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Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath

Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 3, Wind (Noble) 2

Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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Adam Joosen slid into the table across from Samazzar, a worried look on his face. The saurian picked up a heavy wooden mug, cocking his head slightly to the side as he brought the glass to his muzzle to take a sip of cider.

The human sighed, hand leaving the sword on his hip just long enough to run through his short blonde hair. He slumped backward in his seat, pressing his back against the wooden rest.

Without a word, a waiter set a ceramic mug down in front of the knight. Sam felt his nose wrinkle as the smell of alcohol assaulted him. Even across the intervening table, whatever Adam was drinking packed a punch.

Joosen lifted the cup to his lips, taking a sip and recoiling at the harsh liquid. Samazzar took another drink from his cup, full of questions but waiting for the obviously troubled human to speak first.

Ever since his return from the magma vent, Sam had been meeting with the man once a week at the Settler Tavern. He wasn’t entirely sure what the appointments were for. It might have been to make a point, that the saurians were under the knight-lieutenant’s protection, it might have been to make a connection with one of the Academy’s up and coming prodigies, and it may-

“By the Dead Gods Sam,” Adam groaned, “this has been the week to end all weeks. I swear that I have been beset by every possible disaster, calamity and annoyance known to man, mystery, or beast.”

Samazzar smiled wryly. It also might be possible that Adam Joosen was just wound up tightly and looking for a friend, or someone like a friend, that he could vent too.

“I finally got approval to send out a scouting team to investigate your reports from around Redfern Vale,” he continued unhappily. “They were supposed to have reported back almost a week ago. I can’t help but see this as one of the darkest possible confirmations of your concerns.”

Sam set down his glass of cider, swirling it in a circle for a second against the tabletop before addressing the knight.

“I’m not sure how many people we saw hiding in the grass. They weren’t as well or as uniformly armed as the town guard, but it was more than I’d ever seen outside of Vereton.”

“Knights should’ve been able to get away,” Adam replied unhappily. “None of them were particularly skilled in the mysteries, but no one can make it past squire without at least becoming a student of major mystery. Between their martial skills and their magic, they should have at least been able to fight off a bunch of bandits.”

Samazzar leaned back in the booth, looking closely at Adam as the human fretted. His hair was oily and dangling in his face, failing to conceal the dark bags under his eyes. There was little doubt in Sam’s mind that the knight hadn’t showered or slept properly in days.

“Are you sure that they’re bandits?” Sam asked finally, his claws clicking against the table.

Adam paused, cocking his head to the side as he looked at the saurian in confusion.

“I don’t know many of the details,” Samazzar said, replying to the unspoken question. “But I’ve had at least a half-dozen people mention that Vereton has enemies that are clamoring for it’s destruction or subjugation. Now, they always catch themselves and refuse to talk about it further, but I’m sure you can think of a couple groups that have the power to put a ‘bandit’ clan like this together.”

“I suppose that Sappin, the Middrak Confederacy, or the Grand Duchy of Atophel would have access to the kind of practitioners that could make a knight team disappear without a trace,” Adam responded.

“But if they are taking action,” he continued unhappily, “we’re in a lot of trouble. An obscene amount of trouble.”

“Let your superiors know then,” Sam said. “For all of its flaws, Vereton is starting to grow on me. I’d prefer to be able to finish my studies without an invasion disrupting things.”

Adam picked up his cup, swishing it once as he frowned off into space. He brought the ceramic cup to his mouth, taking a sip and immediately wincing as the cheap liquor attacked his throat.

“Captain Jamise got wind of the missing team,” the human replied bitterly. “He’s saying that they’ve abandoned their posts. Or worse.”

“Worse?” Samazzar asked.

“He’s whispering to anyone that will listen that they were working with the City’s enemies,” Adam said glumly. “I know that they’re probably dead, but he isn’t even leaving things at that. Jamise is ruining their legacies, and if he has his way, none of their families will even get a pension.”

Samazzar chewed on his lower lip for a moment before choosing his words carefully.

“What if someone were to either bring your knights back or verify their passing?” Samazzar questioned hesitantly. “Would that help resolve the situation?”

Adam’s eyes lit up and he edged forward, spilling a little of his drink as he leaned across the table toward Samazzar.

“That would fix everything Sam,” he said excitedly. “If you could do that, it would mean the world.”

Samazzar smiled back, rapping his knuckles on the table.

“I’ll have to talk with Dussok and Takkla, but you’ve done a lot for us. We’ve had enough run-ins with the guard and knights that finding a way to diffuse tensions would be fantastic. If you can put in a good word for us around the knight barracks once we get back, that seems like a fair deal.”

