Madrick
Madame Vezeria’s All-Knowing Shack,Witches’ Hole,Thomas’ Planet
Jaw clenched, foot tapping, left hand flexing, and right hand tightly gripping his sword’s handle, Madrick fumed. He’d run a merry chase all over this gods-damned planet without a scrap to show for it. Whoever had been occupying the tower on Hesvāra had covered their tracks shockingly well. The owner of the teleportation reception bay, a hell-forged orc named Vazgraz, hadn’t known who was using it. As it turned out, the bay was a private bay and no one other than the owner was authorized to use it. When Madrick had brought the situation to said owner’s attention, he’d gone ballistic and begun trashing his own office. At any other time, Madrick might have taken some amusement from the dramatic reaction. As it was, he just shared his UICI recording of his transference from Hesvāra including coordinates to the tower’s location so Vazgraz could check into how his security was so readily breached.
The fool orc hadn’t even setup surveillance for the pad, because, “Why would I need to record myself coming and going?” Idiot. The arrogance of lesser beings never ceased to amaze Madrick. Orcs in particular tended to be on the extreme end of lunacy in his experience. Arrogant without either the strength or the brains to justify it. What had come next could only be described as a snipe hunt. He’d found and interviewed three people who owned facilities near the bay he’d arrived at. Unsurprisingly, none of them had noticed a thing. Cesspool planets like this were the absolute worst in terms of gathering information, despite having the most active surveillance.
Speaking of surveillance, none of his interviewees knew who owned any of the monitoring artifacts he’d seen dotting the entire section. According to them, they’d been there since long before they’d started renting out their own little private spaces. Obviously the next step for Madrick was to find and speak to the actual owner of the real estate. That was, he would have spoken to the owner if he hadn’t found a chain of shell corporations, straw men, and gangs leading to a woman living on the streets who had no idea she had an entire block of buildings registered to her. Out of spite for whoever had set the trail of dead-ends up, Madrick found her and informed her. He even forwarded her the entire chain of evidence leading to her legal ownership of the properties and provided the contact information of a broker who’d happily buy it off of her and use it for his own needs. She’d likely be filthy rich going off of her previous self’s standards by the week’s end.
All of this lead him somewhere he never enjoyed finding himself. Waiting on a witch. Of course, had he gone by his tutorial’s definition of a witch anyone above rank 0 would count. Out in the real world, though, witch was a generic label given to someone who followed a particular kind of a path. The primary defining feature of a witching path was connection. Witches had ways of connecting to others and generally scoffed at simple things like distance, wards, or other reasonable preventatives. The reason Madrick, specifically, disliked witches was due to the fact that nearly all of them required irritating forms of payment for their services. No witch Madrick had ever visited would just accept a couple thousand EB and call it even. That would be their starting fee.
Case and point, the sign that he was doing his best to glare a hole through while waiting for the owner of the business to answer his ringing of their doorbell. It read, “R10-1kEB minimum for all consultations. Compensation for delivery of requested service subject to barter.”
Just as Madrick had decided he’d find another practitioner, any one would likely do as well as any other after all, the door opened. A tall androgynous man clad in tight fitting silky whites and bedecked in more jewelry than one might find within a reasonable vault leaned casually against the frame as he took his visitor in. The witch’s grey eyes appeared back lit by a sickly yellow light.
“You’re madame Vezeria?” Madrick asked doubtfully.
The man smirked and crooked a finger, turning on his heel in a way that seemed designed to jangle every bangle he was wearing. Madrick followed the strutting man within, nose wrinkling at the pungent scent of some unknown mix of herbs and chemicals. Modernized witch, then, if he was using chemical components. Not that it mattered, their mana would work with what their path demanded. No two witches were forced to follow the same traditions as they were in his previous life. He still missed burning witches at the stake, part of him idly considered how difficult it would be to bring the practice to the real world once he returned to godhood. This one’s performance might tip the balance and doom his entire ilk.
They arrived in a room furnished in extravagant colors: bright fabrics hung over every surface, crystals and precious stones were scattered in a seemingly haphazard manner everywhere, and the walls were painted garishly. The paint might have been intended to be artistic, but it seemed that his host had a habit of constantly painting over previous works if the obvious differences in paint age was anything to go off of.
