Arodus 3, 4719

Breachill

Night

We spent the afternoon securing the citadel. Or, rather, securing the parts of the citadel we can access. Obviously, the stairwell is choked with rubble, so there’s no way down to Alseta’s Ring and some untold number of Cinderclaw cultists, but they can’t get up here, either, so the effect is the same: we don’t have to worry about them surprising us. If they had some means of getting up here, they’d have done it by now.

That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway.

“Securing the citadel” makes it sound like the process was simple and easy. I can assure you that it was not.

The skeletons were our biggest problem since they were just plain dangerous. If they ever got out of that room, they’d attack anyone and anything until they were destroyed, which meant they weren’t just a threat to the Bumblebrashers: they were a threat to Breachill and Isger at large. The last thing we wanted to do was turn them loose on the world. Nine Hells, Isger has enough problems as it is.

Because we were outmatched, we arranged bookshelves, tables, and whatever leftover furniture we could find to create a winding gauntlet, then opened the door to let them out. The idea was to pick them off from range as they slowly worked their way to us. Only, it didn’t go quite as planned, because it turned out that they weren’t all that slow.

At one point, Kyira ended up toe-to-toe with one, and she took the kind of hit that most people would not recover from. But Iskaryn was near me, and we tried this thing we’d been practicing, where I cast a spell through her, and let her carry it on. She was able to heal Kyira just enough to get away.

Which means that Iskaryn is even more insufferable than usual, because now she’s useful for something other than lecturing me. And she knows that everyone else knows it, too.

We spent the rest of the day cleaning house. This included the unpleasant duty of clearing out the bodies we left behind the day before, burying the skeletons’ remains, and preparing a pyre for the rest. What can I say? It was grim work.

This morning, we sold off the items we had collected here. Some of those were things the Hellknights had left behind. Others were taken off the bodies of the dead. It was a sum of money I have not seen in a long time. Enough that I could live well, not just live, for over a year.

In many ways, this feels so much worse than anything I have done with my life so far. I’m not a stranger to violence, obviously, but that was an event. A single, albeit horrific, moment. It was something that happened to me. But this? I seem to have found myself in a role that is defined by it, and that profits from it. It’s almost a routine.

This is not something the me in Kerse, or even the me in Macridi, would ever have chosen for herself.

Both would be appalled.

And yet, here I am.

Arodus 4, 4719

Breachill

Night

Guardian’s Way turned out to be an old military outpost that dates back to the Goblinhood Wars. The name makes it sound more impressive than it is, which is little more than wooden platforms and a dilapidated shack among a grove of trees at the base of a cliff. I can only assume it was more impressive when it was new.

We didn’t want any surprises, so I asked Iskaryn if she’d fly ahead and scout around. She agreed, but not without her usual attitude. Right before she took off she turned her head to me and said, “If I die, I’ll haunt you.”

Whatever. I mean, she more or less does that now, so I felt like it wasn’t much of a threat.

We hadn’t gotten very far down the road before she returned.

“You’re back? That’s not good.”

“What?” she replied. “You were wanting me to get shot?”

“Of course not!” I said, rolling my eyes. “We just didn’t expect you to be done so quickly.”

“I’m efficient.”

“Don’t start with me.”

She was back because it didn’t take long to see roughly half a dozen half-orcs, armed with bows, alert and on guard.

Here’s the thing. Guardian’s Way is six miles outside of town, at the end of a road that no one travels because the only place it goes is Guardian’s Way. If you see a group of people armed with bows keeping watch there, odds are good that they are highwaymen.

As it turned out, they were highwaymen.

We split into two groups: Trip and Gath approached from the side, with me not far behind, while the others covered the platforms with long bows from just inside the tree line opposite the meadow. The plan was for Trip to hex the rear guards into a slumber, one at a time, and for Gath to disable them. Then we could take the rest of the guard on two fronts.

I’ve written these words before: things didn’t go as planned. But they went well enough, and when it was done, several of them were dead, and we had one of the bandits and the group’s leader, a hobgoblin named Dmiri, in manacles. They called themselves The Bloody Blades. The name sounded familiar to me, but at the time I couldn’t remember how or why I knew it.

Tarsius was digging through Dmiri’s things when she said, “Damn, you people are worse than my band is! You not even gonna kill me before robbing me?”

Which was, of course, exactly what we were doing, and I’ll admit that it made me uncomfortable. Once we decided to take her prisoner, it seemed like we’d crossed the line between the spoils of war and literally just taking her things. The others didn’t see it that way.

And neither did Iskaryn. Which should not have come as a surprise. Yet it managed to, anyway.

“We have established that they aren’t just innocent in this,” she said. “They are, according to their leader here, the notorious Bloody Blades, and we heard about them on the way here, Aemi. If those men we overheard talking about them were right, there’s even a price on their heads!”

Once she said that, it clicked. There was this boisterous inn along the Conerica River in Elidir called The White Stag, and the Bloody Blades were a topic of discussion at one of the tables. The men sitting there looked exactly like the sort of people who’d hunt others for money, criminal or not.

But of course, Iskaryn wasn’t done, because once she gets on a roll there’s no stopping her. She had an entire discourse on the topic of theft and ownership, and was just getting warmed up. Eventually, she pointed out that Dmiri’s things were probably stolen from her victims, or paid for in stolen coin. In which case, did they truly belong to anyone?

And then it occurred to me that I was being lectured on morality by the bird that probably stole the bracelets I’m wearing.

“Fine,” I said, giving in. “As long as we turn her in or kill her, I don’t care. I just don’t want her running to someone and accusing us of murder and robbery.”

I didn’t think we’d just kill her in cold blood, and fortunately I was right. We decided to turn her in for the bounty. But not before we got a chance to talk to her. And talk, she did.

It turns out, Voz had come across them, too. She hired them. To keep us from following her into the cave.

“It’s just business!” Dmiri said. “I don’t even know you. There’s just some people she says are coming after her to get this great, once-in-a-lifetime reward she’s chasing. We just let her have her shot at it without their—your—interference.”

“Was she alone?” Liberte asked.

“No, she had her…guard…with her, if you can call them that. I don’t argue with someone who walks up with a dozen or more skeletons in their company. I don’t think you would either. But if she gives me a sack of gold, even less, right?”

If that sounds like the sort of statement that would turn heads, you would be correct. And, when we turned her in back in Breachill, I leaned into it. I told the guard captain, “We have disturbing evidence that Voz is involved in necromancy. Specifically, raising the dead. The hobgoblin, Dmiri, saw her enter the caves up at Guardian’s Way with a dozen animated skeletons in her service.”

He slammed his fist on his desk. “I always knew there was something wrong with that woman, but could never find anything actionable until now!”

It was a productive day. I walked into that office with two prisoners, and proof of death on five more. I walked out with enough gold that my share would buy me 10 more months here, and a verbal contract on Voz.

Appalled, indeed.