Knights of Alchemy
Chapter Six: Old Heroes In New Armor
"The Tomegathericon has been found and taken," Helena repeated weakly, falling into a chair. The other Adepts had run back to the watchguard headquarters after escaping the flooded ruins, and quickly explained the situation (though Meg very carefully didn't mention anything about statues, in case they were just statues). "This is terrible."
"I don't get it. I've heard of the Tomegathericon, I guess," said Cata. "Didn't the Kibombo write it? How bad can it be?"
"They may have," Cian affirmed, "but if one of them did write it, that one has long fallen to madness and shadow. There are a few chapters in it with nothing more than simple power-raising rituals and the like. But there are also forbidden chapters that no witch doctor may gaze upon, by order of their guardian spirit, Gabomba."
"How can you tell if someone reads them?" asked Elys, and if she had known the answer, she would have wished she never asked.
"The last one who did was found in Naribwe," said Padriac. "Well, a lot of him. The rest, or at least the ashes they decided were probably the rest, were found on the roof."
"Ugh."
"Of his summer cottage in Ankohl province."
"Stop right there. Or a few minutes ago, if possible."
"Seems to me that Jastyx and Dullahan are likely to blow themselves up anyway, then," said Zak, lowering himself to lie down and take the weight off his hooves. "I really don't think it's worth the effort to go looking to save those two."
"I'd probably agree with you, if it were just them I was worried about," said Cian.
"What do you mean?" asked Elys.
"Right before Zak did his one-kick-obliterates-all renovation, Dullahan was boasting about having some extra power backing him up," Cata recalled.
"Precisely," said Cian.
"So, if it's some artifact or whatever, then maybe they can protect themselves from the book," Meg added as she thought it through.
"And if it's actually another Adept giving them strength, then that one might be able to handle the Tomegathericon too," said Helena. "Either way, anyone who could steal the Trident of Ankohl, the Sea God's Tear, and sneak onto Lemuria and into the ruins before being caught can't be daft enough to try reading the Book of Summoning like they got it from the library."
"The what?" asked Cata, Elys, Zak, and Meg in unison. Helena looked at them, confused.
"Farm girl, farm girl, farm horse, huntress," Cian listed, pointing out each of them and ignoring Zak's 'Oh, thank you, farm horse, didn't hear farm human female in there' and related grumblings.
"Ah," said Helena, but decided that explaining libraries wasn't needed right now. "Anyway… you've got the Tear back, what do you plan to do?"
"Get back to Daila before the storms destroy our home, which is what'll happen if we wait any longer - which could have happened already Cata we have to get home now!" shouted Elys, grabbing her best friend's arms and dragging her in the direction of the door.
"Daila stands, Elys," said Helena. "I managed to slip an inquiry in to one of the merchant vessels while you were in the ruins -which I technically shouldn't have done, considering the power of the Council Glyph, I mean, it is an ancient treasure of the country-" She was getting too angst-ridden for Meg to handle.
"Calm down," she ordered them. "Elys, don't freak out. Daila's still just fine. Helena, same thing. To quote Prachetes, 'rules are there to make you think before you break them'." She noticed the look Cian was giving her. "Well, I knew those philosophers couldn't all be idiots."
"That doesn't change much," said Elys. "We still have to get the Tear back, and fast."
"And what about those thieves?" asked Padriac, who had finally admitted that they weren't especially pirate-like, however disappointing it might be.
"They could be going anywhere," Zak pointed out, but not with much hope.
"Excuse me," said Spring, springing into existence and onto Cian's head.
Y'know, said Cata to Zephyr, in her head, I bet your wings would be really good at keeping an Adept's ears warm.
"Is that…" began Helena, but Elys was getting tired of the constant Djinni-worship (possibly because she didn't have one) and shushed her.
"I've spent a long time in the ruins," Spring went on. "I've been keeping watch on the Tomegathericon. I know its power too well for my liking, but there's a Psynergy to that book unlike anything else. I'd recognise it anywhere."
"And?" Cian encouraged his Djinni.
"And right now it's moving at high speed away from us, somewhere south of here. I'll lead the way, if you want, but don't expect a lot of precision."
"You want to keep following them?!" asked Elys, clearly wondering about Cata's sanity, as evidenced by the thoughtful look on her face, which Elys could read like a book.
"You two should go back to Daila with the Tear, as Cian promised, Spring will lead us to Jastyx and Dullahan like he promised, and I'll get to throw those thieves in the brig like you promised," said Padriac, but Cata was protesting before he finished speaking.
"You think that we can't help just because we're girls?" she demanded.
"No. Firstly, the horse goes with you," said the captain.
"Oh thank Venus," Zak mumbled.
"Second, the incarnation of vengeance comes with us, because she'll be helpful and scary and has a crush on Cian," Padriac finished.
