Suggested Listening

"I want to fight," Elruin said after a moment. "They're bad men who want to hurt a baby."

Calenda didn't bother correcting Elruin's assumptions; bad men who didn't care whether they hurt children was close enough to count. "Okay, that's the two of us, but it's not our home." She turned her attention to Sanel and Leyli. "If you'd rather we try a different strategy, please speak up."

The two of them hesitated. One or the other might have considered the unspoken fourth option of Cali surrendering to the bandits, but neither was going to speak that out loud for a number of reasons.

"No," Leyli said. "You're better equipped to make this decision than we are. Please, do what you think is best."

"First question is what sort of weapons you have, then," Calenda said. She was the one expected to be in charge, after all. "The wall means they can't get in, but it makes it hard for us to get out as well. Going over the wall isn't an option unless we shut down your defenses, and I'm hoping to avoid that if at all possible."

"I can hit them," Elruin said.

"So-" Calenda stopped her planning. "What do you mean you can hit them?"

"Through the wall," Elruin clarified. "I can zap them through the wall. It was my special chore to get rid of rats that way. They like to hide under things."

Cali smiled at the younger mage. "After today I am never going on another mission without necromancer backup. If you were any more convenient, you'd be able to teleport us to Engewel and back."

Elruin thought about it for a second. "I don't think I can do that."

"Nobody expects you to," Cali said. The people on the planet with long-range teleportation could be counted on one hand. "Now, we have a way to hurt them through the wall, which means we can drive them away from the wall, which gives us the ability to open the gate and get out, then you can close the gate behind us."

"You're certain that will work?" Leyli asked.

"They were smart enough to set a fake ambush, then track us here. Once they know they can be targeted, they'll move." Calenda said with the authority of someone who's commanded troops in the past. "If they don't, Ell can keep zapping them until they stop moving, but I'm not that optimistic."

Which brought to mind a question Elruin had been considering for a while. "They're tracking you, right? How'd they know where to find you? Do you have enemies that want to hurt you?"

"Knowing our route's no big task. We run the outskirts several times a year, especially after a big storm, so 'where' and 'when' are easy. Too many to count would take revenge if they could get it. You don't make enemies working as an Imperial Lawkeeper, that means you're not doing your job. Families of people you bust, the occasional noble scions who forget that Imperial Law applies even to them, the list goes on."

Calenda looked over at the gate, where they were still arguing with the would-be attacker on the other side. "What I can't figure out is who'd be crazy enough to try. Either they fail and get executed, or succeed, then get hunted down and executed. There is no win scenario for these people."

"Will we have any weapons to help? Or people?"

Cali glanced at the farmers, noted them flinch back. "No, there's no point." She could hear their relief thanks to her sarite-enhanced senses. "I have a better weapon than you'd find here, your magic's strong enough to take down a mork, which means its better than any mundane equipment, and putting these farmers into a battle against people who can fight a Scout? It'd be a slaughter. Unless they've badly unerestimated the Scouts, then this will be a joke. Either way, we're in this alone."

"Mister Clackybones can help!" Elruin offered. Clackybones was a strong horse, and he liked killing people, he'd be perfect.

"I should probably turn that offer down, but I'm not about to look a gift damage soaker in the mouth. Just remember that I'd like to take at least one of them alive. Actually, know what? I'll take one of them alive. Just keep it away from me and my target, and that'll work fine. Now, for the rest of the plan..."

With a plan established, the pair of them walked with Aunt Leyli and Uncle Sanel to the wall.

"-you inbred mudpuppies! She's not your sister, so you can just give up on any chance of her letting you f-"

"Fine! I'm here! What do you want!" Calenda yelled through the wall. She'd heard enough to extrapolate how the conversation had gone up to this point.

"You to come out and surrender, right now!" The voice shouted back. "You have my word of honor that nobody else will be harmed, and that you will be given a fair trial to answer for your crimes!"

"A fictitious trial with no legal meaning, and the honor of a criminal!"

"Listen here, you..." the voice trailed off for a moment. "Oh, I see what you're trying to do! You're pushing for information! Well, how's this for information? If this gate isn't opened-"

Cali gave a quick gesture with her thumb, the signal for Elruin to act. She raised her hand, taking a moment to angle it just right.

"-in the next five seconds, we will-"

Elruin unleashed the full power of her Apoplectic Bolt, at the nasty man's mouth.

"-cook your goats!!!" With those cryptic words brought on by a necromancy-induced stroke, the rude man collapsed. He remained alive to Elruin's sight, but she wasn't sure if he'd ever recover.

Calenda covered her mouth; it would not do to giggle under the current circumstances. Later, when she was alone, she'd devote half an hour to laughing.

