Chapter 17:
I Spy… Sand
Izuku sat at the head of their wagon with Isendra sitting next to him.
Both were sitting back and relaxing with their eyes closed as the vicious sun beamed down on them with all of its hate. They didn't mind though, for they were completely covered in ice. He recently mastered an ice armor spell and hated that he hadn't learned it before beginning this arduous journey through the desert.
The three months he suffered being subjected to the angry sunlight had left him, and most everyone else, deeply tanned. He didn't have a mirror handy, but he suspected that he looked like a male Ganguro at this point. Was there male equivalent to Ganguros? There had to be. Either way, if there was, he certainly looked like one. Isendra, on the other hand, looked almost unchanged by her months of tanning. Partially because she tended to sleep in the wagon during the day and keep guard at night, but mostly because she was fully capable of casting an ice armor on herself every time she was exposed to so much as the morning or evening sun, let alone the scorching sunlight of the afternoon.
He also wished he had learned it earlier for another reason.
See, the water used for the ice armor had to come from somewhere in the first place. And that somewhere was the air around them. In the desert, that wasn't much, which compounded the difficulty Izuku had in learning the spell but made it damn useful for collecting water. For the last couple weeks, since he'd finally gotten the spell down, half of his job as day watch was collecting the meltwater from his ice armor to help restock the water supply.
He had tried to insist that such water only be used for washing purposes, but the people of Sanctuary were far less grossed out by the prospect of drinking water that had literally melted off of his sweaty body than he was.
"Hey! Izuku!" A man called out to him from somewhere on the right.
Izuku opened his eyes, breaking his meditation, to see who was approaching. It was Tony, a wheel maker in Warriv's employ. He carried with him a full wineskin.
"Can you freeze this for me?" He asked as he got close enough to speak regularly,
Izuku nodded and took the leathery sack. With barely more than a thought he froze the water in the wineskin, but only the small amount of it touching the container itself, leaving most of the water liquid but nicely cooled for his drinking pleasure.
"Here you go Tony!" Izuku said cheerfully.
"Thanks kid, you guys about ready for lunch? I can bring over a couple portions." Tony offered.
"Nah! We usually skip lunch. Dinner and breakfast only, so we can eat together. What, with our different sleep schedules." Izuku explained.
Tony accepted his logic and took off, leaving Izuku to his meditation. And so, he returned to his usual afternoon routine. Practicing ice magic while trying to meditate, with the intermediate interruption by caravanners, who also served to sharpen his magical skills. Isendra had convinced Warriv to instruct all people to go to Izuku to cool or freeze anything. This was for the obvious purpose of improving his ice magic skills, which is what he was assigned to work on during the day, with the lightning skill tree to be his area of focus during the evenings before going to sleep and mornings before starting his duties as a guard.
Still, it was gross that people here thought it was acceptable to drink the water which melted off of him and Isendra. He wondered if there was something perverted about it? Some seemed strangely eager to drink the water that melted off of his mistress, and that bothered him.
"You have progressed greatly." Isendra complimented suddenly.
Izuku broke out of his meditation to look at her. She kept her eyes closed.
"You have tempered all of your spells to the point that you no longer overcharge them. Before this trip, you had the bad habit of forcing your spells to work by putting everything you had into them. In doing so you wasted at least four times as much mana as was required. These last few months have served to help you overcome that deficiency. Now, you use as much mana as the spell requires. In time you will learn how to make such spells even more powerful, with the correspondingly appropriate amount of mana." Isendra explained.
Right. She had explained the purpose of his training thus far before, and yet he felt all the more surprised for having achieved the end goal. It had been such slow progress. Practicing and practicing spells he already knew so as to perfect them. Train that muscle memory, or mana memory, to the point that each spell was cast perfectly. She had introduced a few new spells along the way, like the ice armor and nova, to practice as well. But she hadn't waited on him to master his control of simpler spells beforehand. But it was her role to come up with the training regimen. How she chose to balance having him practice earlier spells versus learning new ones was a role he trusted her with.