"As soon as someone tells me what that means there is going to be a reckoning, you part-Lemurian misfit," said Meg. She looked around. No one was forthcoming. "Cian?"
"Mm?" He looked up from what was apparently a really, really interesting book on Helena's desk. "Oh, probably some kind of sailor-speak, I wouldn't know." Meg raised an eyebrow and then looked at Helena, who was also suddenly engrossed in paperwork.
"It's like I'm being shunned," she muttered. "Are all Lemurians bad liars?"
"Most of them," Helena replied.
"I am not giving up on this quest," Cata insisted, glad to escape the current topic.
"You-" Cian began.
"I," Cata declared, and this time rolling thunder backed her up, "am not giving up on this quest."
"I must admit, you showed her," said Meg to Padriac, standing near him on the side of the Lemurian ship. "To think that a girl would try to continue her personal quest when she had big, strong, not-all-that-assertive men to do it for her while she grew vegetables."
"Shut up," the captain groaned.
Hail didn't like the situation either. To the south of Lemuria was the city of Alhafra, the core of the great Osenia Trade Company, and Padriac had explained that, for various reasons that he didn't have time to explain, neither he nor the Tide Raven would be welcomed there. So, after a bit of arguing, he had relented to riding one of the Lemurian trader ships back to the mainland, and the Tide Raven would be given a temporary permanent (there was an argument over whether or not that was possible, too) dock at Lemuria.
Now the fastest schooner available was carrying Pietr to Daila with the Sea God's Tear, and would then go north to return the Trident's fragments to the people of Ankohl. And that left Cata, Elys, and Zak at the boarding platform to the trader vessel with the others, asking Helena what the box was for.
"It's a sort of… adventuring pack," said Helena. "As attached as I'm sure you are to your sword-"
"Not really," said Cata, grinning.
"-There's equipment in here that I think you'll all find useful," the woman finished.
"Just don't expect me to be trading these in for some Lemurian flouncing rapier," Meg called from the ship, but Cata opened it and found herself nearly blinded by the sunlight reflecting off a Lemurian-forged longsword, and the deep silver of it declared it to be mythril.
"You can't possibly-" Cata began.
"I'll not have a girl an eighth my age tell me what I can and cannot give to aid heroes," said Helena, firmly. "Lemuria is a grand city, and these are by far not the greatest of its treasures."
"Heroes," Cata repeated, possibly blushing, except that she was still staring at the sword, and so her hair fell around her face.
"What else do I call a few brave Adepts who seek out dangerous thieves and risk their lives to save their home?" asked Helena, rhetorically.
"Idiots, if they don't go back to that home afterwards," Zak grumbled.
"In older days, people like yourselves were called knights," Helena went on. "And I think that's exactly what you are. Knights, guardians from all the elements. Knights of Alchemy."
"Looks like you went about things the right way, then," said Elys with a grin, and Cata turned flame-red.
"Mars is still underrepresented," Meg pointed out, still out of sight above them.
"File a grievance," Helena suggested, grinning.
"Do what?" asked Elys.
"Never mind." A melodious horn rang out from the top of the ship, the call for all crew and passengers to board. Sailors scrambled about the deck and in the hold, making the final preparations for launch, while Cata and Elys hauled the chest of equipment up to the deck.
"I don't suppose you need a horse for the watchguards?" asked Zak, hopefully.
Helena laughed. "Get up there. They're the ones who need you."
"No one bothers with what I might want…" Zak grumbled, but he wouldn't have really stayed, even if Helena agreed. The ruins had convinced him of that. The satisfying thock of the sentinel's head flying off still echoed in his head, along with one truth: he couldn't leave, knowing that one day Cata could face a situation when her life would depend on him again.
"Hang on," said the captain of the ship to Meg, Cian, and Padriac.
"Hang on?" Padriac repeated, and pointedly did nothing of the sort, even though the others did. "I'm captain of the Tide Raven, you know. The fastest ship on the-"
The Lemurian craft rose out of the water as the helmsman focused his Psynergy, and water rolled off two great white wings, matching the dragon-figurehead very well. Two assistant helmsmen called up Psynergy as well, and the wings began to sparkle with scintillating light. The ship rocketed ahead, barely skimming the waves. Cian and Meg reached out, each catching hold of one of Padriac's arms as he crashed backwards.
"Second fastest," the captain corrected him, and she wandered off to get on with the business of captaining.
"Contigan dragon wings," Padriac marvelled. "I didn't know they were still crafted."
"They aren't. But they're very durable, and only a fool would decommission a winged ship," Cian pointed out, and it didn't take long to see how right he was. The Lemurian ship moved like an ocean falcon; it took a fair bit of concentration and careful balancing to move around on the deck, and so instead the Adepts -the Knights of Alchemy- spent the voyage in the hold, going over the gear Helena had sent them off with.
