H - 110: How Dare You (Patreon)

No one paid much attention to the Lone Wolves loitering by the roadside just outside the city gate. They were too elaborately dressed and too comfortable within sight of the guards to be bandits, and adventurers on the roads were a common and welcome sight…even if their conversations regularly and inexplicably led them to strike implausible poses. Adventurers behaving oddly were a cue for everyone in the vicinity to hurry along and mind their own business.

The guards were watching them, though. Not exactly warily, but with the long-suffering stoicism of experienced police who foresaw having to deal with something annoying in the near future.

They did not react when the Court Mage came tearing through the gates at a light jog, apparently recognizing her on sight; a visibly disheveled individual running out of the city would warrant at least a hail, were it not forestalled by the Valefolk aversion to getting tangled up in shenanigans clearly above their pay grade.

“Ah, Lady Cora, you’re early,” Riocco said with approval.

“As are you, excellent,” Cora said curtly, turning off the road and jogging right between them without slowing. “Come, this doesn’t need an audience.”

In most parts of the world, trees were not permitted to grow close to city walls; in the Vales, the dense and all-surrounding forest was part of a city’s evacuation plan. Even this close to the main road and within sight of the battlements, it took them less than a minute to lose themselves in a thicket with no view of other travelers. Royal foresters did try to keep the underbrush trimmed enough not to start fires, but like most parts of the forest this close to Boisverd, the four were soon stepping over discarded bottles and old papers.

Every possible kind of assignation took place in every walkable patch of these woods. If anything, they were lucky not to blunder across someone else also seeking privacy; that happened a lot.

“All right,” Cora said curtly, coming to a stop and conjuring items into her hands, “I will distribute teleportation devices shortly; first I need to set this up before we arrive. I expect you have some idea how rare and expensive teleportation artifacts are, and I encourage you not to dwell on it; this is done for the sake of the realm. I’m only mentioning it because I wasn’t able to get as many as I hoped, so we’re in for a long trip home. What in the hells are you doing?”

She’d been too busy fiddling with the objects in her hands to physically stop Lilith from messing with her hair; now, the younger mage finally stepped back, having sorted Cora’s tousled platinum blonde locks into a decent semblance of order, and dusted off her hands.

“There. You said you had recruited the Dragonvale bandits, yes? Bandits are a superstitious and cowardly lot; you will need to intimidate them into place. Can’t very well do that while looking like an escaped haystack.”

“Presentation is crucial,” Greg agreed, playing a fanfare that set several nearby squirrels scolding them; an acorn bounced off the top of his musical contraption.

All three Lone Wolves struck poses, and Cora inhaled silently through her teeth.

“What manner of grimoire is that?” Riocco asked.

“One of the rarest,” she said, “and part of a set with these.”

The spellbook was, like many such, thick and sporting an elaborate, metal-embellished cover. Uniquely, the apparently decorative attachments of brass and steel formed clever attachment points.

“These are artifacts of the Plenary Mage Council of the Amaar-Darash Hegemony,” Cora explained, pressing the similarly-decorated wizard’s staff against the spine of the huge grimoire and twisting; with a satisfying little snap they locked together, and a steady purple glow ignited in the amethysts inset into the book’s cover and larger matching stones laid into the head of the staff. “This book doesn’t contain castable spells, so much as…instructions that can be triggered to modify the standing enchantments the Hegemony used to control its most important magical functions. The book is inert and useless unless connected to a staff like this, and to a wand like this.”

The wand was visibly of the same design as its other two counterparts; she slipped it into designated grooves along the edge of the book’s back cover. Once snapped into place, the violet stones at its head and tip also lit up.

“Two access keys, one institutional, one individual. With these united I now have the power to control all the standing magics of the Hegemony, which isn’t hugely useful as barely any of those still exist. But it will get us past the Phantom Legion, and eventually, sever them from their curse and that damn godling’s control.”

“Incredible,” Riocco breathed. “Acquiring it must have been an amazing adventure! I would love to hear the story, someday when we’re not on the clock.”

Cora hesitated in the act of leafing through the grimoire; affixed to the staff as it was, she was able to hold it open at a pretty convenient height. “It was…a lot easier than you’d think. Almost disappointingly so, really. Just…weird. Ahem, anyway, I need to have this particular feature activated before we ‘port into Dragonvale. Those ghosts have been keeping tabs on the bandits for weeks; they’ll know we’re coming without this measure.”

