Chapter 15:
Party like it's 999
Akara had all of the helpers she could ever want, running to and from like headless chickens as they tried their best to bring her the ingredients and objects she requested. They were almost doing more harm than good, as they were not trained to know and recognize these things, but at least she had Cain there to provide proper aid and instruction.
"We have no records of the nature of Andariel's poisons." Cain confided in her at last as he returned from his research. "Only records of people dying from it and the techniques that failed to save them or relieve their symptoms."
That was good. That meant they at least had information on what not to do. It was better than going in completely blind as they tried to save the two dying sorcerers laying before them.
"Cooling them down has slowed their fading." Akara told him. "But my antidotes have done little."
Indeed, the two were nearly frozen solid from her underpowered frost spells, a technique used to slow bleeding and heart rates and keep people sedated during surgeries. The oddly comfortable and inviting unconsciousness of a near death by hypothermia.
"Have you tried garbing them with enchanted objects to protect against and slow the effects of poison?" Cain asked.
"I would like to, but I cannot leave their side and the others I sent to scour the treasury for such objects have yet to return." Akara admitted.
Just then, said searchers returned. Her heart fell when she saw the mountain of necklaces, circlets, rings and anklets they labored under. It seemed that, lacking the ability to determine what objects had anti-poison enchantments, the group opted to merely collect all things magical and carry them back to let them sort.
And sort they did. Akara could identify the exact magical properties of any object, but she could at least tell the difference between one that felt of fire and one that felt of poison magic. The difference between one that protected from such or applied such? Not so much. And so, the pair quickly developed a routine where she would separate the pile of jewelry into two, one for poison related objects and for non-poison related objects. Then, Cain would closely examine the ones she found and toss away whichever ones would surely do more harm than good.
They wasted no further time in decorating the pair of heroes in so much jewelry that if they were awake they could not feasibly stand up from their weight. By the end of it each had two or three rings on each finger, one for each phalanx where possible, and so many necklaces that she worried they might choke.
"Awww. Izuku looks like a little pimp." Mary commented at the overly jeweled young man. To much jeering.
"And Isendra looks like what I imagine Gheed's wife would look like." Kashya added to even more jeer.
Gheed snorted.
"Almost! She is nowhere near big-boned enough and lacks the ever-present scowl or overly fluffy cat she adores so. But she does have my woman's taste in extravagance." Gheed added.
The jeering stopped as the good humor was replaced by confusion at Gheed's tacit revelation that he did, in fact, have a wife.
Akara had been so busy tending to her duties that she hadn't properly registered the crowd of well-wishers that filled the barracks behind her, likely all the way out to the front door of the citadel. Now that she had, she blew her lid.
"Out! All of you, out!" She hollered. "I'm doing important healing work here, and it's stressful enough without all of you breathing down my neck and making light of the situation!"
Most scampered off, grumbling something about tasks they had been putting off around the ruined citadel, but the important individuals stayed.
"Is there absolutely anything more you can do?" Warriv asked.
"Or anything you want from us?" Kashya asked.
"Maybe, but it's a last resort option." Akara said.
"How last resort?" Warriv asked.
"Best case scenario? upwards of twelve more people will be bedridden in agony for days in a similar state to them. Worst case scenario? if it doesn't work all twelve would die, along with these two." Akara clarified.
Kashya did not hesitate.
"Gather for me every single person who owes these two their lives, above and beyond everybody else. Those most willing to give their own to save Isendra and Izuku from their Pyrrhic victory." She ordered.
Both of her usual guards bowed and left them to do exactly that. When they returned, they brought along many more volunteers than were needed.
When Izuku awoke, it was to the feeling of his entire body was made of lead. Every muscle fiber, tendon sinew, bone and bit of cartilage felt heavy. Most especially his head. The closest thing he could compare it to would be the feeling of an extreme case of the flu, where you can't even lift your head, but minus the sinus pressure.
He sat up upright and realized he was on a cot in the barracks of the citadel for the Sisterhood of the Sightless eye. It was a great deal cleaner and more well-lit than when he and Isendra had stormed through it. The lack of blood and viscera on the floor and wall was a marked improvement, as was the company.
To his right, on a cot identical to his own, lay Isendra, sound asleep and covered in garish jewelry. On his left was Alexis, in a similar state of health and dress. looking down on himself he noted that he too was covered in enchanted trinkets. Reaching out with his mana he felt the nature of poison imbued into its magic, but the precise details of what they had to do with poison was a mystery to his senses, if obvious to his mind.
Returning his attention to the room at large, he counted fourteen beds filled with resting figures, also all covered in jewelry. Had they all somehow been poisoned by Andariel?
