Wandering Warrior: Judge - Chapter 34 (Patreon)

Chapter 34

Jess was still fuming, upset at herself about how things had gone down.  “I should have smelled them, at the very least.  They stink like you wouldn’t believe.”  She punched her palm, grinding her fist into it.  “I’m going to show them how it feels to get blindsided like that.”

“Instead of talking about what you’re going to do, why don’t you practice the spell I showed you some more, so we can gauge your progress?”  I was very interested to see how quickly she was going to learn something completely different from the earth spell I had shown her before.  If she got it as quickly as the last one, it meant she was some kind of savant.  “Start at the beginning, and take it slow.”

She was trying to learn a lesser version of the fireball spell, something similar to a fire dart.  It took less time and energy to form, but without the splash damage it meant you had to be more accurate.  For someone with shifter reflexes, I was hoping it wouldn’t be a problem.

“Why am I learning this one again?”  Jess held up a curled index and middle finger, like she was throwing an invisible knuckleball.  “Wouldn’t an actual fireball be better?”

“Sure, if your body could hold the mana to power one big enough to matter.”  I held up my hand in a mimic of hers and swung, casting a swarm of five fire darts, sending each of them perfectly into a tree sapling.  One dart wouldn’t have been enough to do much, but the five combined worked together to chop it down like an elemental chainsaw.  It fell to the ground with a crash.  “Trust me, this spell has its uses.”

Jess swallowed hard and looked at her hand.  “Okay, I see your point.”  I watched as the mana in her body swirled down her arm as she swung forward, and a single spark shot out, burning her hand.  “Ah!  What was that?”  She blew on the burn, trying to soothe away the sting.

“That was a more normal response.”  I reached out and drew a circle on her hand, quickly healing it.  “Now, try the earthen wall spell again.”

She did as ordered, and a hard ridge of earth appeared a few feet off the trail from where we were walking.  It was even better than the last time she had used it.  “That was easy.  Are fire spells harder than earth spells?”

“For you, apparently.”  I showed her how to do a wind blade.  “Try that one.  I want to see something.”

“Okay.”  Jess put too much energy into it, and ended up causing a large gust of wind that blew the leaves off of the nearby trees.  She also managed to exhaust over half of her energy supply, and sagged to one knee.  “Um, that one didn’t go as well.”

I helped her back to her feet and gave her a strip of dried jerky to help her recover.  “Give it a minute before you try anything else.  I think I know what’s going on, anyway.”

“What is it?  Am I broken?”  Jess looked around, making sure the others were out of earshot.  “Will I not be able to become a mage?”

Shaking my head, I could only laugh.  “No, you are just lucky.  How you are with other spells is how you should be with earth spells.  A total noob.”  I ignored her raised eyebrow.  Noob should be a universal term, and damn any language morphology.  “I think you have an affinity.”

“What does that mean?”  Jess took a swig of water to help swallow the jerky.  “Can I only cast one kind of spell?”

I concentrated for a moment and formed four tiny balls of energy above the palm of my hand.  “There are all kinds of spell elements, but most of them can be broken down into these four major ones.  Water, earth, fire, and air.”  I gave them a mental push, and they started to spin.  “Most mages have a favorite element or two that they focus on, usually because they find it easier to control.  That’s called an affinity.  It’s not usually anything drastic, just a slight preference.”  I allowed the earth element to grow until it was twice the size of the other three.  “For you, it’s very pronounced.  Any earth spells, or mostly earth spells, are going to be much easier for you to cast.  You’re just average with all the others.”

“So, what do I do?  Only cast earth spells now?  What if I want to become a death mage, or metal?”  Jess mimed stabbing out with a sword.  “I might have an affinity for something else.”

“Life and death are something called esoteric magics, but even they have some aspects of the main four.  And a metal mage is basically just an earth mage with excellent control.  But to answer your real question, what you should do is keep practicing everything.”  I showed her how to cast earth spike, and then a smaller rock version that could be thrown similar to the fire dart.  “Since we’re about to go into a fight, you might want to concentrate on spells that are immediately useful to you.  Earthen wall, earth spike, and rock dart should give you an edge.”

