TD006 - Supply Run (Patreon)

The sigil, in all its many forms, is the heart of casting a spell. The most common form in human lands is that of a circle, and they are often referred to as spell circles as a result. However, forms are possible: lines, geometric shapes or spirals. Each has its own advantages and limitations.

The complicated shape that you see is a kind of language that defines what the spell will do when mana flows through it. The shape defines the spell and matters far more than the materials used to construct the sigil. Whether the sigil is written in blood, carved in bone, crafted out of pure mana or inscribed onto the caster’s soul, the shape must remain the same.

Nevertheless, some consideration must be given to the trade-offs involved with all of these different casting methods. That will be our topic for today.

An Initiation Into the Nature of  Magic - Silas Greenleaf

They had to come back a little sooner than expected. It wasn’t that they had run out of food. Lif had brought more supplies this time, preparing for her guest. She was also starting to think about stockpiling for the winter.

No, it was wine that they had run out of, and Kaliex was impossible to tolerate without it.

Lif made her way towards the village, cautiously and carefully. Kaliex was by her side, muttering to himself at the delay. It had taken the threat of leaving him on the mountain to get him to agree to follow her lead on this.

“There’s no smoke,” he whispered. “So the place isn’t burning down. Looks fine.”

“Something’s off,” Lif whispered back. They were hiding in a copse of trees, near enough to see into the village square, but not enough to make out much in the way of detail. Lif knew this village, though. She’d studied how the villagers interacted, how they moved. Something was wrong.

Not wrong enough to justify going back up the mountain with no wine, though. She slipped into the smithy, Kaliex at her heels.

This time, Kaliex made enough noise coming in to disturb the blacksmith at his work. He looked over at them.

“Back for the stove?” he asked.

“Among other things,” Lif said easily. “Is it ready?”

“Almost. Give me an hour to gather the pieces.”

“No problem,” Lif said. “We’ll come back on our way out.”

The blacksmith grunted. “Heard you took the stranger with you. Friend of yours?”

Lif looked back at Kaliex, who was managing to convey boredom despite being hooded and bandaged once more.

“Yeah,” she said. “Drinking buddy, anyway. That’s as close as it gets, in the city.”

Rhodan looked suspiciously at the covered-up demon. “You going to tell me what you’re hiding under there?” he asked.

“Buy me a few drinks first, old man,” Kaliex shot back.

“Anyway,” Lif interrupted, “Is there anything going on right now?”

The smith grunted. “People are upset. You want the town gossip, go talk to Eadric.”

“Sure,” Lif replied. She glanced over at Kaliex. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see his best customer again.”

  *

“It’s suspicious, that’s what it is!” Eadric exclaimed, the words bursting out before he could even finish pouring their drinks.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call me a what,” Kaliex growled, snatching his cup.

“Not you—though you are as suspicious as they come,” the innkeeper clarified. “It’s what the Baron told us!”

“Oh, well, you can’t trust nobles, eh?” Lif said, relaxing a little. Villagers complaining about their baron was a story as old as time and probably didn’t involve any necromantic cults. “What did he tell you, then?”

“He said that little— I guess that should be Justiciar, now— Elayna headed out in the morning to investigate the villages that have missing people!”

“That… sounds like something a Justiciar would do?” Lif said. “This was her first mission, sounds like she’s eager to complete it.”

“Sera take me, an eager Justiciar,” Kaliex muttered. Lif spared him a glance, amused.

In the slums of Arneholme, people often took advantage of the fact that Holy Seraphara shared half a name with the Draconic Seraphylis. Complaints from devout followers that you were disparaging or praising one could be disarmed by claiming you were talking about the other.

In Kaliex’s case, Seraphylis was an allied god, but not one he should be calling on, while Seraphara was his deadly enemy. Lif wondered if Kaliex had just picked up the habit without thinking about what it meant, but only briefly, because Eadric was still talking.

“She wouldn’t do that,” Eadric told them earnestly. “She didn’t get a chance to talk with everyone on her way up, so she was going to come and see us the next day, after she talked with Lord Kordemor.”

“Well, maybe she planned on doing it when she got back from investigating,” Lif said.

“No, no, you see, there were people coming in from the outlying farms. They were there, but she wasn’t,” Eadric insisted. “She wouldn’t let them miss out on seeing her.”

“Well—”

“And her horse is still there,” Eadric added. “She hasn’t gone anywhere!”

“Um, well, that does sound bad,” Lif agreed. She could tell one horse from another, if they were different colours, but recognising a horse did seem like something country folk would be able to do. “You should maybe send a letter to the Justiciar chapter house?”

Eadric pulled the cask off the bar and set it down underneath with a thump. He glared at Lif.

“What?” Lif asked.

“You know well as I do, that by the time the Justiciars get that letter, everything will long since have finished. Likely all they’ll do is cross one more novice off the register.”

“It’s a dangerous job,” Kaliex put in, sipping at what was left of his wine. He eyed the edge of the bar, wondering if the cask was going to make a reappearance.

“What do you want from me?” Lif asked plaintively. “I’m not a Justiciar.”

