Chapter Twenty Nine

They didn’t stay in the alley for long. Even Maryam recognised it was late, and they all had a bit too much on their minds to continue reading. When they finally got back to their rooms, they found Ralisdor waiting for them. They all expected him to shout, but he did something else instead.

“You’re back. Are you all right? Did she trap you in some sort of deal, or go back on her word? Please tell me everything went well.”

“We’re fine Ralisdor. All things considered things went surprisingly we-”

Shuka was cut off from finishing her sentence by the door behind her getting kicked open. Shuka couldn’t see who had done it, but judging by Ralisdors look of shocked terror, it couldn’t have been anyone friendly. The ear ringing shout that soon followed only strengthened that suspicion.

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY BOOKS!?”

Shuka didn’t need to turn around to know who was now standing in the room with her, but she did anyway. There Visia was, wrath in her eyes, with a wand in each hand. Not pointed at anyone yet, but Shuka knew that didn’t mean much. What truly scared her though was the magic. Pure mana, blue as the sky, was coiled around her arms in perfect lines. They spiraled down to her wands, and then curledaround them too. At the tips of the wands, where all the lines coalesced, was a small orb of mana so condensed, that the intensity of its glow hurt to look at. If that was all then Shuka would have been scared. What terrified her though, was that she didn’t sense the mana coming off of her at all. To even manifest mana in a visible form required a tremendous amount of it, so much so that some of that mana would inevitably leak into the environment. Visia went far beyond that, and yet kept it all contained. That level of control was nearly unthinkable.

“H-hold on Visia.” Xorvos stammered. “We didn’t steal anything, a-and we held up our end of the deal, didn’t we?”

In less then the time it took to blink one of Visias wand was pointed at his chest and the spirals of mana on that arm were now spirals of flames.

“You couldn’t cross me if you tried, and I wouldn’t recommend making that attempt now. Your blood would need to be blue at least to piss me off. Isn’t that right, ‘Ralisdor’?”

Though her body moved, Visias gaze never waivered. The entire time it was locked solely on Ralisdor.

Blue blood? What the hell is she talking about? And what did Ralisdor to get her this mad?

“I assure you; you have the wro-”

Ralisdor disappeared. One moment he was talking and the next, there was nothing but air. Maybe not even that, as Shuka then felt a slight breeze, as if a wizard shape vacuum was being filled in front of her. It was only after a moment that she noticed that Visias other wand was now outstretched, pointing towards Ralisdors last location.

“What did you do to him!?”

“Nothing lethal. Yet. I just sent him to a place where pesky ‘laws’ and ‘contracts’ won’t get in the way.”

Visia didn’t stay around after answering, instead she activated some sort of spell and disappeared just like Ralisdor did. It had been less than a minute since Shuka was about to tell Ralisdor how well things were going. Now she just felt like a fool.

What am I going to do without him? He was the only one who could actually get the better of Validus, and I might’ve gotten him killed. He warned me about Visia and I didn’t listen, this is all my fault.

She didn’t have long to worry as less than ten minutes after he disappeared, Ralisdor reappeared. Shuka knew this as soon as it happened because he fell face first into the ground from a few feet in the air. Shuka almost thought it was his corpse hitting the ground, but a grunt of pain relieved her of her worries. Still, he obviously didn’t get out of the encounter unscathed. His clothing was scorched, and as he started to get up, Shuka saw the front of his robe was covered in bright red blood.

“Shit, Ralisdor are you okay? Quick, drink this potion, you’re bleeding.”

Shuka took out her potion of healing, but Ralisdor pushed it away.

“Don’t worry Shuka, I already drank one before she teleported me back. She never intended to kill me; I wasn’t in any real danger.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I was still deciding on whether or not to kill you when I brought you into my demi-plane.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Visia came back too, and yet it was. Maybe it was the way she didn’t make even a single sound, even to Shuka’s keen ears.

“It seems my business here has concluded. If I ever meet any of you again, it had better be for a good reason. Goodbye.”

And she was gone. Flickered out of existence like she was never even there in the first place.

*

A new day dawned on Lancrin, bright and sunny, as if it was in defiance of the night before. Xorvos normally woke up early enough to see the dawn but not today. Today it was almost noon by the time he got out of bed. Not that he slept the whole night uninterrupted. He found it’s a bit hard to sleep after your room gets raided by a pirate queen.

It was that easy for her. We were all there and none of us could do anything, not even Ralisdor. Have I always been this useless? What have I done this entire journey? It feels like even Maryam has done more than me, and she’s only been here for a week.

