I jerked awake as sensation returned, then groaned as that sensation brought waves of pain. My head pounded, my joints burned, and my spine ached. My eyes were closed, and when I opened them, the light stabbing into my retinas convinced me to keep them closed. Confusion swept over me for a moment as I wondered what happened to leave me in the state I was in. Memory slowly returned, and with it came a mixture of anxiety and relief. I was alive, which meant I’d been at least partially successful.
“Actually, you were almost completely successful, John.” Sara appeared before me, her presence bright in my mind despite my closed eyelids.
“Almost?” I asked.
“You managed to erect the barrier. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite cover everyone. Those who were outside the shield…” She fell silent, but I didn’t need her to finish. I understood.
“The sheriff? Chomai?”
“Both made it. They were right next to you, after all.”
“What happened to me? Why am I so beat up?”
“Too much magic.” She laughed gently. “You’re making a bit of a habit of that. You tried to channel ambient power from the Mythic rune into your card. When the rune went critical, the power surge went through you first. It destroyed the card and damaged you a bit, but it did power the rune.”
I sighed. “How bad is it?”
“Nothing severe. You should be fine within a few days. I’m channeling energy into healing you.”
“I don’t get it,” I admitted. “I saw what happened to the marshals when they channeled all that power. Why didn’t it destroy me, too?”
“Because your body isn’t like theirs, remember? You’re a construct of world energy that replicates a person of this world. Your body just mimics their inherent resistance, so once the power overcame that resistance, it just flowed the way it would for a creature of this world.” She made a face. “Of course, there are some side effects. I’ll let you read those in your notifications.”
I frowned as a thought occurred to me. “Wait, how do you know all this? If I’ve been unconscious…”
“Your ears still work,” she laughed. “I’ve been listening.” She paused. “The sheriff’s a little unhappy with you. I think he recognized the word ‘Inquisitor’. He keeps saying, ‘That boy has some explaining to do.’”
“Well, I’ll explain later–if I get the chance. I assume I completed this mission?”
“Almost. Here, check your notifications and see.”
You have lost multiple bonds
XP Loss: 21,914*
*Mitigated due to incomplete bonds for multiple pets
You have lost the following abilities:
…
Pantologist XP Gained: 65,788
Profession: Pantologist has gained a level!
New Level: 6
For Each Level of Pantologist, you gain:
Dominia, Personia, Arcania, Reason, Perception, Intuition, Charm, Prowess, Vigor, Celerity, Skill +1
4 Skill Points
Ability Gained: Jack of All Paths
Passive Pet Ability
You suffer half the penalties from any of your paths to any of your handling stats
Skill: Trapmaking has gained a level
New rank: Adept 2
Benefit–Your traps are +1% per skill rank harder to detect
Your pet: Terror Eagle has begun ranking up!
Estimated time to completion:
00:02:18
Your ability has upgraded!
High Rune Casting has become Paragon Rune Casting
Passive Pet Ability
You can craft and use runes of four ranks higher than normal, to the maximum your natural Arcania allows or the Epic rank, whichever is lower. You can have nine extra runes active at once, plus one rune per level of Pantologist. Your runes receive a 5% bonus to their effects per level of Pantologist. Any rune you activate of less than Paragon rank is treated as one rank lower for the purposes of power draw (Simple runes now draw negligent amounts of power for you).
New Title: Rune-Warped
You have channeled dangerous amounts of power into your body, altering it to make it a better conductor of power
Effect–You can use runes up to one rank higher than your normal max; you gain a 50% bonus to the number of runes you can activate per day.
Penalty–Using runes slightly damages all your pet bonds. The amount of damage depends on the rank of the rune and is mitigated by your Arcania.
Side-Effect–Your eyes glow in the dark
Profession: Inquisitor has gained a level!
New Level: 5
For every level of Inquisitor, you gain:
Reason, Intuition, Perception, Charm +2
Prowess, Vigor, Celerity, and Skill +1
6 Skill Points
Congratulations!