"You now can cast a true firebolt, and in fact most of your fire spells are vastly improved. The only thing you can do with them from here is make them more powerful in time, a process that has no end. Unfortunately, most, if not all, of the creatures we will encounter here in the desert are adapted to resist extreme heat, and fire magic in particular." Isendra continued her lecture. "So your focus in training and battle will continue to be developing your ice and lightning magic."
Izuku nodded to every word. This was as close to a graduation ceremony as she would ever give him, after all, but that was the spirit of the lecture. To tell him he had advanced further.
The caravan peaked over another hill of sand and craggy rocks and they saw it. At long last, after three months subsisting on preserved and pickled foods, the occasional aquifer oasis, and Isendra's sweat water, the white towers of Lut Gohlein were now in sight. Her white towers just barely peaked over the distant sand dunes in the horizon. It looked close enough to reach by night, but long enough to leave them exhausted by their arrival.
"Halt!" Warriv's voice carried back to them from the front of the caravan. "Take a meal and wash break."
There was a smattering of discontented mutterings around the caravan, a few came from Izuku himself, but they stopped all the same. It was a decidedly odd time to take an hour break. With the destination in sight he felt a second wind and excitement to finish the journey, why waste time breaking?
Tony returned to Isendra and Izuku's wagon with a hint of the answer.
"Warriv has requested you." He said.
Izuku and Isendra shared a look. Yup. Trouble was definitely abound.
They canceled their ice armor, dismounted their wagon, and made their way to the front of the caravan. There, they saw Warriv talking in hushed tones with a pair of scouts. There were always a good four to six of them walking several kilometers ahead and to the sides. This kept a good warning system in place for oncoming dangers, which were usually environmental and easily course-corrected for. If they brought news that required the two Sorcerer's to actually do work for a change, then there was surely a fight ahead.
"Isendra, Izuku. We have need of your services." Warriv said with an inviting wave. "Our scouts have returned with news of an ambush in the making."
Of course. Close enough to the city to make travelers drop their guard, far enough that any help at the city couldn't see said ambush, let alone do anything to prevent or retaliate against it. Gotta hate the smarter thugs of the world. They're smart and hard working enough to be as annoying as possible, but not enough to get a real job and improve the world by contributing.
The scout, who wore tan colored clothes so as to blend in with the desert environment as much as they could without modern camouflage, stepped forward. Izuku made a note to introduce proper camo and ghillie suits as he talked.
"A small tribe of Lacuni are lying in wait on either side of the road ten kilometers ahead. We spotted their encampment in the shade of some rocky outcroppings they dug out of." The scout explained. "And I didn't get a good look at it, but I also spotted some kind of chitinous creature. I fear it may be a scarab demon."
Isendra nodded along with every word. At least she understood all of this.
"Point us in the right direction and we'll take care of it." Isendra said.
The scout pointed down the path they were going along anyways, and so Izuku and Isendra began their walk.
"Lacuni?" Izuku asked as soon as they were out of earshot to the caravan. "Scarab demon?"
"Cat people and big, bug demons that like to hurl lightning. It is one of the few creatures out here that you can unleash fire upon with some success." She explained. "Keep to the shadows of the dunes as we approach."
He crouched down at her command and did as she ordered. And so, the two of them sneaked their way along the curves of the shifting sand for the next hour. The sun was only now beginning to descend, giving them little shade, so they opted to renew their ice armor for comfort and protection in case they were ambushed despite expecting it.
They both spotted the black outcropping of rock at the same time and crouched low, crawling the last of the way to the final dune where they peeked over to survey the enemy forces.
Yup. Those were cat people alright. Nowhere near as cute as he was expecting, they looked more like the misbegotten half breeds of doctor Moreua. Their torsos and arms were longer than human and cat portions alike, but they were almost naked of fur save for their blood-red manes, tufts at the tip of their tails and, strangely, on their forearms. He took it back, they looked like Blanka if he'd an accident at a chocolate factory. Why was their skin blue?!
He honestly shouldn't have been that bothered by their appearance, plenty of mutant type quirks were stranger, but he was expecting something evolutionarily sensible here. Oh, and the females had four tits. Of course they did.
"What are you thinking of Izuku?" Isendra asked.
He realized she probably thought he had such a consternated expression because he was thinking up a strategy, and not overthinking their odd appearance. So he improvised.