Meanwhile, Elruin kept silent watch as one of the other beings, this time one of the not-right ones ran forward to his downed comrade. As instructed, she waited for him to get close before she blasted him in the chest. He stumbled, but remained standing, so she hit him again. He turned to flee, she shot him in the side, then the back. After the fifth bolt he stopped moving, fell to the dirt, and his light vanished from her eyes.

"One of the weird ones came. He took five hits," Elruin said once she was sure she didn't have to continue. "All to the core, like you told me. Now the rest are going back into the woods." She smiled at Cali, awaiting praise for her job well done.

"Flawless," Cali said, then she gave the little necromancer a pat on the shoulder. "It's not the most reliable measure of power, but they can't be much tougher than normal people if he went down that fast." She looked at the farmhands at the wall, where only some of the men remained while Leyli had rushed off to take charge of the women and children as was both custom and plan.

"Based on what I saw, I think these men could survive two core hits." She left out of her estimate that most of them would be crippled, or that she would be able to take maybe a dozen of them. Neither was something they needed to know. "So I'm guessing they're low power, but with high power sarite to help them."

"Two down, four falling back." The plan to this point had been an exploratory attack to test the enemy's strength, as well as Elruin's, before committing themselves. "Open the gates, then run for cover."

Despite their misgivings, the men obeyed, seven of them instead of the usually required three. The door slid open, and Calenda stepped out first. She began her movements, the position of her hands and steps of her feet did look like a dance. Elruin's vision became nothing but gray when a single stomp on the ground brought up a fog bank so thick that it was too dark to be white.

This has no impact on her Bleak Sight, however. The four remaining opponents decided caution was the better part of valor, so they remained at the edge of the tree line. Two crossbow bolts rushed toward them, both focused on Calenda. The girl ducked under both of them, relying on her own unnatural sight- though in her case it was more like she could feel through the fog, using it as a means to extend her sense of touch.

Then a stream of lighting shot out, between the enemy and the metal bolts now behind Cali. She screamed when the electricity pathed its way through her body, then dropped to her knees. Now the remaining four rushed forward to attack; it seemed they weren't blinded at all by Cali's fog magic. Laying on the ground, Calenda forced enough control into her muscles to trace her hands on the ground, crafting her power as best she could.

Vines lashed out of the ground, catching the attackers as they rushed forward. It was a good tactic, but it wasn't fast enough to trip them, nor was it strong enough to hold back the swings of their swords. It would slow them down, a delay tactic and nothing more. Calenda forced herself back to her hands and knees, her still-trembling hand gripping her dagger. A pulse of energies hardened the metal past any natural state, and the force of water empowered its speed.

The blade shot through the fog fast enough to leave a visible swirl in its wake, then one of the two remaining human enemies flickered and vanished from Elruin's vision. She began a slower spell, now, one to draw up a barrier of stone around them. There was no possibility that it would be completed in time.

And so, Elruin sang. She sang to the fog, she sang to Mister Clackybones, and she sang to her internal power. Her black flames washed out, joined the fog, and cast a shadow that denied the very concept of light.

Mister Clackybones rushed through the impossible darkness with not a care in the world, until his fleshless jaws caught hold of the face of one of the unnatural men. The hapless victim put up a valiant fight, shoving his curved sickle into the open ribcage where a heart should have been. Clackybones did not, could not, feel the attempted counterattack. He just clenched the necromantic energies that served as his jaw muscles, and crushed a man's skull in his teeth.

These six, now reduced to two, were prepared for the speed, durability, and battlefield control magics that made Calenda such a good advance scout. Their weapons, their tactics, everything was planned to bring down a Plant Mage like her.

What they were not prepared for was a little girl and her undead war horse. The sickle was a perfect weapon against someone like Calenda, with a thin point would help pierce her armor and curvature would flense, leaving nasty wounds that caused uncontrolled bleeding and made healing difficult.

None of this mattered to a thing which had no flesh, blood, or armor to bypass. The weapons best suited against the undead were heavy, bludgeoning tools that could break apart the bone and overtax the necromantic energies holding it together. Lashing out with both hind legs, Clackybones demonstrated that bone-shattering force worked well against living opponents as well, and smashed the chest of the last unnatural opponent inward. That one survived, but the struggling flicker of lifeforce indicated it wouldn't be for long.

Elruin remembered Calenda's desire to take a prisoner, so she altered the tune of her song, drew back the blanket of darkness she unleashed, and granted new instructions to her new favorite dolly. Now the horse bit the last remaining victim in the face, just like he had his first, but he held back from chomping down.

Trapped in the blood-and-brain slathered jaws of the monster, the remaining attacker could do nothing but some minor, futile, struggling.

Meanwhile, Calenda seemed to catch her breath, and began the patterns to dissipate her fog cloud. Now they could look upon their enemies with their eyes for the first time. Three, the normal men to Elruin's special sight, were nothing special with natural sight, either. Two, including the one caught by Mister Clackybones, were uncommon shades of forest green, but she'd seen a few people with similar coloration, and weirder things by far when the caravans came through.

