Two carts leave from Vane/Gloria's each morning. One goes north to the mountains, towards the snowy plateau; while the other heads south, the land sloping down gently for dozens of miles towards the lowlands. The trees thinned as the bouncing southbound cart approached a ridge with a ramp carved back and forth across it's face.
Elia watched the landscape pass as the cart turned and her view from the window spun to overlook the rippling grass far below her. Piles of crumbled rock speckled the plains down there, scattered in between a jigsaw of thick ribbons of stone. They were the boundaries – and the thrones – of tiny fiefdoms, from a time centuries ago when humankind first attempted to settle this fertile land. They built great castles and townships, trying to claim a piece of the world that wasn't tainted by the demonic hordes, only to fall to each other's blades and magic. They grew too weak, at the end, to resist the demons that attacked through the forests.
There is an old belief that these souls of vain rulers persisted after they died, as well as all other rulers. They drifted in the winds around the lands they once ruled – and sometimes, a demon will receive that piece of old soul, and foster it within itself. They become a greater monster: an infernal animal, a personification of sins, or a fractional incarnation of ancient royalty. Wights and witches of the bitter dead are strewn throughout the plains, and washed down the rivers to the swamps and outlets far to the south. Or they climb back up, striving for the highest horizons in the mountains to the north. It's one of the reasons why the frontier is such a dangerous area, beyond simple proximity to the demons – humans leave behind so much to feast on.
The rubble of ancient strife faded out of sight behind the canopy as the cart descended the ridge that marked the halfway point of its outbound route. Elia turned back to the rest of the cart's occupants, resting an arm on the pack beside her.
They were a Rank 2 team, heading to a contract a bit farther than her stop. A grab bag of different specializations and roles, they wore armors of various weights and cuts, mostly of padded leather, some reinforced with steel plates. They were eight in all, bunched in three smaller groups that conversed among themselves.
Elia tried to listen in, but it sounded like they were intentionally straying away from talking about the contract they were traveling to. Which she supposed she understood; Rank 2 teams were always afraid of people taking bounties from them. The poachers wouldn't get the contract payout, but if a piece of the target creature's body had alchemical uses, it might still be worth it for some rival team to snag the kill.
But seriously, she was a solo Rank 1, she wasn't going to be stepping on any toes here!
She had enough on her plate with her own mission. An imp camp, small numbers, and she had plenty of potions. She flexed her shoulders and stretched her arms out, impatient. Finally! Finally out on the frontier, finally out of the big cities of Alacandra. It had become too stifling there, too little contract activity with too many mercs trying to stay in the relative comfort of the Kingdom's core. What mercs were left there were often the militias' rejects, thrown out for one offense or another, or retirees who were tired of killing humans and needing something that didn't stress their consciences so much.
She could respect that; she just wished more of them were willing so move out to the frontier for a real fight, so that she hadn't felt so compelled to do it.
Giving up a lot of those comforts had been tough. The runic circuits that they were starting to build and retrofit into communities were such a major help to powering the amenities of modern life in the city. Hot baths, and showers; trains that ran throughout the city and out to the surrounding farms and rural communities; carriages that were powered by runic batteries instead of animals, only the start of an invention that could revolutionize the world.
It would still be some time before a lot of those advances made their way out to the frontier, though. She supposed one of those Vanes might have a few carriages stuffed way as toys to play with, but she heard that they apparently required very smooth roads to function safely at the kinds of speeds that would make them revolutionary.
Elia was fine with waiting if it meant that she could easily find work again.
She looked down at her hands, and quickly flashed her runes as she restarted her cycle. White and gray, both hands and feet marked with Wind.
Sometimes people scoffed at her. Wind was a Scout rune, for running away from fights and watching stronger mages fight. Not so for Elia.
As the carriage finished its winding path down the steep ridge, she stood up as it leveled out. She flipped open her pack and started putting her equipment on.
Her leather vest had ten little knives tucked into it, each fitted with a thin bit of crystal for injecting rune power. She had a belt with slots for eight potion vials, though only six were currently filled. Two health potions and four mana. All the potions that she'd brought with her from the city.
Getting out here had nearly left her completely broke, only enough money left over for her to afford inn rental for a few days and meals for only a couple of those. So she'd felt the pressure to pick up a job as soon as possible.
It was weird, though: when she'd tried to register for the quest the first time, the woman at the booth...had said no? Elia had ground her teeth as the woman kept talking, explaining about precautions she wanted to take for a newly registered merc, and for that job in particular. It was Rank 1, though. Elia was Rank 1. Why couldn't she take it? It smacked of some of the cliques that had started growing in guilds back in the cities, using their clout to pressure other mercs away from favored jobs, and she hadn't believed the woman trying to pass the job off as 'too much for a new Rank 1 to take.'
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She hadn't expected to still see the job hanging on the board there the next day, or for someone else to be running the booth.
Elia smirked as she belted and tightened her short swords to her hips. She felt like a kid who'd stolen candy from the store, leaving none the wiser.
She leaned out the window and called the coachman for her stop as the cart reached where the trees petered out and the grassy expanse ran onward, seemingly forever. Hefting her light pack over her shoulder, she made her way roughly east, to where the reported imp camp hid.
She took off at a light jog, the runes on her hands and feet gently glowing as she pushed herself faster. Her stride did not speed up, but each step carried her farther forward, keeping her floating in the air for an extra second before touching down.
This was a gait she had learned a few years ago, right after she’d decided to take feet runes, instead of leg runes. Leg runes let you glide longer and run faster, but didn’t have the versatility that she wanted. Everyone forgot about the fact that feet runes were potentially another set of weapons; they were just tougher to control and incorporate into a fighting style that made good use of them.
