It would have been nearly an hour when Erebus returned with the three archmages, though Dus had declined to join them, refusing to elaborate on her reasoning. The situation was much as they’d left it, Alec and Holly were resting on the ground, crosslegged and leaned against each other, that had been one lesson the two had learned in their misadventures, to rest when possible because you never knew when there would be an emergency.
The Swordsman was watching over the two, expression torn between amusement and frustration, occasionally glancing at the still rictus form of Janiah, which had managed to collect a couple of starlings, the birds taking to flight at the quartet’s approach.
“I should tell you all to leave and never return.” He declared darkly, not even trying to hide his anger, “This cannot work when you flout the rules so flagrantly.”
Of all people it was Erebus who retorted, “When a rule is no longer fit for purpose it should be ignored. This place is meant to be a place of safety, noone’s safe in an apocalypse.”
“You turned your coat fast.” The tattooed blademaster snapped back.
“My coat’s the same it’s always been. But sometimes a serpent will grasp at a drowning man.” The mage replied smoothly as he gave the three archmages the side-eye.
That at least got a chuckle from all parties as Erebus crossed to the two sleeping youths and shook them gently awake, “You know, rest is one thing, but a sleep that deep really isn’t good on the road, anything could happen.”
“We can’t help it.” Holly grumbled defensively, “Once he gets drowsy, I get drowsy, then he gets drowsier because I’m drowsy and then we’re asleep.”
Alec nodded his head along to the dryad’s explanation the gesture somewhat lost as he stretched his limbs. “What are we doing about Janiah?”
It was Pheus that answered, the lord of dreams looking human again as he wandered over, “Simple enough. From her perspective no time has passed so we just stand where we were when time was stopped for her and don’t mention anything.”
The teenager couldn’t keep the doubt off his face, “The sun has moved and Dus isn’t here, she’s bound to notice.”
“Yes.” The archmage agreed, thin lips twitching with a positively delighted smirk, “And she won’t be able to prove a thing.”
“Seems a little cruel…” Alec mused, though Holly seemed to share Pheus’ amusement, the young dryad having to hold back giggles at the thought. The paladin had not endeared herself to either of them in truth, referring to them as the ‘victims of necromantic experimentation’ which while technically true certainly wasn’t how they thought of themselves.
“If she’s going to pull the tail of a tiger then she doesn’t get to complain when she gets clawed.” Pheus replied blithely, “In the old days we wouldn’t have been half as considerate at this.”
“In the old days we’d have been trying to kill each other.” Erebus pointed out, “Not all nostalgia is good. Now places everyone…”
Less than a minute later, after a few minor adjustments where Alec and Holly had accidentally swapped places and Erebus needed to be re-manacled, Janiah would burst back to motion, still mid-bellow, “-Holy Paladin Order and I will not surrender him to anyone except the Guard-Commander of New Pax. Certainly not some jumped up fossils who insist on malingering in this forsaken hole.”
Pheus smiled, the expression warm and heartfelt, “My apologies Lady Vorthame, you are of course correct, my brothers and I will resume our malingering and trouble you no more.” And with that the three were simply gone as if they’d never been there, and it was certainly possible they hadn’t.
Janiah, for her part, stared at the empty space, aware that something wasn’t quite right but unable to put her finger upon it as her gaze traversed the carefully blank faces arrayed before her, even if Alec and Holly’s lips were twitching. Still as Pheus had said, she couldn’t prove anything no matter what she suspected.
For a few seconds impotent rage danced in her eyes, clear for any with the eyes to see it, before it was pushed out of sight, “If there are no further interruptions, we can get underway, the guards should be meeting us outside the barrier.”
She wasn’t happy about that either, but The Swordsman had been quite firm that as they weren’t seeking sanctuary they would be regarded as a hostile presence and she’d had little choice but to acquiesce with poor grace.
Erebus walked in front of her, manacled hands in front of him, Janiah watching him suspiciously the entire way and not raising a hand to help him over the waist high wall. Alec frowned at that, Holly and himself helping the necromancer over with a minimum of fuss, as awkward as it was manhandling his own mentor.
He wasn’t entirely angry with Janiah about it, proximity to the wall was a strain at the best of times, making it hard to do anything, last time it had actually been sheer apathy to his own apathy that had gotten him through it. This time he’d been slowly building up his exposure to it, along with Holly who was still having to bite back small sounds of pain as she crossed it, more or less fleeing for the treeline once she had.