"Are they more akin to lions than cats? With the tufts on their tail and manes? And I'm seeing a lot more females than males."
"Possibly. Would that give us an advantage?" She asked.
"Not necessarily, so much as tell us how they may fight. The males would obviously be stronger, but fight as an individual, but the females would be more aggressive and work more cooperatively." He explained. "If they are akin to lions."
"You are overthinking things." She admonished.
Izuku made a show of bowing his head, as if it wasn't his intention to make her think he was just overanalyzing instead of being an idiot.
"I think it's time you showed off your ice nova." She said. "Stun them all in one swoop. I know you've practiced the spell as well as you could in the caravan, but I want to see what you can do with it full powered."
Izuku nodded, then went back to raking the small tribe with his eyes.
"But where is the scarab demon?" He asked.
"It is right there." She said, pointing to the rock outcropping. "How could you miss it?"
She was right. The creature's chiton was a much darker shade of black than the rocks it huddled against for camouflage, but its cleanliness and reflective sheen gave it away. Not to mention all of the spiky bits.
"So what? Just jump down there to the middle of the fray and ice nova them in place?" He clarified.
"That's the idea. Need me to toss you?" She offered.
He accepted her offer and was bodily thrown by a gust of wind down into the encampment. He built up all of the mana he could in a dome around him as he fell and saw that every single Lacuna spotted him as soon as he crested the hill, but could not gather their weapons, let alone notch an arrow to fire at him, before he hit the ground. When he did he unleashed a violent gale of frigid air that then exploded into spikes of cutting ice erupting from the ground about him in all directions. Most of the Lacuni were outright impaled by the spikes, all were coated in a thick coating of ice that froze them in place.
He watched as Isendra sprinted down the hill and unleashed a similar storm to his, this one of electricity. The familiar lightning nova cooked the Lacuni from the inside and shattered their ice prison, and parts of their body, as most fell dead to the might of the two sorcerers.
Only two remained. A rather large male, and the now awakened and enraged scarab demon. The former was badly frostbitten and electrical burns, the latter was only now slowly rising, having been rudely awakened by the frost nova and likely energized by the lightning nova by the look of the sparks of electricity arcing between his many spikes.
Izuku threw his best firebolt directly at the scarab demon's still partially frozen face while Isendra opted to show off her own frost nova, which washed harmlessly over him. His firebolt shattered the hard carapace around the creature's head and sent it stumbling backwards, only to be fully frozen in place by Isendra's ice nova. He threw a second firebolt to finish the job of vaporizing the demon's head while Isendra did the same to their feline friend.
God, but did that one two combo of ice followed by fire never get old.
Izuku sighed. He was barely winded from that.
"Amazing what a difference three months of focused, uninterrupted practice will do, isn't it?" Isendra asked.
He shrugged.
"I was still expecting a fight to be... well, a fight."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
"Are you about to complain that things are getting too easy? Because I promise you, they will not remain so. Careful planning and skillful execution of said plans makes all encounters far easier and less injury prone, but rarely do plans survive first encounter so flawlessly." She warned.
"I mean. You all keep saying that, and yet our plans keep working out." He said, sounding more confident than he meant to.
"And yet we still have brushed against death all the same, even when we got lucky at every turn in our battle with Andariel. Don't worry, there will be more threats to keep you humble." She promised.
He believed her.
When they finally reached the gates of Lut Gohlein the exhaustion of three months journeying in the sun showed on all of their faces. Each of them sagged into themselves, mouths agape and eyes lidded. They looked like undead abominations themselves.
The guards waved most everyone in without much to do about it, but stopped Izuku and Isendra.
They looked his mistress up and down appreciatively, but not in a way that made Izuku worry they wished to defile her. It was more the appreciation a man would give a vehicle, or a well-maintained gun.
"You two are warriors and sorcerers, yes?" Asked the guard.
"We are. I am Isendra, and this is my student Izuku." Isendra explained.
They nodded sternly.
"Then you should go see Lord Jerhyn in... three days' time at the second bell." The left guard said after consulting a calendar. "The morning meal will be provided by him."
Izuku looked to Isendra.
"There is always work that needs doing. It's nice to have a new job as soon as you arrive at a place. Three days ought to be long enough to settle in." She said.
