Chapter 059: Departure
Later in the tavern.
“You expect us to do what?” I asked for clarification.
I needed it quite often since my brother’s mind got replaced with the new and, admittedly, better version of himself. If he only he didn’t pull weird things on me every ten seconds or so...
“I want us to join the Ambryxis operation against a cult called Hand of Freedom.” He obediently clarified with a serious face. “Together with Vasyr.”
I have a weird feeling that if Vaera was here, he would fire a joke about Simea no longer being enough for Avhar… thankfully that little rump wasn’t here.
“Ok, don’t get me wrong.” I leaned forward, towards Avhar and over the table in the tavern’s dining room. “Just because I spent a while talking about fashion with his sidekick doesn’t mean I suddenly began liking them. In fact, any suggestion of us helping Vasyr in any way makes me feel rather bad.”
If anything, I had a sudden urge to take a bath after the talk with Vhera. It was nice again to talk with someone about girly things (that I prefered to wear armour didn’t mean that I did like to look pretty from time to time), but…
… then she noticed my gender due to this Appraisal thing - none of the ‘Players’ seem to care about the violation of a privacy that this is, even Avhar or Simea. And after that she started throwing herself on me, putting at least a single double entendre every three sentences.
Search for a person that will actually see my personality rather than my body continues. Or anything aside from the body. I lowered the standards a lot after my twenty fifth birthday.
“I know, I know.” Avhar shook his head. “The thing is, the name of the cult sounds pretty… how should I put it… lightside-ish. That’s what picked my interest.”
“You know that the official name of Ramshiran’s cult was ‘The Charitable Society’?” I wasn’t persuaded by his reasoning. Not at all. Though I’d probably complain even if I was. Someone had to limit his brilliant ideas… or at least make him think over the details before jumping head first. “World would be much simpler if evil cults used more straightforward names. Like Doombringers, Mass Murderers or Rapists In The Free Time. But unfortunately it isn’t that easy.”
The Society did a lot of charity in the city. Made it easier to recruit new members - even if the process of initiation was lengthy, since we had to prepare the trainees to not bail out after understanding what the Society was really about.
It also made finding offerings easier. There were always enough miserable people that you could lure out of the city with empty promises.
My personal quest for forgiveness was going to take a while. Not one from Overtyrant, since He forgave me the moment I understood I was wrong. I was fine in His book the moment I genuinely regretted everything I did and decided to be a good person from then on. Forgiving myself, however, was a completely different matter.
“Yes, I knew that.” He didn’t. I could read him well enough at this point. He was generally straightforward and truthful, but he had serious problems with admitting that he was wrong. So, instead of agreeing, he was going to pretend that he was aware of the flaw in his plan, and then fix in in on the fly and pretend he thought of that beforehand. Is he even aware of that? “But, there is still a chance for the group being light side. I mean, as the Ytar case proved, at least some people not satisfied with their current situation end up asking the morally positive religions for help.”
Morally positive. Heh. I haven’t heard him use this term before.
“Well, I still think that visiting the Anchoring Station should take the priority.” Let’s make myself clear. “But it’s also true that if those guys are good people about to get wasted by Ambryxis puppets, we should help them. I guess I’ll abstain.”
“I’m going to write that date in my calendar. ‘Leria abstained for the first time in her life.’ I sent Simea a lot of daggers in exchange for that.
Don’t change into another Vaera, please. That’s the last thing we want.
With Avhar busy chomping on venison, Lena absent (she was busy playing with Toothy in her room, she’s been worrying me recently), and Syna silent… well, only the people with surname Khan were here to made a decision.
It will be 2 to 1, since Syna will abstain right after me. So I guess we’re going with those assholes. I don’t know why, but I’m absolutely sure this mission is going to be a pain. The question was - for whom?
***
Two days later.
To the northeast from the city of Ambryxis lied relatively civilized lands. The old imperial road started again after one left the city, spinning along quite picturesque lands serving as an economy powerhouse of the Ambryxian Dukedom.
It no longer existed, at least de facto. De iure the city state of Ambryxis still considered it its own territory, as it thought of itself as a political successor of the Dukedom. Locals paid taxes to the city, if only to get it off their back. Besides, if something evil started to badger around, they could at least demand the city to do something for them.
It was a fertile land. Locals cultivated several types of grain to feed the city. There were also a significant number of fields on which klaha and terrerin grew, coffee and tobacco ersatzes that could grow even in a harsh mountain environment.
And there were also several mines and quarries, mostly run by slave labour. Though mines especially seemed to have been in permanent troubles ever since Ambryxis struck a deal with a Dravehar Republic, a dark elven state in the Labirynth (a massive undeground cave system of the Karathi, deep beneath us) near the city.