“Well now,” Eadric said, leaning in closer. “When a stranger came in, spending lots of money, and not having a way of getting it, we all knew what it meant.”

“There’s lots of ways to get money,” Lif said, frowning a little.

“Aye, but you weren’t looking for land, or to start a farm or a business or any of those things. You were looking to hide.”

“If you’re gonna make accusations—” Lif started to protest.

“No one cares about that,” Eadric cut her off. “Not then, and not now. Ain’t none of us got anything worth stealing. Not for a woman with that much silver, so no one was worried about you taking stuff.”

“But now?” Lif asked.

“Now…” Eadric looked at her challengingly. “Now, we figure that you’re someone who can slip past Baron Khordy’s guards with none being the wiser.”

Lif gave him a sour look. “So all the risks of sneaking into the Baron’s home, without any kind of gain.”

The innkeeper looked at her pleadingly. “She’s just a girl, barely come of age. She’s not wise to the ways of the world, she’s sure to have run into trouble.”

“She’s a Justiciar!” Kaliex snorted. “She could reach into the Baron’s chest and feed him his heart if she wanted. Let’s just head back to Arneholme, Lif. Leave these yokels to their problems.”

The two men glared at each other.

“I knew you were the wrong sort,” Eadric spat.

“An innkeeper who overcharges as much as you do has got no kind of moral high ground to stand on,” Kaliex returned.

Justiciars do have a terribly high mortality rate in their first year, Davethai put in silently. It’s not implausible that something has happened to her.

Lif looked at the two of them, considering her options. Finally, she sighed.

“I guess it couldn’t hurt to take a look.”

Kaliex threw his hands up in the air. “Are you soft because you are a woman, or is it because you are a—” he cut himself off suddenly, realising what he was going to say.

“It’ll be fine,” Lif told him. “A quick in and out, no need to take anything.”

“Try saying that after you get caught,” Kaliex said, scowling.

“I never get caught,” Lif said confidently.

  *

Lif had already cased the Baron’s manor, back when she’d first arrived in Emberfall. It was less of a habit and more of a sound precautionary principle. You never knew when you’d need that sort of information, so it was best to gather it when you could. She’d also investigated the weaknesses of the other buildings in the village, but they were so easily breached that she could hardly call such investigations “casing”.

The manor was another story. Three stories high, the first story was constructed of stone and had no doors or windows. Entry was via a sloped bridge that led to the second story from the ground. It could be raised by chains when there was a need, but it had been left in place for a while.

When the manor was built, there had still been roving bands of Kobolds around, left over from the Draconic Faction’s withdrawal. They weren’t great at sieges, and this level of fortification was generally enough to repulse them.

Lif already knew that the manor didn’t have any enchantments or wards. Enchantments were costly, requiring a mana stone to power them as well as chymeric materials to force the mana into a sigil. Wards weren’t much cheaper. If you were an archmage or a dragon, you could twist the mana into a sigil to do your bidding with an effort of will, but lesser mages needed something physical to work with. Something expensive. You didn’t need a mana stone, but you did need to recharge the wards.

The wards on the mountain had been crafted by a dragon of obscene power, and even greater skill. That they had lasted this long without being recharged was a testament to both of those things, but they would run out of mana eventually. Eventually, the Lost Mountain would be found.

Under the cover of night, Lif didn’t let the mundane precautions that Baron had relied on slow her down at all. She swarmed up the sides of the wall, lodging herself on the roof, tucked away near where a tower pushed itself through the roof like an unwanted mushroom.

So far, so easy; this wasn’t anything that Lif hadn’t done before. The commentary was new, though.

This is interesting, Davethai said. My masters have been on the other end of infiltration attempts like this, but their attempts at stealthy infiltration were conducted quite differently.

“Your previous masters stole things?” Lif whispered quietly. She had learned that Davethai could hear what she said, no matter how softly she said it. It wasn’t useful in situations where people could see her lips, she still looked like a madwoman if she spoke to him. But here, she could speak softly without giving herself away.

They would not characterise it as such, Davethai told her. Rescuing damsals, bypassing the Demon Lord’s defences to confront them… a hero isn’t always acting in the light.

The tower was high enough to risk windows, covered by heavy shutters. Lif was fairly certain that the room behind them was unoccupied, just as it had been when she was looking at the place before. Just in case, though, she started by oiling the hinges.

Oil was part of her bag of tricks that she always carried with her. An expensive chymerical blend, it worked its way into cracks and made sure that they slid silently against each other.

Silence secured, Lif slipped a supple tongue of stiffened leather between the shutters to lift the catch. It came easily, and the shutters swung open without a sound. Lif waited for a second, but no one complained about the cool evening breeze that now filled the chamber.

Lif quickly climbed into the room. She looked around. This was a guest room, and Lif wondered if it hadn’t been used by Elayna when she was here. A Justiciar had to be an honoured guest, did they not?

Habit made her check the room for valuables, and a silvery glint from a dresser made her take a closer look.

Neatly folded under a white tabard graced with the symbol of the Holy Faction was the finest chainmail shirt Lif had ever seen.