Riloth the 19th the 297th

“Come with me,” I told him, not leaving room for dissent in my voice.

Inwardly I smiled.

Look at me, bossing around a noble. I’ve come a long way from bullying children.

I led him to the other assassin, who I now saw to be a woman.

“Who is this?”

At first, he refused to look, but a quick pulse of anger from the Font of Mind kicked him into compliance.

“I don’t know. I swear!” he looked away, trying to hold in his vomit.

I went over to the fallen assassin, and found a piece of parchment, on which had been sketched very accurate drawings of myself, Daulf, Trish, Bearskin, and Roland, along with a brief description of our physical appearances and suspected capabilities. Mine were disappointingly lacking

A middling mage with limited offensive capabilities. Possibly a sorcerer, type unknown.

My companions on the other hand had lengthy descriptions of their abilities that were accurate as far as I could tell.

“Middling mage,” I mumbled to myself.

“What was that?” asked Dilan.

“I said empty your pockets.”

Dilan looked through his clothes and found only vials of some sort of poison, daggers, a garrote, a lock pick set, and throwing knives. Each object he pulled out furthered his confusion.

“I swear, I’m not an assassin. I don’t know where any of this came from. I can’t pick a lock. I’m a noble, not some urchin padfoot.”

“I believe you,” I said, mostly to get him to stop blubbering. “Are you aware that the Midlothian Empire ceased to exist seven-hundred years ago?”

He didn’t reply, but only stared in disbelief. I made my way back to the dead assassin, and began imbuing her clothes with Will so I could Conjure them off her and better search them. She held objects of similar fashion to Dilan, but no other notes. The removal of her shirt revealed a tattoo that covered her entire back, depicting a woman’s head, with snakes in place of hair. The snakes—well—snaked out and interwove into the branches of a strange tree which had an eye set in its trunk. The deep red aura had rapidly started to fade at her death, but this tattoo still shone brilliantly in the deep brown of the tendrils that had pervaded through her aura.

At the sight of the tattoo, Dilan gasped.

“Take off your shirt.”

I turned to see Dilan rushing to do as I commanded. Desperate to see if he too bore a tattoo. He did, though he could not see it. It bore the brown aura as deeply as his own flesh did his own. Up close, I could smell rusty iron coming from the tattoo's aura.

I broke the news to Dilan, and he broke down into tears, these born not of terror but despair. I left him to his own devices to gather my thoughts.

Could this be the Gorgon? My father had done research into her as part of a paid investigation, but he'd concluded her organization likely hadn't survived the Flood. But what's with the mind control? As I remember, she kept a roster of trained assassins frozen in stone, releasing them for their jobs and rewarding them with weeks of hedonism before returning them to their rocky slumber. And what is that tree?

"Dilan, what do you know of the Gorgon?"

His sobbing only intensified, and finally I tuned into what he was going on about.

"My back! I've been defiled!"

"Wait. That's your takeaway from all this? Listen. Tell me what you know of the Gorgon."

I handed him my water skin and allowed him a moment to collect himself.

"I just know what everyone knows. She sends her assassins out all over Kaltis. The Empire both uses her services and fears her blades. Why would she disfigure me with this? Do you have a mirror?"

I don't have time for this. Actually, time is what I have. It's the patience I lack.

"Alright, one last question, what year is it?"

He looked at me like I was the one blubbering on the ground, and said "Four fifty-two."

"By which calendar?"

"By the Empire's of course."

Hmm, so this guy is either an elf, a dragon in disguise, or has been turned to stone the last eight hundred years. I'm leaning towards option three. It does look like the Gorgon is still alive, active, employing mind control, and after me. This definitely goes into the pile of post-reset-Tal problems.

I left Dilan with some food and directions to "the nearest empire garrison" and headed further down the road.

It hit me as I ran.

These two could have killed me had we made it this far on the original 19th. Did that stupid hangover save all our lives? I'll need to tell Trish about this someday. Another task for post-reset-Tal.

With Wind Run, I got to the band of young growth trees after another twenty or so minutes. My crude estimate put it at fifty miles out, but I hadn't been tracking time too diligently. I marked the location as best I could in my mind and located a few landmarks to assist Dagmar in her search, then continued down the road. A village supposedly lay another hour or so further at my current pace. The idea of a whole village of new faces within reach was too much to resist.

I passed a few caravans going both directions beyond the ward circle. Refugees heading to Orinqth for a new start, and brave or foolish merchants risking the overland route to avoid the fees and delays of river travel.

Five castings of Wind Run and three hours after I left Crossroads, I arrived at the gate to the village of Knollwood. It had a wooden wall that encompassed all the hills on which the town sat, with a hundred feet of clear-cut trees between the walls and woods.

I arrived tired and dirt covered. The wind of the spell naturally cooled me as I ran, but blew up quite a large amount of dust that stuck to my sweat. No guards were present on the gate, which wasn't unusual for small towns, but generally someone manned them to open and close them. I approached unchallenged and found it to be unbarred. With a heavy shove, the wooden door opened just enough to let me squeeze through.