You have completed the mission: A Mythic Mistake
Objectives met: 18/19
Inquisitor XP Gained: 25,000
Your Inquisitorial Seal has gained a new icon.
Icon: Chained Claw
Benefits: +25% to all Handling stats and skills, All your pets gain a +25% bonus to earned XP
Title Gained: Master of Beasts
Benefits: +25% damage to unintelligent, magical beasts; +50% to all attempts to tame, handle, or domesticate beasts
“As you can see, there’s still one objective left,” Sara said. “I’m not sure what it might be, though.”
“I can think of two possibilities,” I mused. “I might need to convince the sheriff to do what Chomai wants–to become a sort of High Sheriff for the whole Gistal. Or I might…”
I broke off my thought as I heard a door creak open and booted feet walk quietly into the room. Sara vanished as I slowly peeled open my eyes, blinking in the light as I saw a figure standing over me. I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the glare, and the figure crystallized into focus. I frowned in surprise as I recognized the person standing over me.
“Kalpna?” I asked in puzzlement. “Is that you?”
“You’re awake!” The woman’s face lit up. “And you know me!” She looked much better than the last time I’d seen her; her face was clean, her hair was pulled back in a braid behind her head, and she wore much nicer clothing–including a pistol strapped to her hip that made me wonder if I was a captive of some sort. I dismissed that idea immediately; Sara would have warned me about something like that, and if anyone would have a chance of holding me, it would be the sheriff, not this woman who wasn’t even a handler.
“Of course, I know you.” I blinked my eyes a few more times and struggled to a sitting position, moving slowly because of the stabbing pain in my skull. I looked around and found myself in the middle of a large bed in a fairly expansive room with a simple desk, some chairs, and what looked like a cast iron tub in one corner. “Where am I?”
“Marshal Kamath’s old room,” she said, her face twisting as she said the man’s name. “It seemed fitting since you were the one that did him in.” She moved to a nightstand beside the bed and picked up a gray metal pitcher, pouring liquid into a cup of the same material. She handed it to me. “Here. You should drink. I’ve done my best to get liquids into you, but it ain’t the same as you drinking yourself.”
As I took the cup, I realized I was incredibly thirsty. The sensation hadn’t really registered over the pain of my injuries, but now that I was aware of it, I quickly drained the cup, happy to find that it was nothing but water. I handed the cup back to Kalpna, and she filled it again for me. This time, I sipped it slowly to give my stomach a chance to adjust. As my initial thirst eased, her words registered for me.
“Wait, you’ve done your best? Have you been taking care of me?”
“Yep,” she nodded. “Again, seemed only right since you saved all of us.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Four nights, and most of a day.” She shrugged. “Sheriff said you’d hurt yourself good using too much magic, and you might rest for a whole week.”
“I did,” I agreed. I glanced down at myself and realized I was naked beneath the sheet covering me. I cleared my throat. “Um, Kalpna–my clothes?”
“I put them over on the chair,” she said dismissively, waving a hand without looking. “Don’t worry, I folded them.”
“Okay, but why did you take them off?”
“How else was I going to bathe you?” she asked, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.
“You–bathed me?”
“Didn’t want you getting any sores or catching a fever.” She smiled at me. “Don’t worry yourself. You ain’t the first man I’ve seen undressed. Although you ain’t a bad one to look at either”
I coughed a little nervously and sipped my drink some more. “So, what happened after I passed out?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Well, Kamath’s rune blowing up made things a bit dicey. You kept us from dying, but the ground was shaking a lot, and bits of stone and chunks of people and beasts were flying all over. We hunkered down in the cage behind your bird for most of the night until all the quaking stopped, then came out.” She shook her head. “There was the biggest damn hole I’ve ever seen in the ground, with bits and pieces of marshals and pets scattered all over. I still don’t know how we survived–well, most of us.”