He looked over at Maryam, doing stretches in their room. She had her own room in the inn, but slept here this night. He didn’t blame her; he wouldn’t want to be alone either. Not that being in a group would have helped, as he had recently experienced. Their eyes met for a moment, before Maryam stopped her stretches and came over to the window Xorvos was looking out of.

“Hey Xorvos, lets hang out.”

“Uh, now?”

“Well yeah, it’s not like you’re doing anything right? Let’s go.”

It was astonishing she was still so energetic. She was even smiling, to Xorvos’ surprise.

“What about Shuka? Shouldn’t we wait until she wakes up?”

“Are you kidding? She’s always so grumpy in the morning, there’s no way she will want to go out with us.”

Well, I can’t say she’s wrong. Why does she want to go out with me so much though. Is there something she wants to talk to me about? Considering everything that’s been happening it’s probably important.

“Alright, I’ll go then. Where are we going?”

“I dunno. I was thinking of just taking a walk and seeing what we find.”

Xorvos didn’t have an objection to that, so he soon found himself following behind his friend. She led him into the city where she started looking around for something fun to do. What she found was a food stand selling meat skewers.

“Two meat skewers please. Or do you want two since your so big? Actually, better question, do you even eat meat? I don’t really know if animals count for Quanso’s whole ‘no killing’ rule.”

“It depends on the Quanso, but I have no problem with meat. And I will just buy my own skewer, there’s no need for you to pay for my food.”

“You sure? They’re a gold each.”

“A gold!?”

For the first time Xorvos actually looked at the menu attached to the food stand and saw it was advertising food made of magical creatures. Of course there was no way to tell the meat was magical, or tasted good even if it was. Those were small details though, nothing for a customer to worry about.

“I can’t let you spend that much money on my account, especially for something so small. I will simply go without one.”

“Oh come on, don’t be like that. I got so much money it barely has any meaning to me anymore, one gold is nothing.”

“Still, I do not wish to impose.”

“Well too bad, because I want to be imposed and you’re just gonna have to deal with it.”

Maryam put down four gold coins on the food stall and picked out three skewers. One for herself and two for Xorvos. The extra gold she paid was a tip, but she mostly just paid it to be extra imposed upon.

“Here. Now if you don’t take these you will be wasting the money I already spent on you. Enjoy.”

“…You really like putting me in difficult situations, don’t you?”

Xorvos was sighing as he said that, but he also took the two skewers with a slight smile on his face.

“Yeah well your politeness is still holding you back. You still gotta learn to just say thanks when getting a gift instead of saying you don’t want it. That’s what feels ruder to me. But hey, what do I know? I’m the rude one.”

“Hmm, I don’t know about that. I think your prestigious position as the ‘rude one’ might have been stolen by Shuka, even if she has some outside assistance.”

“Ack, you’re right! And that Ralisdor fellow is some pretty nasty competition too as long as he’s in a pissy mood. That’s it, we gotta cure that curse asap, I need to get my title back.”

They were laughing as they talked, walking through the city and munching on skewers. It actually tasted better than Xorvos expected. He had thought that magical creatures wouldn’t actually taste better than normal meat and the whole thing was just a scam. Well, admittedly the meat wasn’t necessarily better than its more mundane counterpart, just different. But whoever had made the skewers clearly knew what they were doing. The good food and better conversation was already causing Xorvos’ mood to rise.

“So I’m assuming you want to talk to me about something right? There is too much stuff going on right now for you to just want to hang out.”

“Well, there is something I want to talk to you about, but I do want to hang out too. Just because there are important things to be done doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun in between doing them right? And besides, Ralisdor already got his grubby little hands on the book so there’s not much I even can do right now.”

“Ah. I guess I can assume that you wouldn’t be here talking to boring old me if you could be reading that book?”

Maryam gave him a devilish smile to go with her answer.

“You know it!”

“Of course… so what did you want to talk to me about then?”

“Ralisdor.”

Her answer didn’t surprise Xorvos. The man had been on his mind too, and after last night there was a lot to talk about.

“I actually had something I wanted to ask you about that. Visia said something about needing blue blood to be able to make her mad. Do you know what she meant by that? She seemed pretty mad at Ralisdor so I think he might be related to it.”

The line had been bothering the Quanso all night, among other things. It felt like a hint to a puzzle, but he didn’t have enough pieces to put it together.

“Yeah, well it could have two meanings actually. The first is that blue blood can refer to royalty, or even nobility in a ‘we are inherently better than you peasants’ kind of way. I don’t think that’s what she meant since I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give two shits about the nobility.”