And when the ship reached Alhafra, a rather different group stepped down onto the docks, looking around for any hints of Jastyx and Dullahan's recent passage. Cata now wore a suit of light plate mail with a touch of gold in its colour over a warm purple travel robe, and the mythril longsword hung at her side. Her step was more confident than ever before- just wearing the armor made her feel properly knightly, and adding that to her natural attitude, it was going to be a bad day for anyone who tried to cause trouble.
Elys was less extravagantly different, but the circlet on her head caught the sunlight nicely, and the phoenix designs on her armlets seemed to dance as she walked. Cian wore a Lemurian mantle, though he still passed on the traditional headdress, and kept his sabre.
Meg looked exactly the same, though anyone trying any tricks on her -and she fully expected this to happen inside such a big city- was likely to find out that she had hidden various other kinds of equipment in hidden pockets and such places, most of which were good at causing pain from a distance.
Onboard the ship, Padriac had looked disproportioned, as he had found Riot Gloves and Hyper Boots in the miniarmory (like a minibar, but causing damage to foes rather than credit cards) that counted on size for defensiveness. Stepping into Alhafra, though, he looked like Death. Fortunately, this was due to a large, shadowy cloak rather than a starvation diet or anything similar.
"Padriac? Is that you?" asked Elys, thinking they were being followed until she recognized the clomping of the boots.
"Yes. Just keep going," he said, quickly.
"At last someone else doesn't like cities," said Meg, glaring at the buildings.
While Elys didn't mind cities, she found Alhafra easy to hate. It was a highly "civilized" city, which apparently meant "bleedin' full of great big stone buildings, an inordinate number of which give off smoke, and all of which are a disgusting brown-green-grey colour". At least, that was what it looked like around the docks, and in case it looked nicer elsewhere, it made up for it by being really unpleasant here. The streets were a quarter-inch deep in a substance that was mostly soot.
"According to Lemurian legend, the ruler of Alhafra, the 'mayor', hasn't been a decent person for seven hundred years. There was a man who cut down a forest near here, ignoring the tales of trees spirits and the like, but they were real, and the last one cursed the town. They say that every mayor will be consumed by greed and the city shall suffer, until one day when the people decide to place humans over wealth," said Cian as they walked through the streets.
"Humans," Zak repeated. "Thank you. You could at least have said 'people', at least then there'd have been some ambiguity." He sighed. "No one cares about horses."
"Helena didn't forget you," Cata pointed out. "I thought you liked those mythril horseshoes."
"Oh, absolutely," said Zak. He clattered one down the side of a building, creating a shower of sparks. "Is that not the coolest thing ever?" He clopped the thing twice more, and then a section of wall shattered. Despite the close quarters of the roads between huge buildings, no one seemed to have noticed. He moved on, whistling until he remembered that whistling horses aren't often considered inconspicuous.
"I wonder how long it'll take," murmured Elys, still thinking about the legend.
"Can't imagine, let's not stick around to ask public opinion, shall we?" said Padriac, pleasantly if manically. He would have far outrun them by now, except that he was taking care to stand in the rough middle, where no one would notice him.
Oddly enough, this was exactly the technique being used by another person in the crowd. He stepped into the marketplace plaza at the same time as the Knights, entering from the opposite direction, and was wearing a long, thick cloak, with the hood pulled well over his face. He and Padriac had very different reasons to be afraid, but they were both afraid of the same thing.
It's a strange thing to be afraid of a bunch of twisted fibres.
He slipped from place to place, not choosing shadows, because cloaked people standing in shadows -despite the apparent logic- are noticed almost instinctively, perhaps because those who don't notice them usually don't last long enough to try again. Instead he chose to be out of the way, and after so many years, he was a master of standing in the background.
The cloaked figure who wasn't Padriac didn't often go out in crowds unless there was no other choice, and such was the case now. He preferred to buy food at the end of the day, when the people were fewer and scattered, but it was likely that if he waited any longer, he'd have passed out from hunger by then. It was another one of those occupational hazards.
Cloaks still draw a fair amount of attention, even when not in shadows, and he could practically sense the odd looks coming from all directions. Still, between the hood and the gloves, he was probably safe. Well, as close to safe as was ever likely. Unless someone managed to accidentally do something really st-
The following events are probably proof that the Elemental Spirits had taken an interest in Cata's group, because the timing is nearly epic.
The world's most inventive cook, Mrs Cruikshank, had gone out to buy eggs for a cake. It was for her granddaughter's birthday, and in fact, she was a few hours away from being the inventor of the birthday cake. (In earlier years, she had also invented cinnamon buns, perogies, jambalaya, curried oatmeal -they weren't all good, mind you- and, when she was four, sliced bread.)