“Madrick Lark. You have come seeking quarry as a hunter.” The man’s somewhat effeminate voice was drawling and bored, “Yet you are reluctant to pay the price. Before you rant, rave, and threaten, yes I already performed my readings. No, you won’t find a way to swindle me out of my credits by leaving - by entering you already entered a contract to pay the consultation fee. In three possible futures you attack me and are sent back to your origin point. In four I manage to capture you and we have some… Fun… Before I send you back. In two you are reasonable enough and just pay me and go about on your way after the prey you seek.” Throughout the entire tirade, the witch’s tone of voice managed to remain entirely unconcerned, unrushed, and modulated in a way that seemed to indicate he was intentionally not using a flat tone.
Before he could open his mouth to ask a question he continued, “Yes, I follow a path of fate weaving. No, I can’t see anything about you in the grand tapestry. Yes, I know about your past, of which I care about as much as I would about a cat’s comings and goings. Oh good, you’ve chosen to take your information and pay me.”
He hadn’t, or rather… Damn it. Madrick glared and crossed his arms over his wide chest. He purposefully didn’t try to ask any questions. It didn’t seem to matter to Vezeria, if that’s who this guy was, “My fee in your case isn’t too extreme. I want a specific future service. I want you to intervene against your disciple when she tries to kill my sister. You will almost certainly fail, but I want you to try to the best of your ability.”
The request both caught Madrick off guard and set his blood on fire. The possibility that Willow would be able to defeat him, even long enough to kill someone he wanted to defend, was truly exciting. Narrowing his eyes, Madrick used his Eyes of Conquest to peer more deeply into the witch he was parlaying with. He’d guess the man was tier sixteen or seventeen. He could be higher ranked with less concentrated mana, perhaps having chosen to cultivate a greater variety of mana over strengthening a smaller number. His ability wasn’t perfect for gauging ranks, it was more intended to give him a hint into the general strengths and weaknesses of his opponents.
Nodding, the white clad jewelry display continued, “Great, since we’re in agreement I’ll just give you the planet where your target retreated. They went to Savriâ, they’re currently hiding within some kind of volcano.”
Frowning, Madrick tried to remember why that planet sounded familiar. It certainly wasn’t one he’d spent any length of time on. Maybe he’d gone there to feed his inner war at some point? It could be one of the war-torn planets like Hesvāra.
“Well as much as I’d love to watch you stand there and brood, the longer I let you stay the higher the likely hood something stupid happens due to your presence. No, I won’t tell you what it is because it’s all but guaranteed if you know. No, telling you this much doesn’t make you more likely to stay. Actually you’re just about to leave because you’ll get annoyed at my constant prattling and…”
Madrick turned and left with all haste.
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Willow
Yet Another Temporary Generic Campsite, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
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The stupid pop-hopper messenger hadn’t woken up for a full twelve hours. Willow had her suspicions that the little jerk had intentionally stayed unconscious out of spite. Sore loser. It’d only woken as the persistent mist that hung as a constant above them begun to glow with morning’s light. Naomi had been on watch when it started thrashing and had just ignored it. When Willow woke it was due to the thing screaming obscenities, which had been annoying at first, then exciting! The excitement came purely from realizing the thing could talk and that the UICI and whatever translation magic it had built in translated it! Each sentence had essentially just been a ball of curses, unlikely promises, and furious nonsensical snarling, but it was still better than all previous attempts to communicate with the monsters.
When she’d realized their prisoner was awake and ‘talking’, Willow had rushed out of her tent to get straight into the interrogation. An interrogation which had been frustrating. The little jerk seemed to know mostly how to throw insults, curses, and other vileness. It had taken them nearly a full three hours to get enough out of it to satisfy Kent’s quest.
When he’d told her about the quest he got, they compared notes and decided her quest and his were probably from different sources. He was pretty convinced his quest was directly generated by his own insight and gaming systems mana. Apparently, he had an entire mana type which was constantly in use and created an entire extra layer to reality for him. Why he’d want to make life more like a video game, Willow wasn’t sure. Games were fun, yeah, but they were so limited compared to real life.
