A Before Friday Thursday, it is. And with it, another chapter of Phoenix-fire.
Enjoy!
A cold reception
Loivissa POV(early spring of 643 ADG)
"Wow, you did not even bring your pet this time", Loivissa commented, "or have you ordered it to try and ambush me during our talks?"
"No one knows where it is", Ilumëo grunted annoyed, "now, let us stop this smalltalk and get down to why you are here. I thought that I told you the last time that you could never extort me again".
"Technically, you only had me swear that I could not use that particularly information against you again", Loivissa said smugly, "this time however, you stand to answer for the far more serious betrayal of your master".
Ilumëo growled underneath her black cloak, and if eyes could kill, Loivissa would have been dead already. It was a good thing that no one was around this neighbourhood at this time of night. Not even the city guards bothered to come there because no one lived there.
"I had heard that your group had gone underground after you botched the raid, so why are you suddenly trying to play big again?", Ilumëo asked curiously, "or have you come to try and make me give you some good publicity stunt, because if you have, then I would have to laugh".
"We are not as dead as you might think", Loivissa growled back, "but neither have I come here to beg for impossible requests".
"Then what do you want?", Ilumëo asked sourly, "it cannot be anything that urgent, considering that you allowed me to postpone our meeting until after my lord had left the city".
"Before we start, where exactly has your master gone, and why?", Loivissa wanted to know. It was always good to know your opponent's movements and motives.
"Heh, I am surprised that your little spy have not told you already", Ilumëo let out a short humourless chuckle, "it is not exactly a secret that he took a few centurions north to hunt down some bandits that had been terrorizing the northern villages".
"Interesting", Loivissa mumbled, "but back to my original reasoning for calling you here. I want to know where your master has taken Rhunön".
"…You want to restore the dauthdaert and try to use that to circumvent my lord's wards", Ilumëo quickly figured out their entire plan, "but you have no idea of how to go about it, so you have to find the one person that could possibly know. The only problem is that my lord has already foreseen that course of action and moved said person, and since you have not been able to find her in any other way, you were forced to come to me".
If Loivissa had allowed herself to fall into the belief that the aide was someone that she could easily fool and ensnare, then she had just been woken from that dream. This was a dangerous woman that was almost as sneaky and deviant as her master. Loivissa would have to thread carefully and choose her words thoughtfully.
"So you knew about it being a dauthdaert?", Loivissa asked to gain time.
"Someone told me about it after our conversation", Ilumëo shrugged, "but let us be on with our business and never lay eyes upon one another again".
"So you know where she has been brought?", Loivissa inquired.
"Of course, as do you", Ilumëo shrugged and chuckled at the same time, "if you want to hide something from your enemies, then tell them where it is and they will look everywhere but there. Or did my lord never teach you that?"
It was all that Loivissa could do not to slap herself, though she could not stop her mouth from opening and closing, but without letting any sounds pass.
"You will catch flies with that", Ilumëo said smugly.
"Which city?", Loivissa eventually managed to growl out, "what city is she being held captive in?"
"Well, it is not like she is under house arrest or anything", Ilumëo said and shrugged, but she kept the mirthful smirk plastered on her face, "when they got to the Lav Fjäll province, they asked her which city she wanted to settle in, and she picked Bregan Hold because of some old acquaintance that used to live there".
"Wait, are you saying that she is not under guard? Speak in the Ancient language, so that I may know that you are not lying", Loivissa requested, as this sounded very much like a setup attempt by Ilumëo, after which the aide could claim innocence if any from Aiedail survived.
Ilumëo looked cross for a moment, before her features straightened out and she said, "she does not have guards walking beside her everywhere she goes".
"But she is being watched at all times?", Loivissa suspected that she knew the answer already, but wanted confirmation.
"…Yes, there are people assigned to watch her from a distance at all times", Ilumëo growled annoyed, "but I do not know the exact specifics concerning how many or where they are".
"It will suffice for now", Loivissa waved it off, as she had not really expected to get that much out of her, and they would make their own investigation into the matter anyway.
"This time, I do not want to see you ever again", Ilumëo growled.
"Let me tell you how this is going to play out", Loivissa said threateningly, "firstly, I never promised anything before you told me what I wanted to know, and secondly, at this point, you have given us far too much to even think of getting out of this. It may be next month or never, but if you see Earl Karl wearing an embroidered or a jewel hammer anywhere on his person, you will go down to the market district the very next day. Once there, you will buy something, and the quantity of what you buy will tell us how many days until we can meet at the place that we agreed upon the previous time".