She would make the cake, but it would be a bit late, and she would do it with shaking hands, trying to replace a flicker of hidden eyes in her mind with the correct amount of flour. She happened to look up from the heggler's cart directly into the depths of the hood, and with a strangled yelp, darted off into the crowd as quickly as possible.
The crook of her walking stick, though, caught a fold of the cloak, and wrenched it back. The crowd in the market was dense, and Howl was within a few feet of at least ten people, all of whom suddenly got a closer look at a lycanthrope than they had ever wanted.
"Werewolf!" someone screamed, drawing the attention of a few hundred more people Howl wanted desperately to avoid, especially if they were armed.
His nearly-wolfish face took on a look of concentration for a moment, and then he moved. The strength and speed of a wolf, combined with the balance and planning of a human, was absolutely unbeatable if you wanted to escape someone. When you were escaping some dozens, it was less useful.
Howl slipped between the citizens like a knife through water, with all the grace and talent of a lycanthrope whose ancestors were never turned into rugs. And fear wasn't entirely against him, since the people got out of the way in a hurry for a speeding werewolf. But every once in a while, there's someone courageous, and then things go out of whack. Howl cannoned into the Knights after about four steps.
Cata reached out and grabbed him by the collar. "Where are you going?" she demanded.
"Far, far away from here, I assure you!" he replied, slightly frantic, and in turn grabbed her wrist. The hold of his furry, clawed hand was wickedly strong, and Cata let go in sheer astonishment. Howl took the advantage, lifting her off her feet with a shove that toppled the rest of the Knights as well. "Sorry!" he called over his shoulder, dashing away again.
Padriac and Meg were up first, being the most capable of the group at dealing with difficult terrain, including the kind that came rushing up at you, as well as non-quadrupeds. By the time they had veered around the corner after Howl, Zak was still working on his third leg.
Howl juked through the streets, remembering to pull his hood back up after the first block. By then the shouts were echoing off buildings, and they had probably heard about him in Lemuria: werewolf in the street!
The Alhafran guards were on the move soon enough, and while they had the kind of mayor leading them who would have attained high rank in the Underworld, they were good at their job, and enjoyed protecting people. They could have used a broader definition of 'people', in Howl's opinion.
After a several minutes of pursuit through the thickly-populated streets, Meg and Padriac had caught up enough to try a tactic or two. The huntress sped forward as quickly as she could, and the mere sight of a rather wild woman getting within reach on his left drove Howl straight to the right- into Padriac's waiting grasp.
"What do you think you're doing in a city like this if you look like that?" demanded Padriac.
Howl glanced back, saw Meg standing alert in the road and heard the watch steadily eating up his lead. "Look, I apologise deeply for this," said Howl, looking anguished, and decked Padriac across the right temple. He dropped like a stone, and Howl ducked into the alley ahead.
"Everything I hate about hunting animals mixed with everything I hate about people," Meg muttered, and ran down the street, wishing with all her might that this was a forest. Unfortunately, this meant she wasn't there when the watch caught up, and when they saw a cloaked figure lying at the entrance to an alley that ended in a wall (one with a great many handholds, if you've got claws), they were sure they had him.
"Hey, this guy's not furry," said one, picking up Padriac's limp form by the shoulders.
"They're werewolves, corporal. Furry is just an option," said the sergeant.
"Then he was pretty stupid to go wolf on us in the middle of the marketplace," the corporal said.
"Sir!" another guard called, rushing up behind them, a little out of breath. "I've got… seven witnesses… saying he attacked some people who tried to stop him back in the market."
"Really? Well, I don't know if being a bloody monster is an offence in this city, but attacking civilians is always a simple one. Haul him in. Y'know, corporal, this guy looks kinda familiar," the sergeant added quietly. "In fact…"
"What is it, sir?" asked the corporal, confused by the thoughtful look on his superior's face. At that moment, the sergeant was remembering the last time he had seen raven-black hair on a man, and remembering the sound of a crossbow and a sudden flare of pain… and pirates.
"Corporal, run back to the guardhouse. I do believe we're going to have a hanging."
Howl came out of another alleyway, hood pulled up as far as possible, and checked for pursuit. No one anywhere. Not even anyone shouting in the distance. He leaned back against a brick wall and tried to catch his breath.
A blade made its presence known just under his chin. "Give me a really good reason not to kill you," said Meg.
Howl looked back at her, his disbelieving expression hidden by the darkness of his cloak. "It would be unjust to kill me without telling me how the hell you did that." Meg was blank for a moment, then grinned.
[Author's Notes] A minor cliffhanger's all. There's a review button down there that you should press if you want to complain or anything. Or if you don't. It's an important button. Go hit it and maybe the next chapter'll be up soon.