Regardless of Kent’s new perspective on life, it gave him clear direction on how to progress his abilities which was a pretty neat advantage. Willow was pretty happy to experiment and figure her own stuff out as she went, but she could certainly see the appeal of a straight forward ‘do thing A to get thing B’ kind of system of advancement. Kent wasn’t the only one with a shiny new insight, though! Naomi had ‘voiced’ hers too. She’d explained that she thought she had ‘formed’ the insight the other night when she’d meditated, but it hadn’t fully solidified until she actually spoke the words of the insight out loud. This, of course, made Willow curious as to how her own was working. If Naomi had to specifically say her insight out loud to activate it, how could Willow have mana aspects without even knowing what her insight was? A mystery she’d certainly get to the bottom of. Later. Right now, they had to decide what to do with the information they’d extracted from their unwilling, vitriol spewing, rope holder.
Once Kent’s quest had been complete, they’d stepped away from the screeching creature to give their ears a break. They found a spot to stand maybe a hundred meters from their campsite, among a random clump of feather-branch trees, to discuss what they’d learned. Even at such a distance the sound of screamed threats and colorful language could be faintly heard. They pretended not to notice.
“To summarize…” Kent said, “The pop-hoppers are able to evolve by eating, or maybe absorbing, enough sun-child stones. Taking the stones kills the sunsquat trees, but it makes the pop-hoppers smarter and generally better in every way. The messenger we captured was bringing orders for the pop-hoppers at the camp to come and take their turn evolving since all of the ones in the main camp around the tree have already evolved once. Their ‘chief’ wants all of them smart enough to understand basic orders.”
“That’s about 90% our speculation and 10% what the dumb creature actually managed to tell us.” Naomi pointed out. She was standing straight, no longer hunching in on herself. Her voice held more confidence, or not really. It held less of any emotion really, but it certainly held less doubt and uncertainty. So that was good, probably, hopefully.
Kent shot her a frown, “Well we have to extrapolate a bit, right? It’s not like ‘boss say come back, boss say get stronger’ at face value. We have other information from our own observations to tie in.”
Naomi shrugged, “Yeah, that makes sense. Just saying, it’d be a mistake to assume that whole summary is bullet proof.” Although he looked a bit miffed, Kent nodded in agreement to the point.
Clapping once, sharply, Willow gathered the others’ attention. They saw her bright smile and both groaned. “Willow please don’t say you have a plan…” “That evil grin is never a good sign…”
“I have absolutely no plan, so don’t worry!” She began by addressing Kent’s concern. She then pointed at Naomi and clutched her heart, “And you, Judas, betrayer, your lack of faith cuts me to the quick!”
Willow noticed the slight twitch at the edge of Naomi’s lips and counted it as a definitive point to herself. Since Naomi had embraced her insight, her emotions had been drastically deadened. She explained a little about it to herself and Kent the night before, but had asked for more time to sort things out before getting into it for real. They’d naturally agreed. Willow, because she already told Naomi she wouldn’t push on subjects that made her uncomfortable and Kent because he wasn’t paying much attention anyway. She might need to talk to him about spacing out so much and… Ah… What are they saying?
“…just that the last times you’ve given us that look we’ve ended up in fights shortly after.”
“Hey! Last time YOU started the fight Ke-n-Joooonah…” She trailed off with a wince at her slip. She’d been doing so well with using his ‘real’ name recently!
Groaning, Kent dropped his face into his hands, “What is it about my name you don’t like?”
“It just doesn’t suit you!”
“Like jimble-grimbs don’t suit pop-hoppers?”
“Exactly! Well no… Not exactly, but kinda?”
Naomi intervened before they could get into it too much. They’d had similar ‘arguments’ at least every other day since they’d met. “So what’s your not-a-plan, Willow?”