She step-glided along until she felt her core sit half-empty, then she walked normally for a time as her core refilled. Then when her mana was full, she pushed off again, floating forward from step to step, hands clenched behind her back as she focused on keeping their runes mana-tight – closed off from the pressure of mana use. Without that focus, excess mana might leak out from her hands, making her magic less efficient.
Striding along next to a stone wall, Elia caught a flicker in the corner of her eyes.
She threw herself down onto a cushion of Wind, and she heard something heavy rush by where her head had been. The cushion carried her momentum, and she dropped it to come to a sliding stop. She whipped her head towards the attack's source – right in time to duck under a head-sized stone hurtling at her face.
Come on, let me see you, you bastard!
She whipped her head back up after it passed by, catching a glimpse of an old wight, burly but weathered, standing on top of a fallen tower and ripping pieces off it to throw. He hefted another rock and hucked it at her.
Elia ducked and moved along the wall, wincing as she heard the rock slam into the wall behind her. She reached up to her chest and pulled two small knives out of her vest, holding them ready in her left hand as she moved. She risked a peek over the top, and saw him spot her and throw his stone. She ducked.
Right after it hits, she thought.
The rock sailed past the wall, slamming into a tree and cracking the trunk the whole way down.
Elia stood up, glanced at the wight looking down to gather his next rock, and she threw her knives straight forward, away from the wight, as her left hand's rune lit up. She guided the knives through the air, arcing them around, around, until the wight was in front of them. He chucked the rock as she focused, but the knives were on target now. After one last adjustment, she ducked and moved; the rock splattered against the wall. There was a short silence, then she heard the distinct sound of flesh and bone crunching against a rocky surface.
Elia peeked up. Nothing stood on the tower anymore. She glanced meekly around for a few moments anyway, watching. Seeing nothing, she hopped over the fence and made her way to the base of the weathered tower. She found the body of a wight there, its eyes black pits in sunken sockets. Its skin was torn and hanging loose on the muscled frame.
Two small knives were lodged in his temple.
Elia beamed. Ha! Take that, you shit! That was a goddamn throw!
She looked the body over, trying to see if there was any part of it worth taking – but it wore only decayed rags, draped across itself to give the faint impression of regalia. And, she didn't know enough about the local monsters to know if any part of this one was worth keeping.
Dejected that it had no loot, but still upbeat that she had killed it, she moved on. The fight hadn't even taken a lot out of her. One shot? Some dashing? She was still at around half her mana capacity.
She let her core refill as she walked, then built up to her gliding step for a short while, repeating again once her core approached half full.
Elia moved along for about an hour in that start-stop pattern before she started pinging her Scouts’ charm. Along her path, she noticed another of the ancient piles of rubble near the trees ahead, and veered her angle to stop by it next time her core ran half dry. These places had all been picked through a thousand times by now; but every once in a while, someone would find some old piece of scrap that retained enough of its ancient glory that it could be sold to a merchant of those types of wares.
Elia landed by a rectangular stone and looked around at the gray, scattered rock, looking for any glint of reflected light or color out of place. Nothing of interest revealed itself. With a huff, she gazed up at the broken keep, and with an empowered leap she used a burst of wind to launch herself up, scattering dust and pebbles below. She alighted on what was once a guard tower. She pinged the charm again and sat atop the aged brittle stones to wait.
It only took another fifteen minutes for the Scout to arrive. A small dot ran out of tree line, jogging briskly towards where she sat on the tower. With a smile, Elia watched her approach, making no move to leave the tower. The Scout pulled up at the base of the rubble and slowly stared to walk around it, eyes darting back and forth. Elia pulsed the charm again, watching the figure below as they looked at the blinking charm on their wrist, and slowing making their way around the tower. Once they’d gotten about a quarter of the way around, they stopped abruptly, and then whipped their head up to look at the top of the stones.
The Scout saw her up there, playing games, and with a smirk, he called out to her.
“Yeah, I see you. Neat trick. Now come on down!”
Elia grinned and threw herself off the rubble. She let herself fall most of the way down before pushing Wind power through all four limbs, slowing her descent to a safe speed before letting herself drop the last few feet to the ground.
The Scout raised an eyebrow. “A Wind mercenary? Not a Scout?”
Elia shook her head. “Nope, registered Rank 1.” She placed her hands on the pommels of her shorts swords and shook them for emphasis.
The Scout looked at the weapons, then shrugged and nodded. He stuck a hand out. “I’m Randu.”
“Elia.” They shook.
Randu led her towards the tree line where he’d come from. “I checked on them about an hour and a half ago, and all four imps were still there. I’ll go ahead before we get there to make sure they haven’t decided to multiply but you should be alright.”
Elia shrugged. “I’m fine either way. Imp expansions aren’t big enough to cause me any real trouble with the numbers we could expect from one. What would we get, another three imps?”
Randu smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Are you new?”
Elia’s eyes widened a bit. “Yeah. Are bigger expansions typical for this area?”
“Typical? No.” Randu sighed. “But the numbers have been going up. There was this freak event a few days ago where a group of twenty imps marched into a camp that had just been cleared.”
Elia blew out a puff of air. Those are big-boy numbers. “Okay, that's a little scary.” She shrugged, nonchalant. “I think we'd be able to get away, though. We're both fast movers.”
“That's what I'm thinking, too, but I wanted to make sure you knew what the worst case scenario is.”
Making light chatter, they made their way into the trees.