Loivissa hated doing this, but if she was going to beat Mercury at his own game, then she had no choice but to become hard and ruthless in these matters. It would be worth it in the end, she hoped.
"Give me one reason to let you continue undermining my lord?", Ilumëo asked equally threateningly, and for a moment, Loivissa thought that the woman might be reaching for something underneath her cloak.
"Your son's life would be one", Loivissa answered immediately, "which has me wondering, where is he exactly? There have been no sightings of him in a while".
"Last I heard, he was fine", Ilumëo answered in a far different tone of voice than previously. It was one of suspicion mixed with motherly care.
"Wait, you have not seen him either? Why?", Loivissa demanded to know.
"He is being fostered with my mother back at our home", Ilumëo answered with a shrug, "I see him from time to time through an enchanted mirror".
"Did you send him away because of our last encounter?", Loivissa asked almost softly.
She could not entirely hide the worry of whether she had been responsible for forcing a mother to part with her child.
"No, the Uluth children are always sent away when they are at that age?", Ilumëo seemed more confused than anything else at Loivissa's worry, "I was raised by my maternal grandfather and only ever saw my mother and father on a few occasions, and so was my mother before me, and her father before her. It is how it has always been".
"You mean to tell me that you just give birth to your children and then hardly ever see them again?", Loivissa asked incredulous, "does it not bother you that you never spend any time with your children?"
"It is how it has always been", Ilumëo repeated herself, "having to look after children would only hinder my ability to do my job to the utmost efficiency".
"This is…wrong", Loivissa argued for a lack of a better name for it, "no mother should ever be forced to give up her child for a job".
"It is how it has always been", Ilumëo shrugged once again, before irritably saying, "anyway, are we done here, or are you going to keep giving me tips on how things should be in your little world".
"Yeah, we are done…for now", Loivissa said hesitantly, though she still wished to debate further on just how many principles it was wrong of Mercury to make his aides do this.
Perhaps she could use this in the future to make Ilumëo more sympathetic to their cause. Perhaps, she would even realize the wickedness of her master, but for now, it was best to let the matter drop, or else, Loivissa would only antagonize her further.
Mercury POV
Mercury rode at the head of a column of 150 mounted men, of which thirty of them were from his Varangian Guard. The snow was falling with playful snowflakes dancing on the wind, before they were captured on his grey woollen cloak.
Spring had not yet touched this part of the Spine, and likely would not for a few months, but it did not bother him particularly. The cold never bothered him. His horse on the other hand had to have a rug draped over it to keep it warm and comfortable, and the men behind him were all huddled in layers upon layers of insulating clothes.
The screech of a hawk made him look up into the sky to watch as it descended down towards the man directly behind him. The hawk landed upon the man's outstretched glove with practised ease, where it was fed a few scraps of dried and salted meat before it cawed happily.
"Anything of interest?", Mercury asked without stopping.
"Just a wolf's lair an hour or so east of us", the man replied.
Mercury nodded in satisfaction and returned his attention back on the road, or what could best be described as a trodden path that the scouting party had created on their way through. It was far more dangerous to ride in ankle-deep layers of snow than on solid ground, as you never knew whether your horse might step into a hole at some point.
The fall would not hurt Mercury, but it might damage the horse enough for it to have to be put down, and though they had brought spares with them to carry some of the baggage, it was better not to waste the horses uselessly.
Speaking of animals, Mercury kind of wished that Muhsu could have come with him on his vacation, though the panther might not have liked the cold quite as much as he did. Unfortunately, no one had heard or seen the cat in weeks, and every search party that Mercury had sent out to scour the city, had been unsuccessful.
A particularly harsh gust of wind gripped Mercury's cloak, which made it swivel and tug angrily at his neck, but it was over a moment later. It was just another thing that you had to get used to when you traversed the mountains in the far northern parts of the Spine.
"We should be nearing the rendezvous point soon", Mercury's second-in-command commented.
"Good, then we can start setting up camp and begin the hunt", Mercury commented, as he once again checked to see that Tinkledeath was still safely secured in its holster at his hip.
