Chapter 10

The Mayor

“Nothing but mindless beasts, the whole lot of them.” Atrum’s blade had been stained in shadows as he said that. Terrill could remember it plain as day, the four of them standing amidst the corpses of the monsters as they began to dissolve into ash. He had grown much stronger over their short journey. “Why do we fear them so much?”

“Perhaps there is no reason for us to fear, and indeed we do not,” spoke another man. The longer Terrill watched, the more the details filled in of a bridge over a river, and a small, less familiar town that sat upon it. The man in question sat himself upon pieces of a broken bench, his two swords resting in his lap. “But for the people, there is always the greater fear.”

“If we could be rid of Golbrucht forever…”

“It’s nonsense. He has been eternal, and will continue to be, ever pulling at the strings of his cohorts to arrive at whatever destiny they have planned.”

“Destiny,” Terrill scoffed. The man looked at him, his grayed beard, which had no length to it, wrinkling with the slightest movement of his mouth and accentuating his scars. His eyes were sharp, attempting to discern what Terrill was trying to say. “I don’t believe in that crap.”

Charles had waited, continuing to watch Terrill as he sheathed his sword and looked out over the carnage. The village had been saved, but it had been a mere incidental trip on the road to their current destination for the Chosen One. He shuddered to think of the state of the city if they hadn’t arrived when they did. Or perhaps, it had always been planned that way. Call it destiny, fate, or a plan which he had no knowledge of at the time the events had occurred, Terrill’s mind was now considering the possibility as the memory replayed for him.

“Did you think it possible to expunge Golbrucht from the world? Was it a dream of yours to become Chosen One?” Charles had asked, continuing the reverie. Terrill scowled at him, and the older Guardian laughed, his whole body thrown into it. “Youthful ambition. I like it.”

“Didn’t you ever want to be Chosen One?” Atrum asked. Charles leveled his gaze, his darkened eyes gleaming in the night while he surveyed him. “Didn’t you…ever want to defy what fate has in store for this country?”

“Defying fate is a young man’s game. I’m far too old for that now. I accepted my unfortunate role in this farce long ago.”

“Charles! I won’t have a Guardian of mine speak that way!” shouted the fourth member of their little troupe. Terrill’s memory filled him in, though he was hazy as he could feel the dream being pulled away from him. All he could see was the regally dressed boy, his blond hair cascading down and tied in a ponytail. Terrill vaguely joked, when they’d first met, that he and Atrum looked like brothers with their hair styles and faces. That was all his mind would allow besides the words spoken. “Maybe it doesn’t matter, and Golbrucht will return all the same, but we can give people a moment and lead Sayn to greater prosperity.”

“Lumen…” Charles took his sheathed blades, tapping them on the stone of the bench. His sigh was akin to growl. “That naivete never served the past Chosen Ones. It will not serve you now. Even allowing these two along…”

“If you don’t want us here, just say so,” Terrill said, or remembered saying, but it didn’t get a response from Charles, who kept his eyes trained on the Chosen One.

“I feel they help round us out. I can’t spend every day with you, Charles, and I feel like there’s a connection between the three of us, in different ways.” Lumen had said that, but Terrill didn’t understand why he felt so. Atrum appeared to have an inkling, smiling at Lumen with this strange sense of kinship they had formed as fellow Chosen Ones. It was a miracle that Atrum hadn’t thrown a hissy fit over losing the position to Lumen. “With this group, we’ll defeat Golbrucht for sure!”

“This kind of soft and impulsive thinking is the reason your cousins are so wary of you and despise you.”

“I very much doubt that’s the reason we’re not close.” Terrill could remember the sad looks that Lumen and Charles wore, ones that transferred on to Atrum. He couldn’t have been bothered however, making his tracks back into town.

“Can we talk about this while not being in a dangerous area? I’d like some rest,” Terrill had said. “And don’t worry about us, Guardian Archovy. I’m here because Atrum is. Soon as Golbrucht is dead…”

His mind couldn’t keep up with the memory much longer, though he remembered saying something along the lines of how he’d have fulfilled his role as Guardian and would have made up for the deaths of the previous Chosen One and Guardian that he once knew. He also remembered the breeze that chilled that night air.

To that, Terrill’s eyes snapped open, his lips sucking in a sudden breath.