Jess immediately cast the rock dart spell, her pinky thrust forward like she was stabbing someone with it.  The one I had shown her looked similar to a crossbow bolt, fully formed and with rudimentary fletchlings to help control its flight.  Her version was more like a sharpened pencil, and stabbed into a nearby tree with a twang.  “What do you think?”

“I think it’s a good start.  Keep practicing.”  She gave me a thumbs up and I left her to it, jogging forward to check in with Leedy.  “Any word?”

“Murphy said he lost the trail, so he went to try and find Cross.  Since he hasn’t come back yet, that means he’s still on them.”  Leedy patted the horse’s nose, wiping away the dripping rain.  “The fact that they can find anything in this weather is a miracle.”

A flash of lightning lit up the skies, and the mana inside me thrummed in response.  It was loving this storm.  “Well, you did say Cross used to be in charge of a scouting team.  I’m sure he had to pick up some tricks here and there if he wanted to stay in command.”

“Either way, they seemed to still be running parallel to the road.  All we have to do is see where they veer off, and we’ll be able to follow them straight to their base.”  Leedy closed his hand into a fist, his knuckles whitening.  “There’s not many places to hide between here and Greendown, so I know we have to be getting close.”

“I think the sun came up a while ago, but with this storm they might still be able to stay above ground.”  Another flash of lightning crackled across the sky, and I only counted to one before the thunder followed.  It was getting closer.  “If this gets any worse, we might have to seek shelter.”

Leedy shook his head.  “There’s no place to go.  We’re going to start running into the farms and inns that surround Greendown before you know it.”  We walked in silence for a few minutes before he spoke again.  “You know where they are already, don’t you?”

“I can’t be sure of anything, but I can make an educated guess.  After all, the best place to hide is always in plain sight.”  I motioned to the forest around us.  “Not to mention, do you see a lot of food for vampires around here?  If I was in charge of a bunch of undead, I would want to be close to their food source to keep them from getting grumpy.  Put all that together, and the only population center large enough to cover up the occasional missing person around here is Greendown.”

“What about the hints that their headquarters is farther north, in the mountains?  Didn’t you say that’s where the Destitute’s Mausoleum is?”  Leedy pointed straight east, along the trail.  “That’s not where Greendown is located.  In fact, I’d say it’s a little south of here.”

“The Destitute is a vampire, not a lich.  We’re tracking down the equivalent of an undead guild house, and that lich is in charge of the closest one.  I’ve probably got at least another two or three boss fights to get through before I fight the big bad guy.”  I wiped the rain off my face, shifting my hat down to keep me from getting wet.  “There’s the witches we need to worry about too, plus I need to figure out where that super ghoul and its core came from.”

“Have you given up on your quest to find the Silver Star, then?”  Leedy smirked at me when I let out a long-suffering sigh in response.  “I’ll take that as a no.  People can’t resist the thought of all that treasure.”

I rummaged around for a second and pulled out the black marble-like core, holding it up for him to see.  “I told you, it isn’t about money.  This is connected to the Silver Star.  I don’t know how, or why, but it is.  And I found it inside a ghoul that could keep fighting after I chopped its head in half.”  I tucked it back in my pack.  “There’s no way all of this is separate.  I’m going to figure out how they connect, and then I’m going to tear it down.”

A spike of dirt erupted out of the forest next to us, toppling a tree and scaring the horse.  Leedy was busy fighting with it while I slowly turned around and glared at a guilty-looking Jess.  She gave a tiny wave and mouthed ‘sorry’ before ducking her head under her hood.

“You trying to kill us or something?”  Leedy finally got the horse to stop bucking, before shaking a finger in my face.  “That was entirely uncalled for!”

“That wasn’t me, it was Jess.”  I cast the same spell, and a much more compact version erupted next to the one she had cast.  “See?  That’s what my version of the spell looks like.”

