The gentle hum of rain on the shingled roof of the stone cottage did little to calm Ben’s turbulent thoughts. His companions and the Bounty Hunters had settled in for the evening and were sleeping soundly as far as he could tell. After using his power to make Derek his subject, he warred against his instinct and curiosity to prod at and shape the light-blue ball of light that represented his presence. Ben had decided to refrain from changing the complex lattice of emotions and personality traits lest there be a repeat of the Scally incident.
Earlier that evening, after Kieran and an uncharacteristically withdrawn June returned, he’d experimented by conveying varying emotions and thoughts to Derek the same way he and Ann could. The shifting and pulsing light of his presence and the subsequent responses of confusion, fear, and apprehension told Ben that the link worked more or less the same. He left the man to spend time with his father; their lives had changed, and Ben thought he’d gradually let the young man become accustomed to his new role as his subject. Derek had been respectful so far, and he deserved to be treated in kind, he thought, content to take his time to observe and learn the intricacies of his concept.
Ben sat cross-legged beside his Keeper in the dark room, her sleeping form illuminated by the low glowing coals of the fireplace. Sleep had eluded him for several reasons. The primary one was the overwhelming appetite he’d developed moments after feeling the shift closer toward his role as the Champion of Domination. He’d wolfed down three servings of the hastily thrown-together stew, yet he wasn’t sated. Ben absently stared at the dusty stone wall, his unfocused gaze on a fist-sized spider that sat deathly still. A white blur shot past his periphery, and the young man’s brows raised to see a shaggy kitten impact the eight-legged predator. The pair tumbled to the dry wooden floor with a light thud, the arachnid’s fangs locked onto its fur.
Ben smiled, grateful for a distraction from the thoughts of subjects, Council members, and the uncertainty of how his companion would react to what he intended to do at the temple. He silently cheered on Miss Fiona’s cat, who, unsurprisingly, was winning the contest by tearing limbs from the silent hunter one by one. A sniff and an almost imperceptible sob drew his attention to the front door. He scanned the open room and counted the sleeping bodies beside his Keeper; Ainsle and Issa slept to his left, Kieran on the far side of the room, and the Father-Son pair of Bounty Hunters against the wall near the table.
He quietly stood and tiptoed to the door, grabbing his cloak and putting on his boots before opening it and quickly slipping outside. Sheltered from the light rain, under the cottage's eaves sat June. Her knees were tight to her chest, her arms wrapped around her shins, and her head buried in her lap. Her thick, purple hooded robe shuddered. Ben said nothing as he silently sat beside her, gazing out into the dark clearing, devoid of the corpses that littered the ground only a few hours prior.
June lifted her head to wipe her eyes and flinched when she saw Ben sitting beside her.
“Gods,” she gasped in a whisper. “How long were you sitting there?”
“Just got here,” replied Ben, not meeting her gaze. “You all right?” he asked, trying to sound casual so as not to make it awkward if she wanted to avoid the topic.
In his periphery, he noticed her stare. June remained quiet for a few heartbeats before quietly chuckling to herself. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
She sighed. “How do you… deal with-” she paused to gesture with a shaky palm to the area in the clearing, “-all of this? The… carnage.”
Ben frowned and turned to face the woman. “I thought you’d be used to seeing death.” He thought back to his encounter with the twins during the attack on Honeydew. “You seemed to be able to hold your own.”
“That’s different.” Her face fell into her palms, and she spoke with a muffled voice. “Killing monsters. Sure, people died all around us… but they fought back. Gave as good as they got.” She looked up with eyes unfocused, scanning something beyond the clearing before them. “This. This was just cruel.”
Ben nodded as he tried to understand her perspective. It was enlightening to know that not all people were exposed to the harsh realities he’d seen during his few months lucid in this world. He remained silent as he had the impression that the albino woman needed an ear and not disingenuous words of comfort.
June met his gaze. “How? How do you handle it?” she asked, tone pleading.
The young man considered her for a beat. “I…” he began. “I don’t know. I think, deep down, I was meant for this. Whether I like it or not.” He watched as the young woman’s brows slanted and her lips pursed, the beginnings of a tremble. He thought hard at the question and spoke after a few heartbeats. “I just think of my friends. No, they’re closer to family. Ann, Ainsle, and recently, Kieran too. I’d do worse things to anyone who’d hurt them. So, I tell myself this: it’s either them or my family. Tends to make it easier knowing that there are one, two, or twelve fewer people out there who could, you know, hurt those close to me.”
The albino woman’s red-tinged eyes remained fixed on his own. Her expression was blank as she stared at him. Ben continued. “Yeah. Not that I like seeing blood and death necessarily, but when I see them suffer… It gives me a weird kind of peace. Almost like a warning to anyone who wants to try their luck —ah… not that there were any survivors this time, but you get the point.”