“Terrill, relax. Relax!” He wasn’t aware of where he was, waking up from the realm of unconsciousness, but he was aware of whose voice he was hearing, and that his head was presently resting in her lap. There was a loud creaking, and the sloshing of waves outside started to fill in his picture. As he looked up, he focused on Krysta’s concerned face while she tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear, and past her he could see the wood paneling that confirmed what he was beginning to suspect. “We’re on a boat, to Silicias.”

“The harbor? What happened to the harbor?” he croaked out. Krysta heard the strain and reached over to give him some water. He glugged it down, and slowly began to sit up. His entire body felt heavy, as if weights were attached to it, but he was beginning to awaken more fully. Not long after he started to move, he heard a clank. The sound caused him to look down to find his hands were bound by a pair of shackles. “What in the-?”

“We’re handcuff buddies!” Floyd’s grating voice met Terrill’s ear, and regardless of his state of orientation, he managed to find the redhead and glare at him. “Nice of them to give us such service! She’s the only one that got off without them.”

“That’s because I worked by healing the injured. You just ran around looking for your girlfriend, who, I’ll note, is exactly where we’re going thanks to me. You would have known that if you bothered listening,” Krysta snapped back. Floyd grinned, but behind the grin, Terrill could see how frightened he was of her sudden outburst. Sure enough, Krysta had no manacles on her wrists, and was seemingly free to move about with the other passengers in the ship’s hold.

The one consolation was that the two of them didn’t appear to be locked in the brig.

“What happened?” he groaned, feeling a light headache. Now that the dream had subsided with the cold douse of a revelation from that night, he tried to get everything straight. Krysta moved so she was facing him, but it was Floyd who beat her to the punch in answering the question.

“You went all insane back at the harbor, man!” He tried to gesticulate how crazy it was, only for his shackled hands to get in the way, causing him to hit himself in the chin. “One second there’s this giant cyclone barreling down the port, and the next you’re calling up these massive stone blocks. Left the harbor in a right state, I’ll tell you that!”

“I’m aware of that part. What happened after? To the people? And the woman?” Terrill asked, his frown increasing with every further question he could come up with. “And why are we on a boat to Silicias exactly?”

“Because you have a weird obsession with playing hero that makes you do stupid shi-”

“Like I said to him, I negotiated things,” Krysta said, leveling a glare at Floyd. She was clearly chiding his uselessness in the earlier situation. When she stopped glaring, she sighed and looked straight at Terrill. “She disappeared completely. Never came back. The people are fine, though the harbor is messed up, but considering it already was before then, it is not like what you did made much of a difference. At least the injured from Silicias seem to be getting back on their feet. We offloaded them before boarding.”

“What I did…” Terrill looked to his hands, remembering the energy rushing through him to call forth those plinths of earth. It was draining, but exhilarating all the same, like remembering how it first felt to pull that power out of him, protecting a younger Atrum from monsters on the town outskirts. He had actually managed that, himself, surprising everyone. It was hardly the most important detail, however.

“The soldiers weren’t sure whether to praise you or arrest you, but they put the cuffs on you all the same. I think they were worried about that much magic power manifesting from you by accident.” It made sense to Terrill, and he took no umbrage with the soldiers’ actions. They were just doing their duty and they had busted through the blockade without authorization. He supposed that this was the reason Floyd was also shackled, making Terrill’s frown turn to a scowl as he recalled the boy running about.

Your friend doesn’t have the same kind of compassion for people that you do.

The woman’s words cut, and the bitterness over Floyd’s foolhardy actions intensified. He tried to not let it show, but Floyd quirked an eyebrow at him before Krysta cleared her throat. She continued speaking so as to preclude the boy from saying anything he would regret. “As for the boat…your actions did save a lot of people. Anyone who was wounded, I took care of. I know you found the woman and all, but she seemed to mention Silicias, so I thought it would be a wise idea to go.”

“Plus, the mayor’s there! I’d think you’d still want to see him!” Floyd chimed in. A shuffle of footsteps was heard before Krysta could make any attempt to smack some sense into him, and Terrill saw some of the familiar soldiers from the port approaching, garbed in the robes of Serotin.

“Oh, you’ll see the mayor, all right. You’ve really done it this time, Floyd! No weaseling your way out of this one!” the head soldier said, leaning down to the boy.

Floyd grinned right back before leaning his head against the wood. “We’ll see about that. Soon, I take it, too. How long have we been on the sea?”

“I was out for multiple days?” Terrill asked, eyes blinking rapidly.