“Why not just…free them now?” Lilith demanded, belatedly remembering her affected vocal rasp.

“Because Princess Perseverance is in the middle of that. I want to hold that off until the last possible second—not until we have our eyes on her, ideally. Once those ghosts are turned loose it’s going to be them versus dragons and bandits. That is what we have to carve our way through to get her, and then again to get out. So…prepare yourselves.”

All three Wolves nodded, expressions intent. Cora touched a spell diagram on one page—helpfully labeled in classical Darashi, which she could not read, but had been given amazingly detailed instructions for the use of these artifacts.

Light flickered across the page, and she gave the staff a jostle, snapping the book shut. “There, that should be settled.”

“Nothing happened,” said Greg.

Cora gave him a scathing look. “The Phantom Legion is not here. What would you expect to see from a remote instruction to render mortals invisible to them?”

“Ah…right.”

Transferring the staff to one hand, she began conjuring objects into her other and tossing them to each of the adventurers in turn.

“These devices are just access nodes keyed to a network,” Cora explained as she did so. “I will have the master key. I will try not to jump you anywhere by surprise, but we’re heading into a volatile situation, so prepare yourselves for anything. Riocco, I’m giving you an extra one; if you’re able to get closer to the Princess than I can, give it to her. Once she has a node we can theoretically port back out, but in practice that whole place will be covered by wards laid by the White Wind herself, so we may have to gain some physical distance before we can do so. Be ready to fight our way out.”

“Understood,” Riocco said, tucking the second node into one of their armored and padded belt pouches. “Ah…why me?”

“To be brutally frank, you seem least likely to die if everything goes sideways.”

“No, yeah, that tracks,” Greg agreed.

The nodes themselves were, to the naked eye, just palm-sized pieces of glass and brass roughly the shape of a spinning top—in fact, easy to mistake at a glance for exactly such a child’s toy. That suggested they were local; while many enchanters favored a flashier magical aesthetic and the Rhiva liked to clearly label everything, Valefolk enchanters had a habit of crafting magical devices that were easily disguised as mundane objects.

“We will arrive surrounded by bandits,” said Cora, conjuring the master key into her free hand; its design was similar to the attached nodes, but more elaborate and featuring several overlapping dials, while still able to pass at a glance for the same kind of toy. “I’ve done the prep work to get them used to me, but they’re still bandits, and may…overreact. Protect yourselves but exercise restraint. Unless you want to try fighting three dragons and a legion of undead alone, we’ll need them. Also, it’s always better to hire an actual portal mage if you can; teleporting by artifact can cause nausea and dizziness. It passes quickly, but…hold onto your butts.”

“In the name of justice!” all three oddly-dressed adolescents on whom her plan depended chanted in unison, raising their weapons—or in Greg’s case, a slide whistle linked by a rubber hose to the thing on his back.

Cora sighed through her teeth and began turning the dial with her thumb.

***

It had been a pleasantly peaceful day, until some fool started trying to send him messages. The attempted intrusions rippled against the wards protecting his tower, each blocked sending alerting him with both a soft audible chime throughout the structure and a tangible sensation in the back of his head. These annoyances would simply have to be endured; only an absolute idiot disabled the alarms of his wards because listening to them go off was unpleasant.

Had he been in the middle of an experiment that required concentration, Shadrach would have triangulated the source of the attempted messages, ripped open a portal to their location, and dissuaded them from ever bothering him again. Fortunately for the presumptuous fool in question, this occurred during his exercise hour.

His feet were propped high in the air behind him, toes curled around a smooth wooden bar wrapped in leather secured aloft with tiny portals at each end affixing it to a location with different gravity, while he did one-handed push-ups. The soft pings were slightly obtrusive, but not so much that he couldn’t keep count of reps. Any mage worthy of the title had at least that much mental discipline.

Much more obtrusive was the suddenly scream of alarms as something tore right through his entire ward network with the force of an asteroid sinking a continent. Shadrach instantly teleported himself upright into a fighting stand, calling his staff to hand, as a portal was ripped open right in the middle of his tower and a tall, voluptuous, horned and clawed menace stalked though.

“Shadrach Meshabedan! How dare you screen my sendings?” Emeralaphine roared, her tail lashing so hard he was surprised it didn’t create audible whipcracks. “And would it kill you to put on a shirt?”

“Wh—that was you? Why the hells would—and hey, if you don’t want to see people undressed, don’t barge into their homes!”

