout from some rather questionable rumors the spriggan had already managed to spread in the form of some lude comments.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Emilia asked when the necromancer sat down next to her and Gilbert.
“Nah, too many inquisitors in my room.” Anastacia yawned. “Did you seriously not see her? Tall, red, had six arms?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” Shrugged Gilbert.
“Well, turns out that the two members of the Red Inquisition that are able to use living material like me, aren’t too happy with the way of things.” Anastacia said and explained what had happened and what it meant in terms of opponents they had left to deal with.
Emilia, now just about up to date with her knowledge on necromancy, nodded and pointed out something Anastacia hadn’t even realized. “So if we don’t need to worry about the these two that are like you, doesn’t that mean we can help out properly, without being in constant danger of having our necks snapped?”
Anastacia’s face lit up. “You’re right! It still won’t be a walk in the park, but at least we’re not limited to just me and Xammy fighting them now.”
“Yeah, it’s probably good for several reasons if you get some distance from her for a couple of days…” Gilbert said glared at a couple of adventurers that were glancing at the necromancer over their shoulders and whispering.