Anastacia tossed her backpack against the parapet of the bridge that arched over the river running through the town of Oopdelt. Made of sturdy granite and wide enough for two heavily loaded wagons to effortlessly pass each other, the bridge they were hired to guard was the only path over the rapids marking the border between two kingdoms. The relatively quickly flowing river had no chance of freezing over properly during the winter either and thanks to its depth, trying to ford it was a terrible idea even without the additional threat of hypothermia. The necromancer stared at her reflection on the surface of the water and sneezed, dislodging the wedge of cheese on her helmet and dropping it into the murky water below. She followed the floating lump with her gaze and felt a little sad seeing it disappear into the mist.
“Are you cold? We should probably make a campfire.” Gilbert asked and walked over to the small guard post by the bridge, where Medivar presumably spent most of his time on duty. Lined against the wall of the hut was a pile of firewood, which the adventurer happily commandeered so he wouldn’t need to try to buy some from the less than complaisant citizens of the town. There was a second identical hut on the other side of the bridge as well and Gilbert figured that he should probably aim to take evenly from both of them, so it wouldn’t look like he was stealing from one side of the conflict.
“I’ve never camped on a bridge before, have you?” Anastacia asked and dug through Gilbert’s belongings to find what she needed for brewing coffee.
The old adventurer stopped to think for a while before continuing with his task. “Twice. Far in the south, there’s a bridge that’s so long that you have to camp on it if you want to cross it, and the other time we did it to bait a river spirit that had been attacking people crossing the bridge.” He laughed. “Don’t try to bait river spirits by the way, always build a dam to drive it away. There was no bridge left to cross once we were done…”
The necromancer frowned and turned to his friend. “Why would anyone build a bridge that long? Has no one told them about ships?” She asked.
“The entire seabed there moves so quickly that there’s no telling where it’s deep enough for a ship. Even the island the bridge leads to sometimes just moves out of the way and people need to wait until it returns. You need to be there to make any sense of it.” Gilbert explained and wiggled his arm trying to emulate the movement of the seabed he was talking about.
Firmly of the opinion that islands shouldn’t be moving like that, Anastacia shook her head and made a mental note to never swim in the ocean – crossing one on a ship would be decided on a case by case basis.
Ever since the adventurers had arrived at the town, the citizens had locked themselves inside and quietly spied on the strangers from between their curtains. Neither Anastacia or Gilbert had spoken or even seen a single person, but the sounds of the locks and windows shutting, and Anastacia’s necromancy could confirm that they were there. The other side of the town was equally quiet, though an old woman happened to walk by and gained a surprising boon in agility for someone her age when she noticed the adventurers. Besides the frigid welcome, nothing seemed odd about the town, and for a while the two adventurers fooled themselves into thinking that they had just won some easy money by accepting the quest.
Suddenly Anastacia remembered something Gilbert had briefly mentioned while they were walking. “Hey, what about that other simulacrum you met? What were they like?” She asked and took a sip of extremely mediocre coffee that was made with stale water from a canteen and brewed far to hastily.
“Like a moving statue with a fancy green cloak? I’m not sure what to tell you. The simulacra look like simulacra.” Gilbert shrugged.
“That’s not true! Come on now, were they cool? Cute? Pretty? Shy? Outgoing?” The necromancer interrogated her friend.
Gilbert poured himself some coffee and topped up Anastacia’s cup. “I don’t know. Relatively lightweight and… quiet? It just kind of sat there, as far away from King as possible. Simulacra have the personality of a coffee pot, there really isn’t much to say.”
“First of all, coffee pots have a fascinating array of personalities. That’s like me saying that you have about as much going for you as a steak or the fish swimming under this bridge.” Anastacia scoffed at Gilbert’s simplified view of the ancient machines – and coffee pots. “Secondly, you said that King hated them? I need to meet this frail and quiet beauty…”
“Whatever you’re thinking, stop thinking it.” Gilbert grunted disapprovingly. He was afraid that their guard duty would end up just being a repeat of their initial journey to the mansion, where Anastacia wouldn’t stop complaining about King. “You need to stop hanging around with Xamiliere. Sometimes I fear she’s literally growing on you and you catch whatever personality disorder she has.”