“Stop doing that!”  Leedy gripped his sword hilt, looking around nervously.  “You’ll anger the Pauls.”  I just stared at him, not understanding what he was talking about.  “Of course you wouldn’t know about the Pauls.  They own the forest around Greendown.  Everyone leaves them alone, because they don’t bother humans unless they try chopping down the trees in their territory.”

“What are these ‘Pauls’?  Are they another kind of undead?”  I was surprised to see Leedy acting so nervously.  He hadn’t seemed so worried when he was facing velociraptors.  “And how dangerous are they?”

“They aren’t undead.  Nobody really knows for sure what they are.  Maybe some kind of fae, or just an odd kind of monster.”  Leedy slapped at a leg, doing a little hop at the same time.  “They’ve only got one leg, but don’t think that makes them slow.  Pauls dart about all over the place, kicking people in their rears the moment their back is turned.”  He positioned himself so he was closer to the horse for cover.  “A single Paul can ruin your whole day.  Trust me.”

“I’ll… take your word for it.”  I could only shake my head in disbelief.  Don’t get me wrong, I believed Leedy.  It was just crazy to me that a race of one-legged ass-kicking monsters named Paul were running loose in the forest.  This whole planet was off its rocker.  “Anyway, does Greendown have any kind of sewer system, or underground tunnels of some kind?”

“What?”  Leedy was paying attention to our surroundings more than he was listening to me.  He was genuinely worried.  “I’m sorry, I missed what you said.”

“I asked if–”

The horse jerked itself out of Leedy’s grip, and trotted farther down the trail, disappearing around a curve before I could finish my sentence.  The two of us started to run after it when both Cross and Murphy came into sight, with the horse already in tow.  At least we knew where its loyalties remained.

“Finally!”  Leedy seemed excited to see them, and I didn’t blame him.  I was ready to be anywhere except in this storm.  “Did you find them?”

Murphy stayed silent while Cross passed the horse’s reins over to him and crouched to draw a map in the mud of the trail with a finger.  “Here’s Greendown, and this is the northern gate.”  He drew a cluster of spots farther north, and a line connecting the two.  “This is the old patrol base the Hunter’s Guild gave over to the farmers years ago.  Now, it looks like they’ve taken it back.  There’s signs of heavy fighting, and the tracks lead in that direction.”

Leedy knelt to fill in a few more details, including the east-west trail we were on and some more dots that were probably the farms and inns he had told me about.  “Where do their tracks branch off?”  Cross made a mark shortly before the first set of dots on the map, causing Leedy to frown.  “I don’t trust it.  Why would they charge straight into a place where there are more Wardens and Hunters?  There’s plenty of room left for them to double back and go somewhere else.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”  Cross nodded, looking up at us.  “It means they know we’re on to them, so we need to look out for an ambush.”

“Do me a favor.”  I took a step to the side as Jess finally caught up to us.  “Draw in the details of the rest of the surrounding area, especially any abandoned buildings and underground locations.”

Cross quickly added dozens of spots, and both Leedy and Murphy helped where his memory might have left any gaps.  Jess stole my hat so she could use it to shield the makeshift map from the rain, and we all carefully looked it over for clues.

“If they headed north, what are the odds that their actual base is south?”  Murphy pointed to a series of farms that stretched along a road that led toward the coast.  “They could have taken over any of these places, and no one would know for a long time.”

“No.”  I shook my head, pointing to a spot closer to the city.  “Their neighbors would notice, and they wouldn’t want to draw attention.  Not only that, they wouldn’t want to travel far for food.  What’s in this location again?”

Leedy leaned closer, checking distances before answering.  “That’s the old dairy farm and cheese factory.  It’s supposed to be a storage site for root vegetables during the winter, but I imagine it’s empty now.”

We looked at one another, all of us coming to the same conclusion.  I stood up, putting my hat back on my head.  “Let’s go.”