I grimaced at her words and opened my mouth to speak, but she cut me off by leaning over me and putting a hand on my lips. “Now, don’t go saying some damn fool thing like how sorry you are. It’s a shame that some of us didn’t make it, and that’s the truth, but most of us did, and that’s better than any of us had a right to expect. A month ago, I would’ve said that we was all gonna end up dead and monster food.”
She straightened and smoothed down her clothes. “Point is, we did live, and we came back to the town and found that while a few buildings weren’t in great shape from all the quaking, most of it held up fine. We been fixing it up a bit along with the rest of the valley.”
“I wouldn’t do too much,” I said, taking another sip of the liquid. “I plan on convincing the sheriff to escort you all back to wherever you came from. He’s a stubborn, old fool who’ll say he’s too lazy and tired, but I’ll talk him into it.”
Kalpna jumped and yelped slightly as the door swung open, revealing the old man and Chomai. He glared at me, his mustache quivering, but she watched me with an open grin, her eyes dancing. I matched her grin with one of my own, and after a moment, the sheriff sighed and let the irritated expression slide from his face.
“I take it you knew I was listening?” he asked.
“Heard your boots scuff the floor in the hallway,” I nodded, taking another sip. “And Chomai whispering.”
“I told you to be quiet, girl.” He shook his head. “You want me to teach you, you need to learn to listen.”
“I was trying to listen, old man,” she replied. “Just to him, not you.” She looked at me. “And he don’t need no convincing. He and I both offered to take these folks back to Sinakha and help them make arrangements to return home. They turned us down, flat.”
I looked at Kalpna in confusion. “You don’t want to go back to Northwatch?”
“There ain’t nothing there for me,” she shrugged, her face blank but pain flaring in her eyes. “Nothing but bad memories.”
“I would think there’d be as many of those here, though. You could go somewhere else, start over…”
She shook her head. “We done talked about it, and we think staying’s the better idea. We got all we need here, more or less. That fire the marshals used to clear out the forest made the ground fertile, and that crater you made is already turning into a lake we can use to water fields. There’s plenty of lumber around, and even iron in the hills nearby. We can make a living here just fine.”
I gave her a dubious look. “What about the beasts? You’re going to need protection from them, and whatever weapons the marshals left behind won’t last long without ammunition. You need a handler…” I glanced at the others. “Unless one of you is planning to stay?”
The old man shook his head. “Nope, but that’s something we need to talk about, boy. What, exactly, did you do to Kamath’s rune?”
“I short-circuited it,” I shrugged. “I made a connection between two layers that would destabilize the whole thing and cause it to fail without activating it.”
“How the hell did you do that from our cell?” Chomai asked, but the old man simply nodded.
“That orb you gave the ranger?” he asked.
“Yeah. I needed something that could carry the kind of power a Mythic rune would channel, even if only for a fraction of a second. That was long enough to make the rune fail.”
“You could have told us,” Chomai protested. “We all could have died!”
“And if he hadn’t done what he did, we would have died anyway, along with a lot more people,” Ramka replied. “I’m guessing the boy didn’t say nothing cause he could never be sure if anyone was listening.”
I nodded. “Govand reminded me of that. I use my buzzfly to spy on people; there’s no reason other handlers can’t do the same. If someone had a small bug hidden in our cell somewhere that let them listen to us talk…” I shrugged. “Anyone with a shovel could have undone what I had my pets do by digging up the rune. I did my best to keep them from noticing by having my pets hang out around the town and cause trouble, but if they’d overheard us, the game would be up.”
“That was you?” Kalpna asked. “You was the one causing all those problems? The mill breaking down, the forge running out of coal, the marshals’ barracks catching on fire?”
“Well, it was my pets, but yes. I had to keep their focus on the town, not the field.” I shrugged. “It worked well enough.”