"Of course you're the first to awake, you death defiant little man you." Akara's voice greeted him.
He turned to see the wizened woman come out from behind a screen where he could see the edges of an alchemical workstation and desk covered in tomes.
"How are you feeling?" She asked.
"Bad. I don't think any elaboration beyond that would be necessary." Izuku said, intentionally cheeky from the grogginess of what he now realized were the after effects of his poisoning.
"Andariel? The citadel? Everyone else?" Izuku asked.
"Dead, conquered and still being cleaned before the rebuilding can begin, and the losses were less than we dared to hope. It was an overwhelming victory. You did well, young Midoriya." Akara said with the most genuine smile he had ever seen her wear.
Izuku nodded, too sick to blush or be bashful as he normally would upon being complimented. He turned his attention back to the other people in the cots.
"What about all of them?" He asked.
"They were subjected to a wound sharing ritual." Akara said.
Izuku looked at her questioningly.
"It is a magical ritual used for splitting a wound evenly between a small group of people with a bond, so that a life-threatening stab wound would become little more than a nick for each of them, thus easily recoverable. Likewise, the insurmountable poisons of Andariel could be slept off when shared between them. Everyone lying unconscious around you volunteered for this, with each knowing that success was not guaranteed and could have killed them all." She elaborated.
Izuku had the frame of mind to feel touched by the gesture and took a closer look at the figures on each bed. He counted Alexis, Mary and all the other rogues he had helped to rescue from Blood Raven and that tree of torture. Others he recognized only by the shapes they made under their blankets and color of their hair. Warriv, Charsi, Kashya, Cain and even Gheed had taken up cots around them. Gheed may have been the most surprising at first glance, but all of them baffled Izuku.
Why take such a risk, putting the lives of the leaders on the line when any foot soldier would do. Why run the risk of leaving all of the factions in the Blood moors leaderless? He knew the answer, sentiment, but that didn't make it less stupid.
"I know what you are thinking, and I partially agreed. But powerful bonds of friendship and loyalty give the ritual, and most magic, far more potency and chance of success." Akara consoled him. "To get the reward, you must take risks. And they opted to risk it all, because you deserve it. Now get some more rest. I am sure the others will awaken shortly."
By the next day everybody was awake and fully recovered from the ordeal. The sickness of Andariel's poisons were cured and the entire citadel was spotless.
Then the partying began. A week-long feast full of dancing, drinking and singing. Even Izuku muscled up the courage to join Gheed and Warriv in their attack on the meadery, which the forces of Andariel had completely left alone. Not fans of fun, those demons and undead.
Charsi was the last to recover, and she made a beeline to Izuku where she crushed him in a hug that made him smile to his cheeks at her softness and his tipsiness.
"Thank you for saving my hammer Izuku!" She squealed. "You were just supposed to kill Andariel, but you went and did that too. Come see me when the party ends."
The party did not end. It lasted an entire week. A week of waking up feeling worse than he had while sick with Andariel's poison. Only for the drinking and eating to begin again.
Those few of the Sisterhood who didn't take in the celebrations cleansed the forests surrounding the citadel of all beasts during this time. The celebrators then picked said beasts clean down to the bone to fulfill the needs of the feast. Gargantuan beasts? Gone. Those weird porcupine lizards? Gone. The fish? Those they made a concerted effort not to hunt to extinction, but a few still wound up on their plates all the same.
Izuku actually still made himself useful during the mornings. He learned how to butcher these beasts, along with the rare deer and fish, as well as how to tan the hides with eggs and brains. He was even shown how to make minor repairs to clothes as the now moth-eaten and nearly ruined things of the sisterhood were being carted out of the bowels of the cleaned citadel.
But in the evenings? He drank and sang and danced with the much taller and much prettier rogues until he felt sufficiently tired and artificially happy to go to bed.
It was around the fifth morning of the binge that Izuku decided to stop with the drinking. That morning he woke up, fully clothed, but being cuddled by an equally fully clothed Alexis who seemed to think he was a teddy bear. He pried himself free from her embrace and blanched at her drowsy whining at the loss of his warmth.
"No. Stay my little hero. Stay forever..." she moaned before falling back asleep.
Izuku crept away to the courtyard with the water fountain and rested there for the day. He made a point of only drinking water and eating some leafy greens that were brought back. Wild spinach, berries and nuts foraged from the overgrown undergrowth that the fallen had ignored in the last year. By now the ruined stone, plaster and shingles had been removed and many of the caravan workers had begun making new ones. The latter by cutting down the overgrown woods nearby and the former by breaking down the stone of the ruined parts of the citadel and mixing it into new concrete or mortar.