“You were completely passed out. Good thing you weren’t too heavy to lug aboard the ship. That expulsion of magic you used certainly did a greater number on you than the harbor,” the soldier said, his attention leaving Floyd. His head bowed soon after. “Thank you.”

Terrill wasn’t sure why he was thanking him, but managed to put it all together with a shake of his head. “No thanks necessary. I did what anyone would.” Except for Floyd, it seems.

“Either way, that woman was a force to be reckoned with, and you managed to hold her off for us to get our citizens to safety. We’ve abandoned Point Harbor in the meantime, and if that woman is in alliance with the pirates, the mayor will need to know how serious these situations could get. One bad thing after another.”

“Then how about you make things better by letting us go?” Floyd offered, his hands rising up, expecting his shackles to be unlocked. The soldier rolled his eyes.

“Nice try, Floyd. You’re not getting free. Straight to the mayor for all of you. I hope you can forgive us, though, for the shackles on yours, Sir Mercenary. They’re special for blocking magic, you see…”

“Uh, I’m not a mercenary,” Terrill blurted with no mind to stop his mouth. The soldier looked confused, and Krysta pursed her lips at his outburst.

“O-oh…I guess I just assumed because there were so many taking passage to Silicias,” the soldier said, rubbing the back of his head. Floyd snorted at the awkward moment as a bell on the deck began to ring. “Speaking of, it seems we’ve made berth. Miss Krysta, if you may, we might require your assistance at our mayor’s base. The number of wounded we’ve seen from here has doubled in the last few days.”

“I’m sure all of us will be happy to help,” the girl said, her emphasis thrown to an aloof Floyd. As well as he could attempt, the boy tried to throw his hands behind his head, reclining against the side of the boat as it pitched and rocked.

Terrill tried to stand amidst that, maintaining his balance well enough despite the restrictions to his hands. His head having cleared from the fog of a three-day sleep, Terrill realized how sparsely populated this cabin was. The few people that were there didn’t look to be mere travelers or miners seeking work, but were all armed to the teeth; mercenaries, he realized, looking to make quick money at whatever tragedy had befallen the Luster Mines. Terrill also noticed his sword wasn’t with him, but when another soldier descended and made their way to an armory, he didn’t worry too much over it. His parents’ memory was safe.

It was his own memory he was beginning to worry about, and the things the woman had said to him in Point Harbor.

A war is coming between heroes and fiends? I’m not supposed to be here? What is that supposed to mean? And if she’s looking for heroes, which side would she even be on? These thoughts and more plagued his brain as his body moved on command. Everyone aboard the vessel was heading for the deck, with two soldiers attaching themselves right at his and Floyd’s side. Krysta stuck by them as well, but she was distracted, especially once they’d emerged on the deck. Her eyes were drawn to the site of their destination.

Terrill held off, a ball forming in his throat that he tried to swallow, but was unable to.

Only when the ship slowed and the spray of the sea on his face could no longer be ignored, did Terrill turn his eyes towards their destination of Silicias.

The continent looked completely different up close than it did from that distant shore of Sayn. Whereas in his youth, it appeared to be this great crown formed of rock that he could have picked up even in his tiny hand, here, it looked like a jagged wasteland. Stones pointed every way they could, and the terrain looked unnavigable. Some tents and makeshift houses were pitched along a crafted road for the miners that were there to do their work, but aside from that singular winding road, there was nothing to indicate anyone lived on the continent at all.

The crater, stained with a scorched blackness, was enough to tell him why.

“So, this is where…” Krysta and Floyd both turned in his direction, but the soldiers were pushing the two chained ones from behind, indicating they should leave the ship. One of them was holding tight to Terrill’s sword. He never tore his eyes away from the blotting battlesite that consumed the continent. Burn or blood, he couldn’t be sure what covered it, but he started to surprise himself by wondering how anybody was here at all.

“All right, we’re moving! We’re moving! Don’t need to poke us with your little spears…” Floyd was grumbling, but no one took him seriously. He was the first down the ramp to the shore, and Terrill could tell they hadn’t even landed at a port, but more like a cove on the western side of the continent. It wasn’t a very protected cove, either, as there were numerous gaps between the monolithic rocks that allowed a breeze to pass through.

Terrill was starting to hate the breeze.