“You presume to chastise me, whelp? What manner of imbecile ignores a sending spell? Do you know how few mages are able to do that?”

“A lot more than the two hundred years ago that I gather was the last time you checked! Every royal court has somebody who can—well, maybe not in the Vale states, but every significant country has a mage who can send. And they all pester me! Always wasting my time trying to bribe me with shit I don’t need to do shit I don’t want to.”

“All right, shut up, I wouldn’t have time for your tedious backstory even if I wasn’t in a hurry. I am here to purchase your services.”

“Why?” Shadrach screeched, clapping a hand over his eyes. “Why must I keep doing chores for your ridiculous family? Anything I can do, you can do…faster and more easily.”

“Yes, but I am busy.”

“You are the living opposite of busy!”

“I am fully occupied with matters which are none of your concern, boy! My family requires aid of the kind only a skilled mage can provide, and I am fully occupied elsewhere at the moment. Therefore, you will do it, and I will give you this.”

She opened another portal, and for the split second it existed, he beheld exquisite perfection. The way it sliced so flawlessly through an incredibly potent ward network of her own, while also managing the barrier with the wards upon his tower, bypassing both without permitting them to interact or disrupt one another… Raw power in preposterous proportions, wielded with skill beyond his own highest ambitions.

Beauty unimaginable.

And then he was distracted from that because she thrust one claw into the tiny portal, pulled out a book, and levitated it over to him.

Shadrach grasped it instinctively, looked at the cover, then in the next instant clutched the volume with both hands, suddenly having to forcibly restrain himself from hyperventilating.

“Planes of Plentitude?” he gasped, wheezing. “You have a copy of—this whole time, there was an actual copy of Planes of Plentitude just…right there, two mountains over!?”

He was suddenly painfully conscious that he hadn’t washed his hands in…at least half an hour. He should not even be touching this.

“Two copies,” Emeralaphine said smugly. “My copy is personalized and autographed by the author—the only copy not hidden behind one of her elaborate multi-dimensional treasure hunts. I helped Archmage Veralda with much of the central research. There is no circumstance in which you’re getting my copy, it has sentimental value. That one was secured in one of her puzzle vaults in one of the more exotic alternate dimensions; I went and extricated it because the mage who was on its trail was the most odious little cretin imaginable. I could not bear the idea of him getting his greasy mortal hands on my old friend’s research. Anyway, do as I say and you may have that one.”

Shadrach was still himself; he couldn’t deny the urge to comment that apparently she wasn’t in too much of a hurry to narrate her tedious backstory. He restrained it, though, because cranky dragons tended to kill everyone—or worse, she might take the book back.

“What is it you need?” he asked, still clutching Planes of Plentitude in trembling fingers.

“My husband is in a situation and will require support. You will find, join, and assist him with…whatever.”

He tore his greedy eyes from the cover of the book to stare incredulously at her. “What? Just…what? That doesn’t even require a portal mage! What in the hells—”

“Obviously I don’t need you to brush his hair or clear the plumbing,” she said contemptuously. “We are dealing with an actual situation, boy. A small revenge god with a vendetta against Kaln is scheming plots against the household. The other consorts and I are busy untangling its webs on the other side of the world, which it arranged for the sake of unleashing some mischief on Dragonvale itself in our absence. So no, I cannot tell you with any more detail what to expect, but some divine buffoonery is surely in the process of unfolding. The thing is a meticulous planner, and you are a factor for which I don’t believe it has planned. So…go play adventurer. Stick your meddling fingers into the pie, throw some spells around, make a mess of whatever is being attempted by whoever you find harassing my husband. Keep him safe and ensure his success until we return.”

“If you were anyone else,” Shadrach said hoarsely, “or were offering anything less—”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Emeralaphine sneered, flicking her claws in his direction. “But I’m not, and I am, so you will. Hop to, boy. I will return as soon as I am able; make yourself amply useful until then, or we shall have to discuss reparations, a nuisance for which no one has time. I have to go deal with bureaucrats, so count your blessings.”

She ripped open another portal with casual disregard for the meticulous ward network in his tower which should have prevented anyone doing that, stepped through, and then was blessedly out of his hair.

“Bureaucrats,” he scoffed at the empty air. “Emeralaphine? Bah. Where could she possibly be going, Shamissar?”

He teleported deeper into the tower to secure the book and grab a shirt. And then…to work.

