Art by Melissa Conway and N.A. Soleil
Narrated by Shae Strong and Randell Moore
After three days, enough of the critically-wounded had been flown out that the army was able to pack up and get moving again. In that time, the Golden Paladin’s scouts had located the other necromantic staves and destroyed them, though they’d all been deactivated by the time they were found. The camp remained on high alert, but no further attack came.
Two weeks of travel brought them so deep into territory that the Kingdoms hadn’t seen in several decades that the scouts remained busy, this time surveying the changes and ferrying information back and forth. As the caravan traveled, their ranks swelled with refugees who were willing to aid the effort in some way, and the nightly training regimen broadened its scope to prepare them.
The Golden Paladin spent this time constantly in contact with the various groups that needed his input and direction, though he couldn’t say anyone in his company was more occupied than Hesa. The landscape was speckled with evidence of magical interference, and Hesa needed to note, map, and analyze each case, all on the fly.
“Where are we at?” The Golden Paladin asked Hesa as he held out a chunk of bread he’d spread with her favorite stewed fruit. She took a bite without looking up from the snow of documents covering the table inside the main, large wagon.
“Mm,” she said while she chewed, her gaze tracing the lines of one map, then flicking to a page of notes. “Mana-mutated foliage, areas of physics inversion, more omega zones than you can shake a necromantic stave at.”
“Pardon what is perhaps an ignorant observation, but — that sounds like quite a random assortment of effects.”
Hesa nodded and opened her mouth for another bite. Grinning indulgently, the Golden Paladin obliged. Still not looking up, Hesa shuffled some papers to one side and pointed at a large map covered in neat marks while she chewed.
“It’s exactly that,” she said around the bread. “Random, I mean. It doesn’t fit with Merlin’s M.O. at all — why would he waste the mana he is so desperate to obtain? Some places, like here,” she swept a forefinger across several marks on the map to indicate ruins of villages they’d passed by, “make sense, because we know they’re collecting people to trap as sustenance for the tower confluxes. But here,” she tapped a different mark, “was a spellstorm just … out in a field, for no discernable reason.”
“Is it possible the mages under Merlin are causing these things?”
Hesa sighed and, bracing the heels of her hands on the edge of the table, leaned back in her chair. “The short answer is yes. But those that we’ve found are mostly mana-sick thugs, so I don’t know how much I trust that they’d be capable of such high-level spells.” She glanced up at him finally, her brows knitted. “There is one more likely variable, but I’m not sure how much credence to give it, yet. Have you heard the name ‘Resh’?”
The Golden Paladin thought for a moment. “Actually, I have — I first opened my eyes on this planet to Baleraphon facing off with several mages. Baleraphon called out to one of them, named him Resh, though the individual didn’t stick around long enough for me to get much of a read on him. And, I was understandably a bit out of sorts at the time,” the Golden Paladin finished with a grin.
Hesa turned in her seat to face him, pinning him with an intense stare. “You saw him?”
“Briefly.”
“Shit.”
The Golden Paladin lifted his brows at the unexpected expletive. Hesa didn’t seem to notice that she’d even said it; she was massaging one temple between forefinger and thumb and staring off somewhere to her left.
“Who is he?” The Golden Paladin prompted.
“Ah — Maa’Resh. The scion of the infamous Resh clan, mages who practice all the worst kinds of magic. Maa’Resh is particularly dangerous, both because of his advanced use of blood magic and his lack of connection to shared reality. The mages that attacked Arthur’s Kingdom babbled about ‘right hand Resh’ during their interrogation, so I already had an inkling that he was involved, but I was hoping he was meddling from afar.”
“Him being on-planet complicates things, I take it.”
Hesa groaned and buried her face in her palms. “Quite a lot, in fact. Effective — and more importantly safe — countermagic necessitates some intel about the caster you’re countering. My work just got twice as hard, since now I will have to analyze which mage cast which spell before I can even calculate a foil. I need to know the general percentages of interference, and the trends of magic cast. Did they both have equal hands in the confluxes?
“Neither Merlin nor Maa’Resh are the type to play well with others, so I can only pray to Celestial that their inherent arrogance kept them from actually combining wills. If they have, we are in for a much thornier struggle than initially anticipated.” She glanced up again and finally noticed the bread in his hand. He offered it; she took it, turning to hide the embarrassed glow of her cheeks. “Inform the troops that we’ll need to be stopping for augury occasionally, and adjust the schedule.”
“Yes, my Lady.”
Hesa finds your excess of mana disturbing! More pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place, but our heroes are quickly approaching the first tower — it’s only a matter of time until things get hairy again!
No Metacosm Trivia this time. Instead, have a bonus scene!
The Golden Paladin bowed slightly and turned to leave. Her voice floated after him:
“Oh, and Gorian —”
The Golden Paladin halted at the same instant Hesa abruptly stopped talking. He turned to look over his shoulder at her; she had clapped both hands over her mouth, bread dropped and forgotten. Nearly her entire face was alight.
“You’re not supposed to know that name,” the Golden Paladin said, struggling to keep the warning in his voice and the humor out of it.
He’d never seen the eloquent and sharp-tongued Hesa actually speechless, and couldn’t keep himself from finding it absolutely entertaining — and more than a little cute.
Finally gathering herself, she lowered her hands and said in a choked voice: “I truly don’t know why I said that. It just jumped to my lips. I swear it.”
The Golden Paladin studied the shocked look on her face for a moment more, then sighed and nodded.
“Yes, that sounds about right.”
N.A. Soleil is a portmanteau pseudonym of the two authors' names.
