NPCs (18 page)

When he began walking again, it was with a renewed vigor. Eric needed to move, needed to feel his body bend to his will. It was the only way to get out of his head and right now
,
he needed that space. He wasn’t quite ready to face the revelation looming over him. He wasn’t sure how one even got ready for that sort of thing.

All he was certain of was that it felt good to move quickly, so that’s what he did.

* * *

Gabrielle swung her axe rhythmically, focused on nothing but the timing. Not the strength of the blow, not the angle of the blade, none of it. This was about feeling comfortable with the heft of the weapon in her hands, about learning how each muscle through her back and shoulders worked during various parts of the swing. Soon
,
she would add attention to form, making certain she knew how the grain of the wood should feel against her palm
,
and
how
the tug of the axe should pull on her arms. Soon, but not quite yet.

Grumph sat a few
yards
away, the book of spells resting open in his lap. The two of them were at what remained of the arena, which had fallen into debris and splinters not long after the last demon was beaten. The hurried, shoddy construction had barely held together for the fight; once time went to work on the weakened supports
,
all but the sturdiest bits collapsed. Despite this, the arena’s location was remote from the town, and there weren’t many people eager to linger about
,
so it made for a peaceful training facility. There were others sprinkled about, but they kept enough distance to allow Grumph and Gabrielle to focus.

Not that focus was helping all that much. Despite his best efforts and several hours’ concentration, Grumph was no closer to making the final spell in his book work. He understood most of the components presented, but there was something he was missing, something that made it all fit together. At first, he thought it required more contemplation, but the longer he sat without progress
,
the more he suspected he had reached his limits as a pretend wizard. The real ones trained under other mages, learning magic from the very basics. He’d done exceptionally well to fake it through four spells; perhaps this was the gap that only training would be able to bridge. Four would be enough to sell his cover, he hoped. His only other option was to find a spell caster to teach him, and that was assuming he even had the potential to learn. Grumph had poured enough mugs of ale for drunken wizards to know that very few were able to master every level of magic. The vast majority of them hit a wall that was nearly impossible to break through. It was possible that this was his.

“You going to sit there and read all day or you going to actually cast a spell?”

Grumph glanced up to find Gabrielle staring down at him, skin shining in the sun thanks to
the
coat of sweat she’d worked up. The blade of her axe was on the ground and she was leaning against the shaft as she rested. From the heaviness of her breathing, Grumph estimated she’d be able to start swinging again in mere moments. The young woman’s progress was remarkable.

“Sit,” Grumph sighed, closing the book. “Last spell is beyond me.”

“What about the others?”

“Them
,
I can cast.”

“I know you
can
cast them, I’m asking why you
aren’t
casting them,” Gabrielle said. “Training is training, whether it’s an axe, a bow, or mystical arts. Doing something over and over will make you better at it.”

Grumph readied a retort then swallowed it. She made a sound point. He’d been looking at magic as somehow different from the other pursuits he’d undertaken in his life, but there was no reason it should be. If he applied hard work and constant drilling, he could improve at it. Perhaps this was even the method needed to overcome his lack of understanding on the final spell.

“Good point,” Grumph admitted, pulling himself out of
his
sitting position and reopening his book. He marched over to a part of the
demolished
arena that had once held practice dummies. A few remained, battered and broken, but still somewhat recognizable as humanoid in shape.

With a few flicked gestures and a mumbled word, Grumph hurled a bolt of magical cold right into one dummy’s center of mass, engulfing part of it in a sheet of ice. He then stepped to the side, took aim, and repeated the feat once more. Gabrielle was right: one improved through practice.

And Grumph had catching up to do.

16.

The Keening Wyvern was an actual restaurant, not an inn with a bar and kitchen attached. It stood three stories tall and offered private rooms for dining, drinking, or whatever else one might care to indulge in. It was crafted from thick, dark wood that seemed to glow in the light of the candles that illuminated the rooms. The tables were set with actual tablecloths, rough though they were, and silverware was laid out next to the plates in an orderly fashion, the way one might expect at a formal occasion.