“Consider it done,” Adam replied, snatching up his drink and clinking it against the side of Samazzar’s cider. “I know more than one knight worried about Jamise. They think he found a way to take a cut from the missing knights’ pensions. None of us can prove anything, and no one is going to make any accusations without something to back it up. That brother of his has a lot of influence with the Patrician. Still, if you could figure this out, it would go a long way toward bringing squires and junior officers over to your side.”

Samazzar lifted his own mug and took a drink. The slightly alcoholic beverage burned a little as it slid down his throat, but Sam knew better than to drink anything stronger than the unfortified cider. It had taken a fisftul of parros and a number of apologies to make up for the fire damage caused by his one and only drunken revel.

Three days later, Sam stood with his eyes closed drinking in the sun as he stood in the tall grass just outside Redfern Vale. The wind rustled by, almost overwhelming him with information.

The second level of wind had changed a lot. Before he had a sphere within which he could sense the passage and flow of his mystery, but now Sam could see everywhere that it had once been.

He remembered his first time exploring after he reached the second level of heat. Samazzar’s mind had been filled with hints and images of where the head had come from. Of the rats, bugs and hidden springs that drew warmth into the icy depths of the deep caves.

This put that moment to shame. He could see everything the wind touched. Admittedly, things began to fade past a certain distance. Sam’s perception of the mystery blurred at the edges of his direct perception, fading until he could identify the vague shapes of the largest obstacles on the plains.

Advancing a level had also helped Samazzar’s focus, letting him process significantly more information as he tuned in to the mystery of wind. His perception didn’t increase at the same rate as his magical senses, limiting any sort of attempt to read the air at a long distance into a cone rather than the usual half-sphere that he operated.

“We aren’t going to find anything, little dragon,” Dussok said, probably for the fifth time. “I don’t know what you expected, a big sign saying ‘there was a battle here.’ We’re in the middle of an endless prairie. Literally all someone would need to do is throw a body into the grass and wait for it to decompose.”

Samazzar didn’t respond, instead shifting his perception thirty degrees to the right and casting his attention into the far distance. At first he had tried to hold a conversation with Dussok, but after the third hour of their search, he realized that his friend was mostly talking for the sake of talking. As sure as the sun went up in the morning, Dussok would find a reason to be dour. It was simply in his nature.

“I was making progress at the forge,” the big saurian continued. “I just finished my baptism into the first level of metal, and I was on the cusp with fire. Between Crone Tazzaera’s lessons and weeks of work, I’m at the threshold of another breakthrough. I can feel it.”

“Congratulations,” Takkla squealed happily, wrapping her arms as far as they would go around Dussok. “I feel the same way. Tazzaaer’as lessons have become so much better now that she has the Academy’s resources. Both of us will make it to the next level of fire in no time!”

Sam broke into a run, eyes still closed as he followed the whisper of the twisting wind. He could feel something off in the distance, he couldn’t exactly put his finger on it, but it was like a missing tooth. No matter what he did, his tongue kept exploring where it should have been.

“What in the-” Dussok began before he shut up to catch up with Samazzar.

Black and white images flitted through Sam’s vision giving him a vague impression of the endless swaying grass. To the left, the wind flowed around the mountains that housed Redfern Vale, but ahead, he could feel it, a spot where the air swirled downward into a divot carved into the landscape.

It was like a riverbed, but it blossomed out of nowhere. One second there were unending fields of grass, and the next there was a pit carved in the uniform, swaying landscape. Even more surprising, there were no other hints as to its origin. No mist from a spring or pond woven into the air, no heated thermal driving the wind upward. There wasn’t even an obstacle or cold patch. Nothing. Just a hole in the grass without any explanation.

Takkla and Dussok struggled to keep up with Samazzar, but he hardly noticed. He was in range now, no longer relying on the second tier of the mystery of wind to whisper hints about the medium’s recent past. He could directly feel the strange spot.

It was a roundish patch, devoid of grass with an approximately ten pace radius. There were still some stalks of grass that rose shin high here and there along with some suspicious shapes and lumps, but the closer Sam got, the more convinced he was that the location wasn’t natural. If it wasn’t what he was looking for, at a very minimum he had found something else worthy of his team’s interest.

Finally he slowed as he arrived near the target. Sam opened his eyes. The landscape didn’t even begin to change until he made it within about sixty paces of his destination. Only then did he see a shadow in the unending field to mark the area bereft of grass.

Thirty seconds later, Takkla gasped as she joined Samazzar at the edge of the clearing. Dussok just shook his head before speaking up.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you managed to find the knights, little dragon, but even so-”

Sam stepped into the clearing, careful not to step on one of the bodies. There were fourteen. Five were knights, three men and two women wearing the same form-fitting interlocking plates as Adam under brownish cloaks designed to hide the glint of metal. The other seven looked a lot like the ‘bandits’ that the saurians had encountered previously. Their only constant was the mismatched armor and poor hygiene.

