People were scrambling around the pink lady- Riala, assuming she’d been lucid enough to get her name right before she toppled onto her face- but I frankly thought everyone was overreacting. I approached Evija, who had just consumed some sort of fast-acting potion. It helped stitch her guts back together after having a spear impale her to a wall, but clearly things still hurt.
I helped her stand steadily. “I need your opinion on something.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Lay it on me.”
“As one of the injured parties here,” I said. “Even if you’re mostly un-injured now…” un-injured is of course what happens after you get injured and it goes away, compared to uninjured which is just you not being injured. I guess it wasn’t clear though. “Recovering. How do you feel about the whole situation? I’m not a good metric for determining if this is bad.”
She grunted. “If you’re asking if I’m going to raise a fuss, don’t worry. I knew the job had risks.” She straightened, but that appeared to hurt. “I just didn’t quite think they’d be like this.”
“You can raise a fuss if you want,” I said. “You were stabbed.”
“Eh. She seems too important for that. Though you’ve gotta negotiate for concessions.”
Healing people you injured wasn’t as net neutral as it seemed. Concessions could be good. “... Any particular kind of magic you want to learn?”
“I was thinking something for the mission. Like access to later volumes of Heroic Curses.”
I frowned. “Pretty sure Yalith would let us have the ones she has access to anyway.”
“Yeah, well… pinkie isn’t from Fort Seire, I don’t think.”
“But they know her name,” I pointed out.
As it turned out, Riala did have more potions. And she wasn’t even that hurt. It was just the adrenaline wearing off… and the stun shots, of course. It was probably bad to get hit by those repeatedly, but it was still better than the alternative. Pretty sure we could have filled her full of holes, magical protections or not.
“Nnngh!” the pink woman waved off the people crowding around. “No more potions. You have to give them time to work.”
Riala’s body stood up in an unnatural way. She could apparently use her telekinesis to prop herself up, but she might not be able to stand straight. Oh, but nobody else was supposed to know that, were they?
Her eyes settled on me. Green. Radioactive green… including a glow that might have been magical aura. I hadn’t noticed that earlier, but I was busy dealing with various sharp lengths of metal.
“So…” she stood a bit straighter. Maybe those potions were catching up. “What happened in there?” she gestured to the building we had infiltrated.
… were we just going to gloss over the part where she attacked us? Inasyah was my official manipulator, and she seemed fine with it for the moment.
“Those inside had stolen some tomes,” Yalith explained. “Turlough helped track them down.”
I nodded. “We knocked them out. We managed to retrieve three of the five, and this fellow did something with the other two.” I was glad we left the books inside on the counter where they weren’t speared or in danger of being hit by lightning. “This one probably holds the secret,” I said. Meanwhile, I dragged the guy who’d done Storage shenanigans out.
I could probably retrieve whatever books he had with Advanced Spatial Magic. Certainly, with his own abilities suppressed and him restrained it would be easier. But it might be a little bit risky to do that since I couldn’t make it look normal.
“Let me see that,” she gestured to the book I mentioned. I kind of expected her to snag it with telekinesis, but maybe she was just being polite.
I handed it over. She looked at it suspiciously. Because it was stolen? She shouldn’t have noticed the ward was faded, right?
But she had manual control over her flow of mana. She might also be sensitive to active spells. I had a handful of things active right now that I wouldn’t be able to explain away. I also hadn’t exactly been subtle when we fought.
Hopefully her memories were fuzzy.
She made the book float in front of her as she dragged the guy forward with Telekinesis. So she was willing to do that. But not with books. Did it have something to do with fine control? She turned the pages manually as the book floated there.
“What did you hit this guy with?” she asked. “He’s out cold.”
“Ah, just slap him,” I said. “He’ll wake up.” No way I could explain Sleep. I wasn’t even sure what category of magic that fell into here. “It doesn’t have to be very hard. Or he’ll wake up naturally in a couple minutes tops.”
