[TLQ-B2] 1. Wicked Hunch (Patreon)

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Wicked Hunch

Something terrible had happened.

That was the feeling Nerya couldn’t shake from her head. She stared up at the ceiling. Her eyes burned. She yawned every second, yet her mind wouldn’t let her fall asleep.

Hail peppering her window frame drew her attention outside. Through a slight gap in the curtains, the darkness of the realm waved at her.

Her stomach sank, making her frown. “What could it be?”

Master Circe had always told her not to discard her intuitions.

Most often, a mage’s intuition is no more than the bark of a street dog. Sometimes, it’s like a warning from a Divinity. Never bet on it being the first, child.

So Nerya allowed the sensations inside her to simmer until they forced her out from underneath her blanket.

‘Demons?’ she thought. Another surprise attack? Possible. Likely, even. The demons may yet have other ways into the village. Moreover, Winterforge was already weakened. Another attack on the same scale as before would do them under.

…but that wasn’t it. Not quite. Oh, her dread was related to demons, so her gut told her. Yet it wasn’t in the way she expected.

Her gaze once more turned to the hail knocking on her window. The storm was worsening as it always did a week before the Winter Fest.

“Varrick needs to hurry,” she mumbled.

He’d not yet caught their offerings—

The image of her brother froze in her mind. She saw him leaning outside the central hall, hair in a topknot, white bow slung over his back. The bow was a gift from their father—he’d defend it with his life before losing it. That’s how he was with the rest of their family, too.

…

Nerya jumped from her bed and donned her cloak.

Snow crunched beneath her boots. The sound echoed into the night, accompanied by the low-hanging moon.

Nerya hugged her cloak so the feather lining pushed against her cheeks. ‘Why am I even out here?’

What kind of lunatic left her bed in the middle of the night on a hunch? Varrick was a dickhead at the best of times, but he was her brother. She knew him. He wouldn’t ever betray the benefactor of their Mother, even if it was to save her life. How unthankful, ungrateful a vermin would he have to be?

…

Despite her mind’s best efforts to stop her, she continued heading for Levi’s home. ‘I’m just making sure, that’s all.’

So she convinced herself as a cold gust whistled overhead that made her look up at the moon. In spite of the uneasiness in her stomach, she found herself smiling.

But a few nights ago, she’d been making this exact same walk, for the exact same person. The shivering priest had been completely out of his element. He was thin as a stick. Didn’t have the ‘warriors’ spirit the men of their village appreciated in their sons…

Until someone was in danger. If it was to save another, Levi wouldn’t hesitate to jump into battle, nor shy away from confrontation. Nerya appreciated that about him. She was certain Varrick did, too. That’s why it was so absurd that she was even doing this.

Turning the corner to Levi’s home, she sighed. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

Her steps paused the moment the living quarters came into view. Three men of their village were standing outside. Botan, Diu, and Ren. Rowdy men, when they’d had a few too many drinks, but otherwise reserved. They were well known as a trio in their village. They’d all been born on the same day, and had been the closest of friends since they could walk. It was also the reason Father had stationed them here together.

‘Huh. Did Father increase the security?’ Of the three, one had to stay inside at all times to make certain no teleportation spells or other shenanigans went unnoticed.

The guards, who were whispering amongst each other and having a giggle, whirled around at her approach.

Nerya waved. “Good evening.”

“Good evening, Princess,” they echoed in tandem. “Anything we can do for you?”

They’d been standing on the side of the entrance but now moved so they were barring the door. Nerya frowned at that but didn’t think much of it.

“I’m here to check on our friends,” she said. Now, she was only a few steps from the men and the entrance. “Mind stepping aside?”

The men shared a glance. For some heartbeats, the cold gust overhead was the sole sound.

Their faces set, and three steel shafts with a pointed tip barred the entrance. “I’m sorry, Princess,” Botan said, “but we cannot do that.”

“Pardon?”

“Chief’s orders,” Diu continued. He was standing on the right of the trio. “No one’s allowed inside. That includes you.”

Father had given no such order. If he had, she would’ve heard about it.

White clouds trailed from her nostrils as she exhaled. “Botan, look at me.” The shortest of the trio, with his hair up in a bun, was already looking at her, but she made sure he was staring in her eyes. “Did my brother put you up to this?”

From the way his chin lowered an inch and his neck muscles tensed, she knew it to be true without him confirming it. Nerya rubbed her fingers over her eyes and pinched her nose bridge. She allowed the quiet that followed to exist for a few breaths.

“No, it can’t,” she mumbled. “He wouldn’t.” She looked back up at the guards. “Botan, please tell that he wouldn’t.” All at once, like an erupting geyser, emotions pushed from her core into her head, and water drops glistened as they fell down the side of her cheeks. “Please,” she begged.