“Right! My scheme is like this. We’ll go back to the pop-hopper village, I’ll sneak into their camp using my moment, and steal all their sun-child rocks. We’ll hide them somewhere we prepare ahead of time, then…” She leaned toward Naomi, excited to share her master-stroke, “we let our captive see that we have them, and ‘accidentally’ let it get free. It runs back to its people, tells them where their precious stones went, and lead them here.”
“Where we have an ambush ready.” Kent finished.
Grinning, Willow leaned back against the feather-branch trunk behind her, throwing her arms wide in celebration of their impending victory. Their prisoner let out a particularly loud shrieking curse in the background.
“Three of us are going to ambush… Hundreds or thousands of jimble-grimbs?” Naomi clarified.
Willow’s arms dropped and she swished her lips back and forth in consideration, “Ehhh I was thinking we’d set things up so they’re more isolated into smaller groups? Like we can maybe get some of them with pit traps, and maybe drop some branches and stuff on them with trip wires, you know - like that!”
Naomi nodded slowly, “Sure, do you know how to setup those kinds of traps?”
“I… Kind of hoped you would” Willow admitted, breaking out her puppy-dog eyes. It worked super well on Kent last time, maybe…
“Sorry, I don’t know how.”
Drat.
“Willow… Your eyes are real pretty and all, but widening your eyes at me isn’t going to grant me sudden insight into trap making.”
Double drat. Dropping the use of her secret weapon, Willow pivoted to her backup plan.
“Okay, in that case we’ll just lure them out into the forest and slowly pick them off using gorilla tactics.”
“It’s Guerrilla.” Kent pointed out, “With a ‘uh’ sound, not ‘o’.”
“Wait, really?” She looked at him in shock.
“Uh… Yeah. You thought the term was referring to war with primates?” The teasing tone Kent used was insufferably knowing.
“Noooo… But ah… Let’s just say someone asked me what exactly it is, if it’s not saying to fight like gorillas,” she waved upward to indicate the canopy of feathery fronds above them, ” you know, in small packs from treetops, then what would I tell them?”
“First of all a group of gorillas is called a troop -”
“Not helping convince me that’s not the correct word for ambush tactics with that.”
“- and secondly, gorillas don’t really jump on anything from above generally. They could of course, but it’s not something they’re known for.” He shook his head and went to push up glasses that he no longer needed, a habit he had when indulging his know-it-all tendencies, “Anyway guerrilla warfare was coined to describe soldiers operating outsider of military structure. The word itself is just the diminutive form of the Spanish word for ‘war’ so it’s kind of like saying ‘smaller warfare’ or I guess ‘little war, warfare’.”
“Guys… Maybe we should get back to planning exactly what we’re doing? Also, why are we planning to do anything instead of just taking the location of the Jimble-grimbs back to the kobolds? If nothing else, they’d probably be more than happy to help us with your traps plan, Willow. They might even know how to set some up.” Trying to imitate Willow’s relaxed pose against her tree, Naomi leaned back a bit, stumbled over an unexpected root, recovered, and ended up in an awkward position. She repositioned to a properly relaxed lean in mirror of her friend, who shot her a surreptitious thumbs up while Kent was looking Naomi’s way with raised eyebrows.
“Well!” Willow started, “I actually did think about doing that. The main thing is I don’t think we can keep the crybaby that long. Or… I guess we could but I don’t want to. Also, if their ‘boss’ is at all smart he… she… it? I’m just gonna go with it, these things don’t seem to have genders and don’t seem intelligent enough to warrant ‘they’. It might be smart enough to realize something is wrong when neither the messenger nor the camp poppy-doppers come back.”
“Please don’t give them more names.” Came Kent’s defeated request, followed by a sigh. “But I agree, your plan is less likely to work if we wait too long. The kobolds can’t help with that specific plan but we could just kill the messenger and go get them to help us anyway. It’d definitely be safer than trying to take that entire swarm on by ourselves.”
Looking between Kent and Naomi, who were both looking her way, Willow nearly decided not to tell them her real reason for wanting to do it herself. In the end, though, she didn’t have an actual good argument so she was stuck with the truth. Trying to look ashamed, while not really feeling any shame at all, she explained.
“…I just want all the xp for ourselves.”