The strange looking ones were hideous, twisted abominations. Their faces, save the one that was crushed, were twisted, demonic, like the things called 'gargoyles' that she saw in one of Kasa's books. Their muscles were swollen, twisted and contorted as if someone had tried to make them bigger by stuffing more meat inside them as one would stuff a duck for a fancy dinner. And, like the stuffing in a duck, there was nothing alive to it. It left large, empty pockets inside the flesh of these three.

"What happened to them?" Elruin knew it could not be natural, whatever it was.

"Sarite abuse," Calenda said. "I don't know how it works, myself, but there are ways to do things with sarite that, well, even accidentally mishandling Sarite can cause mutations. When it's warped with the right magic and tools, it can provide a massive boost of power, but it'll turn you into... these things, or worse. The practice is illegal, I'm sure you can see why."

"Oh." Elruin listened deeper into the swirling magic, where the sarite joined with flesh. The magic was well beyond her skill, but there was something more than that. "I don't think I can fix it."

"No one can," Calenda said. "I'm not sure even gods can fix what this stuff does to the mind and soul. Oh, and while we're on the topic, it's fatal. The power of overtaxing the sarite burns it out, but the body needs it to survive the mutations. A week, maybe two, and the system collapses. Don't touch them or their stuff, we need an archmage to clean this mess safely."

Calenda turned her attention to the still-living enemy. She spent some time going over his equipment while he was held firm by the undead horse. She tossed a dagger to the side, pulled a vial of unidentified chemicals out and set it down, three hidden knives soon followed, and she took his boots off since they had spiked cleats. The only thing of real interest was a number of coins and two sarite shards. "They armed you to the teeth, didn't they?"

Nobody answered, save for Clackybones who did the fleshless equivalent of a snort. It sounded like a poorly blown horn.

"Okay, drop him." Calenda stepped back, and watched the man spill to the ground now that the monster no longer held him up by his face. She got a good look at all the lacerations, and could only begin to guess what sorts of nasty infections might arise from them.

"So, the Empire is so corrupt that it now consorts with the undead? Does your degeneracy know no limits?"

Calenda held her long-practiced neutral face and tone. "Says the cowards who dress up as women and give people corrupted shards."

"They were patriots! They did their duty, knowing the costs!" In spite of his defiant words, he scooted away from her.

"Oh, I'm sure." Calenda stepped forward to keep her position over the man. "I'm gonna bet you picked out the dumbest, most easily brainwashed, addle-brained people and told them they could do good. But I'm not interested in who you throw away. I want to know who gives the orders."

"I'll never talk!" His bravado, such as it was, was ended by screams when Cali stepped on his foot and pushed down with her augmented strength. His bones bent under the pressure, leaving him gasping and crying beneath her. She made certain she didn't push hard enough to break them, not yet.

"Oh, I'm sure you won't." Calenda twisted her heel, drawing more gasps and whimpers. "Not at first."

"Then I'll rip off one of your fingernails. You'll scream, but maybe you won't talk." As Calenda spoke, she continued applying pressure. "Then another, maybe you'll even make it to three. Then you'll talk. You'll lie, but I'm a Truthsayer. That'll be another fingernail, and another. Then you'll tell the truth until I ask an important question, the name of someone you love, perhaps? Another nail. I'll get maybe four or five important questions from you, less if you're as strong as you imagine you are. Then you're out of fingernails, right? Wrong. I'm a decent healer." True enough, for this conversation. "You'll get your nails back, and we'll start all over again. As many times as it takes before there is nothing left for you to tell me. Then, if you're lucky, I'll kill you. But if you waste too much of my time, I'll hand you over to the professionals. Give them five minutes and an hour with me will look like heaven itself."

She stepped back, having inflicted no more damage than perhaps a dislocated bone or two. It was rare she needed more than just the threat of torture to make someone talk. He, to her surprise, looked more enraged than terrified, though there was plenty of both.

"Mortem Tyrannis!" Last words joined with a blossom of magical power as their captive sacrificed the sum total of his life energy to fuel one, final, spell.

Elruin heard the upsurge of magical power too late to do much more than bring her hands up. Cali acted somewhat quicker, enough to fall backward and bring some earth up between her and the explosive magic.

Moments later, the energy rushed over them with enough power to... knock Elruin to the ground and ruin her new dress. It was still a powerful blow, by normal standards, perhaps enough to break an ordinary girl's ribs, but all Elruin had to do was sit up pat out a small flicker of flame on the hem of her dress.

Clackybones looked over at the girls laying on the ground, then returned to not caring noticing the layers of gore, and now baked gore, which coated much of his body.

Cali, still laying in the dirt, tilted her head back to look at Elruin. "So, umm, if anyone asks, he blew himself up before I interrogated him, okay?"