Glancing at Janiah as he vaulted over it, he could see a pair of fairly vacant eyes staring back at him, “You need to cross the wall.” He told her, hoping the instruction would spur her to action, it certainly had when he’d last faced this crucible.
Fortunately it did, not that Erebus was making a run for it, and not that Alec would have helped Janiah if he were, instead the necromancer had found himself surrounded by two robed and hooded figures, staves held at the ready with spells visibly crackling at the tip.
By this point Alec had had enough of a grounding in magical heraldry to read the basics, one in the vivid and dancing scarlet of a senior pyromancer and the other in the arsenic green of an alchemist.
“At least you’re on time.” Janiah declared, striding forwards to meet them as her fugue lifted, crow-footed eyes sharpening once more. “But I thought there were supposed to be more of you…?”
“A month is short notice to travel this deep into the forest.” The crimson robed one said, voice bespelled to be inflectionless and genderless and the shadows of their hood unnaturally deep so not a single detail could be made out of their face, ditto their partner. “Especially given its recent change in attitude.”
“Do you believe you can escort the prisoner safely with just the two of you?” She asked them, all business now.
“It won’t be a problem, we’ve arranged a site-to-site teleport to outside New Pax where we will be supplemented with sufficient reinforcements to ensure his detention.” The alchemist assured her in that same obnoxiously neutral voice, taking out a vaguely purple glowing crystal, despite the colouring Holly suspected it was something far rarer than mere amethyst, sharing that insight across the bond.
“I was not informed of this.” Janiah replied, eyes narrowing suspicion.
“It became necessary when we realised we would be undermanned. You decided the timeline, not us.” The pyromancer pointed out, not relaxing their grip or aim at Erebus for even a moment. “We were not informed of the children either.”
“My apprentices.” The condemned explained, or rather lied, “They’re key witnesses for my defence.”
“Irregular. We will consult.” From the alchemist, the way the duo alternated who spoke strangely eerie.
Both raised a hand to their ear, clearly listening to something before nodding and chorusing as one, “Very well. We will abide.” Frankly it made Alec’s skin crawl, and he could feel a similar repulsion coming across the bond from Holly.
Even Janiah looked a touch out of sorts, “Well?” She demanded, wanting this done with.
“Command says it’s okay.” The pyromancer announced, and even the voicechanging spell couldn’t entirely conceal their displeasure, a hint of masculine growl managing to get through.
“The prisoner and witnesses will join hands.” Green robe ordered as the purple glow from the crystal began to intensify, in moments getting hard to look at.
“Wait a moment.” Janiah ordered, “I still have to-“
They never found out what exactly Janiah had to do, the two mages clasping crushing grips on Alec and Holly’s shoulders and with a flash of ethereal plum light they were gone.
*
It was bitterly cold. That was the first thing Holly noticed as they arrived, the biting chill was like nothing she’d ever felt before as the wind cut through her dress as if it were gossamer. The second thing was the sheer lack of plantlife to speak of, even without her tree she was still at heart a dryad, and still had the suite of supernatural senses that involved but there really was nothing, not even lichen or moss.
Just stark white ice as far as the eye could see as snow battered against the bubble of calm a mage in a steely blue robe (the colour unfamiliar from Holly and Alec’s lessons) was maintaining for them as they all reoriented themselves.
Alec for his part looked fairly queasy and that was as much as Holly got before she narrowed their link as far as it would go, receiving a look of betrayal from the teenager as the nausea hit him doubly hard without the apparent anchor of Holly to cling to. Fortunately it never went further than looking ill.
The two mages and their prisoner took the teleport without even so much as a wobble, the two grabbing Erebus and throwing him to the ground as one drew a sword and advanced upon him as the necromancer scrambled back across the ice. “Lord Protector Lutan sends his regards.”
Holly tried to reach for something, anything, to stop it as Alec rushed forwards, only to lose his footing on the smooth ice and crash down heavily, the whumph of air leaving his lungs barely audible over the howling wind. It was all happening so fast and there was nothing, nothing that Holly could do, no plants to manipulate.
Desperately she drew on Alec’s mana, breaking the bond as wide open as she could, not even wincing as she felt the teen’s pain, nausea and winded state like it was her own.
For the first time in her life Holly cast a spell. It was barely stable, little more than a mass of mana and crude intent that the two assassins stop, even Holly didn’t know how it would express itself.