“It did, but that ain’t all you did, is it?” the old man persisted. “You used that orb for a reason. We saw you making changes to it, adding extra layers to it. I thought you were just hoping to use it to draw away the Mythic beast when it rose, which I didn’t think would work but probably wouldn’t hurt neither. What did you do?”
“I added the rune I used to heal your severing to it,” I nodded. “Originally, I was just planning to use it to make the rune fail, but after I figured out how to fix you two, I decided to add that to the orb. I knew that part of what Kamath was doing was a Mythic Severing rune, and I was hoping that the counter would trigger with enough power to undo whatever damage that did.” The sheriff and Chomai exchanged glances, and I sighed. “Okay. What did I screw up?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it screwing up, exactly,” Chomai said. “Your rune did make some changes, though.”
“It’s easier to show you than tell you,” the sheriff shrugged. He glanced up at Kalpna. “You mind showing him, girl?”
“Sure.” The blonde woman walked over to the corner of the room and bent, picking something up. When she returned, she held up her right arm, and I blinked in surprise at the two-foot-long orange and black snake wrapped around her forearm, its head extending from her palm. A flicker of fire darted from the creature’s mouth like a whipping tongue, sucked back in an instant later. “This here’s Vati–my new pet. Ain’t she beautiful?”
“I didn’t know you were a handler, Kalpna,” I said slowly as a suspicion rose in my mind. Curiously, I analyzed her and the snake.
Kalpna
Path: Tamer
Rank: Simple
Affinities: Earth, Fire, Metal
Pets: Heatnipper
Dominia: 4.2 Personia: 4.6 Arcania: 3.4
Threat Level: Very Low
Vati (Lesser Heatnipper)
Type: Magma
Bond: 8
Attack: 3 Defense: 3 Damage: 3
Speed: 2 Dodge: 2 Heal: 1
Special Attacks: Burning Venom (4)
Special Defenses: Stone Scales (2)
Weaknesses: Water, Ice, Air
Threat Level: Very Low
“She wasn’t,” Chomai spoke up, interrupting my examination. “Least, we don’t think she was. After that darkness touched her, though, she changed a bit.”
“Every person in this valley did,” the sheriff rumbled. “All of them suddenly got the stats to be handlers. Most can just barely do it, but some, like Kalpna here, got enough potential to become duelists one day.” He shook his head. “There are maybe a hundred people in this town, Naasi, and six of them got the capability to become duelists. It’s usually one or two in ten thousand, not six in a hundred.”
Frowning, I turned on See Magic and adjusted the ability to focus on world energy, examining Kalpna with it. A pale gray version of the lattice surrounding Ramka and Chomai now wrapped around the woman, with a similarly colored link connecting her to the serpent. She was a handler, all right, and she had the improved lattice Sara created, not the angry, red one I’d seen before.
“Sara, did that rune create this lattice for her?” I asked in amazement and concern.
“It wasn’t designed to,” she answered. “It’s far more likely that it was already there but dormant, and the rune repaired it.”
“And everyone in the valley? What are the odds that they’d all be latent handlers?”
“Well, you’re assuming they were randomly chosen. It’s possible that Kamath picked them specifically because he saw they had potential.” She paused. “However, it’s equally possible that when Ujali or whoever created this lattice, she gave it to everyone on the planet, and it’s been passed down from generation to generation, slowly getting damaged to the point that only a few people could use it. If that’s the case, the rune might have repaired it for everyone it touched.”
“So, I might have made a bit of a mistake,” I said with a sigh.
“A mistake?” Chomai asked.
“Yeah. It kind of depends.” I quickly explained the two options Sara had given me to the others. “I wasn’t intending to do that, of course,” I finished. “My thought was to undo the damage Kamath’s Severing rune would do–who knows how far that spread, after all–and maybe to make it impossible for him to bond the Mythic beast in case it rose. He was counting on the Severing rune to make that easier for him, and if I undid that, even if the beast rose, at least it wouldn’t be under his control–or boosted by his stats.”