As he dangled in front of her, she swung her fist down on top of his head. The guy yelped, then looked up at her. “Ah! Y-y-y-y-” Nobody was able to say that word right today. How frustrating. If they said it properly once, even if it was incomplete in the future Translation could fairly accurately give me what was expected.
What could it be? You of Great Might? Yeoman of Many Spears? You of Great Momentary Anger?
I might have been making up some of those words. Translation was good for extrapolation but sometimes I forced it and it got weird. And sometimes Raglubithex.
Riala let the man drop. “You have three seconds to return the books you concealed.”
“I-I would need to peruse that tome,” he said as he looked up. “And my shackles-”
“What page?”
“Umm… about a third from the back?” He dragged himself to his feet, reaching out for the floating tome.
She smacked his hand away while turning pages with her other hand. “Ah, this should be it. Seems easy enough. Let’s see… Short term concealment, spatial distortion, long term concealment… I’m going to have to throw in a reversal and…”
She sure went through the verbal and somatic components like she was familiar with the spell and not modifying one she’d just found on the fly. How much proficiency did she have with that sort of thing?
At the tail end, there was a little bit of manual control thrown in. Probably because she forgot a targeting component and didn’t want stuff to drop on her toes.
Good thing too, because the guy dropped three suits of armor as well as the two books. There were also several weapons of various sorts that looked kind of like what belonged to the guards.
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Riala turned to Xarrin. “These are the fort’s?”
“Ah… most of them, at least.”
Her eyes turned back towards the sneaky guy, revealing their glow to me again. “In that case, I sentence you to death. For stupidity.”
She shoved him back, and before he could even really protest one of her spears had pierced through his heart.
The angle she had to throw at was extremely awkward, yet she still did it. Which meant she probably hadn’t been trying to kill Evija, despite how it looked. I glanced over to my friend from Extra, and she just nodded.
“You can deal with the rest, Leader of Peace and Violence,” she said to Xarrin. That word was also kind of ‘mayor’, and clearly related to ‘city hall’. Intense eyes settled on me. “What’s your rank? I don’t see your insignia.”
I was almost ready for that question. We had come up with proper cover, after all. I just wasn’t ready for it to be said with the assumption that I was military. Was… everyone supposed to have a rank?
“We’re a detached mercenary group,” I said. “We’ve sort of been drifting around the border regions.”
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be completely suspicious. Riala nodded. “Want to be a Hundred-Man Slayer? Your lieutenant can be promoted up behind you. I can’t set you up as a Thousand-Man Slayer until you complete the required procedures.”
How did one politely turn down… this? It would be nice if Inasyah could whisper helpful words in my ears, but I couldn’t be certain Riala wouldn’t overhear somehow. Obviously we’d be using comms, not actual whispering.
“I am quite pleased with my current status and the freedom of movement it affords,” I said. “I would not want to make a hasty choice.”
“Really?” she tilted her head. “You seemed like the hasty choice type to me. Good combat sense.” She turned to Evija. “You want new armor? I don’t think I have easy access to anything that could stop me, but it would be better than… that,” she gestured.
That. Indeed. I was so lucky that Disguise had managed to keep its form as her actual armor was damaged. The real gear didn’t look at all like the metal breastplates that the Extra agents appeared to have, yet somehow the damage looked approximately right. Or at least, it looked like a damaged metal breastplate with healing skin beneath the deepest layer.
Evija wasn’t quite ready to be directly addressed. “Armor? Well, I find mine adequate enough for most tasks. I was curious about something, but I doubt you can address it.”
“Do you think me unlearned?” Riala raised an eyebrow. She looked upset, but not really upset. Like she thought she was supposed to be, maybe.
“Not at all. It’s just that we heard the information was restricted, so we might not be allowed to access it. But we ran across some knights on the border, and we heard something about a new wave of heroes. I wondered how that whole curse that binds them here worked.”
“Ah. That,” Riala said. “The later volumes are secured in the royal courts.”
“I understand,” Evija nodded. “It was just idle curiosity.”
“Yes. I cannot allow such sensitive information to be spread carelessly. You would have to visit in person.”
