Volume 1, Chapter 43: One Last Thing Before I Leave (Patreon)

After finishing my meal with Nicky, I headed to one of the side chambers off the temple aisle, where I found several soldiers arranging various pieces of equipment on shelves they had set up there.

Some were carrying armor toward the back, stacking it one piece on top of another in the corner, while others hung weapons from racks nailed to the wall.

The quartermaster sat deeper inside the room behind a desk made from some kind of hard mushroom trunk. Even after being cut down, the thing still glowed with its own inner bioluminescent light, making it the main source of illumination in the chamber.

I stopped in front of two guards stationed near the entrance. The moment I appeared, they crossed their spears in front of me and pointed the tips in my direction.

Without saying anything, I pulled out the paper Plasario had given me and, leaning on my staff, waited until a soldier summoned by one of the guards came over to take it.

He looked at it for a moment, read—at least I assumed that was what he was doing—whatever had been written there, then carried it over to the quartermaster.

“Let him through,” the man called.

The guards pulled their weapons back and allowed me to approach the man in charge of the place.

Like Plasario, he had a shaved head and a long beard, though his was tied into a single thick braid. Red beads had been woven into it at even intervals. I counted four, but the rest of the braid disappeared beneath his light brown shirt, so there might have been more.

The man was missing his left eye. In its place, that entire side of his face looked as though someone had badly burned it. The tissue had melted downward like wax, covering both the empty eye socket and part of his cheek, with one bridge of scarred skin even stretching across part of his mouth.

His remaining eye moved sharply and alertly. It was green.

“Master Quartermaster,” I greeted him with a slight bow of my head and a hidden chuckle. “I was told I could receive clothing from you suitable for traveling to the city, as well as the wages owed to me.”

“We’ll start with the simpler matter. Drachmas. Gwin, bring me three strings.”

At the word strings, I started wondering what exactly he meant, though I would’ve gladly accepted anything that could be tied, knotted, or stretched. You could say that was the one thing I had in common with Eli. A simple string of connection.

“What kind of clothing should I prepare for you, young Master Arthur?”

“Oh, you know who I am?”

“Forgive me. I failed to introduce myself,” the quartermaster replied and stood, pushing his chair back.

It turned out one of his legs was artificial—or at least severely limited his movement—because he stepped on it slowly and unevenly as he made his way around the desk.

Once he reached me, he extended one hand with his fist closed and angled upward and forward, making something that looked a lot like an Earth-style fist bump.

I answered in kind and pressed my closed fist against his. I had seen other people in the camp greet each other that way.

“Quartermaster Woliano. I read the reports from the skirmish, prepared by Master Rodrick,” he added, then made his way back around the desk, supporting himself with one hand against its surface until he reached his chair again. “Forgive me. My legs aren’t what they used to be.”

“No problem,” I replied, watching his soldier return with the drachmas in hand.

He carried three columns of them, each one held together by a cord threaded through the hole in the center of the coins, with a thick knot underneath to keep them from sliding off.

When the soldier approached, he held out the three strings, and I carefully took them from him.

At the other end of each cord was a small steel ring that kept the coins from falling off, along with a metal clasp that could be bent open to detach it from the ring.

The steel loop itself wasn’t completely closed either. Its two ends could be pried apart, allowing it to be hooked onto a belt or wherever else someone wanted to carry the coins.

“Thank you,” I said to the soldier.

“What exactly do you need?” Woliano repeated. “Master Plasario didn’t list any specifics. He only said I should equip you with whatever you ask for.”

I knew that because I had read the note, and I had already been thinking about what I wanted.

I didn’t need a weapon. They weighed too much, and I was already carrying a hammer I still hadn’t used, rope, bandages, my magic knife, a crowbar, and a lighter in my backpack. I also had the staff, which I intended to prepare so I could pass for a proper wizard.

Adding more weight didn’t seem like a particularly good idea.

“Something like light armor would be best. Leather, maybe. And something I can wear over it to hide it—a cloak or a tunic. A scarf for my mouth in case of a sandstorm, and some kind of head covering. Besides that, maybe three ordinary shirts, pants, and whatever kind of boots people wear around here. And a bag so I can pack all of it up and carry it comfortably.

