Azura wasn’t entirely sure how to feel about this guy. The man was dressed much like the one who gave him the crown in the first place, except his clothes were gray instead of white. Probably because of how bright the sun was here. If his clothes didn’t have enchantments to help keep him at a good temperature he would have burned up already, or more accurately he would have frozen up over the night. He wondered how the girl in the story survived her night in the desert. There wasn’t exactly any firewood around, and consciously regulating your body temperature with magic wasn’t something many people could do in their sleep.
“So, what is it you’re trying to hide away out here?” He tensed. The guy… Arbeid? That was the name he had been given if he remembered correctly, well the curiosity was obvious, but it didn’t sound like he was overly invested in the answer. Azura had learned to trust his gut, and this guy seemed more or less trustworthy if a little eccentric. Or perhaps out here he was the eccentric one.
“I’m not sure, but judging by the state of the person who handed it off to me, I imagine it’s bad news.” The woman in the story would have had no way to know since her story would have had to have been set before the kingdom of glass which was the story that made this artifact famous. Not that he would have been honest even if he felt like she had known.
“Ooh I see. Sounds like an interesting story. We’ve still got a long way to the oasis if you’re interested in sharing.” He winced, there wouldn’t really be much for him to tell, since he only experienced part of it. Plus even if he had the whole story, the man who looked almost identical to Arbeid almost certainly died after handing him the artifact, so probably best not to mention it.
“Perhaps not that tale, the ending isn’t a particularly happy one, but I’d be happy to trade some stories if you like. I’ve gathered a decent few in my time training to be a powerful mage.” He didn’t see any harm in sharing his own stories though, Arbeid was either a simulation, or someone acting like a character from the book either way he was clearly not trained in the use of magic and thus not really a threat to Azura. He’d still be leaving out the specifics just in case Arbeid gave out the info to anyone else. No reason to give out his skillset lightly.
Arbeid seemed to wince. “Sorry if I brought up some bad memories, pops always did say I could be a little insensitive, that and curiosity killed the cat, but I’m not a cat so it should be fine!” He chuckled. His guide really was quite a character. “As an apology I’ll go first on the story trade. I’ve never done anything especially interesting, so you’ll have to settle for some local legends.”
He was more than ok with that. Local legends actually tended to have a surprising amount of good information, if you were good at sifting through all the nonsense that is. “Sounds good to me, as long as it passes the time right?” He had honestly expected the world to skip forward again, and for him to suddenly find himself at the oasis saying goodbye to his new friend.
***
Well as the sun once again began to set Azura gave up any hope of there being another time skip. Trading stories with Arbeid had been a surprisingly fun experience, and he had learned alot about the area through some of his stories. Although the scrap sharks were a particularly worrying piece of information. They shouldn’t be beyond his ability, but the terrain would make them a pain to deal with. Unfortunately his guide didn’t know any of the specifics of their abilities, just that they seemed to be random metal scraps formed together into a shark that could swim through the sand like water.
“I had hoped we’d be able to make it to the oasis before nightfall, but it seems the sands were against us. We’ll have to make camp here.” He was fine with that, but wasn’t the rule in the desert that it’s better to walk at night when it’s cold and sleep while it’s super hot during the day? Thanks to his magic it wasn’t too difficult to get water, and Arbeid had shared rations with him which made the day trip manageable. Well manageable for his guide, he had his equipment to keep him cool. His guide had no such equipment.
“Wouldn’t it be better to travel through the night to try and keep warm?” Arbeid winced, looking distinctly uncomfortable before releasing a sigh.
“That would be the conventional wisdom, but this desert isn’t normal in a lot of ways, and one of those is that traveling at night is a death sentence. No one knows why because none who’s traveled at night has ever survived to tell the tale. Trust me we’re better off trying to stay warm while resting than going forward.” He didn’t know if there was any que he was supposed to follow. This part hadn’t been in the story or rather it was mentioned, but was skipped over for more interesting parts. Although it was near the end, he at least had that.
“I’ll take your word for it. Do you need help staying warm? I can cast some magic to help you.” Arbeid chuckled and waved him off.
“I’ll manage, don’t forget I’ve spent my entire life here, I know how to survive.”
“Fair enough. Should one of us keep watch? I set up a ward before going to bed last time, but it didn’t seem to work when you came near.” Arbeid looked confused. Azura felt a little silly after realizing what had happened. Of course Arbeid never went through the words, he probably appeared next to him like how the shades just appeared in his clairvoyance range.