“Well if a tiny tree-person sprouts from my ear, I’m keeping them in a flower pot and there’s nothing you can do about it!” Anastacia said and was about to take another sip but stopped halfway to look around. She closed her eyes and scanned the surrounding. On the very fringes of her reach, the necromancer could feel people leaving their houses and gathering. Starting from small groups of three to five, they slowly combined their forces and started to feel disturbingly mob-like. The fact that it was happening simultaneously on both sides of the bridge didn’t help either. “We might have a mob related problem… a moblem?”
Gilbert slowly and agonizingly got himself up. He was still sore from almost dying, and sitting down for a while had stiffened his joints. “Of course. Maybe they’re just gathering to meet us?” He jokingly suggested and tried to spot any movement in the fog. “Ahh… No… I can see the torches now. Get ready, but do not pick up your weapons. We’re not here to kill anyone.”
Slowly, more and more flickering lights appeared in the mist and started to close in on the adventurers. By Anastacia’s approximations, both sides mustered roughly a hundred people before finally walking up to the bridge. Besides their torches, the townfolk had armed themselves with pitchforks, scythes, clubs and whatever they had found in their storerooms and cupboards. A few people had even shown up with bows and arrows, which were more of a cause for concern for the adventurers. One brave old man had shown up with a broken bottle that was somehow on fire. While not very threatening, Anastacia had immense respect for his can-do attitude when facing a scathing lack of ready-to-use weaponry. However, what she saw next to him made her skin crawl and her face turn even more pale than usual: someone in the Eshtian mob had a crossbow.
“Gil… GIL! We have a big problem. If he points that at me, I will freak out and might turn everyone into paste.” She started to panic and pulled on Gilbert’s sleeve. After being briefly killed with one, Anastacia had developed an understandable aversion for crossbows and would often get distracted in combat if the opposition had them.
“Oh crap… Just stay behind me and think of goblins or something. I’ll handle it as soon as I can.” Gilbert calmed his companion and moved her out of the crossbow’s line of sight.
It took a while for both mobs to position themselves at both ends of the bridge but the insults and name calling began as soon as the groups saw each other. Completely ignoring the adventurers, the townspeople bickered and waved their makeshift weapons at their neighbors, at least until Gilbert made the mistake of speaking up in an attempt to prevent the situation from escalating to violence.
“Excuse me! I’m here on behalf of Medivar, who is currently trying to get a replacement for your other guard. Now, if everyone could just move along and go about their day as usual. Things should be back to normal by tomorrow morning.” He said with a raised voice, addressing both crowds as well as he could.
After a brief silent moment, the townsfolk began gossiping amongst themselves and questioning the adventurer’s identities. Gilbert’s explanation somehow failed to appease either of the mobs and the insults resumed soon after.
Suddenly an old man from the Eshtian side of the border stepped forth with his pitchfork. “Medivar, huh? So you two are Helleboran spies then?!” He inquired and pointed his weapon at the adventurers.
Gilbert sighed. “No… We are adventurers, and because of that, unaffiliated with either country. Medivar simply signed our contract.” He tried explaining despite knowing exactly how little good it would do. “Besides, what could there possibly be worth spying on here? Your pumpkin yields for the year?”
“SEE, EVERYONE?! These Helleboran dogs are here for our pumpkin secrets! They’re planning an invasion, I’m telling you!” The old man declared from the top of his lungs, somehow convincing the entire crowd about his theory.
Suddenly another voice echoed from the other end of the bridge. A young Helleboran woman with a sickle in hand pushed her way out of the mob. “Fuck you, Wald! Everyone knows your pumpkins are shriveled and rotten!” She yelled. “Besides, these spies are almost a full meter on our side of the border and clearly eavesdropping on our gourd secrets! You’re just trying to cover for them.”
“I just sell the rotten ones to you, Hilda!” The old man cackled. “Have you gone blind so young? Look at them spies and tell me their clothes aren’t as black as Helleboran hearts and armor!” He continued and pointed at the black undershirt Gilbert had happened to wear that day.