The weapon had been confiscated when Angela had been taken into custody, and Mercury had since kept it stored in his private collection. It was sharper than anything that he had ever encountered before, but as a weapon to use in regular combat, he found it distasteful.
Because he had no idea of how to replicate or repair the thing, there was no way that he could gauge the approximate structural strength of the blade without risking permanently losing it. This meant that since it was generally a very bad idea to try and stop an incoming blow by cutting the opposing blade in half like it was nothing, since you would then simply have two blades coming at you instead of one, you had to avoid any and all clashes between Tinkledeath and the enemy weapon.
Well, you technically could fight them as you would with a regular sword, but if you did, then you would have no idea of whether the blade would eventually snap in the heat of battle, and if there was one thing Mercury hated in heated combat, then it was not knowing the limits of your own weapons.
Still, the blade had its uses, and if he needed a more regular weapon, then he also carried Wolfbane with him in his backpack, and he was surrounded by other weapons that he could burrow at a moment's notice as well.
He stopped his musings when he was just about to climb the last stretch that would lead to the hill where his scouting party was waiting, only to find that no one were there. They had been there, as evidenced by the footprints in the snow, but where they had gone was more of a question, as there were many sets of footprints going out into the treeline in multiple directions from the plateau.
"Where have they run off to now? They were ordered to wait for us here or send their hawk if they were forced to move out", Elladan commented grumpily. He had lost his original horse when it had slipped on a hidden patch of ice, while the two were climbing a slope, and had been grumpy ever since, but he had a point. This plateau was a good defensible position to hold.
"Ian, Louis, find out where they went", Mercury said to his two best trackers, before he turned to the remaining men and said, "the rest of you, get a few moments of rest and feed the horses while you are at it, but I want lookouts at every angle of this plateau".
As the men rested, Mercury went over the tracks in the snow from the side that the scouting party had originally come from. He did not expect to find anything useful in the actual tracks, as his own men had taken the same route and summarily destroyed most of them, but he would be able to spot whether other footprints had been set in the general area, which would indicate that his men had been cut off from retreating back to the main force.
He did not find any traces of such a thing, and in fact, nothing really looked out of order all the way down to the base of the hill. If it, or they, Mercury hoped that it had not become they in the meantime, had been the ones to force his scouts away from the plateau, then it had not been from this side.
He went back up the plateau to find both Ian and Louis waiting for him up there, "my lord, the tracks indicate that upon arriving here, the scouting party rested for a while and sent out scouts of their own. It looks like all of them managed to come back, after which the entire party decided to go in one direction".
"Are there any indications that they were being forced to go?", Mercury wanted to know.
"Not that we can tell, my lord", Ian replied, "the tracks in the plateau do not indicate any fighting, and the tracks going out looked relatively peaceful".
Mercury had to take a moment to weigh his options, before he eventually decided upon a course of action, "tell the men that we are moving out. I want them found".
Both nodded quickly and started rousing the rest of Mercury's group, and not long after, the column once again followed the tracks further into the forest. This time however, Mercury had doubled the amount of riders riding on his flanks and rear, and he had even put a few up in front as well.
If they were attacked, the best hope of the ones in front would be to try and survive for long enough for the main group to reach them, but if they were attacked, then Mercury much preferred sacrificing a few men to avoid having his main force caught by surprise.
They were not attacked though, but before long, the sounds of battle could be heard further ahead. Men were yelling and screaming warcries as well as cries of anguish, and the ground shook slightly every now and then.
"Faster, draw weapons", Mercury ordered and rode forward to ascertain the situation.
When he reached the source of the noise, it was in a small clearing that opened up in the middle of the forest. Inside the clearing, his scouting party were frantically trying to gather themselves and make a front against the…being that Mercury had originally come here to get rid of.
The being in question was a six metre tall humanoid shaped creature. Though it lacked a neck, its legs were big and burly, and its arms looked like giant clubs of compressed snow with ice spikes from the elbow and up. It looked to be made mainly from hard compressed snow, though small spikes of ice could be seen sticking out from where its joints were supposed to have been.
It had quite a few crossbow bolts sticking out of its large husk, but it did not seem at all perturbed by them, and the effect of regular weapons seemed to be limited at best, as they only seemed to make the being angrier.
"Tsk, idiots", Mercury grumbled, as he realized that they had chosen to seek it out on their own, before he raised his voice to let it be heard by all the men in his group, "men, begin a zeta approach. Skirmishers, shift to incendiary rounds. Pikeners, make sure to keep your poles away from those arms".