A wave of force rippled through the air, fraying and expanding as it did so but still carrying strength enough to throw the blade-wielder from their feet, which made it all the more tragic that the pyromancer stopped it with a simple barrier of bright blue fire before it could reach them, the flames setting light the magic itself, reducing it to little more than an insubstantial ash floating on the wind.
It was hopeless, Alec had no more mana to give and in his manacled state Erebus couldn’t even fight back as the assassin drew back the blade, poised to stab down at the defenceless target. The dryad closed her eyes, flinching at the harsh crack of the blade plunging into the ice.
Opening her eyes a few moments later she was surprised to find the assassin stood over Erebus but with the blade stabbed firmly into the ground next to him. “Had you going didn’t I?” inquired a clearly feminine voice while offering him a hand up.
“Yeah you did.” The necromancer growled, accepting the hand up, “Crypt’s sake Natalya, what if I’d killed you?”
“You’re in mana-restraints, do your worst.” Natalya scoffed, dispelling the illusion on her robe, the toxic green fading to an inky black, the very twin of Erebus’ own robe. Still for all her mockery she did put up a spellshield.
Now Holly wasn’t an expert on spellshields but she had seen a few while living in Seruatis, half-spheres of shimmering force, walls of glowing green entropy, rock and earth rising to form a golem-like shell of armour. Von Mori herself had preferred a flurry of petals that disrupted magical energies not born of the forest, and if that sounded weak for a borderline primordial being then that was just because the person hadn’t ever been in the centre of a hurricane of foxgloves petals and pollen.
As shields went this one was solid. A complex network of vaguely green glowing runes suspended in a force barrier that wrapped entirely around the mage in a bubble.
Erebus raised an eyebrow at it, “I thought you used a skintight shield?” He rapped on it with his knuckles, flashes of incandescent white sparks rising from the contact and the knuckles visibly reddened from even that brief touch.
“Times change.” She half-shrugged, expression still unreadable beneath the hood whilst Holly and Alec watched, neither of them entirely caught up on events to the point that Alec hadn’t even picked himself up off the ice yet. “Now I said do your worst.”
“Can’t. It’s of the fire and forget variety and I’m saving it for a rainy day.” Erebus replied, offering his wrists, “Any chance of taking these off? Or is this not actually a rescue?”
His fellow necromancer would, with apparent reluctance, unlock the manacles, “A rainier day than being stabbed through the gut and bleeding out on the ice?”
“Much rainier.” Erebus assured her, “Now who’s with you?”
“Less than you’d hope, it’s been a bloodbath since you got detained.” She admits, “It’s bad Ere… I know they got Fredrick, Morlan, Monica, Dreadful Ed and someone just about levelled Triple A. And that’s just the ones I’m sure of. Frankly some of it’s weird, the Umbral Temple took a run at Karatas and Amara nearly got made extra crispy by some bizarre joint operation between the Umbral and Vulcanus.”
Other than a particularly tight-lipped frown Erebus took that in stride as he gave the waiting pyromancer a long look, as if trying to pierce the magical darkness beneath the hood by simple staring power alone, “That you Amara?”
“In the flesh, just about.” The pyromancer replied, “And Sato’s powering the barrier until we’re ready to teleport to a secondary location, though that’s going to take a while given someone decided to bring along two extra people.”
“Things got complicated.” Erebus explained whilst managing not to include any explanation, “Just about? Vulcanus actually took a run at you?”
“Things got complicated.” She echoed, before pulling Erebus into a rib-creaking hug, “It’s damn good to see you kid.”
“It’s not that I’m ungrateful for the rescue but if your own people are hunting you shouldn’t you be in hiding?” He asked with clear concern as he tried to extricate himself from the hug.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
“If someone tries to assassinate me in front of you, what’re you going to do kid?” Amara asked with a carefree laugh, not letting him go just yet as she began rubbing a knuckle on the top of his head.
“Kill them, obviously.”
Whilst the mages were busy catching up, Holly had found herself with her own problem to deal with, Alec still hadn’t gotten to his feet, the teenager just about having managed to get himself to a seated position as he puffed and panted as if he’d just finished a marathon, his skin adopting an unhealthy pallor.
She tried to send a little healing into him, not a true spell, just the instinctive magic she usually used, but it didn’t help, it did worse than not help, Alec starting to shiver and shake.