“Oh shut up, you old curmudgeon!” The woman replied with an equally mocking tone. “Have you gone soft in the head? The small one is wearing nothing but Eshtian purple! The same shitty shade you numbnuts wanted to paint the town hall with!”
Anastacia raised her hand. “Actually, this is violet. Purple is what you get when you mix red and-“ She tried to explain but was cut off by both sides telling her to shut up.
The old man, apparently named Wald, took a step forward and made stabbing motions with his pitchfork. “You dare to bring up the town hall fiasco when everyone has to listen to your tone deaf wailing every single morning?!”
“That song is a classic and a masterpiece! I’m not expecting you uncultured Eshtian swines to understand it anyway.” The woman responded and took a step forward as well.
The two continued to bicker and fight about every single minor issue the two halves of the town had ever encountered, while others joined in on the yelling. Both groups seemed to forget the existence of the so-called spies entirely and focused more on things like the supposedly disproportionate amount of rocks in the fields on either side of the river or the unfair flight paths of the local birds. Even Gilbert had never seen anyone ever voice so many petty grievances, most of which seemed completely unverifiable and made up.
Had they stayed still and simply yelled at each other, it wouldn’t have been much of an issue, but both sides slowly approached the middle of the bridge as they argued. It was safe to assume that if they ever reached each other, at best a fistfight would ensue or if worst came to the worst, someone would actually dare to use their weapon.
“Anna, about time we set up a perimeter. Can you do something flashy but harmless to scare them a bit further away?” Gilbert whispered to Anastacia.
The necromancer nervously glanced at the crossbow and took a deep breath. “It’ll smell like burnt hair for a while, but yeah.” She nodded.
“Get ready then. Let loose when I signal you.” The old adventurer said and clapped his hands as loudly as he could, demanding silence from the mob around them. “Alright, looks like we’re done here folks. No one is crossing this bridge today. Go home and stay there until Medivar comes back.” He stated with a commanding tone in his voice.
Some of the least enthusiastic people on both sides actually gave up and started to head back, but the main body of both sides stood their ground.
“Watch your mouth, spy! Don’t go ordering people around in their own town!” The old man from before yelled and quickly gained the support of his countrymen.
The woman didn’t back down either. “Helleboran people are free to cross this bridge all they want! Take a hike, Eshtian spy!” She said and waived her sickle at Gilbert.
“The fuck they are!” The old man screamed and rekindled the earlier argument.
With both sides reverting back to their name calling and boasting ways, though this time even insulting other people’s mothers was fair game, which was usually the first step towards the situation going bad according to Gilbert’s previous experiences.
Speechless from the juvenile nonsense he was forced to witness, Gilbert buried his head into his hands and groaned. “Anna, just do the thing. These people are hopeless.”
Anastacia pulled her hood up, took a better stance and lobbed a single fireball directly up, which already caught the attention of the townsfolk. She then pointed up at it and began spinning her finger, causing the fireball to spin as well and turn into a disk of flame. As the disk widened, it began raining down sparks on everyone that had made it to the bridge. Apparently more powerful mages were able to conjure similar spells that covered entire fields and rained down small meteorites, but Anastacia’s version was barely ten meters across and entirely harmless for anyone that wasn’t covered in oil. Yet it looked flashy and terrifying for anyone unprepared for it or unversed in magic.
Horrified screams and the clanging of the dropped weapons and tools against the stone bridge filled the air as the bickering citizens ran for their lives. Among these weapons was the dreaded crossbow, which Gilbert quickly snatched and tossed into the river below to alleviate the necromancer’s anxiety over it.
When the rain of fire finally ceased, the adventurers piled up all the weapons in the middle of the bridge for safekeeping. They debated tossing them into the river to be sure but figured that it would look bad if half the town lost the tools they needed to work and decided against it. By the time some of the townsfolk had regained their courage and returned closer to the bridge, the adventurers were ready.
