Chapter 9 - Adventurers

  The ride across the state of Westcoast continued peacefully. Outside the walls of Westridge they travelled past farmland and into rolling planes. They were unable to travel directly to Silverdale as a deep canyon stretched out to the south of the city and they had to go around it, they also couldn’t use a teleport token like they’d used to get to Westridge because they were expensive. Anything that let you use magic from an affinity that wasn’t yours, even temporarily, was worth a lot of money. Still, it was a pleasant enough journey, so they didn’t mind so much.

  It gave both Cal and Meliana time to get used to their new mounts. From what Cal could tell, Meliana’s Root was a perfectly normal, and well trained horse. It did as it was told, when it was told and how it was told.

  Melt however was anything but normal.

  She did things before she was told, better than she was told to do them. It wasn’t just in the evenings when they were bedding them in for the night either, she was so intuitive when they were riding that it was sometimes hard to believe that she wasn’t under some sort of active control spell, though Cal would have no idea how that would work anyway.

  She could tell the difference between him looking around to see what was happening and when he was looking so that she could turn. She sped up when Cal was feeling nervous about potential bandits riding behind them, even before he made the decision. She even side stepped to help him regain his balance when he slipped in the saddle.

  He had never met a horse like Melt before, and he wasn’t sure anyone else in the world had either, short of one of the heroic adventurers of old at least. They always seemed to have special everything.

  Recalling one of the stories, he’d asked Melt if she was secretly a fey that had transformed into a horse, but she’d shook her head and made a noise to indicate that that wasn’t the case.

  Of course that just made Cal wonder more. What kind of horse could understand and answer your questions?

  She was wonderful, but very strange.

  As the group rode on, their routine became comfortable. They would ride all day, talking about their lives, their plans and whatever else came to mind. They would find a place to camp for the night, take care of the horses, cook a meal and go to sleep early so that they could get up early and reach their destination as quickly as possible.

  Some nights, if they had a lot of energy in them still, Cal and Meliana would spar. They could have done anything to use up the energy, but sparring served dual purposes. Not only would they use up their energy, but after six years apart it gave each of them a good idea of how the other fought now.

  It actually gave Cal a third purpose, which was to regain some of his expertise in sword and spellmanship. After five months of fighting drunk it had been well needed to get back into that rhythm. He had been worried that it would take a long time to return to him, but it turned out to be like muscle memory. After fourteen years of extensive use, his skills turned out to be harder to lose than he’d expected.

  The only problem Cal and Meliana had on their week long journey was that it was a long trip with little to occupy them while they were riding. And unfortunately, after six days of talking about old times and what they’d been doing since they last saw each other, they had run out of things to say.

  Cal told her everything up to when he’d met Chell and the others - though couldn’t bring himself to talk about them yet - and Meliana had told him all about her work since leaving the blades. She told him what she knew about her benefactor, though that wasn’t a great deal, and about the jobs she’d pulled, the lives she’d saved.

  He found himself jealous of how well things had gone fore her since they’d last seen each other. Then he felt guilty for feeling that way.

  Eventually though it seemed like they’d asked everything they possibly could and Cal finally asked, “So where is it we’re meeting the rest of the team?”

  “Getting bored of me?” She asked, amusement in her voice. Cal gave her a flat look and she grinned. “Tomorrow morning we should get into Canyonvue village and we’ll find them there.” She said, stretching.

  “When you say ‘find them’ do they know that you’ve employed them or have you suckered me into convincing them?” Cal asked. “Hell do you even know who we’re picking up?”

  Meliana rolled her eyes. “Yes I know, Ass. There's a Merc called Teth, and a mage called Kaila.”

  “All right.” He said, pretending to be trusting her begrudgingly. “Why don’t you tell me about them?”

  She sighed. “Sure, I should do that.” She agreed, reluctantly.

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  Cal raised an eye at her. “Or don’t? What’s that tone?”

  “No, no, I should.” She said. “I should definitely warn you before we get there and it’s almost certainly too far and you’ve spent too much of my money to drop out now.”

  Cal’s other brow joined the first. “Who on earth am I about to meet?” For a moment the names she’d given him fell out of his mind and he wondered if she’d told him Selenia. He started breathing hard, his eyes wide as he gathered his thoughts back together and retrieved the names. Teth and Kaila. Not Selenia or Sidian. It was fine, he could breathe.

  “Cal are you okay?” She asked.

  He nodded a few millimetres and then shook himself out of… whatever that was. “I’m fine. Tell me about the two newbies.”

  Meliana frowned at him but did as he asked. “The first, Teth is an Elekin.”

  Elekin were part elementals. Like Drakokin and Feyling, somewhere in their ancestry they somehow gained elemental biology. There were earth, fire, water and air Kin. Cal had worked with a Fire Kin before and found them a very compatible team mate in battle as he didn’t need to worry about where his fire attacks were landing. “Fire?” he asked, hopefully.