The whole operation was supposed to be a rather typical sweeping run. Twenty witch-hunters and three hundred adventurers. Most of them were silver badges, but there were five parties of gold badges and one of platinum badges.
The ranking was pretty intuitive - a party of silver badges was expected to fight on equal grounds with a silver grade threats, gold badges with gold and so on. We were an equivalent of a gold badge party, though we were never graded properly due to never working for the Guild.
We were separated into twenty groups, each with a single witch-hunter working as an overseer and about fifteen adventurers (numbers varied since dividing a party between two groups was a nope).
Our party - of course - was assigned into the same group as Vasyr’s party. He was a boss and main tank, then there was Vhera, his dark elf black sorcerer sidekick, an NPC rifleman… ok, riflegirl, that also doubled as expert in tracking and trapping… Also a fire drakon fire sorcerer (another NPC) and an orcish shieldbearer, a Player.
The third party in our group belonged to the Crimson Blades as well. High elf knight under the name of Lybaer as a top dog. NPC Vanguard, high elf. Human Hexer... Geralt (seriously?), a Player. Wood elf Archer (Player), and dark elf slave elementalist (NPC).
So, sixteen people plus a witch-hunter. Human male named Mangk or something like that. Interesting.
I totally overuse the ‘interesting’ word. Only in my mind, so at least Simea can’t jab me for that. To make up for that I mentally jab myself for it.
***
According to our witch-hunter overseer, the area where the cult was believed to operate was a rectangular space, approximately 45km long and 35km wide. Which was a lot of area for three hundred twenty people to cover.
Thankfully, there were procedures to follow in case of such sweeping operations. The biggest weakness of any cult to grow large enough to be a threat was that it required certain installations to be able to work. The best example was the Charitable Society (I still can’t believe they used such a lame name).
The second someone would have found the Hold, the entire Cult would be easily beheaded. Of course, the Hand of Freedom was twenty or thirty times bigger than the Society. So the number of strategic installations was proportionally higher.
But they still had to place them somewhere. There were enough caves, ruined structures and forest clearings in the area to garrison an army. It was even used like that during the last years of the Decemvirate. Several thousand insurgents waged guerilla warfare from the bases up in the mountains, attacking an infantry division serving Dragon (the local decemvir) while it was busy retreating towards Ambryxis.
The division never reached the city. Despite starting as ten thousand veteran soldiers supported by a lot of warmachines and even magitek tanks. Which wasn’t exactly optimistic when it came to our mission, but…
The point was, there was no way locals didn’t know about such places. The amount of ruined abandoned structures and caves was obviously limited. Even if villagers supported the cult, you just had to visit every village in an area at the same time, ask them out about every such location in the area they lived in... and then cross reference everything with archives of the local adventurer guild, magic guild and the government.
Every adventurer guild had an insanely detailed map of the whole region. With every single place like that marked. Of course, it wasn’t perfect, since no cartography without satellite coverage and advanced computers could be perfect or even close to that (and both things were abandoned after the Apostasy ended). But if literally every single village in the region forgot to mention the same cave/abandoned castle… Tough luck.
The strongest weapon locals had against everpresent dangers of living in fantasy world like that, were the procedures. Literally every single weird thing already happened (perks of having history that was twelve thousand years long). And locals have necessary procedures written in case it happened again, safely stored in some archive, ready to be relayed to the epicentre of the problem the second its existence is confirmed. Especially the Imperium made constructive paranoia into art.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The procedure in that case was simple. Have silver badges do a proper reconnaissance and look around every single location that could house cult bases. After they report finding signs of cult activities - a lot of humanoid tracks in the area are enough for that - reinforce them with gold badge adventurers and go for the kill.
Of course, it might not be the cult base after all. But hey, what normal people used places like that? Even if the target place wasn’t a cult base, you might end up wiping an unrelated group of necromancers, for example. Or bandits. Smugglers. Those sort of things.
Sweeping operations like that tended to make the whole region much calmer for a while.
We also had a single party of platinum badges that was supposed to defend the center of operation and act as reserves in case of shit really hitting the fan. Though if anything that I knew about such operations was still valid, our commander-in-chief would rather let all silver and gold badges die than risk platinum’s lives for real.
After all, there was only around 50 of them in Ambryxis. And only a single mithril badge. Which, admittedly, was a lot for a single city. Normally per city of this size you’d have at best ten platinum badges serving as a core for a suppression force for powerful threats. Unless you were at a major hunting ground for an equally major country, mithril badges were rare and even in Imperium higher badges were unique in existence, almost as valuable as archmagicians.
If the witch-hunters’ tribune (higher ranked officer, curiously the Old Empire officer rankings were still used in some organizations) that was ordered to clean this mess returns to the city with platinum badges dead… well, Ambryxis is probably going to have him hung by his balls. Or something like that. As most dictatorships (even collective) the Masked Council had little tolerance for major screw-ups.