“Even so, it rising would be a disaster,” the old man shook his head. “Mythic beasts don’t seem to like civilization, and they take offense when they see it. It could have marched through the Uttar, destroying everything in sight. It could have gone down the Sonkhee and wrecked the Gistal. It could have headed east for Ohr or Na Jhauta and slaughtered millions. That damn fool Kamath could have wrecked the whole, damn continent.”
“Assuming there’s even a beast down there,” Chomai shrugged. “We don’t know if there’s something sleeping beneath us or not. Kamath might have got it wrong the whole time.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t want to put money on it,” the old man sighed. “He was right about too many other things.” He looked at me. “And now, for the real question. Who the hell are you, Naasi? And more importantly, what the hell are you?”
I glanced meaningfully at Kalpna, but Chomai chuckled.
“You can talk in front of her,” the marshal said with a grin. “You’re looking at this place’s new sheriff.”
“Sheriff?” I repeated in surprise.
Ramka shrugged. “She’s got spirit, the right attitude, and enough potential to bond a Greater beastie someday. Plus, she wanted the job.”
“I won’t tell anyone anything I heard today,” the new sheriff said solemnly. “You have my word.”
“Good enough,” I sighed. “Not that it’s likely to matter, not really.
“As I said, my name’s John. I come from–somewhere very far away, a place I might never get back to again.”
“Where, exactly?” the sheriff pressed.
“Earth. It’s…” I paused, wondering how much they’d believe, then shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, I came here because something was wrong, and it needed fixing. That’s my job, the job of an Inquisitor.”
“That’s what you said to Kamath,” Chomai observed. “You said he shouldn’t fuck with an Inquisitor.”
“It seems the boy proved that point well enough,” Ramka chuckled. “So, what the hell is an Inquisitor? I thought it sounded like something from the Empire.”
“No, I’m not connected with anyone on this world – I might not be connected to anyone at all. It’s hard to say. Like I said, we fix problems. When something’s wrong, we come and do our best to make it right. In this case, Kamath’s plan to bond the Mythic beast is probably what brought me here.”
“Probably?” Chomai asked. “You don’t know?”
I shook my head. “No, I have to figure things out as I go. I can feel when something’s wrong, though, and I felt it when we first met Kamath, so I knew that he was part of the reason I was here.”
“I’m guessing this Inquisitor thing explains why your stats are so high, and how you grow so fast?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Our jobs are usually dangerous and close to impossible, so we get the best tools possible to complete it. One of those tools lets me grow quickly and gives me a better understanding of things like runes.” I wasn’t about to try and fully explain Sara, but that was close enough.
“Kamath said you were like Ujali,” the old man said shrewdly. “That mean she was one of these Inquisitors, too?”
“I can’t say for certain, but yeah, I think she was. It would explain how she created a standardized rune system, how she worked out stats and the analyze rune, and how she reached an Epic path when no one else could. As I said, those tools we get give us a lot of advantages.”
I shifted uncomfortably in the bed, unused to sharing this information with anyone. “The point is, usually, when Inquisitors are done with their job, they just vanish, off to another job. I thought that was what happened to Ujali, but I was wrong. She died here, and Kamath found her tomb. He stole some of the tools she’d used and used them himself. That’s how he got so strong, and how he could do things like create the Severing rune and the Mythic Calling rune.”
“Wait, if all that’s true, why are you still here?” Chomai interrupted. “Why ain’t you vanished?”
“My job’s not quite done yet,” I shrugged. “I’ve got one more thing to do.”
“What’s that?”
“No clue,” I laughed. “But I have a few ideas.”
“So, you lied to me this whole time,” Ramka said solemnly.