***

Both the transit and the initial contact with the united bandits of Dragonvale went faster and more smoothly than Cora had implied—and feared. In minutes, they were striding through the forest, accompanied by a few of the gang’s central leaders and surrounded by a veritable army. An army in size, but veritable because there was no marching or general order, just a vast mob of well-armed individuals ambling along in the wake of the blistering pace Cora set.

“Lady Cora,” Riocco murmured, stepping close to her. “I know they’re just bandits, but… Well, one has to act with some personal honor, or there’s no point in life. Are this lot joining us under false pretenses?”

“Hah!” Cora barked with bitter amusement, not troubling to lower her voice. “Oh, I was fully prepared to lie to them, but it proved unnecessary.”

“I believe the word you want is ‘unsuccessful,’ m’lady,” Gunhild commented lightly, striding along at Cora’s other side with that musket over her shoulder.

“That document I gave her is a treaty signed by the Queen, assigning her the fief of Dragonvale,” Cora said, eyes dead ahead as she strode along at a pace that some of the bandits were having trouble keeping up with. “She thinks she’s going to trade it to the dragons for patronage. I wish her and the lot of them all possible luck with that, in all sincerity. I have made it no secret that I think they’re going to end up as so much ash, treaty and all. Sometimes allies are formed because their interests align for a moment. Don’t get attached.”

“I wasn’t particularly concerned about that, but thank you for the warning,” Riocco said, glancing around. Greg and Lilith drew closer as if half-expecting to need to protect their leader from behind.

“Now, now, lass, this is the Vales,” Gunhild said, grinning. “D’know know the difference between bandits and adventurers? It’s whether you’ve drawn the ire of some scheming noble. You’ll find quite a few of your erstwhile comrades among our ranks. And in the fullness of time, you may find yourself among them. Best not to judge, aye?”

“I’m not a lass.”

“Ah! A thousand pardons, my young friend. I’ve no eye for detail and little for faces, that’s more or less how I ended up a bandit. Slow a moment, Lady Cora, we’re coming up on a little fortification I had my folk erect across the path. We’ve begun to have some minor trouble with Imperial scouts for—”

Cora did not slow, or even gesture as she cast. A spell circle simply appeared in the air along one side of the log wall stretching across the half-overgrown road; from it emerged a gigantic glowing blade, which stabbed first at one side of the posts holding the barricade up, and then the other.

Slashed free of their supports, what had been a wall became a cascade of logs, several of which started rolling in the direction of the oncoming horde, causing numerous outcries and several attempts to flee.

This time Cora did gesture, raising one hand and producing a boulder from midair. It flew straight up the road at a speed as if launched by a trebuchet, smashing and halting the logs. Three more such giant rocks she launched, which proved sufficient to not only stop them rolling toward the bandits, but shatter them enough to clear a space through the middle.

Cora snapped her fingers, and all four boulders vanished.

“There’s an old Timekeeper staircase right to the lair,” she said. “You know where it is, I trust?”

“Aye,” Gunhild replied, matching her unconcerned tone. “Been long enough since the Timekeepers that the land itself is different—we’ve a bit of a climb to reach what’s now the base of it. And a squeeze through a rockfall about midway up. Both’ll slow but not stop us, unless anybody’s clumsy enough to fall down the mountain. In which case they’d’ve been no help against the undead anyhow, so it all pans out.”

“Hn,” Cora grunted.

Riocco glanced back at their comrades, both of whom looked tense, but no less resolute than when they had first set out. The Lone Wolves deliberately slackened their pace a touch, just enough to let Cora and Gunhild pull ahead.

“Conjurers are most often considered logistical mages,” commented Oswald, one of the two bandit spellblades, as he drew up abreast of the three adventurers, grinning amiably. “Y’know, most often called upon to generate resources and materials. There’s a good living in it! Plenty of conjurers never feel the need to branch out from that. So some folk forget that if you’re creating material, all you have to do is add velocity to your spells, and… Boom. Takes an…interesting kind of person, to become one of the deadliest types of battlemage when they could just as easily sit around collecting a lavish salary and never chipping a nail.”

“I can’t see Lady Cora fitting into that life,” Riocco said dryly, glancing at him sidelong. “Could you?”

“The difference between myself and the likes of Lady Cora…or you…is opportunity,” Oswald replied, his grin fading into a flat stare.

They shrugged. “Opportunity is a lesser concern than destiny.”

“They’re the same, my young friend. May you come to learn it before you’re forced to.”