Botan’s posture closed as he broke eye contact. “Please do not blame him alone, Princess. He did what’s best for the village—”

“What’s best for the village?!” Her voice broke.

Botan and the two others shied away like she’d hit them.

“He saved our Mother, the wife of your Chief! Healed our clansmen!“ Her arms swept the air like a dagger. “Have you no shame, any of you?!”

They didn’t speak. Merely kept their gazes pointed at the ground as they kept blocking the entrance.

The sorry sight of them. Like they were the victims here, dried the tears in the corner of her eyes. What took their place was an anger colder than the air on the highest peak of the mountains.

“Where did he take him?” she asked calmly.

“We cannot tell you, Prin—”

“Botan.”

The guard cut off and gulped at the way she said his name.

Taking a deep breath, Nerya stepped forwards and placed a hand on his shoulders. “Where did he take him?”

The guard stammered, but as his lips were about to move, Diu placed his hand on Botan’s other shoulder.

Flakes of snow drifted from the heavens onto Nerya’s robe as Botan stopped trembling.

“I see,” she said. “So that’s how it’ll be.” She released him and looked away.

Within her, a volcano of emotions tried to erupt. She pushed down on it all. Her pupils dilated and she asked: “Have you ever heard the name Circe?”

“Of course you have,” she finished for them. “She was infamous while she was here.” A crazed woman. A witch. The names for her were numerous and none of them flattering. “Do you remember what she did to Rock, Botan?”

The guard swallowed. “…I do, Princess.”

Beside them, Diu leaned closer to Ren and whispered: “‘eard she froze his balls off.”

“What? Didn’t he only steal a cookie?”

“She was a woman of examples,” Nerya nodded, then turned on the three men. “She taught me everything she knew.”

After letting the revelation settle, she whispered: “I’ll ask you one last time: Where did Varrick take him?”

Botan turned to the side for support. His allies had gone as white as him. The hand on his shoulder had slumped. The grip on their weapons has loosened. What good were their weapons anyway? Their opponent was the Princess. She’d freeze them, balls included, before they could so much as raise their arms…

But Botan’s hold on his spear tightened. This wasn’t about them. This was about their village. So what if the Princess could dismantle them in a fight? She was not the monster her mentor was. They would survive, and so would their families.

The guard turned away from his friends and back to the Princess. “Princess, I’m—” his next words got stuck in his throat.

Nerya Ebonfrost was the village’s pride. Every boy who’d grown up at the same time as her, and if they were honest, some elder boys as well, had dreamed of being the one to receive her hand in marriage. But with the Chief being who he was, it was just that: a dream. A child’s fantasy.

Her hair trickled down the base of her neck like a rivulet, its touch soft, the surface glittering similar to velvet. When she’d pass him in the courtyard with a smile and said: “Good morning, Botan”, an inviting smell of frost lilies followed her passing, leaving a man like him to think: ‘she remembers my name!’

That was the essence of the Black Pearl of Winterforge, princess of the Ebonfrosts. A kind soul, who went out of her way to remember the name of a low class soldier like himself.

But as Botan stared into her eyes, his lungs contracted and didn’t allow any air through. Whatever the cold glow in her pupils was, it was not kindness. Merely…resolve. A resolve not unlike his own, which had welled up in his stomach and propped up his chest.

The resolution to do what was necessary, no matter the cost.

His shoulder lowered with the weight of her hand pressing down. A shiver rippled from his head to his toe. Botan considered, very carefully, his next words. For they may be the last he ever uttered.

The spider golem’s legs punched through the ice. Nerya clutched her cloak. Her sight was fastened on the distant horizon despite the darkness keeping her from seeing past a few feet.

‘Father…please let me make it.’

He’d not been there when she’d rushed into the house to get him, leaving her to rush after her brother alone. Well, not wholly alone.

“It should be up ahead, Princess!” Botan yelled. His voice droned out into the early morning, whose coming was heralded by a snowfall growing heavier with the hour.

Nerya knew where the lodge was, but she’d taken him with her to be sure.

‘The Warden’s undead wasn’t there.’ From what Botan told her, it’d left together with Levi and Varrick. Her gaze narrowed. She’d seen the big orc’s power firsthand. Not only that, but it also carried more undead with it at all times. ‘Can Varrick really beat that thing?’

Surely not…but if the other members of their clan charged the beast with abandon, it might be possible. But that would cost them their lives.

Mana curled inside her, and she spurred on her golem.

Shadows lightening in the first rays of morning light warped into the back of a square home. Nerya leapt from her golem’s back as it slowed down and pulled up to the side of the home.

“Varrick!” she yelled. The scream echoed across the mountainside. Unanswered.

Behind her, Botan also jumped from their steed and fell in step behind her, head swivelling. “I think he’s already gone, Princess. He left more than two hours ago.”