Of their group, he was the last to stand upon the blackened beach, taking in the sight before him. Stretchers were laid out, a new group of wounded miners gasping and bleeding. Some tents had caregivers running in and out, but it very clearly was not enough. Terrill wondered if Krysta was planning to head over and help out, but her conflicted expression told him otherwise. Behind them, some of the mercenaries that had traveled aboard the boat bustled past them, bragging about earning themselves some coin. They gave no care for the people who were wounded or fallen, racing up the arduous path to the mines.

For Terrill, however, the destination was closer, in the form of a big, blue tent set against the mountainside that formed the spine of the mining road. The sun beat on it, and soldiers stood outside it, scanning the seas for any disturbances. Terrill didn’t know what they’d find, but he could see clouds coalescing in the distance, and he hoped it wouldn’t storm.

Not long after this observation, the trio and their escort arrived at the tent, and with a mutual nod with the other guards, pushed on to the opulent dwelling.

“Well, why haven’t we found the source of these injuries, foreman?! I can’t send people in there with good conscience if I know they’re going to be spit back out by some malevolent, unknown force!”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Gerald. We’re trying our best, but even the mercenaries-”

“I’m aware,” the first man spoke. He rubbed at his temples, an exhausted sigh pealed from his lips. To Terrill, his bespoke suit and well-groomed hair told him that this was Gerald Rainert, the mayor of Serotin. The man next to him was less clean, covered in the dirt and grime of the mines, while behind him, a girl around their age worked studiously, poring over documents strewn about a large table. “We shouldn’t have gone to that cavern…”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Isn’t that supposed to be it? We can’t have known.”

“Perhaps, but look at the state of things. I thought we were just dealing with a couple pirate raids on the mines, but now there’s trouble within them? This is too much.” The mayor grabbed a handkerchief from his breast pocket, wiping at the patina of sweat on his brow. “What would you suggest, Franklin?”

“We have an exploratory team down there now. No mining or fighting. Just observation. They should be coming up soon. Until then, loathe as I am to say it, we need to halt mining activities in that sector.”

“You can’t do that!” The girl had finally spoken, and next to Terrill, Floyd lit up, though none of the three occupants took any notice of their guests. By Terrill’s estimation, this had to be Torry, made obvious by the fact that she looked like the mayor’s daughter. Both had the same dirty blonde hair and crystalline blue eyes, though her locks were shoulder-length while the mayor’s decidedly weren’t. “Father, that cavern could hold the very thing I’m looking for. If it’s the source I believe it is, that cavern might be magical enough to seal itself back up.”

“If it’s magic, that explains all our problems. Your damn magic is probably what’s injuring my miners!”

“That’s preposterous!”

“Torry, we’ve had this discussion. It’s too dangerous. I’m not letting you examine a cave that could kill you, especially on some wild chase you can’t confirm. I already lost your mother to that insanity!”

“It’s not insane!” Torry insisted. Underneath the beret she wore, her hair slipped out of its perfect position, trailing into her eyes. She didn’t care, pouting and huffing at her father’s insistence. The more Terrill looked, the more similarities he saw, right down to the fashionable clothing Torry wore, and even the obstinate glares they shared.

“She’s right. This is definitely the place believed to be the source of all Earth Magic. I bet even you could confirm, right Terrill?” Terrill’s lips twitched at the boy calling him out, but the declaration took all attention and put it straight on Floyd. There was no longer any doubt the two knew him.

“Floyd!” The way they said his name could not have been more different. While Torry was overjoyed to see him, her father was quite the opposite, grimacing. The girl bounced over to her friend, or whatever he was, and looked at him with wide, doe-like eyes. “You managed to find it? How?”

“No doubt some nefarious sneaking,” the mayor grunted. He received Floyd’s grin for his trouble, and the boy once more tried to place his hands behind his head. Torry immediately noticed the manacles.

“What are those…? Floyd, what did you do?” she demanded, rounding on him and leaning close. Their noses were basically touching. Krysta coughed, looking away from it as Terrill resisted the urge to scratch the sudden itch on his head. He watched as Floyd recoiled, drawing away from Torry and chuckling. “You made a mess of things again, didn’t you?”

“Ah, come on, Torry! Like you’re one to talk! You blew up the-”

“We agreed to never speak of that again!”

“My apologies, mayor,” said their escort, saluting to the man in charge, “but Floyd broke the blockade.”

“Yes, I figured as much,” the mayor said with a sigh. He was pointedly avoiding Floyd’s grin to settle his eyes upon the pair that was Terrill and Krysta. “The better question is who these two are.”