The road beyond went straight to the hill, at which point it circled the town in a spiral leading to the top, with a great staircase leading directly to the apex where the road first met the hill. Small homes and shops sat between each level of the road, with an entrance on each level.

From my vantage point, I could see clear to the large manor home at the top of the knoll, and despite my clear view, there wasn't a soul in sight.

Gods, does everything in my life have to be some ominous adventure now?

I cast Mage Armor and drank a potion of clarity before moving forward. In place of alleys, stairs to the next level sat between many of the buildings, and I traversed these to ascend the hill. Close up, I saw signs of combat, doors broken in, blood on the ground, and isolated black burn marks, the last a clear sign of magical combat.

Flood.

I made it to the top of the hill without encountering anyone, and by then noticed the odd lack of any creatures. No birds sang, nor did rodents rustle through the midden heaps. I'd not even needed to brush away a fly from my face since coming through the gates.

Dagmar would love it here, but I'm guessing this is not a good sign.

At the top of the hill, the signs of combat were intermixed with signs of some less violent chaos. Kegs, plates, and mugs lay strewn all over. As if a great celebration had been held just the night before. The lack of flies was all the more strange with the amount of food laying all around.

Cautiously, I crept through the open door of the manor, taking great care to not step on any crockery. The mess had not been constrained to the outside, and I had to use Glow to navigate the dark hallway in silence. The entry hall of the great house ran straight through to a central courtyard. I made my way to that door, which too was ajar. As I neared, I heard the first signs of life since entering the town.

I could not identify the words, but the tone was unmistakably that of someone begging for their life.

I threw my caution aside and ran out the door Lightning forming in my mind as I did so.

The overpowering stench of blood hit me as soon as I exited. The courtyard looked more like the back room of a butcher shop than the open-air garden it had once been. A massive pile of bodies dominated the center of the courtyard, all appearing to have been slain with cuts to the throat. Blood coated every surface, and around the pile lay the dismembered remains of others strewn about haphazardly. To the left sat a hastily constructed wooden cage, and inside stood a dozen figures in familiar black hoods.

“What have we here?” came a voice from behind.

I hesitate to call it a voice, for that seems such a feeble word for the discordant tones that told everything in my body to run.

“You’re new. How did this happen?”

Slowly, terror keeping me from moving any faster, I turned. In the corner of the courtyard loomed a hulking figure of nightmare. The demon, for there was no denying it was such, stood ten feet tall and had a twisted amalgamation of a body. It had the same general shape as a minotaur, with a bull’s head and the torso of a man, but instead of the hooves of a minotaur, its cloven feet tapered to deadly sharp points. Its skin was a deep red reminiscent of burned flesh, but most of its body was coated in the dried blood of the dead. As I stared at it, unable to move, it let out its mighty batlike wings and spread its arms wide in a gesture of greeting. In his left hand he held the source of the begging, a robbed cultist who was down to only a single limb but somehow still alive. Where the blood of the poor wretch landed on the demon, it sizzled, the heat of his body evaporating the vital fluid.

The demon sniffed the air with his bovine nose and said, “I smell the stench of the gods on you. But I can’t place which one. Riloth maybe, but it feels off. You aren’t here by chance, are you?”

“Hah, chance,” he laughed to himself, with a sound far more terrifying than anything else he’d done so far. “You must be trapped as well.”

Oh no, he knows about the resets.

I let the Lightning spell I had prepared fall apart in my mind, losing the Will along with it, but not caring. I glanced up to the roof and began to cast Blink, when a flash of orange light flew from the demon and caught me around the chest. The light burned where it touched, and I cried out in pain as he dragged me towards him with a whip of flames. I tried once more to cast Blink, entering the Arcane Realm to escape the pain, but I was faintly aware of the burning traveling to my face. The demon had lifted me by my head, the heat of his palm burning as much as the whip.

His mocking tone reached me despite my efforts to escape reality. “You can’t escape yet, we’ve hardly had time to chat.”

With my eyes covered—and possibly burned away—I could not teleport away.

“We have so much to discuss,” he whispered into my ear, burning the skin with his searing breath.

Frantically, I ran through my options. I could not escape through conventional means, but I could not allow this demon to do with me what he willed.

Who knows what lasting damage he could do to my soul?

I recalled the time in the forest where I had tried to control the Font of Fire, and plunged my mind into the Font of Space. I drew upon its energy, with no plan or spell in mind, only drawing all the power I could into me. At first, I had to work to draw it out, but after a moment I passed some tipping point and the effort lessened until eventually, the power was pouring into me of its own volition. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to. Faintly, amidst the pain, I was aware that the magic was destroying my body, though I was not concerned, that was the goal after all.

The last thing I can recall, before the magic ended me, was the demon’s shout of alarm.