Clearly he had not been the first to become tired of the partying, but he knew he wasn't up for doing any real work that day. He took to wandering the area surrounding the citadel, where large mass graves for bodies of their enemies had been dug and covered, forming small hills of dirt that were then planted with herbs and small fruiting plants, tomato especially.
He walked and thought about nothing. Enjoying the slightly more peaceful world and downtime that he knew would be short lived.
That day seemed to have a magic all its own, as everybody else packed up the party and all collectively decided to put the drink and food down. It was time to get back to work. It wasn't until that night that Izuku realized he hadn't seen Isendra during the entirety of the partying, and suspected she was off doing her own private celebrations where he couldn't see. She probably had a lover somewhere she didn't want him knowing about, keeping appearances and all that.
He would have respected her no less for knowing for certain who she was off with, but he understood her want to keep her apprentice in the dark about such personal things. She had always been a private person.
Isendra still hadn't reappeared by the next day, so Izuku took to the recently refurbished library where he picked up quill and ink to get started on a project he'd had in mind for some months. He copied a map of the moors, marking the location of the citadel and a compass on the corner. He also added crude sketches of fallen and a few other threats in the Blood moors.
His work was interrupted when Warriv approached him.
"My crew leaves next week for Lut Gholein." Warriv told him the next day. "You are welcome to join my caravan for free."
Izuku nodded.
"I will tell my mistress." He informed the caravan leader.
When Warriv left, Izuku went down the aisles in search of a book about Lut Gholein. He found a reference to it in a glossary of the world and a short description. a shining Jewel of the desert. Trading port in Aranoch and the midpoint between the Western Kingdoms and Kehjistan beyond the Twin Seas in the East. Good to know.
He went down to the stables where the caravanners had set up their little wood working shop for making repairs around the citadel.
"Excuse me. Any chance I could make a small sign post?" He asked.
And so, for the rest of that day, one of the fine young men under Warriv taught him some basic woodworking skills. By the end, he had a simple rod of wood with a spiked bottom, and a flat sign on top. He then used a paint brush to glue his makeshift map to it and another layer of glue as a protective coating. He was pleased with the end result.
When he finally returned to the mess hall it was to find Isendra in her white dress, the one she wore to relax on cleaning days, eating alone. Her mood seemed much improved since the huff she was in when they woke up after their battle. In fact, he'd never seen her so at peace.
"Good evening mistress." Izuku greeted her dutifully.
"Good evening apprentice. I hear you have been busy." Isendra said.
"Yes ma'am. Warriv said to tell you that his caravan is going to the desert's Gem in a week's time, and that we are both welcome to join him free of charge." Izuku told her.
"Free of charge you say? As opposed to the more accurate description that he will be paying us in food and comfortable travel in exchange for our protecting him through the journey. Either way, I accept. Tell him so if you see him before I do." She ordered. "Now, what have you been working on when you weren't refusing the matrimonial designs of young Alexis?"
Matrimonial designs?
"She never asked me to marry her." Izuku told her.
"No. But she did ask me, and I refused. That you still have a mother and father out there who are the ones she needs to ask, and that the answer was certainly no until you finished your apprenticeship under me." Isendra told him.
Izuku looked around to make sure there were no minders, and finding that there was nobody nearby this late at night he leaned in to whisper to his mistress.
"Our age difference would constitute a crime in my country." He told her. "I am still considered a child, and her behavior would be considered criminal."
Isendra dropped her spoon into her bowl of porridge as she gaped at Izuku.
"Twenty two and twelve are not a significant age gap." She reasoned.
"No, but our people are considered children unable to consent and take part in certain adult activities until sixteen." Izuku explained. "If you're seventeen and persue a twelve year old it is criminal, one of the worst crimes, rape."
Isendra breathed deeply and stared off into the void as she absorbed this information.
'My goodness. That must be torture to young girls. The highest requirement I have heard of is thirteen, and even that seems cruel to young girls in my opinion." She said.
"Why young girls and not young boys?" Izuku asked.
Isendra gave him a pitying look.
"Oh Izuku. If you could peer into the pit of filth that is the mind of a thirteen-year-old girl, you might be put off from us forever. We are ready for that kind of thing earlier than you childish boys. And the men we like are older." She told him. "For men are like a fine wine, they really only get better with age. Up to a point. Us women? We are best and most passionate when we are young. So not allowing us to express that and pursue the men we want but restricting us to little boys until sixteen? That is just oppressive. Pure repression of women's sexuality."
the complete juxtaposition of this way of thinking to what people in his society feel about "backwards" societies where marriage and a preposterously young age threw Izuku through a loop. Maybe the humans of this world really were a separate species altogether? There was no way this was so with human females of his world.