“Oh, and two long ropes. You never know when you’ll have to climb your way out of some hole.”

“You’ve thought this through? No weapon? No shield?”

“Not really my style.” I leaned forward and raised a hand to cover my mouth.

“I’m a wizard.”

“I understand. We’ll prepare everything, Master Arthur, along with a writ confirming your service,” he replied, then began giving orders to his soldiers.

“I still have one more thing to take care of. I’ll come back for all of it in about an hour,” I said, with just enough of an upward inflection to make it sound almost like a question.

“We’ll be ready.”

As I left, I headed toward the women’s tent, thinking about the persona I was going to use.

I needed to get on the good side of whatever passed for law enforcement in the city, and I didn’t yet know exactly how they operated. I figured finding that out once I got there wouldn’t be difficult, but I still needed to offer them something they might find useful. So pretending to be a mage capable of reading hidden signs and peering into people’s minds seemed like a good option.

I couldn’t actually do either of those things, of course, but both seemed easy enough to fake.

A traveling wizard therefore felt like the right solution during the day, and Arthur Nilrem could become that person quite convincingly, especially considering I had already begun building myself a reputation. The persona only needed some work on the way he spoke and carried himself—something a little more mysterious.

At night, though, I intended to adopt a much more unsavory persona—a thief who could get to know the city’s underworld from the other side. With those thoughts in mind, I reached the place where Sophie, Nicky, and Bri were resting. I pulled back the tent flap and stepped inside.

Sophie sat at a small table, arranging flowers across its surface and apparently studying how they were put together.

Nicky was organizing the contents of her backpack.

Bri, meanwhile, floated in the very center of the tent, roughly halfway between the floor and the ceiling, well away from anything flammable. With her eyes closed, she looked as though she were either sleeping or meditating.

“I came to say goodbye properly,” I said after clearing my throat.

Nicky turned and looked at me.

“I already said what I had to say,” she replied, but she stood up from her things, walked over, and unexpectedly wrapped me in a tight hug. “I hope things work out for both of you. If there’s any way we can help, let us know.”

“Thank you, Nicky,” I said, easing her away from me a little. “If you’re still here when we come back, we’ll let you know, but I have no idea how else we’d even contact you. Take care of yourselves. Your task sounds like it involves a lot more fighting than ours, so don’t do anything stupid. Better to survive and live somewhere on this planet than sacrifice yourselves for Earth, which might stop existing in the not-too-distant future anyway if all the Earthlings get knocked out of the Event, right?”

“Logically, maybe. But I have family back home, and I’m not planning to abandon them. I have sisters. Parents. That’s who I’m fighting for here, Arthur. I’m not the only one who matters.”

“Let’s not go down that road again,” I replied with a smile.

Surprisingly, she smiled back.

When she stepped away, Sophie was already standing behind her with one hand extended toward me.

I realized it might have been the first time I had seen her without her long cloak. Underneath, she wore a dark shirt and dark leather pants. Her brown skin, even along her arms, was dusted with golden freckles that shimmered in the light cast by the still-motionless Bri.

I took Sophie’s hand and gave it a light squeeze.

“Good road to you, Arthur,” she said without smiling. “May we be given the chance to meet again under less dramatic circumstances. Though nothing seems to suggest that will happen, does it?”

“I don’t think it’s going to get any better. No.” I released her hand. “Everything points to things getting worse with every passing day, and even if we succeed, we’ll probably just be thrown into another new task afterward.” I said it, though the thought itself didn’t fill me with disgust or helplessness. I liked facing challenges. The only problem was that I preferred choosing them myself.

“Let’s not be such fatalists,” Nicky cut in.

“Okay. I’ll stop,” I replied. “Do you know what’s going on with my coolest companion in the entire world?” I said loudly enough for Bri to hear. I was starting to worry she might be upset with us about something.

“She said that whenever she starts drifting toward sleep, she thinks she can hear voices, so she decided to meditate on it. She’s been like that for the last fifteen minutes or so. Started not long after you left.”

“Voices?”