Evija’s eyes screamed for help. Fortunately, Inasyah was around because I sure didn’t know the right thing to say. Even odds that Riala would accept a casual ‘oh, I guess we’ll go’ or maybe she’d say it was a joke and we were clearly overstretching this boon.
“None of us have had the honor of visiting the capital,” Inasyah commented. “We have some other comrades that would be quite interested as well.”
“A handful or two dozen, what difference does it make?” Riala shrugged. “After you settle things with the mayor, come find me. I should likely be returning to the capital soon regardless.”
I casually glanced towards the locals we knew. Something about their faces told me that I should know who this woman was. It didn’t seem she was just a personal friend. Maybe a famous general? A Ten Thousand-Man Slayer or some such?
… These people were led by a king, right? That wasn’t something the humans were wrong about?
I was pretty sure I had confirmed that. But Riala could be a noble lady or a princess or something. There were probably a ton of princesses. Those of the Many-Colored Skin should have had the same king for… it sounded like centuries? There were plenty of things she could be besides a princess, but there could also be like fifty of those.
-----
I was back in the comfort of the Library with Yalith and not a single spear tossing pink-skinned woman. “Unfortunately, if we head to the capital we wouldn’t be able to return the tomes in a timely manner…”
“No problem. You can just Teleport them back when you’re done. Though if it’s going to take longer than a year, I’d like to know.”
… Was the capital that far away? No, that didn’t seem right. It was more like… her sense of time was weird. Maybe a year was a normal length of time to borrow a book from a library.
“I can’t Teleport stuff, though.” That was technically true. “Aside from Gift, I guess.”
Yalith grinned. “Ah, Gift. Such an interesting spell. Have you tried to modify it?”
“Not all that much yet. I couldn’t imagine it reaching this far, though.”
“Of course not. The librarians will do that. Though actually, if you only want exactly ten, your copies will cover it.”
I wanted more. Was that greedy? Especially since we were making digital copies of anything we’d gotten our hands on. “... can one of them be Dimensional Smuggling?”
“It sure can! You like that sort of magic?”
“Well, I only just started with Gift.” I wondered if humans did magic differently. If so, we might appear… extremely suspicious to everyone. Speaking of which, why hadn’t Riala called us out on that? She had to know that our weapons were… weird. Maybe the capital was a trap.
But we also needed to go there. We’d have to consult with Malaliel to see if she thought we were crazy, but…
-----
“You’re crazy,” Malaliel said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know of another way to resolve this. Especially not in any reasonable amount of time. This is already stretching very long. But of course, we would not abandon any of our people. The ongoing threat of further abductions is also a concern.”
“In that case,” I said, “What are your plans? If I leave Midnight with you, it will be possible for you all to survive without issue.” He could Gate to get them food even if they ran out of local money, and Shelter just worked. It wouldn’t be a fun period, but it would be safe.
Malaliel clearly took some time to think. “I will need to be there in person. You are not… the greatest judge of truth.”
“Inasyah’s pretty good,” I said.
“She may find truth, but it is not imbued in her very being.”
“Agreed,” Inasyah said. “Malaliel is superior in that regard.”
“And so… we will have to join together.”
“I could protect the teens instead?” Inasyah suggested.
I thought that sounded reasonable. Maybe that meant it wasn’t, somehow.
“Your presence would be missed,” Malaliel said. “Unless you plan to say you have ‘sudden business’ in ‘another city’. But I doubt we could name one.”
“She might not notice,” Inasyah said. Even I didn’t believe her.
I shook my head, not that Malaliel would know. We weren’t doing video calls. “Riala would absolutely pick out that you were missing. I don’t know how she would respond, though.”
“And that is why,” Malaliel concluded, “I must be there. We may have to deal with this Riala along the way. If she were merely prone to violence- like Turlough- it would be easier to handle her. But she seems to have deeper motivations.”
“I’m not that violent. I’ve been using Sleep tons. ”
“How many people have you fought in that fort that aren’t our enemies?”
“... Only two and they both started it.”
“Fine. You’re just a violence magnet, then.”
That didn’t sound that bad. Violence was good for me.