“I don’t remember seeing any wards, Actually I have no idea what wards would look like even if I did see them, but I have no idea how I would have gone undetected, I’m not exactly stealthy.” The wards only stopped outside going in, so Arbeid wouldn't have seen anything just walking out of the warded area with him.
“Nevermind, I must have forgotten to set them up last night. I suppose I’m quite fortunate nothing bad tried to approach me.” The guide had probably appeared right next to me, but hopefully any monsters that were spawned by the simulation would do so a little further away. He’d be adjusting his wards though, just in case.
Arbeid laughed. “Yes indeed, you really should be more careful. Not everyone in this desert is as helpful as I am.” He didn’t allow any of his frustration to slip out. Arbeid hadn’t done anything wrong, it was just the parameters of the simulation that weren’t quite accurate. Since he doubted the school was keeping them in the simulation for several days he wondered how the time dilation effect worked. Was it simply that time ran differently in the subspace, or was it purposefully manipulated to run differently. Questions within questions. None that he could answer right at this moment unfortunately.
“Yes thank you for your hospitality, I am in your debt.” Whoops noble mode slipped out, oh well Arbeid just chuckled and waved him off. He got to work on his wards. Updating so that anything living, and or magical in nature appearing inside the wards would set them off. It was a bit trickier to do this way, because he had to register everything that was already within them. Including his new travel partner, but this way nothing could just appear past his defenses without him at least knowing about it.
Once all the work was done he and Arbeid chatted a little more about what kinds of things to expect about the desert and then eventually decided it was time to sleep. Arbeid was quite impressed with his soft rock. Kept them from getting a ton of sand in their clothes and was comfortable at the same time. His ego probably swelled a little more than necessary at all the praise his guide had heaped on him for his spell. Eventually they allowed sleep to claim them.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
***
Azura was up and ready to defend himself and his traveling partner in an instant. On the bright side his wards had worked, on the downside it wasn’t a living creature that had set them off. The arrow laid harmlessly in the sand outside of his ward. The arrow would have pierced his leg if it hadn’t bounced off his wards. Whether that was on purpose and they were looking to cripple or if they were going for the kill and missed he didn’t know.
He looked in the direction the arrow came from hoping to spot his attacker, but paled upon finding what looked to be an army of bandits. He doubted they could use much in the way of magic, so he could probably handle them on his own, but fighting them and protecting Arbeid at the same time? He wasn’t quite so confident on that front. His wards were designed to stop attacks, and alert him if anyone entered, not to stop entry altogether. Living things were significantly harder to use magic on than objects, due to having their own mana source. No matter how weak it may be.
He used magic to increase his perception speed, but even that would only give him a few more seconds to think before the bandits realized that their ranged weaponry wasn’t going to be effective. He could make a more physical barrier, but that would give the bandits time to surround them, and a battle of attrition was not going to be in their favor. Sadly he had a feeling his best option at the moment was going to be taking Arbeid and running. He would easily be able to outrun some normal bandits even with the added weight, but that would take them in the opposite direction of the Oasis. He desperately wished Katy was here, her illusion magic would come in real handy right about now. He could try to tunnel, but keeping the tunnel of sand from collapsing would be a lot more difficult and costly than it was with dirt.
Roran could probably manage it, and Lily would be able to just turn everything to ash and glass. Well that was fair enough really. The first part gave him a ridiculously unfair advantage over his friends, so having the tables turn was fair game. Fair didn’t exactly help him here though. He sighed accepting that he was going to have to backtrack. He grabbed his guide and ran back the way he’d come. He wondered what was considered night here. He wasn’t exactly a morning person that woke up as early as possible, but this was the second time he had woken up to someone having already found him.
Given what Arbeid said about traveling at night was true then these people would have to be out at first light. Although the bandits probably just wander the desert, he doubted they were particularly welcome in any of the towns. As he suspected, running away wasn’t difficult, but circling back was going to be a chore. Most of the sand dunes were pretty small, so one could see for miles in any direction. Although if they were looking far away they’d have to take the heat haze distorting things into account.