A place such as this could have never survived in Maplebark. Only the mayor would be able to afford it regularly, and he had his own dining hall that was of comparable splendor. No, this was the sort of establishment that was only able to thrive in a town with lots of adventurers funneling through, dropping their gold as easily as they dropped the indigenous creatures they happened to encounter in the wild.

Grumph, Thistle, Gabrielle, and Eric all took in the sights of the restaurant as they entered, making note of various bits that interested them. It was quite impressive and served to make them wish they had clothing slightly more suited to its grandeur instead of the dusty traveling clothes they were adorned in.

If the woman working the front took issue with their garb, she kept it well hidden. She led them up the polished staircase to the third floor then down the sprawling hallway toward an open door. Already seated in the room were Sierva, a human male with copper-colored hair, and a dwarf with a large club strapped to his back. Though they’d shed their armor, Sierva’s companions were easily recognizable from the tournament.

Sierva rose upon spotting her friend, offering a wide smile. “Thistle, glad to see you once more. Please, won’t all of you join us?”

The group obliged, sitting in chairs across from the other three and getting comfortable. In the time it took them to get settled, the woman who had led them up slipped away, shutting the door softly behind her.

“Well then,” Sierva said once everyone was seated. “I believe we should start with introductions. I am Sierva, as Thistle knows, and these are my companions: Galdrin and Chuff. Galdrin is the tall one, and Chuff has the beard.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Galdrin greeted. His voice was more measured than it had been the previous day, which was understandable since he was no longer rallying troops against a demon attack.

“Greetin’s,” Chuff said. He sounded much the same, but that was par for the course. Conventional dwarven behavior tended to present its broad emotional range in subtle, understated ways. To an untrained observer, dwarves might consistently sound the same, but to a fellow dwarf, there was a symphony of feelings hidden amongst the inflections of words and twitches of the eyes.

“Likewise,” Thistle replied. “My companions are Grumph, Gabrielle, and Eric.” As he spoke each person’s name, they raised their hands in a half-wave, half-greeting gesture. “We’re journeying to see King Liadon, since we have a summons from him.” Thistle knew he was offering information they hadn’t asked for, but he was determined to cement their story with as many people as he could, no matter how inconsequential they might be.

“Liadon is fond of tasking adventurers with dangerous work,” Galdrin noted, giving his head a slight shake. “May I ask what you did to earn such an honor?”

“We killed a brood of kobolds that were harassing a town, saving a royal merchant in the process. The summons was his reward to us.” This time, it was Eric who spoke. Before the meeting, it had been agreed that they would seem suspicious if only Thistle seemed to know about their story. Spreading out the details would help their facade.

“Kobolds? Do yerself a favor, when you gat to the kingdom, lead with the demon slayin’,” Chuff advised. “If you go in wit a kobold summons, ye’ll get nothin’ but cellars full o’ rats for the first month.” Despite the dwarf’s strange dialect, most of the table was able to put together his meaning.

“We thank you for your advice,” Thistle replied. “And since you’ve broached the subject we’re all here to discuss, shall we talk about demons?”

The mood of the room quickly shifted. Gone was the flippancy and polite humor; in its place hung a cloud of severity. Sierva leaned forward, setting her elbows on the table and resting her chin atop her knuckles.

“I want to know everything you’ve seen so far. Leave out no details concerning the demons, for even the smallest one could be the clue we seek.”

“Pardon me, but I believe we came here for an information exchange, not a giveaway,” Thistle pointed out.

“You have my word that we will tell you what we know after, but I want your memories pure. There is a chance my information could taint your recollections, so I beg you to trust my promise and speak first.”