“You’re scary as fuck. You know that?” June said flatly; her gaze hadn’t left his. After a moment, her shoulders began to tremble, and the albino woman let out a chuckle. “The Red Maiden’s apprentice, War Dancer, and Champion of Illephrre is just a normal guy who cares about his own people.”
Ben shrugged bashfully. “When you put it like that…” he began.
June sniffed, wiped the remnants of tears from her grey-red eyes, and smiled as if all was right with the world. “Thanks, Ben. I see why Aunt and Kieran talk you up so much. It’s deserved.” She ran a hand through her snow-white hair and cleared her throat. “You hungry?” she asked.
Ben’s growling stomach answered for him.
Ben and June spent the following hours under the eaves of the stone cottage in the clearing. The Magus’ daughter went inside to fetch her personal ‘rations,’ which were magically preserved meals made by who the young man thought to have been a private Chef. The young woman watched with wide eyes as Ben’s seemingly bottomless appetite made short work of her week's worth of food, yet she didn’t comment. The pair spoke of inconsequential things such as their likes and dislikes, and Ben was thrilled to hear that the woman was a connoisseur of the delicate, divine liquid known as black brew in these lands.
Through their talks, he’d gotten the impression that her overprotective adoptive Father had sheltered her for most of her life. The trip to the port city had been the first time she’d ventured out of the Capital, and, much to her frustration, the condition was that she’d have to be under heavy guard. The fact that she was supposed to have traveled back to Caemire —the capital city's name being the same as the Empire— with Ainsle, a close friend of her Father, was the leverage she’d used to get him to agree to the outing. Ben wondered if he was rubbing the Champion of Lilitia the wrong way by taking his daughter on a less-than-safe adventure in the north.
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Ben learned that June had idolized Ainsle since she was a little girl and would stop at nothing to meet her, yet she grew silent when asked about the lich’s lair, and Ben decided not to press her. They enjoyed each other’s company until the young, lively woman began to yawn with more and more frequency before they bid each other goodnight and settled in for the evening. Ben didn’t comment when he noticed the woman snuggle up behind the Apprentice Necromancer, who absently wrapped his arm around her. He lay down on a bedroll next to his Keeper and, with a full belly and a few hours of good conversation, fell asleep with relative ease.
A warm radiance cascaded over his being as he was beckoned from his domain to the waking world. He opened his eyes to glance at the alluring curves of his Keeper tending to a pot over the fire. Her hair was neatly tied into the single braid she had preferred as of late, and her warm winter dress was immaculately clean. A pale light from an opaque window illuminated the stone walls of the cottage, and Ben propped himself up on his elbows.
“Morning,” he greeted his Keeper, flexing his fully healed fingers.
“Good morning, my heart. Did you sleep well?” she cooed.
The young man blinked and considered the question. He glanced at the window and determined that it was slightly after dawn, as everyone else in the cottage was fast asleep. “Yeah, surprisingly. I guess I don’t need as many hours of rest anymore. How about you?”
Ann smiled softly and nodded before returning to her fiddling with what he assumed to be breakfast. “I’ll put on a pot of black brew.”
“Annie, you really are the best,” Ben exhaled, returning the woman’s smile. He recalled the events of the evening prior, and —his curiosity and genuine interest aside— he wasn’t sure if the emotionally fueled display of power was an appropriate topic for a casual breakfast chat. “Hey, so…” he began, eliciting a ‘hmm’ in response. “That Aura you used last night -what was it?”
Ann continued her task, her rear facing toward him, yet Ben could hear the smile in her voice. “Oh, that little cantrip?” she teased.
Ben groaned, and the blonde woman chuckled. The pleasant sound made Ben’s heart skip a beat.
Ann relented. “I haven’t named it yet, but it’s based on the unfinished works of one of the great Sages.”
“You mean, you made it yourself?” Ben asked, eyes wide.
“Of course, my darling. However, it’s far from perfect. The verbal component is incomplete, hence the little bit of backlash you saw…” she paused and glanced over her shoulder at him. “The intent and mana matrices are polished, yet the lack of an anchor to Aetheria drains my well far too quickly.”
“Wow…” Ben trailed off.
Ann shook her head abashedly. “No, please, my heart. I don’t deserve your praise at all. If you recall, I mentioned that I was on the cusp of Grand Master in my field?” she waited for Ben to nod in affirmation. “The crafting and anchoring of this and two other spells were the final step in my Path. Outside of the nightly sessions with the Speakers, among other things…” she paused and hesitated before continuing. “I had a lot of free time in my decade of seclusion, during which I immersed myself in study. Time admittedly reserved for prayer, yet I believed my pursuits would serve Illephrre just as well as recitals of the doctrine.”