Despite the fact he had roughly flung the man over his shoulder when he started running, Arbeid didn’t seem to be bothered as he was finally set down. “You mages sure can run fast, I can’t believe you were able to cover this much ground. We’re further away than we were when I found you.” That was the idea they were over a days' march away from the bandits, and they didn’t have the kind of stamina magic allowed him to have.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t leave us in a good position. They know where we want to go, they don’t have to try to come to us, we’ll end up going to them. Then there is of course the worse news. They have a mage with them too. I didn’t feel them at first, but their magic flared for an instant when I used mine. My guess is they were trying to decide whether they could take me 1 on 1 or not and decided not to risk it.” The story didn’t say anything about a mage amongst the bandits. All he knew was the girl eventually made it to the oasis after escaping the bandits. After that the story ended with ‘and once she finally reached her goal all that she found was despair.’ and then there was a blank period between that book and the kingdom of glass story.
Did the bandit mage surprise her at the Oasis? Was that who became the mad king? He didn’t have enough info. He sighed. He could worry about that later, for now he needed to think of a way to get past the bandits, the girl in the story may have let herself get captured so they’d let down their guard so she could escape, but he wasn’t willing to risk that. Especially not after the fact he was a mage had been revealed before the fight even started.
“There is a route we can take that the bandits won’t, but there is a reason they won’t take it.” He winced, what was the point in avoiding the bandits, if it was in favor of something more dangerous? On the other hand the issue with the bandits was numbers. If it was 1 strong opponent it might be more manageable.
“Tell me as much as you can. I want to know as many details as possible in order to make the best decision. It’s life and death after all.” It wasn’t of course he could break the pendent if things really got out of hand, and he was half convinced that Arbeid was just part of the simulation, and not an actual person. Although his only evidence of that was Arbeid not noticing his wards, but the guide could just be pretending to be a civilian, while actually being a trained mage. No way for him to tell at this juncture.
***
Azura couldn’t believe this was the plan he came up with. In what world was a monster nest less dangerous than bandits. In the world where he had to protect a civvie unfortunately. Monsters relied solely on instinct to hunt, meaning it was easy enough to make sure he was the prime target. Bandits on the other hand were cunning, and would always try to go after the weakest member of a group. If they got them they had leverage over the stronger members.
Still bandits were also a lot less dangerous than most monsters, especially these scrap sharks from what he had been told. Honestly if the bandits hadn’t had a mage amongst them he probably still would have gone that route, but if there was 1 he had no guarantee there wasn’t more. Worse or better depending on your point of view it seemed scrap sharks were attracted to metal. They ate it, and then overtime it was converted to more rusty armor to shield their actually really soft body. The bad news was that a lot of his equipment was metal, the good news was that none of Arbeid’s was.
He considered abandoning his armor, and weapons and trying to sneak through the nest. It’s not like he couldn’t fight without them, but he also didn’t want to risk them being lost in the subspace if he ended up having to break the amulet. He’d have to deal with the sharks head on. On the bright side he knew the next enchantment he was going to be working on. He’d even started researching it already after his blink spell had been such a major success.
“You said the monsters typically sleep during the day unless provoked right?” He doubted he’d be able to sneak through while he was covered in what was essentially their favorite food, but if he could at least limit the number of monsters attacking them then he’d take it as a win.
“Yes, unfortunately I think walking through their nest with that much metal will work quite well as a provocation.” He rolled his eyes. While he was lucky that his guide knew the area so well, it was a little annoying to be 2nd guessed so much. It had taken a surprising amount of time to convince the man that this was a good plan, which was especially odd when it was him who offered the option in the first place.
“Do you know how they sense metal? I know it can’t be magic in nature for a couple of reasons, but that leaves me unsure of how they actually are doing it.” For one thing most mundane non living things felt primarily the same with a basic scan, and if you cast a spell it involved pumping mana into a thing making it no longer mundane and thus easier to sense. Plus even if they did have some means to make the distinction he would have been able to feel the magic being used to search for it, even if he was a little outside their detection range.
“Rumor has it that it’s by smell, but if it is then these sharks have one hell of a nose, because even when someone covered themselves in really strong scents they were still found and eaten.” That wasn’t too uncommon. Monsters usually had much better senses than humans did, so picking out one scent among many wasn’t a difficult thing for many of them.
“Well guess we’ll be putting that theory to the test. I can make sure my scent doesn’t travel far, but any shark we walk directly over will definitely detect me. So if it's a smell we’ll probably only have to deal with a few of them. If it’s not, we'll be swarmed by hundreds of them.” He spoke with as much cheer as he could muster. Which was actually a surprising amount. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t a little excited to see a monster he had never even heard of before. He pretended not to notice Arbeid gulp as fear etched into the guide’s face.