  “Earth.” She corrected him. “He’s going to act as our front line if we need to fight and our muscle if we need to carry things. He’s older, been a merc a while I believe, but from what I hear he’s solid. Came highly recommended.”

  Cal nodded. He could work with an Earth Kin, they weren’t as compatible as fire, but at least they wouldn’t counter his spells like a Water kin would, or be severely injured just from Cal igniting his blade like an air kin.

  “Doesn’t sound too bad.” He said, recalling her reluctance to speak. He frowned and asked, “What about… Kaiva?”

  “Kaila.” Meliana corrected him. “She’s the… problem is the wrong word. From all accounts she’s fine, great at what she does…”

  “But?”

  “But… she’s a necro-”

  “A Necromancer?!” Cal exclaimed, shouting. He shifted as he said it, he was so surprised. He almost fell off of Melt but she side stepped and helped him regain his balance again. Cal shifted forward and patted her gratefully on the neck, then turned to look at Meliana again. “A Necromancer?” He said more levelly.

  “Yeah, a half-elf necromancer.”

  “Necromancy is illegal. Why on Stj?rna would you hire a necromancer?” Cal asked.

  “First of all;” Meliana replied calmly, and patiently, as if instructing a child, “necromancy on people is illegal. She and her contacts swear up and down she only uses animals, and only their bones, no zombies.”

  It was true, the power of Necromancy itself wasn’t illegal. It couldn’t be, people didn’t control what affinity they had when they learned magic and not learning control after learning what their magic was would be like turning on the gas and leaving it until it exploded.

  Skeletal control or summoning spectres was illegal to use on people because it was deemed a violation of a person’s dignity. The creation of zombies was entirely illegal because there was a chance that even without your power holding them up, they would continue to stand, but without your power they would also be out of your control. Skeletons were literally held together by magic and ghosts could only manifest by using a person’s magic, but zombies were… reanimated. Anything that could create it’s own undead servants was highly illegal to create, a crime which held the death penalty.

  However animating animal skeletons or summoning animal spirits and attacking using undead energy - concentrated death some people called it - was only as illegal as any other magic. Use it on monsters? Fine. Use it on another person and you better have a good reason.

  The problem for Necromancers was the reputation and the creepiness of having skeletons - the part of a living creature that you only saw when something was terribly wrong - walking around with them.

  It was worse in the Alliance though as they also had a rather charged negative history with necromancy. The attempted birthing of the evil god of undeath, Vengeance into the alliance five centuries earlier had left a really bad taste in the nation’s mouth.

  Despite all of this Cal opened his mouth to object further, but was cut off when Meliana continued.

  “Second; we… have it on good authority that we’ll need a necromancer or at the very least a death mage to open Dalag Bol’s tomb.”

  Cal eyed his friend and current employer for a long moment and then sighed, sitting back in the saddle. He leaned back and stared up at the sky.

  A Necromancer… what had he gotten himself into?

  He hadn’t ever had to deal with one before, it was true, so perhaps all of his expectations would be thrown out by this one, but… he doubted it. Necromancy was reviled for a reason, and he doubted that centuries of common sense was entirely wrong.

  Cals mind began to wander back over everything that Meliana had said, then he paused and frowned. “Wait… what’s the difference?” he asked. “Between a necromancer and a death mage I mean.”

  “A death mage can’t use their magic to reanimate corpses.” Meliana explained, simply.

  Cal nodded his understanding and considered a little longer before coming to a realisation and leaning forward again.

  “This is why you wanted me, isn’t it?” He said after a further moment of contemplation. “I thought it was fishy that you needed me to watch your back while working with a couple of mercs. You must have been working with mercs since you left the Blades without problem, so it didn’t make sense that you’d need me to look out for you this time, even with your recent troubles.” He looked over at her and she was watching him. “It’s her isn’t it?”

  Meliana continued to eye him for a moment longer but then nodded. “I don’t expect problems.” She clarified, looking ahead again. She had a deep look of contemplation on her face, one that told Cal that she was being genuine now, not hiding much else - though as a former pirate and thief she was always hiding something. “I think that she’ll do the job and we’ll part ways. I think she’ll be a professional, and she’s just here to get paid… but on the off chance that she isn’t what she claims to be, that she’s been corrupted like all Necromancers eventually are, then…” She tapped on her sword hilt. “We’ll do what we have to.”

  Cal nodded and looked ahead. “We’ll do what we have to.” He agreed.

  The rest of their ride that day, and their evening by the campfire was the most subdued that it had been since their journey had begun. Cal wasn’t angry at Meliana, he was just thinking. The following day they were going to meet the Necromancer and he needed to be prepared, and not just to work with someone who did a job that he didn’t like, but to kill another person.

  A bloody scene flashed through his mind, but with great effort, he ignored it.

  This wasn’t the same as that time.