Soon almost every one of his men had dismounted and quickly, they began to slowly but surely surround the ice-being by keeping strong men with tower shields in front to make a shieldwall to absorb any blows, while the pikeners behind them tried their best to simply discourage the beast from advancing on the shieldwall and breaking through it.
It took a lot of effort, but eventually, all of the surviving members of Mercury's scouting party had been secured behind the line of shields, with many of them having some sort of injury or another. Unfortunately, the incendiary rounds, along with the flasks of burning oil that were thrown, seemed to have little to no effect on the being, so Mercury had to surmise that it had a magical protection against melting.
"Time for plan B then", Mercury grumbled and drew Tinkledeath from its sheath, before he turned to Elladan and said, "make it face the other way from me".
Elladan made a quick nod and grabbed a heavy twohanded steel sword, before he went on the opposite side from Mercury and whispered something into the ear of one of the men. When the ice-being turned around and roared at some of Mercury's men, Elladan charged ahead and buried the sword deeply into the being's joint that connected the right leg with the main body.
The sword went deeply in, but it did not go through, so Elladan had to abandon it as he made a break for it to get back behind the shieldwall. He only just managed to jump to safety, before an ice club swung past where he had once been.
The success of his strike was insignificant though, as Mercury had used the creature's distraction and obvious rage to make a giant leap, which was assisted by using an upwards held shield as a stepping stone for his jump. He could have made the jump without aid if he had used the power, but there was no reason to use It when other options were available.
Let us see if this kills you, he mused as he used Tinkledeath to swiftly and effortlessly separate the head of the being from its body.
Unfortunately, the action only seemed to enrage the being even more, but its arms were unable to twist around to hit Mercury, as he clung to its back. When that tactic proved useless, it tried to shake him off the best way that it knew how to.
"If that did not work, then let us try this", Mercury snarled and let himself fall from the being's back. On his way down, he managed to not only sever the being's right arm, but also finish the cut that Elladan had started, thereby separating the right leg from the body as well, before he quickly darted to safety.
Now thoroughly out of balance and without the means to support itself, the ice-being stumbled forward and fell on its stomach with enough force to make the earth shake. No respite was given though, as more men with swords and battleaxes quickly swarmed forward and chopped every limb off.
After each limb had been rendered immobile, Mercury ordered his men to follow his lead in cutting them open until they found and destroyed whatever it was that controlled them. As it turned out, there had been six different quartz crystals imbedded in the ice-being; one in each limb, one in the main body and the last in the head.
Mercury insisted upon being the one to shatter each crystal, but not before putting up a lot of wards around the block that he smashed them upon. When he finally brought the hammer down upon the first one, it shattered and released a torrent of energy, which was quickly absorbed by the wards, before a spirit could be seen darting off into the sky.
"So it was sorcery at work then, figures", Mercury mumbled, before he set about destroying the remaining crystals.
Once they were all destroyed, he finally turned his attention squarely upon the leader of the scouting party, a young dökkálfar noble with wavy golden hair and blue eyes, and angrily said to him, "I specifically ordered you to only find the beast, not engage it".
"Yes, but sir, you see, I thought that it did not look so tough, and my men agreed with me, so we decided to save you the trouble", the nervous young man said with his eyes flickering to either side, instead of meeting Mercury's gaze, "if you had come a little later, I am sure that we would have been able to take it down".
It almost made him loose his temper to learn that the brat did not even feel any remorse for the lives that had been thrown away needlessly because of his foolhardiness. Many nobles sent their children into the military to gain some glory to help their future political career, and these glory-seekers very rarely concerned themselves with what they had to do in order to get their fame.
Though Mercury had instituted a series of rules that made it very clear that anyone caught in elevating one person over another based on social standing, bribes or the like, could look forward to being demoted as far down as they could go, it had not entirely solved the problem.
Instead of skewing the brat through, which Mercury had to admit, was becoming more and more attractive as time passed by, he instead forced the young officer's head around to see the dead bodies in the now red snow and the wounded that were being treated by his own men.
"Look at them, boy! They were your responsibility, and because of your reckless actions, these people, your people, are now dead!", Mercury growled and ignored the yelp of hurt that came from his fingers digging into the brat's skull, "as of this moment, you are relieved of command. You can keep your commission, but you will not command even a single soldier until after I have made you realize every single error that you made. Is that understood?"