“Stop you fool of a girl. Take much more and you’ll kill him.” Natalya hissed, interposing herself between Holly and Alec, for all the good it would do if she ignored her advice.
Fortunately Holly did listen, managing a rather weak, “What? No, I was healing him!”
“With his own mana. You’re trying to fill a bucket of water by taking water out of the bucket then dropping it back in, not only are you not getting any new water but you’re losing some in the transfer.”
“I’m f-fine.” Alec complained, teeth chattering, “J-just need a m-minute.”
“You’re mana starved, idiot.” Natalya snapped at him, “Just take breaths and siphon from the air, it’s a bit cold-aligned for my tastes but it’ll have you feeling better.”
“How d-do I do that?” He gasped, trying and feeling to get to his feet and settling for hugging his knees instead.
“You’re kidding me, what has he even been teaching you?” The necromancer groaned, a dull slap of hand meeting forehead before she rubbed at her eyes.
“Meditations mostly…” He caught a brief look at her expression, “it was important at the time.”
“Of course it was.” She sighed, “Well just reach out with your mana senses and-?”
“My what?” The facepalm was a lot louder this time.
“Just give me your hand, you aren’t going to like this.” She told him, grabbing for the appendage in question, still she’d given him fair warning, in her mind at least as she pumped some of her own magicka into him. Ideally she’d have given him ambient mana, the magic that suffused all things rather than magicka, her own supply.
Alec’s screaming indicated why, high-pitched, shrill and desperate, it brought the conversation between Erebus and Amara to a halt and even the stalwart and taciturn Sato, still maintaining their little bubble of relative calm from the blizzard, faltered for a moment.
“What did you do?!” Erebus bellowed, shoes scraping and scrabbling on the ice as he crossed over to Alec with all the speed he could manage, the young man still screaming as Natalya maintained her grip.
When later asked to describe it Alec would describe it as like fire in his veins, and he’d be lying through his teeth as he did so, it was cold, terribly cold, and felt more like it was oozing than racing, this terrible chill, much worse than the physical cold of the ice around them, slowly passing up his arm and he feared that if it reached his heart that it would stop.
At the same time his other senses received their own assault, a tinny ringing in his ears, the taste of something sickly sweet in his mouth and suddenly the breeze on his skin felt like a knife.
It had only taken seconds for Erebus to wrench the two apart, trying not to shake the teen as he checked he was okay, the necromancer’s eyes all but blazing as he glanced sideways at Natalya, “Well? Care to explain?”
“The dryad took too much from him, I was just giving him a leetle boost, barely a smidge.” She defended herself, entirely unconcerned at her colleague’s change in demeanour.
“With magicka?!”
“Well if you’d bothered to give him even the most basic training I wouldn’t have had to.” She growled, “He can’t even sense mana yet!”
“Things were complicated, I was busy.” He snaps back, summoning a light to his fingertip as he checked Alec’s pupil response only for the teen to jerk his head away.
“I’m fine. I.. I do feel better actually.” Alec admitted, as begrudging as Erebus had ever heard him.
The necromancer let him go, letting the spell go out to rub at his own eyes, “Fine, fine, how long until we can teleport again?”
“Half an hour unless you’re prepared to power it personally.” Amara replied before Natalya could put in her own waspish retort.
“Can’t. Need to marshal my strength for now.” Erebus admitted, “Where’s the secondary jump site?”
“That’s need to know for now,” The pyromancer told him, “So what’s with the kids? The real story, not the tripe you tried to sell us before we rescued us.”
“Alec’s from Respite, the last survivor.” He explained to her, “Lutan put the entire town to the sword for sheltering me.”
“The Four forfend.” Amara swore, “I knew the kid had it out for you but butchering his own folks, that’s twisted.”
“And naïve of you.” Natalya interjected, “I thought I’d taught you better than that.”
“I took precautions.” Erebus protested, “I still don’t know how Lutan found me there. And on the cusp of finally tracking down Ente’s Tear. Just bad luck I guess.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, he was fairly sure now that Lutan’s finding him had been very much a happy accident, but he certainly wasn’t in a rush to reveal that the paladin had the means to tilt serendipity in his favour.
He trusted his former mentors, they wouldn’t ditch him just because of danger, but they were of the type to second-guess themselves into circles if they learned there was a bard plucking gently at the strings of fate. Scratch that, he was also of that mould but he also knew he couldn’t afford to be, inaction would be every bit as fatal as a mistake.