“That’s why we came, sir. The blockade was broken, but it was the least of the issues at the harbor. A woman appeared and wreaked havoc with her wind magic. Tore up the harbor. We’ve evacuated, but it was thanks to these two that the people were saved. Thank Crea for their timely arrival.” The mayor showed no signs of being taken aback, but his demeanor changed ever-so-slightly. There was more respect and a willingness to listen. “They wanted to meet with you, sir, and given that woman mentioned something about Luster Mines, we figured it best to oblige them. The harbor is in cleanup mode in the meantime.”

There was a brief period of silence, and then, “Woman, you said?”

“Do you know her?” Terrill asked. He knew it was unwise to speak out of turn, but the mayor was not so rigid as the other officials he’d met. He was more pensive, taken elsewhere, to a past meeting of his.

“I know of her, yes. She sent a message to me about the mines. It’s why I’m here.” The mayor’s eyes became sharper as he met Terrill’s. “Why are you seeking her?”

“It’s complicated, but let’s just say she has the proclivity to go around hurting as many people as possible and allying herself with the worst scum imaginable.”

“The pirates, then.” This news troubled the mayor, though it had no effect on his daughter, who appeared to be exchanging hurried words with Floyd despite the latter’s state of restraint. “I knew they’d grown more bold, but to threaten an actual installation of the state…But why is he in handcuffs if he was instrumental to saving our populace?”

“Just a precaution, sir.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Torry finally snapped back, ignoring Floyd for the first time. “You dragged them over to Silicias. What could they possibly do here? Hurt us? Kidnap us? If they saved the people, then there’s no reason they would have to harm us. Same with Floyd. Release them.”

“Torry…” her father grumbled. She appeared too headstrong to listen. Despite her father’s misgivings, she walked right up to the guard and took the keyring from his belt, slotting them into the manacles and freeing Terrill and Floyd both.

“Ha ha! Freedom! You’re the best, Torry!”

“Don’t thank me yet. If what you’ve found out is true, we have a lot to research while we’re here, and with father not allowing me to go deep in the mines, we’ll have to run the research topside.” Torry spoke fast, Terrill realized, but Floyd apparently had no trouble keeping up with her. The whole while she babbled on with scientific jargon, he nodded and his face shifted between multiple expressions that indicated he was soaking it all in.

Her father was displeased, but he pushed it aside to focus on Terrill. “So, this woman and the pirates. Do you know much about their connection?”

“Unfortunately not. Just that she’s using them, or working with them,” Terrill said. He accepted his sword back from one of the soldiers, strapping it on his back. Krysta continued to stand at his side, but with nothing to say, she took to looking around the tent. “She said something about starting a war.”

“A war with pirates?” the mining foreman said. His interruption to their conversation became more evident with his full-bodied laughter. “They’d be crushed in moments! And Serotin has no desire to go to war with a band of filthy ruffians.”

“Then why the mines…?”

“Maybe it’s because they want finances!” Floyd shouted. The mayor’s whole face twitched, but he reined himself in for his daughter’s sake. “I mean, there’s lots of precious gems. They might want to raid some of those.”

“Floyd, focus!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“In any case, I’m glad to have received the information, even if the information itself isn’t quite welcome,” the mayor said, at last extending his hand to Terrill. He took it without delay. “I don’t think I heard your name, however, nor the reason you wanted to see me.”

“Ah, Terrill Jacobs, and I’d just wanted to ask you about the woman, since she-”

“Chief!” The shout startled everyone in the tent, causing Krysta to jump. The foreman made his move without a second thought, brushing the soldiers aside to lead the progression out of the tent. “Chief Franklin! We have a major problem!”

“Well, what is it? Out with it, boy!”

Terrill took a minute to see what was going on, forced behind the mayor as he left the tent to look upon his own employee. When Terrill emerged, he was in shock. It wasn’t just one miner, but a whole group of them. Some were hauling others on their backs, while yet more were dragging stretchers containing the mercenaries they’d just seen. Krysta gripped his arm, though she was looking up the path, her body shaking.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered to her, not wanting to drown out the important conversation that would start when the miner got his act together.

“Don’t you feel it? The corrosion?”

He couldn’t say that he did. His brow knitted together, and he stared with Krysta in the direction of the mines. It appeared no different than any other mine might have, save for the exodus of miners and mercenaries from its depths. Nothing suggested what Krysta was saying. His eyes found her face, and for a brief moment, it was as though she’d let down all her walls, and a primal fear had settled into her that she’d never felt or portrayed before: the fear of death.