Ugh. I seriously hope that the Hand turns out to be potential allies… and that at least a part of it survives the inevitable purge at the hands of the adventurers. Since otherwise it’s going to be a major pain suffered for nothing.
***
It took us three days of marching - in -35C no less - to finally reach our destination. It was cold, even with proper winter gear and the nice alchemical ointment that, when you rubbed it in to your skin, made that particular area of your body impervious to cold. To a certain level, naturally, but we had enough money to buy one that made our faces, ears and so on unable to feel cold for a whole day.
It was also rather bad other than that. The morale was low. People generally reacted that way to being forced to march somewhere in the middle of the winter (especially a Long Night), even when they were paid well for that. The morale wasn’t VERY low, due to the mission barely starting though.
That’s when I heard that we were being followed by a battalion of soldiers from Ambryxis and a few more witch-hunters, that were supposed to pull a nasty version of a ‘knock knock-who’s there’ joke on Vanvyra, the only city worth the name if the region. It had twenty thousand citizens tops and remained a major hub of slave trade due to the whole area being so heavily industrialized and having tons of mines and agriculture.
Officially speaking, the soldiers were supposed to temporarily occupy the place and search for the cult activity within the city walls. Unofficially… Ambryxis was a jealous god. There was a reason why there were no bigger cities in the whole area. After all, they might become a threat to authority of Ambryxis. The occupation probably wasn’t going to be very pleasant (though everything was going to happen as a part of searching for the cult). And it was going to be a major setback to Vanvyra’s prosperity for a while.
Is he even serious with the cult thing? He doesn’t seem to be treating it like a real threat. At least when it comes to the political side of this mess, as sending an army in the middle of the winter - even if it’s such a small army - does betray a lot of seriousness. Desperation, almost. Weird.
The quarters we were assigned to, were in a manor, deep in the countryside. Or, to be precise, a combination between a manor and and a castle. A fortified manor? It was hard to sum the architecture properly. It looked like a large noble manor from XVI or XVII century, but the building was obviously reinforced to survive attacks. The stone was laden in defensive magic, and so were the wooden shutters that were modelled so that you could fire through them while being defended from enemy returning fire. The wood was obviously magic-reinforced as well.
There was also an invisible dome of defensive magic surrounding the place. Projected by a house guardian spirit. One of those little daemons protecting the place in exchange for offerings. Too little to be considered a deity, but different enough to no longer be considered a normal daemon. I haven’t seen him, but I could faintly feel him. They tended to be shy to outsiders.
At least when they weren’t busy chewing on their heads for inappropriate behaviour or something.
***
I’m bored.
Obviously, leaving the manor when its -45C wasn’t exactly a nice thing. If anything, I’d have preferred staying indoors for the rest of the winter (I like the winter, but not when it’s that bad), But staying indoors for a week… it was too much.
Vasyr and Lybaer’s parties were responsible for scouting the region and searching for the Hand’s bases. We, in the same time, were supposed to serve as a reserve squad and defend our base of operations.
We were informed on where exactly the other parties go and what route they use. They also had a little magicial thingy that could send us information if they needed help. Then we stayed in the manor.
We played cards, mostly. Vaera - who joined us finally two days ago - never saw them in his life and seemed very interested. Lena, surprisingly, the same. And she was great at them. I lost a lot of my personal money before I decided to call it a day. Ugh.
In my spare time I barricaded myself (together with Simea) in the library. It was rather poor in size and wasn’t very rich, the lord of the place probably had it mostly to look more intellectual in the faces of other nobles.
Lord Akatay Vaelar himself wasn’t here. Most nobles spent winters in Vanvyra or Ambryxis. There was little to do in their mansions during the winter, especially when it’s a Long Night. His sixteen year-old son was around, but kept to his quarters. The whole place was run by an elderly slave named Lyrian that seemed to work as a deputy for the lord for decades.
One of those slaves that actually won in their lives. The only thing that differed him from a free men was his law status. His two sons were free peasants in the nearby village that belonged to the Vaelar (though most of the villages had the right to rule over themselves as long as they paid taxes). Lyrian stayed a slave because it helped him in representing lord Vaelar.
There was a lot of friction between us. The locals weren’t precisely happy having to host us. No signs of anyone around us being a spy for the Hand, though I was pretty sure that was the case. Nobody around really liked Ambryxis, and even if people didn’t serve the Hand before we came, they might have started to just to piss our deity off.
Our witch-hunter was trying to keep the things civil and work as intermediary, but it didn’t help much.
We were in the middle of another game of poker when the witch-hunter stormed into the room.