And there it was, Ben thought. The stain of her abusers had colored the majority of her life. He pushed down the bitter thought and focused on the woman before him. “So, what does it do? And can you give it a name to solve the backlash?” he asked, pointedly avoiding her reference to the time spent at the temple.
The Keeper beamed as she whipped to face him. A small pouch, wafting a familiar titillating aroma, was held tightly to her breast. She spoke animatedly. “If I were to place it in a school, it’d be in the Mind or Battle disciplines, as parts of its matrices resemble workings from them. However, there are fundamental differences in the overall structure and draw, namely the delivery and severance of the affected being’s conscious mind from their physical body, leaving only base instincts to govern their actions.”
Ben’s brain began to turn to mush, yet he soldiered on. “Woah… so it makes people’s minds regress to, uh, instincts like the need to survive?”
Ann’s smile grew impossibly wide. “Exactly, my darling. Therefore, if the base survival instinct is replaced with, say, lust for blood and violence, we have quite an interesting outcome.”
“A pleasure to witness, Miss Blackwood!” said Kieran, who had awoken and was approaching the table near the hearth. “How did you manage to exclude certain targets from the area of effect? And the range! Goodness me. Let alone the significant auras those ruffians had-” he said cheerfully as he sat on a chair. A red-eyed —from lack of sleep— June sat beside him, grumbling about noisy people having no souls. ‘Good mornings’ were exchanged between the four.
Ann’s smile wavered for a beat before Ben shot her a grin and a wink of encouragement. She blushed and dove into an animated conversation of intricacies and concepts he had no hope of following. The young man smiled at his Keeper as June scooted closer to his seat. She took the discarded treasure pouch from the table and picked up where the blonde woman had left off.
Ben regarded the grumpy albino woman with raised brows. “Not keen on discussing spellcraft with them?”
June shot Ben a glare, which caused him to tilt his head. After a moment of silence between the pair, June turned to face him while absently pouring coffee grounds into the copper container. “Oh, I thought you were mocking me…”
Ben shrugged. “Why would I do that?”
June stopped what she was doing and met his gaze with eyes drawn. “Ah. I’m not a Caster like them. I mean, like Kieran… I know Miss Blackwood is different.”
“But I saw you use magic back in the city…” he said, head tilted questioningly.
June shook her head. “My Path is Evoker. I don’t learn spells the way they do. It's a more… emotive type of spellcasting, I guess.”
“That’s interesting. How do-” he began before being interrupted by a raised hand.
“Ben. Please. Coffee first. Talk later.”
Ben chuckled and acquiesced to the young woman’s request.
The smell of freshly brewed coffee —multiple pots were brewed due to the number of people in the cottage— saw Ainsle, Issa, and even the pair of Bounty Hunters wake and join the group around the hearth. After a pleasant breakfast, underlying tensions muted, the party packed their belongings and began their trek to Skalt village—the last stop before the climb to the temple of Illephrre.
Jerry and Derek Badger left the party to head back to the Capital; the latter was surprised that Ben would let him go. The young man decided that he’d need to test the range of his bond to a subject, and having one in the Capital city would be killing two birds with one stone —that was excluding the fact that their confrontation was still a bit raw. He felt it best to allow the abstract wounds to heal naturally.
Ben had given Derek and, by proxy, his Father, the Honey Badger, instructions to find out as much as they could about the client who issued the Bounty. He shared what little he knew with his new subject about their bond, encouraging him to try and send thoughts or emotions through their link over the coming days.
After a day's trek, the party, with a slightly less laden undead steed, had crested a particularly rocky ridge when the cozy village came into view. The pine trees in the area were covered in light snow, and so were the rooves of wooden houses, their chimneys merrily puffing thick plumes of white smoke into the darkening cloudy sky. A figure was seen on horseback approaching the party at a spirited pace.
Ainsle held up a hand for the group to stop and regarded the young messenger, who seemed to pay the party no mind at first. She whistled as the rider veered to avoid them, causing him to rein in his steed about ten paces away as he stared at the rotting horse with wide eyes.
“Oi!” the Berserker called out. “Any news from the village?”
The boy was torn from his morbid fixation and fixed the old woman with a sneer. “What’s it to ya?” he said, tone brattish. “The new Chief don’t take kindly to outsiders nowadays.”
“Shit,” Ainsle muttered. “Nevermind. Off with you,” she dismissed the boy, who eagerly obliged and rode a wide arc around the party to a destination unknown.
Ben walked over to Ainsle and patted her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
The old Berserker frowned and sighed. “Tribal politics, Benny boy. Looks like we have another bloody upstart Warlord on our hands.”