They thanked the guards and walked into the city. And boy was it bustling. They had to swim through human beings that were so distracted by their hubbub of swapping coins and products that nobody so much as looked at him. Their distracted and animated state made Izuku think of how vulnerable they were, to attack or theft. This reminded him of the existence of pickpockets, a foreign concept to Japan in the twenty second century, and he clutched his coin purse closer and deeper in his clothes.
He quickly learned the real terror of the city as he got a good look at the stalls, or more specifically, their prices. Things in Lut Gohlein were expensive, with a capital E. meals were advertised for one hundred gold on the cheap end, and the inns, of which there were many, held a similar price for single rooms.
"This city is a major port for trade." Isendra told him. "Money and goods change hands so quickly here. It is the end road of the supply line for many necessities, from seafood to precious gems. And the price of everything here reflects these realities. Many come here to make their fortune and leave after working hard for some time, but it is just as easy to lose said fortune trying to survive."
Izuku nodded.
"It's like with mining towns. It's not the gold miner who makes the money, but the pickaxe salesman." Izuku recited.
"Oooh! That's good. Did you just come up with that?" Isendra asked.
"Nope. Age old wisdom of my people." Izuku admitted.
They rounded a corner and caught their first sight of the sea glimmering in the horizon. He could smell the salty sea before, but now the fresh air of it was overwhelming. The desire to rush out and take a dunk in the water almost overcame him. Not least of all for his want of the first proper bath in three months and hatred of the heat, a hatred he was certain would grow in the coming months out here.
"Here." Isendra ordered as they approached an Inn.
The sign above said inn read Desert Rain. The sign read two hundred and fifty gold per day, with an extra ten for bath. It was mid-range in price compared to the other inns they saw, but it was the first to mention available baths at all. It won by default.
They walked inside and straight to the counter where a man, presumably the owner or employee thereof, stood organizing cards and chips and other gambling paraphernalia. He was missing an eye and half of his left hand. He looked like he lived an interesting life, to say the least.
"What's your pleasure?" The man said in a deceptively polite tone.
"We would like a room for the night please." Isendra asked.
The man looked between them but did not betray any thoughts or presumptions on their relationship. Instead, he merely nodded and produced a key.
"That will be two hundred and fifty gold per night. An additional ten each if you want access to the baths." He told them.
Isendra handed him two hundred and seventy coins, which he took.
"If you want any food, head on over to Atma's public house. It used to be a pleasure house, but all of the fine ladies of the evening have fled to the castle for extra safety for now. But it's still serving food and drink. Which we don't here. I specialize in shelter and baths." The man explained. "Also, the name is Elzix. Ask for me if you need me, but I'm rarely hard to find. Just make sure to sign your names in and out on the ledger."
Or recognize, Izuku added mentally. Or spot from kilometers away, really.
"Quick meal, then bath, then bed?" Isendra asked.
"Sounds great." Said Izuku.
They both signed the ledger then went upstairs to put their things away, after first checking the room and its amenities. It only had one bed, but it was large enough for both of them with even more space than they were used to, accustomed to sleeping side by side in sleeping bags in the back of a wagon. It was downright luxurious. They locked the place up and went on their way. Atma's former whorehouse really was just a tavern. They got two plates of fresh fish and bread, both still steaming and smelling a thousand times better than anything they'd eaten recently.
Fresh food beat dried and preserved food any day.
They found a small table with two stools near the back and dug in. The ability to speak momentarily left them as they stuffed their faces. They barely managed to meek out a "thank you" when the barman came around with two ales.
While the food was delicious, it wasn't enough to make Izuku lose his sense of his surroundings or the people therein. And on the other side of the room were two individuals who felt like blazing infernos to his magical senses. It was subdued, as if they were trying to hide it, but for somebody whom magic was almost a painful entity, he could practically see it coming from them. They looked like a couple, but an odd looking one. If they were trying to remain inconspicuous then wearing a wolf pelt on their head or having hair almost as long as she was tall might be some things worth changing.
They weren't bothering anybody, let alone taking an interest in them, so he mentally noted them as potential people of interest and filed the information away for later.