Which meant his plan must’ve already come to fruition.

Biting her lips, Nerya rushed past the side of the log cabin towards the front…and came up short. A dozen shadows loomed near the entrance. One towered over the others. Heartbeats passed. The shadow remained unmoving.

“…Warden?” Nerya asked.

None of the shadows turned, but by now Nerya was certain the undead the Warden controlled when addressing them was among them.

“Warden,” Nerya said with more gusto as she looped around and came to stand in front of the soldier, albeit a safe ways away.

Not so much as a muscle twitched. The undead’s eyes didn’t even move to regard her presence but kept gazing into the distant north.

Nerya turned over her shoulder. There were marks in snow. Multiple.

“Is that where they went?” she asked.

No response.

Botan, scared to be too close to the undead, had seen it a good idea to remove himself from its presence all together and headed inside the cabin. He stopped in the doorway.

“Princess, in here!”

Nerya peered around the undead, then sped towards the cabin. “What is it?”

The guard lifted a lantern from its hook in the wall and lit the match. Warm hues fell on the faces of the frostguards, whose eyelids closed against the light.

“Jaeger!” Nerya rushed forwards and slid onto her knees. With the most speed she could muster, she untied the knot around his wrists and legs. “What happened? Are all of you alright?”

“What happened…” Jaeger grunted as he rubbed his free wrists together. “You’re one to ask.”

Some of of the frostguards were tied up like hogs, while others only had their wrists bound behind their back. ‘No,’ Nerya realised. They’d all been tied up like hogs, but they were in the process of escaping when she arrived.

‘He did a shoddy job.’ Which wasn’t like Varrick. It spoke to how much of a hurry he was in.

Nerya untied the last frostguard and turned back to Jaeger. “I’m asking because I don’t know. Did my brother do this?”

“Him and a dozen others of yer clan,” another guard spit. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted ya!” His eyes flashed and he stepped forward—

Jaeger pulled the guard back. “Slow down, Drake. You couldn’t beat her if you tried.”

From his expression, Drake remained intent on testing that proposition.

“You weren’t in on it?” Jaeger said.

“No,” she said. “It was my brother’s plan. Though I’m not certain how many he’s managed to convince to join his cause.”

“And what cause is that supposed to be?” Jaeger asked. “Levi was out there some time ago. Where is he?”

Her gaze turned to the floor. Her insides churned at the mere thought of the words which had to leave her mouth and her nails tried their best to bite through her flesh in spite of her gloves.

“He wants to sacrifice him,” she got out through gritted teeth.

“Sacrifice him?”

“It’s…complicated.”

“I’m a good listener,” Jaeger said.

She sucked on her lips. What should she do? Any lie she told would be obvious. Varrick’s actions, whatever reason he had for them, were already incriminating. He’d face years in prison, at the very least, just for assauting the frostguards. Let alone what he was about to do to Levi…

Near the entrance, Botan shuffled in place. The frostguards glanced between each other.

“If I were you, Nerya,” Jaeger said, “I would not withold information.” He glanced outside. “Right now, we can still change what is about to happen. However, once that’s done–”

There’d be no going back.

She exhaled. “Can I speak with you alone?”

“Alone?” Drake snarled. “Jaeger, dunt let this whoar–”

The captain of the guards raised his hand. With gaze narrowed on her, he said: “Please give us the room.”

And while his guards vehemntly disagreed, they stepped outside.

Nerya righted an upturned chair and flopped down. Her fingers raked through her hair. “Please give me a moment.”

“That bad, huh?” Jaeger righted a chair himself. “Take your time. That said, we should probably leave here sooner rather than later.”

“You’re right.” Chest expanding with a deep breath, she launched into her explanation. At first, she had the mind to still keep some part back, but the moment she started the words began to flow out on their own, and the pressure on her chest lightened like a titanic weight had been removed.

She allowed the silence to exist after she finished.

Jaeger closed his eyes. “So he wants to hand over Levi to save your Mother?”

“And our village,” she added. After another calming breath, she looked up and asked: “Do you think I can still make this right? The Warden…she’d understand, wouldn’t she?”

Jaeger stared out the window. The snow had picked up again, as it always did in the North. “I don’t know whether you can still save your brother. Even if we thwart his plan, for assaulting a group of Frostguards, especially one on a mission that he was meant to guide, he will be sent to Vrost for trial. At a guess, he would face five years in prison. Minimum.”

Nerya placed a hand in front of her mouth to stop a cry from escaping. She could not contain the tears welling up in her eyes. It was as she’d feared.

Jaeger continued. “However, this is what I can say for certain: if Varrick succeeds. If Levi is captured, dies while being held hostage, and the Warden finds out, then Nerya…” he waited until she faced him.

“Then Winterforge is doomed.”