Thistle weighed his options. He liked Sierva and she’d shown him nothing but reasons to give her the benefit of the doubt. Still, his minion experience hollered in the back of his mind, urging him to remember that words are often forgotten, and promises easily broken. To trust was foolish, and worse, dangerous. But he needed what they knew. In the last two places they’d stopped, there had been demon attacks. Whether it was coincidence, or they were occurring all over the kingdom, it would be foolish to presume these beasts would be the last his party would meet. Better forearmed with all the knowledge they could muster. Besides, under it all, he got a feeling from Sierva that put him at ease. Whether it was intuition, or the legendary paladin capacity for sensing goodness, he didn’t know; he just decided to take a gamble and trust it.

“Very well,” Thistle said at last. “We will tell you everything we encountered at the goblin camp where we were captured, as well as what we each experienced at yesterday’s tournament.” He turned to Gabrielle, who sat next to him, and gave a subtle nod of his head. Gabrielle cleared her throat once, adjusted her position in the chair, and began to speak.

“After the goblins took us, we were stripped of our weapons and put into cages…”

* * *

By the time the story chain had passed through Gabrielle, Eric, Grumph, and looped back to Thistle, dinner had been served and largely consumed. Sierva’s party had clearly spared no expense, ordering several platters of various grilled meats, ample bowls of vegetables, and even bottles of wine. It made the tale-telling go much more pleasantly, and as Thistle finished his story of being stuck in a demon’s throat, the rest of the table listened with full bellies and open ears.

“Sounds like quite a harrowing experience,” Sierva said. “I commend you for keeping your head. If not for the distraction you provided, we might have lost many more adventurers before that monster was slain.”

“I pride myself on keeping a level head,” Thistle replied. “Now then: you’ve heard all we know. The time has come for you to speak.”

“Very well. What I have is more rumor than knowledge, but rumor that has persisted long enough that it has begun the ascension to the rank of legend,” Sierva opened. “Over the past several millennia, the demon eggs have appeared only a handful of times. In each known occurrence, they hatch, release some variation of infernal monsters on our plane, and kill everyone within a defined area before vanishing.”

“Wait, that’s not right,” Gabrielle said. “Demons kill until they’re slain or banished. They don’t just stop and go home.”

“Normal demons, no, but, as we already know, these are a special breed,” Sierva reminded her. “Usually, demons are summoned through gates or magic, not hatched from gem-eggs, and rarely do they show the sort of tactics and teamwork exhibited by the ones you have encountered so far. These demons are different, special, and their method of destruction is just one aspect of it.”

“You said these types of demons had appeared before. When and where?” Thistle asked.

“The reports are scattered, chiefly because survivors of these incidents are so rare,” Sierva explained. “It is my theory that the attacks have actually happened far more frequently than we realize, but because no survivors were left, it’s been impossible to identify the demons as the killers.”

“All right then, let’s gloss past the wheres and whens, and jump right into the meat of it: why? What you’ve described is more like a wizard’s blast than a demon attack. They appear in one area, kill all they see, and then retreat to some unknown location. That suggests a targeted strike, not demon slaughtering,” Thistle said.

“He’s a quick one,” Galdrin said, pausing from enjoying the last of the giant-snake fritters.

“Quick, and correct,” Sierva added. “Yes, Thistle, you and I arrived at the same conclusion. From the way the eggs appear, to how the demons attack, it all points to a single conclusion: these are effectively bombs, sent to wipe out specified targets. Even yesterday, we saw it at work: despite the plethora of demons released, not one of them ventured outside the tournament arena, despite all the townsfolk so close at hand. The people who fled past its borders reported seeing the small demons chase them to the edge, then turn around to find prey inside the grounds.”

“Maybe I’m missing something, but what does this really tell us?” Eric asked.

“Nothing, unfortunately,” Thistle said, letting out a small sigh. “We now have a better idea of the purpose of the demon eggs; however, we have no idea why the goblin camp, or the tournament, was targeted. One could argue that we’re the thread connecting them. Then again, in both attacks, no demon made any attempt to target us. At the camp, they went after the goblins first, and in the tournament, it was a general melee. If the eggs were for us, the demons should have made turning us into corpses their first priority. Even with as much as we know, that knowledge still leaves us with no clue as to why they’re appearing.”