“Doubtful, you will have made a mistake somewhere.” Natalya told him.
“I have it on fairly good authority that I didn’t.” He retorted, “Seruatis has access to some superlatively skilled information gatherers, they agree I took all reasonable, and most unreasonable, precautions.”
His fellow necromancer didn’t look satisfied but at least let the matter lie, “So what was your plan, present the kid before a court as evidence?”
“Hardly, I want them both to live. Besides he slept through the slaughter. Or more likely was knocked unconscious as his home collapsed around him. Holly’s testimony would be far more damning.”
“Oh don’t get me started on her-” Natalya growled.
“Perhaps we should shelve this for a time when we’re all in a more receptive mood.” Amara suggested, quiet and calm in the face of growing passions. “There’s been a lot of rumours flying about the last couple months. Some jokers are even claiming you killed Von Mori.”
“That wasn’t him! That was Lutan!” Holly spoke up, outrage overcoming the intimidating confidence the two mages had projected.
“Much is explained.” The pyromancer noted, because who would dare vouchsafe a Von Mori dryad on their matriarch’s fate. Erebus as it happened.
“She’s not actually dead.” He said, not having even considered that Holly hadn’t been told the truth. He didn’t think it had been done out of cruelty, secrets came too easily to Seruatis, and with himself in irons the only other people she’d have been in contact who’d even known that secret were The Eternal Swordsman himself and Saiko. Seeing the inquiring looks from his colleagues, and the shocked relief tinged with doubt from Holly, he continued;
“Lutan had a soul prison crafted, don’t know from who, around the size of a fist, looked like emerald framed in what I’d guess was a mithril-platinum alloy, a former associate of his claimed it was a four-dimensional runic enchantment with a refined null matrix.”
“That complicates things a lot, someone’s been very naughty indeed.” Natalya stated, “Still that sort of craftsmanship and those sorts of materials, should be fairly easy to track down.”
“The artificer could be unwitting, soul prisons might by restricted but they’re not inherently illicit.” Amara opined.
“Oh making this one was.” The elder necromancer replied with absolute certainty, a chilling rage open on her face as it contorted into a snarl, “You can’t make a soul prison of any real strength without designating a species at minimum. Noone even makes them for dryads, it’s not worth the trouble when you can just go over their heads and pact with the dryad of the forest if they’re difficult, and if you’ve nefarious intent that same great dryad will step in.”
“Trust a necromancer on this,” Erebus backed up his irksome coworker, “Soul prisons are finicky at the best of times. This will have a paper trail a mile long if you know where to look, you can hide the final item from the books but this will have required prototypes, blanks, that’s a lot of very expensive materials to keep off the paperwork. Not to mention trial runs, I’d bet years of my life that if you go through the unresolved incident reports there’s a lot of missing dryads all over Contenmere. Whoever made this knew what they were making and what it was for.”
“I hate this.” Amara admitted, “I had to kill people I’ve known for decades, close friends have tried to murder me in cold blood. It’s… I don’t even have the words for what this is.”
“I’ve got one word.” Natalya said, flashing a gratuitous amount of teeth given she wasn’t the vampire in this conversation, “Conspiracy.”
Erebus sighed, “Yes. I understand someone taking a run at you, I even understand someone making a play for Amara to get to me, but it being her own people makes no damn sense, and the Umbral Temple does not throw away people. I… I just- It makes no sense to me. Hitting Dreadful Ed, he’d been retired for decades, if they’d just waited a few years time would have done their job for them, and Triple A?! Everyone gets hurt by that, paladin, mage… even the hells did good business with them.”
“You’re saying there’s something more at play than a little opportunism.” Natalya observes coolly, “Any ideas as to who’s?”
“You’re assuming just one hand,” Amara pointed out, “With such different targets it could be multiple factions.”
Erebus and Natalya exchanged a glance, the latter deciding to bite her tongue and let Erebus handle it. “That’s incredibly unlikely, one large conspiracy is hard enough to hide, two going unnoticed beggars belief, more than that… well I’m sure I could calculate the odds but I’d have to express it in exponents.”
The pyromancer looked more than a little embarrassed, though it was harder to tell on a vampire than most people, given the inability of their cheeks to flush with heat still there were few other ways to interpret the near forensic examination Amara appeared to be making of her shoes.