"I think their reasoning is that even at sixteen young men and women are too idiotic to make wise choices about life partners and the consequences of taking part in such activities." Izuku explained. "But that's the oldest we can still keep a lid on them before they explode."
Isendra considered this.
"You know, your people might be onto something there! With the prodigious use of enchanted chastity belts we might be able to achieve something similar here. But just to be clear, premarital sex between 'children' under the age of sixteen is rampant as is out of wedlock pregnancy thereby, is it not?" She asked.
"Oh yeah! Definitely. More So in countries where the age is eighteen." Izuku said.
"Okay, now you're having one on me. Was there something else you wanted to tell me besides the fact that your country would string up sweet Alexis for daring to fall hopelessly in love with you?" She asked.
"Yes ma'am. I know that the next leg of our journey will take us far from the moors, and I want to leave a sign for any of my people in case they send somebody here the same way I was sent here." He explained.
"What kind of sign?" Isendra asked.
"A literal sign. With a map leading them here to the citadel and information on the threats they will face here. What I need to know is where exactly on the map the place of my arrival is and if we can make the trip there and back before Warriv leaves." Izuku told her.
"We? What do you mean we? We will not be returning to that bog. You will." Isendra ordered.
"By myself?" He asked.
"Indeed. You are more than strong enough, and based on what you just told me, your society infantilizes the young to the point of indefinite childhood. It goes a great deal towards explaining the immaturity I have seen in you since day one. I suspect eight-year-olds in our society are more prepared for the trials of adulthood than your sixteen-year-olds. Since you have arrived here you have been treated as a near adult, as a boy your age should be. From now on you shall be treated as a full adult. It is my duty to prepare you for manhood, and you have catching up to do." Isendra explained. "Your first task towards this goal is to borrow a horse from Warriv, he will not refuse you, and make the trip there and back by yourself. To be alone with your thoughts for extended periods of time is a thing you must master. You leave in the morning. Bring me this sign you built before then so I can mark it."
The next morning Izuku did exactly as she instructed. He loaded five days worth of supplies onto one of Warriv's horses and set off with his makeshift signpost.
"You come back alive and well in five days, or else I will ensnare every Necromancer of Rathma I can to bring your soul back here just so I can remind you of your promised word." Isendra ordered.
Izuku bowed and went on his way southwest.
It was a slow and quiet ride, especially at first. The forests near or around the citadel and countess' former tower had been cleared of all servants of darkness. but beyond that, sparse beasts and fallen scurried about. He avoided conflict with them, if only because he didn't want to lose important time fighting such lowly creatures.
For an entire day and night, he traveled the woodland until reaching the eastern end of the moors. He almost didn't need the map after that, as the boggier parts of the southeast end of the countryside was as distinct as the day he had arrived. He slept fitfully each night, with every noise bringing him to wakefulness and once he was there, he made a point of checking the perimeter and long country beyond, but nothing tried to sneak up upon him in his sleep.
And so on the morning of the third day he arrived at the trash heap, much smaller and more rotted through than he recalled, as if no new trash had been added since he arrived. In fact, it was so. There was no new trash on the heaps. All of the plastic bags and filth within them were now mulch, with only glass, metal and plastic surviving but even they had grime, moss and lichen growing on them.
He didn't know what to make of this, so he retrieved his sign and a post stamper loaned to him for the mission and got to work pummeling the spike of the wooden pole into the ground. It took a good minute of labor, but soon it stood upright and proudly facing the spot of swamp he had crawled out of many months ago.
He turned around and reached out with his mana to see if he could feel any sign of the power that had brought him there, expecting to feel magic akin to the warp scrolls, but he found no such magical residue. laughing to himself as if a warp quirk would feel at all like warp magic.
He took a deep breath, as the air still smelled similar to the foul stench of a dumpster as it had before, and made ready to leave, but stopped when something in the water caught his eye. It was only for a moment, but he could have sworn he saw something blink at him. Like the glint of a single eye, he looked more closely and then it happened again, but it wasn't a living creature. It was the unmistakable glint of an LED light. Had some electronics made the trip and kept a charge?
He removed his clothes and stomped into the water to retrieve it, and what he lifted out of it was a large sealed bag. In it was a stack of envelopes and a small chip with a blinking LED light. He turned it around to see the front of the topmost letter.
It was addressed to him.
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