Chapter 18: On the Road Again.

The three of us probably made a slightly surreal sight when we left the town an hour later. I had my faithful trolley-wagon loaded with more supplies than I'd come to this world with and a pack slung across my shoulders while a bandolier of actual candles crossed my chest. The Delacroft Sisters walked beside me, Luna dressed in black leather and wearing her father's dagger alongside the same well-used and well-cared for sword which I'd seen her use to dispatch skin-wolves and rot-scales alike. Victoria wore a simple white tunic and pants that had confused me. In the fever-dreams where I'd chosen my class I'd seen wizards, killed them in the role of a Mageslayer or fought alongside them as a battle-mage or War-Scholar. In all of those tutorialised dreams the Wizards had worn floppy hats and starred robes. When I expressed this belief of mine however I'd been giggled at by Victoria and Luna had remarked that I must have read at least one book. Apparently, the style I described was now unused outside of children's storybooks which meant I had been seeing ancient memories or a world coloured by my own childish conceptions from my homeland.

I realised I hadn't told either of them that I had in fact accessed the Akashic record and knew that I wasn't just a stupid rube, Wizards really had dressed that way once upon a time. I thought about that for a second and realised I'd have to admit that I accidentally selected this class after becoming overwhelmed. An impossible story to tell without sounding distinctly rube-like.

"Yeah, I guess it was a storybook then" I decided I'd wait for a better time to reveal my squandered ability to access this trove of mind-collapsing information, perhaps when we really needed a laugh at my expense.

Victoria looked directly at me as we entered the meadows in which we had slain the skin-wolves. "How did you uncover your class Jack? Are Spell-Chandlers the dominant class of Mage in your homeland?"

It was an easy out, I didn't want to lie though. "No, it's unknown there. I read about it somewhere and happened to have a natural aptitude for it, I'll tell you the full story sometime, maybe when you really want to laugh at me."

A wolf howled in the distance and I reflexively reached for my sword, it was worn in a sword belt and scabbard that the blacksmith had scrounged up rather than slung across my trolley the way it used to be. Luna was more subtle, reaching for her weapon with a smoothness that seemed no slower than my own spastic fumbling.

Victoria hadn't seen the Wolves we'd fought, hadn't seen the skin-creatures rise up and attempt to beat us down, hadn't had about 20 percent of her body burned to the second degree by her own recklessness. Luna touched the quiver slung across her back, a score of black-feathered arrows alongside a lacquered composite bow. "I hope we see them coming again, I don't want to fight those things up close without putting a few shots into them first. What kind of ranged spells do you have Jack? Now that you're properly equipped after all." She looked pointedly at my bandolier of coloured candles, I hadn't made them myself so they had a 20 percent debuff to any spells cast when i'd first equipped them but after I heated and remade them I'd found myself able to impart the liquid wax with more mana than the oil-filled cans. I'd felt my mana absolutely pour into the candle without it becoming full when I first attempted the trick. Damn, turned out candlewax was like a sponge for my mana, I felt it drawn out of me until their was nothing left to give and then I had to continue concentrating as the wax cooled, using the tiny trickle of regen to hold the mana in place until it was finally sealed within the remade candle.

Now my candles had a 30 percent boost to damage in addition to the 8 percent boost for using the summoned wicks created via cantrip. It was a big boost and in addition I had access to some new spell variants due to examining these new possessions of mine. The White candles were basic, the green and blue coloured candles could be used to impart poison or lightning effects on my spells, the rosemary infused candles could be used to remove a range of debuffs and a single twisted candle i'd found could be used to cast two spells at once. Unfortunately, because both sides of the twisted candle were completely basic it could only be used for double casting waxen splash or my new anti-bleeding cantrip.

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Until our first night in the woods anyway, at which point I used my newly acquired candle-making equipment to upgrade them further, first I took the twisted candle and heated it slowly, adding metal filings from the blacksmith into the softening wax and using mana to render it more pliable, then I imagined one continuous twisted section, focusing on the idea of a magical channel that aligned perfectly with the visible twist of wax. After that it was a matter of filling that side with as much mana as possible, watching the metal filings magically arrange themselves in one twisted, spiral pattern until the wax cooled down and sealed it in place. Next I repeated the process but with tea leaves that my spell list assured me would create a spell of force.

The end result was the steel infused half of the candle would erupt when lit and the mana would be converted into darts of metal that the other half of the twist would propel like a fragmentation grenade.

The rest of our first night in the woods went easy, no Skin-Wolves, no Bandits, no Ogres, just me, the pretty bookworm and the roguish daughter. Victoria was fascinated by my softening, shaping and magical manipulation of my chosen medium and In return i asked her to show me her own abilities. A quick demonstration on an old log using nothing but her own mana channels showed me how unwise it would be to underestimate her. The log seemed to vibrate slightly as she held her hands, palms up and tilted towards it, the old wood warped and popped as she held concentration and caught fire in a dozen different places before finally the rapidly-heating air and trapped moisture inside of it sent a few fist-sized chunks of log airborne. "What in the world was that spell?" Victoria showed me a page of her spellbook, she hadn't needed it to cast the spell but the book contained all the spells she had encountered so far and could be consulted when she wanted to change the limited number of spells she could have equipped. Written in intensely neat script was the name of the spell Marjorie's Micro-Oscillations. Well, at least wizards didn't have to shout the names of their spells. I made an appreciative noise, tried to use my limited spellcasting ability to puzzle out a method of copying the effect with a candle but my spell list hadn't exactly expanded much, each level seemed to grant me a random spell and sometimes when i saw something i had a hunch it could be used as an ingredient and another spell would be added to my list. That was how i had learned to make the Repulsor and Shrapnel candle that I was hoping to use as a hand grenade.

Luna had her own skills to show off of course, tossing knives casually into tiny targets, I saw her split a series of increasingly small branches with deft throws that took almost no time for target acquisition. Of course she then had to go and collect, sharpen and deburr all of the small weapons before she could turn in for the night but it was still impressive and I made the mental note not to try and beat a rogue in a shootout, Luna could have flicked a knife through my throat before I could get a candle lit or even activate one that was already burning.

I had first watch and the rogue shared it for a few minutes, long enough to finish maintaining her weapons. I thought about what we had to do, how we had to find Ranyai. Victoria had said that the Carnifect often choose to set up near sources of water, it's always a goal of theirs to see the water run red with blood, sending flesh downstream to tempt animals and monsters into eating the demonically tainted but visually unspoiled meat. Only when a creature sank in its teeth or cut into the meat would they see that it still pulsed with vile unlife.

"If the Butcher tells your demon-friend to kill us she has to obey him doesn't she." Luna eyed me while working the knives with small, precise motions and I nodded without hesitation. "She wants to be free of his control and she's using us to achieve that, I told you she hypnotised me in the cave to calm me down after she killed those hunters, in that moment I trusted her, saw her as a friend. She sent me to find you and gave us enough information so she could bring Ranyai not just nobility but adventurers. She wants him dead and she doesn't seem to care how much pain it causes her."

We had both been there when she fought through the pain of her geas, trying to do the mental gymnastics required to disobey a direct order and tell us how to find him. Something flew overhead, something the size of a person, it was too dark to see perfectly but the moon was nearly full and the outline it illuminated was humanoid, wearing chainmail and fluttering lace, great wings beat at the air as the creature flew and we could see the shafts of over a dozen arrows sticking out of its surprisingly curvy body.

"Ah, well there's our clue."