Takkla turned to the side, throwing up the jerky and dried berries that they had been using as field rations. Samazzar didn’t blame her. The tableau was at least a week old, and the bodies had been left to the wind, sun, and scavengers in the meantime. They were bloated and mostly rotted through with numerous limbs and chunks of flesh missing.

Silently, Samazzar cursed himself for not having wind at the third level so that he could cut off his sense of smell of entirely. He took one deep breath of the foul air before stepping closer to the scene to inspect the bodies.

The signs were faded, but there were marks in the dirt that spoke of a desperate battle. Furrows dug by mauls, hammers, or even magic lay next to snapped arrows. All of the knights had serious wounds on them, torn flesh and broken bones covered by dented armor. In one or two places, there were even puncture wounds, likely from picks and spears, where the attackers managed to stab through the well-forged steel.

As for the bandits? It looked like they had been fed through a meat grinder. Skulls were shattered, limbs were cut off with surgical precision that spoke of the mystery of sharpness blended perfectly with skill by a talented swordsman. A pair of the bodies didn’t have any marks on them other than those left by scavengers, likely victims of some magic that Sam couldn’t even begin to understand.

What was clear, is that there had been a lot more than seven bandits. It had rained since the attack, but the grass that had not been torn by magic and blade had been stomped flat by dozens of boots. This hadn’t been anything like the half-hearted ambush that the saurians had fought off. At least forty or fifty of the motley soldiers had attacked the knights, willing to sacrifice their numbers to steel and mystery in order to bring the elite soldiers down quickly.

“Grab some proof and let's get out of here,” Dussok called out nervously. “Smell aside, I don’t want to hang out here any longer than necessary. Anyone capable of bringing down five knights is more than capable of killing us.”

Sam nodded, unwilling to speak up and waste his oxygen for fear that he’d need to take another breath amidst the rot and stench. Quickly, he dropped to his knees next to one of the lights, searching the scene for something that would prove that the saurians had found them.

“Maybe a sword or something?” Dussok asked, glancing either way as he rubbed Takkla’s back. “I know the knights use custom blades. If we bring something like that back, it’ll be all the proof we need.”

He glanced at the bodies around him. Nothing. Their weapons and packs were missing. The raiders had taken everything that was light and could be easily resold. Really, the only equipment that even identified the half putrified corpses as knights was their armor, complete with Vereton and their order’s sigil on the right breastplate.

Thinking quickly, Sam dipped into his bloodline, letting the magic flow into his hands. With quick, steady motions cut the lacquered images free from the armor. The tough steel resisted, but without a practitioner supporting them, they weren’t a match for the magic of his claws.

Sam had to leave the clearing twice to get fresh air, but within three minutes, the grisly work was done. His satchel had five hand-sized plates of steel, each the sad reminder of a dead knight.

The three saurians walked away from the hidden battlefield in silence for almost ten minutes before Dussok spoke up.

“That was so eerie, Samazzar. Unless you had magic or could fly, there wasn’t any way someone would have noticed the fight. If we hadn’t come along, no one would have ever known what happened to those knights.”

“I think that was the plan,” Sam replied. “It’s not a well populated area. Really, the only things past this section of the prairie are mountains and resource gathering grounds. Any bandit group operating in the kind of numbers needed to take down a knight team would have run out of parros or starved to death within a couple of months. Even the group that was waiting for us was a lot more than I would expect. If you ask me, someone is purposely trying to disrupt Vereton's ability to gather magical goods.”

“Crap,” Dussok said, shaking his head slowly. “We should probably let Knight Joosen and Master Pothas know about this. They’ll know what to do.”

“Of course,” Samazzar responded easily, “but it seems a little soon to head back.”

“After all,” he continued, fishing a trio of gently glowing flame garnets out of his satchel, “I thought I heard the two of you say that you were close to the next level in the mystery of flame. We’re right next to the magma vents. We might as well push ourselves over the threshold while we’re here.”

“I don’t know little dragon,” Dussok replied uncertainly, looking from the gems in his hand to Takkla’s still shuddering form. “There are a lot of those bandits about, and the magma vents themselves were incredibly hostile. Even if we don’t run into another salamander, I’m not sure if we’d survive a breakthrough out there given the toxic air.”

“Come on,” Sam said, clicking his tongue at the bigger saurian. “That’s not how a dragon would think. I’ve created potions to help with the heat and the air. The vents are as safe as they are ever going to be. Just think of them as one more opportunity for us to seize.”