Both necromancers let it pass without comment, the vampire was a master of fire par excellence but for all her centuries of life she’d been out of fieldwork longer than the pair had been alive, living in the Academy for nearly all of that long life, working on her mastery of fire had blunted her instincts and distanced her from the changing world around her.
The current state of shadowplay simply wasn’t something she knew anymore, for all her duelling prowess it was fully possible Amara was the weak link on the team even over Alec who at least knew he knew nothing on such matters.
Still Erebus wasn’t in the habit of humiliating close friends so he decided to throw her a bone, “Still two with shared interests would perhaps explain the Umbral’s involvement in the attack on you.”
There was a moment of shared silence as the three digested the information they’d shared, Alec and Holly watching on, a little too intimidated to speak, there was just something in the way the three master mages held themselves, like predators on the prowl, it was something they’d never seen in the affable necromancer before and neither was sure they liked it, especially when it was abundantly clear the others seemed to regard them as an inconvenience.
Still no silence could last forever and it was Natalya who finally put voice to the question they’d all been dancing around. “So what are we actually going to do?” She asked, a hopeful note creeping in as she addressed Erebus, letting him mull it over before answering.
In truth Erebus’ thoughtful expression was not because of the question he’d been asked but the tone itself. It was weird having his mentors now looking to him for guidance, on an intellectual level he’d known for some time he’d surpassed them but still it didn’t feel right and only got more nauseating given he was about to betray the faith they were placing in his judgement.
“We go on the attack. I was given some leads in Seruatis, locations the archmages there believed would be useful.” He said, handing them both their death sentences. It was… practical.
Heartless but practical. The end of the world was apparently on its way, and Erebus, for all his bluster in the face of Pheus, Nem and Jay, was scared. It was an unfamiliar thing, half-forgotten and malformed from disuse, but fear all the same.
If it was just fear he could probably have pushed it away, not made the terrible choice he knew he was making, but far, far greater than his fear was his rage… and his tiredness.
All he’d built, all he’d sacrificed, all he’d done… all under threat. He would not allow that, could not allow that, for it all to have been for nothing.
“You will defeat every enemy, daemon, dragon or death itself. You will submit to nothing, no god, no master nor conscience.” Memory’s fell voice whispered in his ear, each sentence echoing with the sound of the blows that had rained down upon his increasingly desperate guard at the time.
Reality was seldom so easy, or so kind. His conscience gnawed at him, to consign people who trusted him to oblivion was a terrible thing even by his standards, to take people who held power and direct them to his will. Once upon a time, in a much younger man, the thought of it would have been intoxicating, now it made him want to be sick.
He quelled that urge too, realising that his friends were waiting for him to continue, “First though we need a safe place to work out of. Originally I was only thinking about somewhere that neither the Paladin Order or the Necropolis would look for me, having to add Vulcanus and the Umbral Temple to that list rather trims the options.”
“You’re talking death zones.” Natalya observed with more than a hint of trepidation.
“What’s a death zone?” Alec asked, terminal curiosity still apparently at play.
“Exactly what it sounds like.” The necromancer told him, “It’s a place that kills you. Simple as, you cross the line of glowing sigils that give audible, visual, mental and most importantly contextual warnings that the other side of it is bad… you don’t walk back out. Which raises the question why we’d ever even consider stepping inside the kind of death trap that even most zombies are smart enough not to enter?”
“Because there’s at least one I’m sure I can crack open.” Erebus replied, steel in his gaze and surety in his voice.
“How sure is sure?” Nat demanded, his former squad leader not convinced in the slightest – people had been trying to break into most those self-contained hellscapes for longer than either of them had been alive.
“Better than fifty-fifty?” He noted the doubtful looks he was getting, “Sixty-forty. Look can you think of a better place to lay low while we make preparations? Even if someone manages to get a scry off on us there’s no way they’ll follow us in.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure. These attacks haven’t been… normal, I’ve never even heard of an organisation spending mageblood like this, not since the Age of Invasion, and last I checked we aren’t up to the eyeballs in gribbly horrors.” Natalya countered, “though you’re right I don’t have anywhere better.”
“That does concern me. A lot. Last I checked in with the Umbral Temple they regarded Karatas and I as boon companions.”
“Perhaps they got tired of owing you a debt.” Amara suggested, “Which you’ve never explained by the way, what did you do for them that’s worth killing for?”