“Yes, Sheriff, I did. You see, some places know about Inquisitors, and we aren’t always well-liked or welcome. Apparently, some places kill us on sight.” I shrugged. “Other places don’t know anything about us, and it’s not an easy thing to explain. I’m leaving a bunch out because, quite honestly, telling you will make me sound crazy.”
“If all you do is fix things, why would people want to kill you?” Chomai asked.
“Some people don’t want things fixed. Imagine if Kamath had heard what I was and why I was here, Chomai. He’d have gladly hunted me down before I was ready to handle him.” I hesitated, recalling why Menogra had sent me to my first world.
“Plus, I don’t know that every Inquisitor fixes things. Some of them might deliberately make things worse and try to make them go wrong. For all I know, Ujali was one of those, sent here to cause problems, and instead, she tried to fix things. Or I suppose she might have been sent to fix things by stopping handling, and instead she made it easier to become a handler. There’s no way of knowing, but whatever happened, she got stuck here and couldn’t leave.”
The old man nodded and leaned back in his chair. “I suppose that all makes sense,” he said. “I don’t like it–but I understand it.”
“You ought to, old man,” Chomai snorted. “You did the same damn thing to me, remember? You both lied to me about who you are because you didn’t know how I’d react. You getting mad at Naasi, here, is like the bug calling the fly vermin.”
He chuckled. “I suppose you’re right, girl. Fine. I ain’t mad at you Naasi–John–but in return for forgiving you, I want some stories. This wasn’t your first job, was it?” When I shook my head, he went on. “Good. You can tell us all about the other ones, and we can go back over this one and see where you screwed up.”
“Why in the hell would he want to do that?” Chomai laughed.
“Because how’s he gonna grow as one of these Inquisitor things if he don’t learn from his mistakes, girl? That’s true for a handler, and I’ll bet it’s true for an Inquisitor.” He grinned at her. “And speaking of mistakes, we should chat about your training this morning…”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Kalpna said, stepping over to the sheriff and Chomai. “You told him what happened, and he told you his story. Now, he needs to rest. He ain’t all the way healed, yet.” She gently pushed the pair, and Ramka rose from his chair with a chuckle, allowing himself to be moved.
“Well, boy, I ain’t gonna argue with your nursemaid. We’ll talk more once you’re up and about.”
“Now, hold on, I still got questions,” Chomai protested.
“They can wait, girl.” The sheriff’s eyes twinkled. “It ain’t our place to stand in the way of a man’s–recovery.” She blinked owlishly at the pause before his last word, then nodded with a sly grin.
“You’re right, old man. We should be going. Besides, I don’t want the town’s sheriff to hear me laughing at you for being wrong about my training.” The two walked out the door, and before she shut it, Chomai flashed me a wink.
“I’m actually feeling better, Kalpna,” I assured the woman. “I can probably get up.”
“I certainly hope so.” As the woman turned to face me, her voice turned husky and low. She reached up and began to unbutton her blouse, her eyes boring into mine as she did.
“Wait, Kalpna, what are you…?” I stopped and swallowed hard as the woman slid her shirt slowly down her shoulders, exposing pale breasts with large, dark nipples.
“You saved us,” she said in a low voice. “We was all dead but walking, living without hope, and then you came and saved us. I saw you fighting Kamath; I know you was risking your life to do it.” Her hands slid down the front of her body to her pants and slowly unbuttoned them.
I shook my head. “You really don’t need to do this, Kalpna,” I stammered. “Seriously, a thank you is fine…” I fell silent as she slid her pants over her wide hips to display the patch of curly blonde hair between her legs.
“Are you saying you don’t like my body?” she asked simply.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not…”
“Then shut up, lay back, and let me thank you the way I want to.” She slid my sheet down, exposing my nakedness, and her hand slid up my thigh.
I wanted to protest, but the touch of her fingers quieted any arguments I might have made. I’d fought and bled to stop Kamath. Turning away such a generous offer of gratitude seemed, well, stupid. I was many things, but I hoped that stupid wasn’t one of them.