I don’t know Visia very well, but that does sound about right. I can’t imagine even a king could do much against her.

“So if you don’t think she’s talking about royalty, then what do you think she meant?”

“Archmages.”

“Archmages?”

“Yup. Theres a saying that you only truly become an archmage when your blood runs blue. And this time it actually has some basis in reality.”

“…you’re going to have to explain this one to me. Do archmages actually have blue blood?”

Maryam was starting to get that sparkle in her eye that she would get when she talked about magic. Even after all the years apart, Xorvos still recognised it from when they were kids.

“Okay, so it’s not exactly blue blue, but it does start to turn purple. So you know how condensed mana is blue? Well since mana is stored in the body it actually gets in your bloodstream, so if you have enough mana in your body the blue mana mixes with the red blood to create purple. Of course, theoretically if you had enough mana then your blood would go past purple and you would have actually blue blood. I think the farthest anyone’s actually gotten is a fairly blue shade of purple, but in the magic community any shade of blood that’s not red is considered blue blood.”

…Who are the current archmages again? I think I remember Ralisdor mentioning the archmage of illusion, but I can’t remember his name. Oh right, isn’t Maryams mother an archmage?

“If archmages have purple blood, is that true for your mother too? And didn’t you say the ritual she did on you involved giving you her blood? Is your blood purple?”

“Um, kinda? My mother’s blood is purple, but that actually because she is a purple dragon, not because of her mana density. All dragons have blood the same colour as their scales you see. And I do have dragons blood in me, but if she just injected me with super magical dragon archmage blood I would have died from mana poisoning. My body has to adapt to it before it can actually flow through my veins without killing me, so my blood only turns purple when I am very transformed. Even then, it’s still only purple because it came from a purple dragon, not because it came from an archmage.”

How in the world did Maryam go from being as magicless as me to having colour changing blood she got from an archmage? Whatever, I think we’re getting sidetracked.

“So, wait. Was Visia implying Ralisdor is an archmage? Or just very powerful?”

“It could be either. I know for a fact that Visia’s blood is far from red and she’s not an archmage, so she could just mean a powerful mage. But then she would have probably just said purple blood as it would be more accurate. I think she specifically said blue blood to go along with the saying about archmages. I could be wrong though. Either way though, he’s been lying to us this whole time and I don’t like it.”

It was a lot to think about, but Xorvos had the distinct feeling he was the wrong person to be thinking about it. He was spared from thinking too much more about it, or more realistically asking Maryam about it, by the sound of a bell. It was a high pitched noise coming from a pouch on Maryams belt. What was odd was that she wasn’t moving around all that much, so there wasn’t much of a reason for a bell on her to be ringing. There was also the fact that he had never heard the sound of this bell from her before, so when did she get it? Maryam herself obviously seemed to know what it was though, and it did not seem good.

“Aw crap.”

Maryam took out, not a bell, but a small stone from her pouch. It was smooth and had some sort of arcane symbol painted on it.

“What’s that?”

“A speaking stone.”

“You mean one of those artifacts that let you talk to people across great distances? Who’s the person on the other end?”

“Only one person it could be. My mother.”

*

“Heeeey mom. How ya doing?”

“Where are you?”

“Right, so about that. So you see I was on my way back home when my horse got sick, and you’re always telling me not to waste money even if I can afford to. So I decided to wait until the horse got better instead of buying a new horse. I swear I am making my way back home as soon as possible though; don’t you worry about that!”

“Really? Then why is it you are currently wandering around Lancrin telling a Quanso about archmages?”

Shit, is she scrying me? I though my necklace was meant to prevent that. Although, I guess if she made it, she would know how to get past it.

“Yeah, so the horse got sick in Lancrin, and the Quanso was just curious about archmages so I was telling him about them.”

“Maryam. You know better than to lie to me.”

The voice was stern, but not harsh. Still, Maryam knew better than to push her luck.

“Alright, fine. I met some old friends from back when I was still in the orphanage and I decided to help them out with something. It’s important though, I wouldn’t be sticking around so long if it wasn’t.”

“I see. And why didn’t you tell me of this?”

“Wel… I was worried you would tell me to forget about it and return.”

“Did you not think I could have helped with this problem? There are few issues an archmage cannot solve.”

“Well… would you? I mean they are strangers with barely any money. It’s not an easy problem to solve either. Why would you help them?”

“They are the friends of my daughter. What other reason would I need? Come back home, I will help your friends free of charge.”