Chapter 37: The Rebel Commander

Other than the scouts, Miro had counted just over a dozen soldiers before he found the bulk of them – hanging out where two streets in each direction opened into the town square, at the centre of which stood a stone fountain where two ducks floated peaceably, oblivious to the scene around them. A long wooden table stood by the fountain and about twenty soldiers sat around it, laughing over goblets and plates stacked high with rice and vegetables that steamed in the cool air of the Lowlands.

All these soldiers, curiously and with no exception, sported yellow health bars where Miro would have expected a sea of red. Their descriptors were also invariably as least helpful as they could have possibly been – labeling each of them simply as “Rogue Soldier”, which at least indicated that there were no mages in their midst.

The only one who stood out among them was one of the younger men, with a mustache as black as night, whose yellow health bar was labeled “Soldier Commander”. Even with that qualifier, it was hardly useful information, as Miro would have recognized him as the commander even without his powers. He’d seen people like that before, ones who were used to holding some authority over people, whose advantages had calcified in their heads into a belief that they were somehow better than those around them. This one was no different – from his posture to his tone of voice – a commander who lived to command and not to lead.

A middle-aged woman with broad shoulders stepped out of an eatery whose door opened up into the square, carrying an enormous dish upon which was laid out a perfectly crisp roasted pig, presented in one piece from snout to curly tail.

“Ah finally,” the commander said, rubbing his hands, “I was beginning to think it’d never come and we’d have to eat one of those homeless-looking children instead.” Miro looked over to his left and found that at the entrance to the adjacent street, huddled against the building’s corner, stood a group of five kids, aged about five to ten, seemingly curious and terrified at the same time, and who flinched in unison at this threat.

“Ha! Ha!” the commander let out a terribly forced laugh and flashed the gathered kids a toothy grin as the pig was placed before him.

Without a “thank you” or even a nod of acknowledgement, he stabbed his fork into the side of the animal, and dug around before tearing out a chunk and putting it in his mouth. His expression darkened.

“This pig may look good on the outside,” he said to the woman that brought him the dish, “but it’s dry and overcooked, which is more than I can say for this town, which is shabby from the outside in. Now bring me a new one and make it fast this time.”

“But that’s the only pig we’ve got,” the woman said.

“Only pig in the whole town?” the commander asked and looked around the table, summoning a few jeers from his soldiers. “No? Then go find another one, my soldiers are hungry and I won’t be feeding them leather trying to pass itself off as pork.”

The woman from the eatery scurried off while the commander shared a hearty laugh with the soldiers sitting nearest him and then took a big gulp from his goblet.

Miro felt the flames come unbidden to his fingertips and hastily shook them off. Who were these thugs that they acted like they owned any place they walked into? If they were trying to drum up support for their rebellion, they seemed to be doing a shoddy job of it, or perhaps they really did need to bleed the Lowlands dry for every coin they could get in order to finance their army. After all, they did look fairly well-equipped for what they were supposed to be.

Miro found himself wishing that his passive identification power wasn’t entirely so useless – all these ‘soldier’ labels and not a morsel of actually useful intel. If only he could share something concrete with his group instead of just the number of rebels and what kind of weapons they had, maybe they’d see that he could bring something to the table that none of the others could.

His eye had been passing over one soldier, hoping against all hope for some kind of breakthrough, when the man’s health bar changed and no longer read ‘Soldier’ but ‘Rucien At’hal’.

Immediately, Miro’s total mana went down by 1 point and a new progress bar called “Identify: Level 1” popped up, showing some modest growth. Miro stared slack-jawed across the square at Rucien At’hal enjoying his meal, biting into a steaming apple pie. He must have sensed Miro’s gaze, because he paused mid-bite and his eyes met Miro’s and Miro had to quickly look away and pretend it was actually the crow sitting on top of the fountain that had so caught his attention.

What had that been? A newly-unlocked power, or something that had always been there? Miro tried to recall the first time he’d used his incinerate skill and found that he couldn’t recall a specific instance. It was something he could just do, like blinking or hopping on one foot. Maybe Hima would be able to shed some light on this, but that conversation had to wait. First, he’d find the identity of this nasty commander, information that surely Nydra could find some use for.

His efforts to summon the spell again were stymied by a new error message flashing before his eyes:

Spell cooldown remaining: Twenty-Three Hours, Fifty-Nine Minutes

What kind of fresh nonsense was this? Just as he’d discovered something novel that he could offer the world, it was hampered by the most ridiculous of restrictions. He was so focused on this new development in his powers that he did not notice that his loitering had caught the attention of the mustachioed commander.

“Oy, you there!” the man shouted, and as Miro snapped back to attention there was no mistaking it, the commander’s gaze was pinned right on him. He had not prepared for this, and was not about to bet his life on his 4 Charisma points, or, even more laughably, his 2 Intellect points.

Miro took an uncertain step backwards and that was enough for the cocksure rebel commander to make one flick of his hand in Miro’s direction and have three of his soldiers get up from their chairs and move across the square after him.