“People watching her and—”

“Yeah, um, that’s what I thought too,” Bri interrupted, opening the black spaces that served as her eyes. Two enormous points of flame appeared in their centers, shrinking as they absorbed the light around them, mimicking the way human pupils worked. “Every now and then, I get this, well, thought in my head that I should watch out for you, and I know I definitely wouldn’t, um, think that on my own, so I wanted to check where it was coming from, but I couldn’t figure anything out, you know?”

“Watch out for me as in you think I might hurt you? Those voices are talking nonsense. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to abandon you, and I never did.” I started defending myself, then realized how pointless it was. She already knew that perfectly well. “Bri, in a few hours a messenger is leaving for the city. We’re going with him, with Plasario’s permission. I think that’s the safest option for us,” I said, changing the subject. “So if there’s anything else you want to do, now’s the time. I’m planning to take a nap somewhere near the stables so they don’t forget about me while I wait for us to leave, which is why I’m saying goodbye now.”

“I think I’ll, um, wait here. I don’t trust Plasario.”

“You can both sleep here too,” Nicky offered. “I’ll make sure they don’t forget about you and let you know.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I replied. “I still wanted to say goodbye to Khufu and pick up the things Plasario’s quartermaster prepared for me, so let me go find the lion first, and then I’ll come back and crash here for a while, okay?”

“Was that your plan from the beginning?” Sophie asked.

I grinned at her.

“I didn’t want to impose.”

“Just go,” Nicky said.

I slipped off my backpack, set my staff beside it, and still smiling at them, headed off to find Khufu.

I hadn’t even gone fifty steps when I spotted the lion towering above the people around him, walking in my direction.

The moment he noticed me, he struck one hand against his chest and raised it upward.

I stepped slightly aside so we wouldn’t get in anyone’s way and waited for him.

“Word carries that soon both you and Miss Bri will bathe in the divine light of Ra. Are there bones within those words strong enough to hold up their truth?” he asked.

He looked genuinely exhausted. His fur was dirty, with bits of sawdust, splinters of wood, and pieces of mushroom stuck to it here and there. Dried blood clung around his wrists and fingertips. His ears drooped slightly, his nose wasn’t nearly as restless as usual, and his tail literally dragged along the ground behind him.

“That’s the hope. We’re waiting for Plasario’s lizards to be ready for the road. I was actually coming to say goodbye.”

“We will do no such thing. Words that send one person away from another sever a sacred bond. A name once given to another should always remain fresh within the heart, and one should never feel that the next meeting lies farther away than a single heartbeat.”

“That works for me, Khufu. More than you realize. I hate goodbyes.”

“As do I. In my pride, we say farewell only to the dead, or to those whose fate already stands close beside them.”

“Did they say goodbye to you before, you know, you were taken? I know your world knew it was coming ahead of time.”

“Yes. My funeral was held a week beforehand. I also gave up one of my bones.” He pointed toward his foot.

Only then did I get a proper look at it. The fur there was so thick and fluffy that it had been difficult to notice before, but his right one had four toes. His left had three.

“At least one, so that I might rest where my father will rest, and where my grandfather rested before him.”

“You still gonna kick those orcs’ asses, you fucking cripple?” I asked with a grin, deliberately pulling my eyes away from his mutilated foot and looking up at his face.

He bared his teeth and struck his tail against the ground.

“Of course. As Osiris is my witness in this half-world deprived of Ra, I have no intention of lying on my back and watching them pull the ribs from my body. I will fight until the last drop of my blood stains this foreign earth. I will not bring shame upon my people.”

“What do they call your kind on your Earth? People too? I never asked.”

“We are the people of the pride.”

“I like that.” I reached out and grabbed his enormous bicep. “See you soon, Khufu’Ri, man of the pride. I’ve got a few things to collect, and then I’m going to get some sleep.”

He answered with a nod, watched me for another moment, curled his tail around one leg, then turned and headed back toward the palisade construction. Apparently, he had come over only to make sure we were actually leaving.

With a little more time than I had expected, I headed back toward the quartermaster. On the way, I used Cinderhide on my hand once again and studied the claws it formed. I walked like that for several moments, waiting for the strain on my Psyche to make me dizzy. The moment it did, I released the spell.