Gilbert cleared his throat. “Maybe you’re feeling more like listening now? We’re not here to spy on anyone or anything like that. We were hired to make sure you idiots don’t fight while your guards are away. To be specific, we are here to make sure no one gets across this bridge. You can shout at each other across the river all you like, but that’s all you’re going to get. As you may have noticed, she’s a mage; and the bridge is now under a powerful ice magic spell. If I were you, I wouldn’t test it out for fun.” He declared half-truths to the entire town.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
While it was technically possible for an ice mage to do what he implied, in their case, it was just disguising necromancy as magic. Every now and then there came a time when they didn’t actually want to kill whoever they were fighting, and a perimeter set up by Anastacia while the rest of the party worked to keep it clear was the safest way to do it. Yet, because she would rather be recognized as literally anything else than a necromancer, Gilbert made sure to cover for her.
“Purple-ass spy witch!” Yelled by someone still cowering behind a shed was the only response he received, and Anastacia was quick to correct them about the difference between purple and violet.
When the sun was about to set, the mist finally cleared away as the temperature fell. Keeping their fire going with the logs stolen from both sides of the town, the adventurers prepared for an all-nighter. Medivar’s shack had some stale bread and vegetables they were able to turn into a slightly suspicious looking stew. Which was only a bit above passable in taste and made both Gilbert and Anastacia regret leaving Valor without Emilia. Every now and then someone shouted something about spies, but somehow the accusation always missed its target and led into a brief argument with someone else from the other side of the river without the adventurers ever taking part in them. So far no one had been brave enough to test if the claim about the ice spell was true and everyone made sure to stay at least a couple of meters away whenever they came to try and provoke the adventurers. Though annoying, no one seemed to have any intention to cause any real problems and Gilbert almost convinced himself that the rest of the night would be uneventful.
A bit past midnight a group of five mildly inebriated young men wandered to the bridge from the Helleboran side and mumbled something to each other before turning to the adventurers. “We’ve come to fight!” One of them proudly declared in the general direction of the bridge.
Neither Gilbert nor Anastacia reacted to the challenge, nor the next two after it, so the drunken nuisances had to change their tactic.
“Look at you mister big and strong spy-man, hiding behind your witch! Does she dress you in the morning as well?!” They heckled Gilbert. “Typical Eshtian wuss! I’ve heard magic doesn’t work on you if you’re drunk enough. So we could just come over there and toss you both into the river, where you can… spy on the fish!” They continued, no doubt thinking themselves to be terribly witty.
“That’s in no way true, even if I used magic.” Anastacia whispered to Gilbert. Ever since the shouting began, she had noticed some movement again on both sides of the town. Not in the same numbers as earlier, but in total there was definitely around sixty people skulking around in the moonlit town. When they slowly started to gather again a little way away from the bridge, the necromancer notified her friend about it and they started to hatch their plan of action.
“Most of them are probably at least a bit tipsy and just looking for a fight. We might not be able to talk or scare our way out of this anymore.” Gilbert said and tossed a log into the campfire. “Whatever happens, you need to stop anyone that steps on the bridge.”
“Uh… about that. I have no idea if or how long I can hold that many people, and even if I can, they’ll freeze to death in an hour or two because they wouldn’t be able to move at all, and their blood flow won’t adapt to the temperature.” The necromancer pointed out.
Gilbert rubbed his chin and stared at the nightly town for a while, like he was looking for something. “There. On top of the roof with two chimneys.” He said and nodded in the direction he meant. “Looks like your stalker has finally caught up to us.”
Anastacia squinted and rubbed her eyes to see what Gilbert was hinting at but was only barely able to make out two glowing light blue dots that could have passed as small stars just as easily. The roof was still within Anastacia’s range, but she couldn’t feel anyone there, which revealed the stalker’s identity to her. “It’s the other simulacrum?!”
“Aye. With any luck, King is chasing it again…” The old adventurer nodded and stood up just as stiffly as earlier in the day. “Even if he isn’t, having and extra pair of hands won’t hurt when this gets violent.”
With a whistle and a wave, Gilbert got the simulacrum’s attention and it began heading their way by jumping from roof to roof, effortlessly clearing over ten meters in a single leap. Even though the town was quiet, aside from the occasional mocking shouts of the drunkards, the simulacrum’s steps made no sound in the slightest. Even when it made its final leap from a rooftop to the bridge’s parapet, the loudest noise it made was from its cloak fluttering in the wind.