In that moment, recognizing it for what it was, things became clearer, and he felt it, too.

Darkness. Darkness deep in the mines. And a voice, stifled and snuffed out, but calling to him. The earth was dying, throttled by a force of wickedness that threatened to choke the very life out of it.

Poetic license, he felt at first, but it was the only way to describe the intensifying sickness inside of him.

He needed to see it. He needed to go there.

“We were lowering the mercenaries to the lower cave, trying to find the source of…all this madness…” The boy’s words broke Terrill from his thoughts, and he returned to the present, while Krysta continually looked far-off. Behind the pair, Floyd and Torry had emerged from the tent to listen. “It…it was indescribable, chief.”

“Well, try to describe it!”

The boy puckered his lips, dropping the unconscious mercenary he was carrying to the ground. His head started shaking, and soon his whole body did, too. Terrill could see the glisten of tears, and he felt his very bones rattle. The mayor stepped forward, a hand on the boy’s shoulder as he attempted to reassure him.

“It’s all right, son. Try and calm down. Take your time, but tell us as easily as you can.”

The mayor’s words nearly caused the boy to start hyperventilating, but he regained ahold of himself. He continued to tremble. “It was dark, and we could barely see our own fingers in front of our faces. Then…then it came.”

“It?” came the chorus of voices.

“It was like a great skeleton. The undead, walking this earth. A monster!” he screamed. As the other miners heard this, they too were paralyzed by fear. “A-a cleaver came out of the darkness, hacking away at some of the other miners and mercenaries. We barely escaped with our lives.”

“And that voice…” The mercenary on the ground, the one who had made the boisterous claim of scoring big, shook as he corroborated the story. “It was like the whisper of Death! The voice of the goddess calling us home as it told us we could go no further. That we weren’t…ordained to… It was…all we heard before…before…”

The last of the mercenary’s strength gave out, and he collapsed entirely. The miner boy did, too. Silence filled the vacuum of shock left behind.

The mayor didn’t take long to stand.

“Franklin, pull your men out. Until we can ascertain just what is lurking down there, I’m suspending all operations. Safety over all.”

“I’ll pass the word along.” The foreman left, and the mayor was back to rubbing his temples. The soldiers looked unclear on what to do, but understood the gist and left the camp to go racing after the foreman to help. It was a disaster of the greatest proportions.

But for Terrill, it was an opportunity, and a connection.

“Mayor Rainert, sir,” he said, forcing all eyes to gravitate towards him, “if you’re willing, I’ll go down there myself.”

His declaration echoed across the beach, and across the rocks. The mayor turned slowly to him, while Krysta, Floyd and Torry kept their eyes fixed. No one said anything for fear of what might happen next, but at some point, the mayor had composed his thoughts. “I can’t allow you to put your life at risk like that. Not with that unknown.”

“I can handle myself,” Terrill insisted. His hand found his sword to indicate this, but the man wasn’t convinced. He waited for a better reason, and though it took a moment, Terrill provided one. “I have a feeling I can find out what’s causing problems for you. And…” He briefly looked to Torry and Floyd. “I can use Earth Magic.”

“You can?! Floyd, you didn’t say!”

“Wasn’t much time, Torry.”

“Father, you have to let him!” Torry pleaded. Her father wasn’t much swayed, but listened to her argument all the same. “If I can’t go there myself, then it’s possible this, er…uh…”

“He’s Terrill,” Floyd provided.

“Right, this Terrill can. He fought off that woman leader of the pirates, so I’m sure he can handle things even the mercenaries can’t. Magic is a great boon, too! And if the source of all Earth Magic is there, it could power up his own, and-”

“Enough, Torry!” The sudden shout silenced her. His concerned face was gone, replaced with the businessman than had gotten himself elected to his office. “Why?”

There was the question; the one with multiple answers.

Terrill could have said that it was because he sensed the same corroding darkness in the mines that Krysta felt.

He could have said it was because a monster that struck in the darkness, causing havoc and strife, reminded him of that night on the bridge back in Sayn.

He even could have told the mayor that he felt this was the nexus about which the woman was speaking; the threat that could cripple Serotin and start a war.

Instead, Terrill had a far simpler reason, and that was the one he gave.

“Because I’m a Guardian, and that’s what we do,” he answered. “We protect people, and right now they need a whole lot of protection. Will you let me?”