“We have a… wait, are you playing again?” Ugh. He was quite vocal about us not doing this. Not like Ambryxis has problem with gambling and games of chance, but… it wasn’t exactly beneficial to discipline. “Nevermind. Vallar’s group just went dark. We’re going to check it out.”
Vallar… if I remember correctly, his base of operations was eight kilometres north from here. A long walk by the now-frozen river. They had his group (about twenty adventurers, including one party of gold badges) operate from a small fort built by Vanvyria to keep watch over an important trade route.
Above the little magical alert thingies, there were also more magical thingies. A bit more advanced. Each place chosen as a base of operations had one. It worked continuously unless someone switched it off. When it did happen, the other groups were supposed to detect it going dark and go on a counterattack. Or just check the situation.
Ugh, what it is now?
“Are we going alone?” Sounded like a horrible idea. There was only my group in the manor. Both Vasyr’s and Lybaer were scouting the nearby valley. If the entire Vallar’s group went under, I don’t think we have a lot of chance against their vanquishers.
“No, I’ll call them back. The tribune is also sending a platinum badge with some golds as an escort just in case.” Oh? Looks like tribune actually has some balls. Surprising. “Get yourselves prepared, we depart as soon as they come back.”
***
“If the map is right… the fort should be just behind that patch of trees.” The Witch-hunter pointed towards us. “As far as I know, Melvar and his group should be close. They are in the valley already, should be here in an hour or something.”
“Your knowledge on that matter seems awfully precise.” I commented. His expressionless face expressed more than he wanted to. “But you probably don’t know what the threat is.”
To be honest we didn’t even know if there is a threat. Their beacon could just got damaged or sabotaged. But… it was much better to expect the worst.
The area around was very uneven. Lots of large rocks. The stone run, essentially, though it might have not be of fully natural origin. Some of them looked suspiciously defensible, so it might have also be the aftermath of some old battle. Only the road we walked on was even and easy to march on. The steep terrain started maybe a hundred meters to the left of the road. Thirty meters to the right was a frozen river covered in snow completely.
Northern Aevaria invested some money during the occupation of the area, and put some dusted mana crystals into the major roads. The enchantments increased the temperature a bit (at least right above the ground), making the snow much more sparse. The locals refilled them right before the winters came, each year. Due to the crystal dust slowly disappearing it wasn’t going to work forever, but for now…
Now that I think about it, the stone parts are almost completely without snow. The place was obviously disturbed by the old magic, even if it was intertwined with Reality so well I could barely sense it.
Things like that happened from time to time. Northern Aevaria was maybe five hundred kilometres to the north from here, much closer to the Pole… and despite this, most of it had warm temperatures yearly, even now. Heck, part of it was covered in rainforests. It wasn’t very often, but there were places where magic knocked the climate into a weird direction.
Perfect place for an ambush, to be honest. Most of us had white-ish coats, and the stones were gray. Dark gray. So even if we hide there, we would be well visible.
No wonder I kept my Inhuman Resilience on all the time. It might have been paranoia… but if yes, then it was certainly constructive paranoia.
“Are we going to check the place out before Melvar comes?” Vasyr asked. The witch-hunter seemed deep in thoughts. I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, having another gold badge party and a person supposed to keep the ground against platinum grades would mean a lot.
Lybaer, the leader of the third party in our group after me and Vasyr, eyed us from a distance, but didn’t join our little council of party leaders and commanding witch-hunter. I was yet to figure him out. He seemed friendly to us (even if reserved), but I had a feeling he wasn’t exactly on a friendly terms with Vasyr. Was him becoming a part of this group a case of ‘keep your friends close and enemies closer’ on Vasyr’s part? If yes, how exactly can I take advantage of that?
“We have a lot of people. Good people. We should at least take a look, figure out what we’re dealing with and then wait for Melvar.” I added my own opinion.
And thus I sealed our fate.
Actually I didn’t, but it sounded pretty neat in my head.
I should probably look for psychological help, ugh.
“I see. I guess we might do that. We’ll send scouts, people with Suppress Presence or invisibility spells before us. Then the rest go. We’ll…”
He disappeared mid sentence. Wait… What?
What is this wetness on my face? I wiped it with my hand. It’s red now. Wait, is that blo…
A train hit me from the side, making me fall on the ground. Wait, is that Ler…
A thunderous roar almost shattered my eardrums. A second later Vasyr’s riflegirl… popped like a balloon. Blood scattered around. Screams. The rest, at least those who thought faster, dropped on the ground.
Thunder. Hexer Geralt, the last one to not drop on the ground behind the stone cover, died. The bullet went through him, separating him into parts. Then another thunder.
I could see the parts dissolving… in a familiar way.
Oh shit, a glitch.