Without wasting time with greetings, the cloaked simulacrum took out a small leather pouch, opened it and started to dig through it; only to find it empty, thanks to a hole in its side. Tossing aside the ripped bag, the simulacrum rifled through the insides of its cloak but ultimately failed to find what it was looking for.
“Lost your marbles?” Gilbert asked and grinned, slightly prouder about his joke than he should have been.
The simulacrum put out its hand towards Gilbert, clearly asking him to give back the glass orb it had given to the adventurer in the mansion.
Gilbert shook his head. “That’s a discussion for another time. Right now I need to know if King – the simulacrum you brought to us before, is following you again?” He asked and patted his pocket to show that he did still have the pearl.
The cloaked automaton shook its head and stepped down from the parapet.
“Suppose that’s for the better, he has trouble understanding what ‘non-lethal’ means.” Gilbert shrugged and glanced at the drunken idiots nearby, who had run out of insults a while ago and now just repeated themselves. “Anna, what’s the situation with the mobs?... Anna?”
The necromancer as far too awestruck to hear the question and even more unable to answer it. With a glimmer in her eyes and foolish grin on her face, she approached the simulacrum and started to caress its odd green cloak. Though clearly made like a regular fabric, it felt more metallic than anything. Showing some disrespectful disregard to the personal space of others, the necromancer pressed her cheek against the simulacrum and hugged it. “She’s so pretty!” She exclaimed and turned to Gilbert.
“Anna, the mobs?” The old adventurer reminded his party mate about the impending lynch attempt that was probably going to happen soon. Though he was slightly surprised to hear that the cloaked simulacrum was somehow female, he didn’t feel like going into it in detail until the quest was over.
“What? Oh! Yeah, neither group is moving, but the idiots over there have been inching our way. Do we have a plan?” The necromancer reported without letting go of the simulacrum, who didn’t seem to mind her.
Gilbert sighed and started to warm up his limbs by waving his arms and doing squats. “I think I might just feel like whooping their asses, it’ll be five less people to deal with later. It’ll probably cause the mob on their side to come to their aid, in which case your job is to stop as many as you can without taking any unnecessary risks – we do not kill anyone here. They’re assholes and probably deserve it for all we know, but we were hired to protect them from each other and themselves, and sometimes that means having to teach them to be humble.” He said and turned to the simulacrum. “Your job is to keep her safe. Make sure no one lays a hand on her so that she can focus properly, and don’t even think about trying to take her with you or anything – or I might not tell King to calm down when we find you again.”
Anastacia laughed. “So your plan is to beat up an entire town? Emilia is missing out on so much.” She said, still unwilling to let go of her new friend.
“Actually, I’m hoping that they get the idea before it gets to that, but we’ll see.” The old adventurer smiled and put on the ruby ring Anastacia had given to him. He hit his knuckles together a couple of times and went on to challenge the townspeople responsible for annoying him for almost an hour.
From Anastacia’s standpoint it was pretty hilarious to see the five drunken lads – probably farmhands or the like for profession, test their mettle against a seasoned adventurer who was so far beyond them in strength, size, skill and equipment, that any hits they managed to score before finding themselves from the cold, hard ground, actually hurt their hands more than the adventurer. By the time the fifth one finally tumbled across the road and had to be dragged away by his limping friends, the screams had woken up the rest of the town and a few people rushed outside, either to see what was happening or to join the fray. It had also gotten the attention of the already gathered mob on that side of the bridge, who all assumed that the supposed spy fighting with Helleboran people meant that the suspected Eshtian invasion had begun.
This meant that all in all, Gilbert had a little over thirty people to deal with, some of them had held onto their weapons or found new ones, but them being simple townsfolk that had never fought anyone beyond a drunken brawl with someone from the other side of the bridge meant that they weren’t much of a threat. With Anastacia holding still about ten or so at a time, focusing on the people with weapons, Gilbert was just about able to knock out someone every now and then without getting overwhelmed. Being completely unable to move at because of the ‘ice spell’ made a few people change their minds and quietly return inside without the need to be schooled by Gilbert. All in all, the plan was working surprisingly well.
