Vic rifled through both of their things before leaving, this act having been made easier in the veteran’s case: His Bonefire had calcified the man’s body and clothes, but his less-than-flammable possessions were untouched… Including his prosthetics. Besides two disembodied metal legs, he didn’t have much. The only objects of note were a dagger, some money, and a circular brass sigil attached to a long, slender spike… Was this the vet’s original Brass Eye?

He stowed it into Fog storage for now and moved onto the Viridimancer. It was more of the same for most of the man’s possessions, with one small bottle of distilled Viriditas left on his belt, which Victor took, alongside some money and a letter from his pocket. Unfortunately, the letter was written in Pateirian, which Victor couldn’t read in full. He did understand a few of the symbols, and what fragmentary information he gathered only confirmed his assumptions that these were Red Locust Bandit… People-snatchers, he supposed.

After rolling the caster’s headless corpse over, he came upon one more interesting thing: A gun, likely having been strapped to the vet’s belt under his shirt. His first thought was a question as to why he hadn’t used it, his second bewilderment at the firearm’s design. It wasn’t a Pateirian wheellock, an Ikesian sparklock, a pepperbox, and not even a rare revolver. It was… Plain, but advanced, its body shaped more akin to a revolver than an old-style sparklock, while its barrel was, at a glance, a smaller caliber than most sparklocks. Its hammer had no Ignis gem, just a striker, which sat against a quarter-circular block with its own cocking handle. Once he pulled back the hammer, he was able to open up the breech by pulling back the block, causing it to turn on a pin and revealing an Ignis crystal set into the spot where it plugged the breech.

The breechblock had a maker’s mark stamped on the side, a traditional coat-of-arms with a Pateirian symbol in one of the fields, with tiny, barely-readable text below.

Eckhartt Reichtoffen & Sons

Rolling Block Breech

What a truly strange firearm it was. A bit more rummaging brought him to the ammunition: Paper cartridges. It was stiff paper, but paper nonetheless. He loaded one and shot at the same tree he’d used to test the Devil’s Teeth, grinning to himself at how much bigger of a hole his own magic had left. He stowed it and its ammo into Fog Storage without a second thought, deciding to finally head back, and maybe report what had happened in the forest after the Red Locust Bandits and Von Wickten were dealt with, if only to rub it in the duke’s face.

Making his way back through the forest as he gradually calmed down, Victor came upon a bend in the path. Stomping footsteps approached, and soon enough, a plate-armored figure emerged from past the bend; it was a Dragon Knight, and not only that… It was Baldwin Von Burgghusen. That face was unmistakable. Baldwin slowed down at the sight of Victor, a brief look of surprise flashing across his face before he returned to a stoic expression. Instantaneously, anxiety flooded back into Vic’s mind. Was the knight captain’s second-in-command in on it? Of course, he had to be. Was he aware of the veteran and the viridimancer? It was possible, but not guaranteed. Victor decided to play it safe and pretend he was just returning from his daily run, knowing that if Burgghusen so wished, he could chase down and overpower him without breaking a sweat.

“Er- Hello! Ser Von Burgghusen, was it? Nice out today, isn’t it?” he offered a greeting, trying to just walk past with minimal interaction.

“Mrrrhm. Trying to make up for lost training, I take it? Cryin’ shame about what happened to the Duma School last night, to think someone would burn down the whole place just to steal a spear…” the Dragon Knight responded, walking past Victor.

“The spear?” a thought rushed through Vic’s mind. “Has Duma told the Dragon Knights? Did they just find out from investigating? No, the old man doesn’t trust them, he wouldn’t let them inside the building…”

Out of caution, Victor drew in a deep breath and funneled Pneuma into his left arm, intending to burn it all at once for a blast of Bonefire if the Dragon Knight tried anything shady. That was his best bet, since he didn’t have the time to make a Devil’s Tooth large and powerful enough to chew through the flesh of a Dragon Knight.

Then, from behind, came Burgghusen’s voice again: “Oh, one more thing…”

Deciding to follow his gut about how that sounded, Victor took a long step forward, whipping around as he raised his arm and set loose five lungfuls’ worth of Pneuma in a single, congealed blast of monochromatic flame, propelled solely by kineticism. It struck the side of Burgghusen’s neck, a concentrated outward blaze slowly drilling into his scales as it calcified them… Too slowly. He closed the gap with two steps and jabbed Victor in the side of the neck with his thumb. Paralytic venom spread through his body, carrying with it an all-encompassing numbness.

“Count yourself lucky that damage to the merchandise comes out of my payroll,” the knight uttered in an emotionless monotone as Victor crumpled to the ground, unable to move. Before his consciousness faded out, Victor heard Burgghusen murmuring to himself: “Such troublesome merchandise. You’re getting a Compliance Gu for sure…”

Floating in nothingness.

Unable to move, to even open his eyes.

Barely able to breathe.

Victor didn’t quite know where he was, only what had happened to him and that he was likely still paralyzed. Strangely, his mind wasn’t clouded whatsoever; he could clearly feel a stinging pain in his neck, a chair beneath himself, and the distinct absence of physical binds.

“Probably didn’t find them necessary…” he thought as he worked to take even half-lung breaths. A disgusting, slick feeling filled his lungs, making it abundantly clear that whatever he’d been poisoned with was tailored to work on Fog-breathers.