"Y- yes, my lord", the brat squeaked, now on the verge of crying.
Mercury let go of the boy's skull, after which he quickly fell down on his knees, before Mercury turned around and headed towards Elladan, to which he said, "I want you to take half the men with you and begin setting up camp back on the plateau. It seemed defensible enough when we were there, but just to be safe, send out some scouts to check whether there are any better locations nearby. If there are none, start erecting fortifications; spikes, palisades, fires burning at the base of the hill around the clock and so on".
"But we defeated it?", Elladan said confused, "it looks exactly like how the survivors from the northern villages described it as".
"We defeated this one, yes, but we have yet to find the ones that made it", Mercury explained, "even if the reason that this one was going rampart is that its makers are dead, which we cannot know until we find their bodies, there is still another problem.
No one, especially not mages in this country, could have known how to make these things in advance. They would never have started with anything as big and as dangerous as this. No, they would have started smaller, with only one spirit and a much smaller body, which posed a lesser threat to them, and then they would have worked their way up from there".
"And you want to be sure that all of them are destroyed", Elladan noted.
"Yes, sorcery is banned by law, and though I do not know the exact reason as to why a group of mages absconded all the way up here, I do know that they were not creating these things with the Alliance's best interests at heart", Mercury explained, "if they are still alive, and this one was just a rogue experiment, then we have to stop them as soon as possible. If they have just a few hundred of these things that were under their command, then they could very likely force us out of Alagaësia in a surprise attack before we even have a chance to regroup and strategize.
Even worse, after they successfully pushed us out, I am sure that the people of the nations would have celebrated them as heroes and lauded their creations as wonders. Once that had had happened, the nations might very well start to mass produce the beings".
"Lucky that this one ran rampart through a few villages then", Elladan commented, "otherwise, we might not have discovered the threat until it was too late. By the way, what would have happened if we had been pushed out? Would you have given up the war, considering the hypothetical army of snow-beasts?"
"Given up? Do you know me so little?", Mercury responded with a laugh, before turning serious, "I would have changed tactics, and eventually, Alagaësia would have been mine once again. Whether it would be before or after I burned down its forests and destroyed the harvests would have depended on when the people decided to give up again".
Even under his many layers of clothing, Mercury could still see the shudder going down Elladan's spine as his words sunk in, but partly to ease the man's mind, Mercury continued, "do not let what could have happened bother you anymore than it has to. As a consequence of my office, I am obliged to always consider these things, but you just have to follow orders and make sure that no harm comes to me".
"Understood, my lord", Elladan said and swallowed a lump in his throat, "I will begin carrying out your orders then".
And with that, Elladan left with half the men to begin setting up camp. Mercury did not intend to leave these mountains until he was sure that the threat to his lands had been neutralized.
Still, he had had worse vacations over the years. For instance, there was the time when he had deliberately decided to spend his vacation as a hostage of some pirates that had been raiding the seas and always seemed to avoid detection by his navies.
It had all worked according to plan, as he had acted as bait, though under the guise of a regular nobleman, and after he had been brought to their lair, he had promised them two things; the first was that if they ever let him go, then he would give each of them a necklace made of gold, and the second was that they would want to give it back to him afterwards, but he would not take it back until after they had learned to breathe water.
They had thought the entire matter a joke, but as it had later happened, once he had been bought free, he had returned to their lair with an army, which had quickly made the pirates surrender. Afterwards, he had kept his first promise and had given them each a heavy necklace made of gold, and had then proceeded to tie their hands and feet together.
After that was done, he had thrown them overboard where the water was only around a metre deep, and true to his word, he had not removed the necklaces until after each and every one of them had learned to breath water instead of air.
Oh well, it was still a better vacation than the time that I went fishing, Mercury mused as he turned around to help with the dead and wounded.
Yeah, Mercury's vacations are not exactly like yours or mine(I hope). Still, it was kind of fun to write this part because to me, it demonstrates that Mercury truly enjoys his actual job of neutralizing threats to the Alliance, though not so much the governing and large amount of paper work parts of his current duties.
Also, Loivissa is finally beginning to settle in to the character that she believes that she needs to be in order to defeat Mercury, though she is still hesitant about playing the part because it goes against so many of the values taught to her.