Gilbert almost enjoyed the fight. It had been a long time since he had last been in proper fistfight and his opponents certainly needed to get taken down a peg or two. While outnumbered, his advantages allowed him to thwart any attacks from the front, so as long as he kept his enemies there, he could pick them off one by one. He was also happy to notice that Anastacia had learned something during their previous quests and knew how to pick her targets to make his life a little easier.
“Hey! Them’s fighting over there!” Ringed a sudden yell from the Eshtian side of the town.
It surprised Anastacia so badly that she lost her control over the people she had been holding still. Having been so focused on not hurting anyone, the necromancer had failed to notice a few people from the other side of the river leaving their houses to see what was happening and that the Eshtian posse was now heading for the bridge as well.
“Gil! MOBLEM!” She screamed while trying to focus again.
Gilbert punted one of the remaining Helleboran troublemakers in the shin and backed off a few steps to see what the necromancer was panicking about. The flickering of the torches on the other side of the river made it very clear what was happening. “Damnit! Can you hold them for just a second?!” He asked and thwacked another dumbass with the handle of their own pitchfork.
“Uhh…” Anastacia hesitantly took control of the first Eshtian that made it to the bridge and stopped them. Same worked for the two that had followed him, but by then the rest had remembered the spell on the bridge and halted their attack.
“The Helleboran spy witch is hexin’ our boys! Let’s get her!” Someone from the crowd yelled and tossed their torch over their ‘frozen’ friends.
Anastacia was luckily still paying attention and deflected the torch into the river with a fireball – not that it would have hit her anyway, but it seemed like a cool thing to do.
Inspired by the first attempt, everyone else in the crowd decided to toss their torches at the necromancer. Trying to deflect a couple of dozen torches was a whole different affair, and there was no time to accurately bombard them all, so Anastacia could only crouch and hope none of them hit her on the head.
Suddenly the simulacrum swooped in and wrapped Anastacia with her freezing cold metallic cloak, protecting the necromancer while the torches harmlessly clanked against it and bounced off. Wherever the cloak was about to get hit, the light blue lines that appeared on most simulacra formed a web-like pattern and very briefly turned the flowing fabric into a solid sheet of metal.
“You have the coldest hugs in the world. Can you please let me go? I’m literally freezing.” Anastacia asked and wiggled until the simulacrum released her. “Okay… What now?”
The ice spell trick would crumble as soon as the Eshtian people would make an attempt at rushing towards the bridge, so the time Anastacia had to come up with anything was limited. Gilbert was still dealing with the other side of the town, and the highest number of bandits she had ever stopped at once was twenty-two, and even then, a couple of them spontaneously broke their legs. So even if she did set a personal record and Gilbert was able to hold his own without her help, it left ten or so people free to do whatever, and even that was based on the assumption that she could stay focused for longer than ten seconds.
“Did you know that necromancy is hard when you’re trying to not kill people?” Anastacia pointed out to the simulacrum. “Could we like slightly burn the town? We’re not supposed to kill, but property damage didn’t get mentioned anywhere. They’d be too busy trying to save their stuff and wouldn’t fight us, and besides-“
Tink.
An arrow bounced off the simulacrum’s shoulder and interrupted Anastacia’s planning. For a fraction of a second, everyone in town could feel a very slight twitch on their entire bodies as their flesh and bone reacted to the necromancer’s powers flaring out before she came back to her senses. She turned to look at the mob and saw that at least three of them had taken out their hunting bows and were now aiming at her and the simulacrum. In her daze, Anastacia let go of the three people she was holding still, allowing them to reconsider their actions and escape into the crowd behind them.
“Nope. None of this. Not going to deal with it…” She muttered and rushed to grab the backpacks they had left next to the campfire.
While the simulacrum blocked two more arrows, Anastacia dragged the luggage off the bridge as fast as she could before picking up one of her spears.
Gilbert happened to glance at them while it was happening. “Anna! What on earth are you doing?!” He yelled, knowing exactly what the necromancer was up to, and lunged into some cover behind an empty cart that happened be nearby.