What a predicament he was in. Vic could only hazard a guess as to where he was being taken, but he assumed that the intent was to traffic and sell him as a slave at the Red Locust Bandits’... What had Duma called it? Meat Market?

There was still one thing he could do. His Black Marble Tablet had an aetherwave communication function, by which it could send and receive ripples in the Sea of Fog as messages, but only between attuned devices… Or within a limited area. Before Burgghusen would notice that he was awake, Vic directed every iota of focus he could scrounge up towards activating his Tablet’s communications function through mental commands alone. To do so without having the device light up was a challenge at its easiest, let alone in the lessened state he was in… And so, Victor dug deep, shutting out everything until he felt the subtle thrum of his Tablet responding to his mental impulses.

“No projection. No projection. No projection…” he chanted inwardly as he constructed a battering ram of intent. The intent to blast a simple distress call, on loop, on every aetherwave frequency the device could access. After a few hours it would begin to draw from him to fuel this, but… The ache of spiritual exhaustion was by far preferable to getting turned into a meat doll.

Relief washed over him when he felt the command go through. The message would be received as such: “Kidnapped by Burgghusen. Being taken to Meat Market. Not much time. Send help.”

This relief was, however, followed by dread when he heard a door open and felt another jab into the same spot on his neck. The numbness washed away, replaced by irreconcilable, gut-wrenching hunger, his stomach growling a demand that rumbled his entire body. Though he was no longer paralyzed, he still couldn’t seem to draw in any Pneuma; that disgusting slickness in his lungs still lingered.

“Wakey wakey,” came Burgghusen’s emotionless, inhuman voice.

Struggling to open his eyes, Vic finally saw the Dragon Knight’s dead, emotionless, mustachioed visage staring down at him from across a table, a tin bowl of steaming something in his hand. He set it down on the table and sat down across from Victor.

“Eat,” he said flatly. “Don’t bother trying to do anything else. My venom destroys your immediate energy reserves; breathing techniques will do you no good, either, it coats your lungs with mucus. Just eat. It is not poisoned. Signs of starvation reduce your value as merchandise.”

It was a simplistic brown stew, full of lentils and carrots, alongside smoked pork ribs.

It looked normal and smelled as such, as far as he could tell.

Vic marshaled what little strength he had to lift the spoon and do as he’d been told.

Tasted normal, too.

He forced himself to crunch down the boiled bones. Since he’d never told anyone how his Ossomancy functioned, there was no reasonable way for Burgghusen to infer that he didn’t need to put Pneuma into the reaction to use his hereditary magic. Unfortunately for any of Victor’s plans, the moment he was done eating, Burgghusen stood up, stepped next to him, and jabbed him in the side of the neck again.

Twin metal steeds ripped across the landscape, two iron beasts fueled by fire and lightning. Despite the lack of proper roads, their great wheels bit into the soil and impelled them onwards.

Two women rode atop the larger of them, and a huge man as pale as death itself rode the other.

As they crossed the borders of the Von Hoedroff duchy’s territory, they brought their Sturmgandr motorbikes to a cease at the peak of a hill in order to get a sense for their location.

They had just returned from the north of the country, having visited a mountain crossing in order to ascertain whether or not passage to Borea would be possible in the next couple days as Jorfr had predicted. It… Didn’t look good. The Great Blizzard had already moved on, but according to the testimony of a harrowed-looking Ankhezian merchant, smaller, chaotic, and much more dangerous storm systems had moved in, alongside the terrible arctic monstrosities that they brought.

“Barely got through before the whole mess started, I did. Lost half my damn cargo, too. Frankly, as things are now, taking the boat trip would be safer and faster,” the merchant had claimed.

Jorfr hadn’t had a reason to disbelieve him, apparently having traveled with the man on his initial journey to Ikesia. Their short northward jaunt across the Blackwall corroborated his claims, for they did indeed come across terrible, yet localized blizzards, and horrible arctic beasts to boot, which set upon them with untoward fervor. Zef did raise some alarm about the conspicuous seals on the beasts’ bodies, but the merchant apologetically explained that they were old bioweapons from the Ankhezian Imperium’s failed attempt at conquering Borea. In fact, he seemed to know a suspicious amount about these beasts, briefly referring to them as “not my best work” before he hurried away.

When Zel stopped him to question why he looked similar to a performer she’d seen one time, the merchant said: “Ah, you must’ve met my grandson. Very talented young man. Travels with the Krishorn Caravan, were they whom you saw him with?”

Considering that she hadn’t told him anything about the Krishorn caravan, and that the old man’s words rang true, she had let him on his way. Even now, she couldn’t get him out of his head. That old man had to have been hiding something… But then he was a merchant, a full-blooded elf, and old enough to actually look the part. At his age, Zel wagered that he probably had more secrets than some nations.

Finding their position on the map didn’t take too long thanks to Zel’s ability to feel which way was magnetic north, combined with the visibility of landmarks from up here. However, they stayed put for a short moment, with Zelsys opening up her invitation to the Meat Market. The plan was to go to town, pick up Victor, and head straight to the Meat Market to wipe the place out, and with Sturmgandrs, the travel portions of that plan wouldn’t take more than an hour or two at most.