The food and drink were soon gone, and since they'd eaten and drunk it down so quickly, they were prematurely full even though his spirit craved for more. He leaned back and sighed at the pleasure of being full for once.
"Alright! Bath time." Isendra declared.
They reentered their room to find it in the same state they had left it, though now the two of them were clean and damp. They were so relaxed they might pass out before the sun finally set.
"We need to get you new clothes. You've had a bit of a growth spurt during our trip." Isendra commented.
Indeed. Half of his forearms and shins were now sticking out past his sleeves. He tried to imagine how nice it would have felt to have brand new, clean clothes to change into fresh out of the bathtub and suspected he might have died from a pleasure overdose.
"First thing in the morning we will do all of our overdue shopping. For now, we must discuss the future of your tutelage." She said as she sat down on her side of the bed.
She patted the spot of linen next to her and he took his seat.
"Due to our taking separate shifts during our travels, I focused on training you in such a way that you could practice without my direct supervision. This was only possible because you pick up new spells so fast and are diligent in practicing them without supervision. But because of our conflicting schedules I was not able to train you in the more academic topics you need to know." Isendra lectured. "History, politics, geography, runes and the like. It is time to get started on fixing that."
Izuku withdrew his notebook, pen and inkwell and got to writing.
"I have especially been interested in teaching you about my clan's history and about runes, but we never had the privacy needed to discuss it. Now. You should know that my clan follows the will of Lady Esu, and I hope to one day be called her daughter. You must never call yourself such, either publicly or especially to other members of my clan. We only permit female members into the order. Many if not all would kill you for claiming membership, thinking you a thief of valor."
Wow. There seemed to be a lot of female only warrior castes around these parts. Badass ones, too. He wrote that down, leaving the question as to what to call himself for later. Was she even allowed to take him on as a student at all? Him being male, and all that. Maybe with the world on the brink of annihilation she bent the rules in favor of having a useful apprentice? He needed not ask that; he knew the answer.
"Now, to begin your study of runes, I must also emphasize the importance of secrecy. Our possession of even the runes we have will draw unwanted attention from other mages who might be overwhelmed by avarice." She warned. "Runes are individually very powerful, but some synergize to create more powerful effects like the ones we found earlier. Individual mages will work for decades to create such runes and will generally create between one and three within their lifetime. So, you understand their scarcity and why they're so sought after."
Izuku wrote this all down.
He pondered the prospect of learning how they're made and introducing a bit of industrial style production line methods. Odds were, as with most things in this world, everyone was a master of their own art and did every part of their craft from beginning to end. Every chair and table was of excellent quality, but similarly expensive and time consuming to create. It was almost certain that this process, which took decades and mastery of magic, could be dropped down to a year or two with enough novices trained in the smaller aspects of the job.
He then frowned as he realized every mage on the planet would bay for his blood if he deflated the value of their most precious heirlooms to nothing. In fact, odds were other mages had invented faster methods for making runes but kept it a secret to their deathbeds. Much like skills with mind magics.
Izuku looked up and nodded that he was ready for her to continue.
"We found some very sought after runes when we battled the countess. Together, they can form the word "Stealth" which can be used to increase speed, both physical movements and amplify your casting speed, as well as heighten reflexes and stamina." She explained. "My new staff is the legendary Leaf Staff, a fire mage's dream weapon, uses such a rune. In fact, your staff was probably made in an attempt to recreate it without runes."
He wasn't so hot on the idea of being considered a fire mage. His natural affinity for it had been dampened with his experience actually using other magics, and he suspected his original excellence with it was more a matter of circumstance than talent. It was all he had, and when you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
"I will teach you all about runes and similar foci during our time here. You should know that orbs are the primary foci for the elemental magics of my own Sann Esu clan." She said, indicating the orb at the tip of her staff. "Many are imbued with amplifiers for specific spells, others help for broader ranges of spells and these ones tend to be even more powerful. Wands are the primary Foci of a different type of magic user. You will learn all about these and more in the coming months. But for now, I think it may be time for us to sleep."
He looked out the one window to see the sun was beginning to fall beneath the horizon, and he was truly exhausted. And the bed was so unbelievably soft.
He crawled into his half of the bed and passed out. He had no idea he was so tired.
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