“PANICKING!” Anastacia screamed and launched the spear directly at the bridge.
The impact sent granite shrapnel flying at high speeds into every direction. While the metal and wooden parts of the spear peeled off when it hit the stone, the bone core sank into it as if the whole bridge was made of warm butter. With a terrifying cracking sound, no lesser to a lightning strike, the entire structure split apart and crumbled into the dark waters of the river below.
With the bridge gone, neither side of the town felt like messing with each other or the adventurers, they had simply blamed the destruction on the other kingdom and broken up what was left of their mobs. The Helleboran side had to spend a while helping up the people Gilbert had trashed but hadn’t seen it worthwhile to seek revenge over it, or simply didn’t dare to even try.
Soon after the town had once more settled for the night, the cloaked simulacrum had disappeared somewhere, likely to stalk Anastacia from further away again. This time even Gilbert wasn’t able to spot her in the dark.
“Such a shame. I wanted to take her to Valor with us.” Anastacia lamented with a pouch of ground coffee in her hands. The party’s coffee pot had fallen into the river with the bridge, and she had to cope with only the scent of her favorite drink, reminding her of better times. “Didn’t even get to ask her name.”
Gilbert, now more bruise than man, was laying down next to a new campfire and dealing with the aftermath of the countless lucky punches the townsfolk had gotten through his defenses during the fight. He had barely noticed them thanks to the adrenaline and the enchanted ruby ring, but now that the situation had calmed, there was not a single painless bit in him. “I don’t think that would have been wise. She clearly has some kind of mission going on, and until we know who she reports to, you shouldn’t trust her too much.” He pointed out. Gilbert had decided to hold on to the glass pearl himself, at least until they were able to return to Valor and he could find out more about them from King.
Anastacia frowned. “But she’s integral to my plan of making King jealous, and she seemed nice enough.” She protested and poked Gilbert’s side with her staff.
“Like I said: you spend too much time with Xamiliere. Don’t go about making plans that invoke jealousy in ancient machines of war and strife, it’s bad for… well everyone probably.” Gilbert grunted and yanked the staff away from Anastacia.
“Whatever. What would you know about it anyway.” The necromancer scoffed at her friend’s advice.
Right as the red glare of the morning sun appeared in the eastern horizon, the sounds of at least a dozen horses galloping towards the town on the frozen road could be heard. Soon enough, a troop of knights popped up from behind the buildings. Donning the same black armor as the commander who had given the adventurers their quest, they were unmistakably the reinforcements Medivar had left to fetch. They tied their horses onto a few poles near the Helleboran guard post next to the destroyed bridge and went on to investigate its ruins.
The knight captain himself hopped off his steed next to the adventurers and warmed his hands on their campfire. “Exciting night, huh?” He laughed.
“What the fuck is wrong with these people?” Anastacia asked, still angry about almost getting hit with an arrow again. “Is this like a centuries old quarrel between two families that just got out of hands or something?”
Medivar flipped open his visor and laughed. “Not that I know of. They’re all just massive arseholes. There’s a reason no one else wants to guard this place.”
Gilbert forced himself to get up and greeted the captain with a handshake. “Nice to see you kept your word and came back in time. We’re sorry about the bridge, I hope it doesn’t affect our reward too much?” He said and nodded towards the river.
“Nonsense!” The knight exclaimed and continued his usual hearty laughter. “I’ll just make the folk here rebuild it as a punishment. A bit of team building wouldn’t hurt, don’t you think? Nothing’s on fire, I don’t see any corpses, and everyone is tucked in their beds nice and quiet. As far as I’m concerned, this is a job well done.” He said and handed over a hefty satchel full of money to Anastacia. “Kingdoms of Hellebor and Eshtia thank you for your services, adventurers.”
Gilbert quickly recounted the events of the night to the easy-going knight captain and explained why he had beaten up a good portion of the town’s population. As expected Medivar simply laughed it off and shared the story with his knights.
Though they were tired, when the knight captain offered the adventurers a chance to ride from Oopdelt to Valor on horseback, they immediately accepted – fearing what would happen if they stayed in that den of insanity for even a second longer than they had to.