“I can’t really tell you.”
“Even though they’re actively trying to kill people around you, possibly you as well?” The vampire singularly unimpressed at the secrecy, face contorting into a rictus snarl that exposed her fangs, going from friendly and approachable to horror of the night in a moment.
“I need you to trust me on this Ra, this one’s so secret that I can’t even tell you why I can’t tell you.”
“That’s not good enough, not this time.” The vampire replied mournfully, “I deserve to know why people want me dead, if you can’t give me that much then we’re done, I’ll throw myself on the mercy of the Council and see if they can protect me.”
“I can’t.” Erebus hissed, “It’s… you’d be in danger just knowing, more danger than you are now.”
“More danger than assassins?! More danger than being on the run for my life? Of being cast out of the Vulcanus?!” Amara just short of screaming, the infamous pyromancer’s temper coming to the fore perhaps.
“Yes.” The necromancer informed her, “It would put a target on your back that could never be removed, The Umbral would hunt you to the ends of Reath, daemons would know your name and not fondly, the fae would seek to carve daggers from your bones.”
“At least I’d know who was hunting me and why.” The vampire protested, starting to border on shrill.
Erebus’ eyes narrowed, “Mara, are you entirely yourself?”
“I don’t know!” She yelled, “I… I was in the middle of the Rite of Compassion when they struck… I don’t know if I’m me right now.”
“Wraiths wept.” Both necromancers swore as one, though it was Natalya who continued, “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have…” only to trail off as her imagination failed her.
“Done nothing.” The vampire sighed, anger vanishing unnaturally fast. “Noone can do anything, least of all me because I don’t even know if there’s anything to be done and it’s driving me crazy.”
“It’s a hard thing, not being sure if you’re you.” Erebus said, with the weariness of experience, for all he was the youngest of the three there was a weight to the words that they couldn’t gainsay, “You’ve got to decide whether you like yourself, and if you do then decide it doesn’t actually matter who’s really in here.”
“It’s not that…” Amara admitted, “At least it’s not just that, if it’s not all me in here, or if not all of me is here, then what about…” She stopped, glancing at Holly, Alec and Sato, settling lamely on “it?”
“Qrilotesh will be fine.” Erebus consoled her, brazenly ignoring the look of betrayal and dawning horror on his friend’s face, “They’ve got a strong personality and millennia of making these pacts, chances are they barely even noticed.”
“You can’t just say their name like that, not in front of-“
“Amy, the fact Vulcanus is backed by an elemental is hardly a secret, or if it is then it’s a damn cheap one. It cost me one pint of bitter to learn it.”
“A half dozen freshly baked cookies for me.” Natalya antagonised gently, smiling as she did so.
“And what’s anyone going to do with the knowledge? The last elemental in their weight class, and I mean physical weight, forget magical strength, flattened two cities and redrew a skyline, and that was such a best case scenario Second Response threw a party that lasted over a day.” Erebus half explained and half griped.
“Fine. So it’s not the best kept secret in the world, is a little respect and decorum too much to ask for?”
“Yeah, I think it’s safe to say you’re fine Mara.” The necromancer replied dryly, “But you’re entirely right we need to know who wants me dead that badly. And I know just how to do it…” He trailed off, waiting quietly, and as always, for the inevitable.
He didn’t get it this time, no one leapt upon the pause, demanded answers or otherwise engaged with the melodrama, even Alec just gave him a tired look and waited him out.
“We need to wait things out,” He continued smoothly, “Find somewhere no one would ever look, make quiet investigations, but first we need to make sure we’ve ditched any magical tracking.”
“I’m clean on my end.” Natalya assured him.
“Qrilotesh purged me personally.” Amara added.
“Ooh kinky…” The older necromancer quipped to a fiery glare from the vampire.
Erebus rubbed at his brow as he decided not to comment on the phrasing, “No countermeasures are perfect, we’re going to need to guarantee we’re clear and free if we’re to make this work. You both know what that means…”
“Ugh come on kid, anything but that. Can’t you just, I dunno, dump me in a vat of alchemical waste, it’ll have a similar effect and I’m more likely to emerge the same species.” Nat groused, arms folded in disgust.
“The fire tastes funny there and the sunlight acts weird, I’m never sure if it’s safe or not.” Amara added.
“Tough. If we want to live, we have to visit Arcadia.”