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94. Dead City
🕑 Added 2024-02-27 15:00:05 +0000 UTCOz caught his breath. Holy shit!
Instead of trees, a forest of tents spread before him, spreading from an enormous central tent like spokes on a wheel out to a wide circle that filled up almost the entire valley. Open pits of reddish fluid stretched for hundreds of yards, with thousands of pale forms laid out like sardines in a tin, packed so tight he could only see the fluid where it pooled up around the bodies. Here and there, small pools of black tarlike liquid slowly churned, stirred by something his fey eye couldn’t see. Forms dressed in ragged clothes staggered around, insensate to the wounds they sported, carrying materials here and there between the pools and tents and back again.
In the center of the circle, the central tentpole of the central tent climbed upward, far above the white canvas of the tent itself. The dark wood pushed into the sky, stained with what rusty dry blood. The top of the pole came to a point, and halfway down the pole, a huge wolf hung, its body withered up, tongue hanging out, eyes shut.
“Mother,” Loup whispered.
Oz startled. “That’s your mom?”
“What? What are you two seeing?” Aisling asked.
“I haven’t seen her in decades,” Loup muttered.
“You’re sure that’s your mother?” Oz asked again. He eyed the giant wolf. The repercussions…the things that happened to create Loup, I don’t want it to be true!
She nodded, touching her nose. “Smelled too much like rot until I got close. But that’s her. For certain.”
Oz pursed his lips. “We have to alert the mages to this as soon as possible. This is more serious than I thought. Where’s that assassin who was following us when we need him?”
“He’s already gone back to the Mages’ Quarter to report,” Aisling commented.
“I hope he made it back safely,” Oz muttered. The mage who set this up stacked up a lot of defenses on the way in. I can only assume they stacked up a lot of defenses on the way out. I’ll take it slow and escape carefully…but would the assassin?
Probably. The Black Blades specialize in stealth, Fflyn offered.
Oh, you do? Oz wondered.
Fflyn narrowed his eyes. Rude.
No, I mean, you were very stealthy, but, you know, I didn’t know if it was a you thing or a your-sect thing—
Sure, sure.
Oz sighed. Yeah, I stepped in that one.
He looked at Loup. “Your mother…I don’t think we have the power to rescue her. We can try, but—”
Loup shook her head. “It’s fine. I’m not that attached to Mother. I’m not a pup anymore and I haven’t been for a long time. In the wild, we can die at any time. Parents, children, friends, anyone can die. If we have to leave Mother’s body behind to make it out alive, I understand. Mother would understand, too.”
She lifted her head, looking at the enormous wolf corpse on the pole. “After all, whether we bring her down from the pole or not, Mother is already dead.”
Oz ducked his head. “Yeah…” I guess growing up in the wild gives you a more brutal take on reality. When sentimentality could get you killed, better to avoid it altogether.
“If she was still alive…” She bared her teeth at the camp. The hair at the back of her neck bristled.
“We’ll get her back. It might take until after we destroy the necromancer, but we’ll get her back,” Oz promised. No matter what I have to do, let’s make sure Loup’s mother rests in peace.
Loup nodded. The hair at the back of her neck settled down, and she straightened up. “It is kind of you. But I will be fine either way.”
“Is this enough?” Aisling asked, looking at Oz. “I can’t see, so I don’t know.”
Oz looked at the city. He shook his head. “We still don’t know who’s behind it. If we return to the Mages’ Quarter now, we’re just as well off as if we’d returned the second we saw the wooden puppets. We’re close, but we haven’t accomplished the final step. We need to finish this. Figure out who’s behind it, and return safely to the Mages’ Quarter with the news.”
Aisling nodded.
“What do you have to hide yourself?” Oz asked. He touched Fflyn’s cloak. “I have something that can help, if you have nothing else.”
Hey! That’s my cloak! Fflyn protested.
We can turn invisible. Let’s not be greedy, Oz returned.
Fflyn crossed his arms. Yeah, but it’s my cloak.
Aisling touched her neck, drawing his attention to a small red gem dangling around her neck. “I have a charm from Master. It should suffice.”
Oz raised his brows. “Sachairi is an enchanter?” I should ask him for advice the next time he comes by.
Aisling chuckled. “No. He bought it from a master enchanter.”
“Oh,” Oz muttered. That, uh, that makes a lot of sense. Even if he’s injured and kind of nothing but a playboy nowadays, Sachairi always gave off the vibe of a martial mage, not a scholar or even a general purpose mage.
“We don’t all have a library of infinite resources at our disposal,” Aisling said, grinning.
Oz glanced at Aisling. “Do you want to learn enchanting? I could show you what I know. It’s not much, but—”
She waved her hand, chuckling. “No, no. I don’t have the patience for enchanting. Don’t get me wrong: I chose to become a martial mage. I’m not the sit-still, bookish type.”
“Different strokes for different folks,” Oz agreed. He nodded at Loup. “What about you?”
Loup gave him a look, then bent down on all fours. She pulled a fur out from under her shirt and threw it over her back. Her body blurred, and a wolf stood in her place. The wolf looked up at them, then lowered its neck, extending its head toward them.
“Oh. Hi, Loup,” Oz said. Not really sure what to do, he offered his hand for her to sniff.
She sniffed his hand, then huffed out and backed up a few steps, waiting.
Oz activated Fflyn’s cloak, then his invisibility spell. His body vanished.
Aisling reached up to her neck and squeezed the gem. The ruby glowed brightly, then faded out, and as it faded out, so did Aisling, vanishing like a cooling ember. Loup watched them vanish, then turned, leaping down the ridge. Oz and Aisling followed, leaving the ridge as empty as it looked.
A cold wind blew. Black energy swirled, sinking low in the valley. An icy chill suffused their ankles, climbing up their calves, then their knees, then their thighs. Oz shivered as the chill closed over his head, clutching the cloak close for warmth rather than disguise. Is it cold because of all the dark magic that’s being used, or is it cold to keep the dead bodies refrigerated?
Either way, it’s unpleasant. He scowled and hugged his arms tight around himself. It was such a nice spring day, too.
They wound down the hill and into the valley, the space between the foothills a subdivision of a subdivision of the larger bowl of mountains that encompassed the entire country. The stench of death grew thicker the deeper they went, until it choked Oz, so thick he could barely breathe. He lifted his shirt over his mouth and nose in a vain attempt to keep the air from reeking, but it barely helped. I could use some actual air filters. Maybe even a whole-ass gas mask.
At the bottom of the valley, they came out not far from a well-worn path. A zombie shambled by, fully equipped with its head and rotten through and through. Loup paused and looked back at Oz and Aisling, then dashed off, leaving them behind.
Oz glanced toward where he’d last heard Aisling’s footsteps. “Shall we go together?”
The thin air snorted. “We’ll lose each other regardless. Besides, it’s best to move separately when we don’t wish to be seen, and it’ll let us cover more ground. Let’s reconvene here at the end of the day.”
“Yeah, that is what Loup seemed to be saying.” It’s dangerous to move alone, generally, but when we’re all using different stealth methods, there’s value in moving singly. That way, if one person’s stealth is broken, the other two can carry on…not that I want any of us to be caught, but I have to think of the worst case. Oz took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll take the center tent, since I have the best stealth. Loup went to the left, so you go right.”
“Understood. I’ll see you at sundown.”
“Good luck.”
With that, they darted off into the camp.
