“Rouxwoods?” Devol asked as he sheathed his majestic and took the card. “That village is near the border of Renaissance and the Kingdom of Britana.”
“Do we have a portal near there?” the young scholar asked.
“No, but it shouldn’t be more than a day and a half’s travel from Fairwind, which is the closest anchor we have available,” she told them. “You can head through the forest toward the King’s Fall Mountains. From there, you can go around or through the mountains and from that point, you should have a straight route to the town.”
Devol nodded as he slid the strap of the sword’s sheath to his back. “I am very familiar with the Monleans’ territory. I should be able to get us there, no problem.”
“Then we’ll rely on you,” Jazai said quickly. “I’m terrible with directions.”
“Isn’t your father a traveler?” Asla asked. “Did he not teach you anything?”
“That would imply he listens to an instruction other than when it benefits him,” Zier snarked and earned an eye-roll from his apprentice.
The young swordsman looked around the group again. “Hey, I noticed Mr. Lebatt isn’t here.”
The grand mistress nodded. “He had to depart earlier on a different mission.”
“Oh, I see.” He was more than a little disappointed. “I was hoping to thank him before he left for getting me here and the training.”
“You’ll see him again, lad,” Wulfsun promised and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Everyone here comes and goes but this is our home. He’ll be back. You can tell him then.”
He smiled. “Right.”
“Are you ready to depart?” Nauru asked. The three young adventurers looked at one another before they nodded to her. “Very good. Let me open the portal for you.” The group moved to the anchor point and she held her hand out. Immediately, the rock began to glow before a large portal erupted in front of them.
“That’s not how Mr. Lebatt opened it before,” he remarked.
She chuckled. “It’s one of the perks of being the grand mistress,” she stated and darted him a questioning look. “And I heard that it isn’t how you opened it either.”
Devol grinned and rubbed the back of his head a little sheepishly. “Well, you do have a point.”
“Let’s get going,” Jazai ordered and waved over his shoulder as he stepped through. Asla turned and bowed before she followed him.
“Bye, everyone!” Devol yelled as he hurried to catch up. “We’ll be back soon.”
As soon as he stepped through, the gate closed. The older Templars took a moment after they left to stand idle. It had been quite some time since they had seen a group of adventurers as young as these leave on a Templar mission and for them, it was inspiring.
“Man, feel that sea breeze!” Jazai shouted as he stretched his arms wide with enthusiasm. “I’ve been cooped up in that castle for so long, I almost forgot what the outer wilds feel like.”
“Fish?” Asla asked and sniffed the air. “There’s fish in that village.”
“Yeah, it’s a fishing village,” Devol told her. “This is where Mr. Lebatt and I came from. We should get some when the mission is over. They have many great restaurants.”
“So which way should we go, Devol?” the scholar asked as he circled the rock formation to look at the fields beyond. “Past the forests, right?”
“Through the forest to the northwest,” he clarified and pointed over the fields. “We should reach the mountains in a few hours and be past those by nightfall. If all goes well, we should get to Rouxwoods by tomorrow afternoon.”
“All right, sounds good.” Jazai smirked and began to glow blue before he vanished, a now-familiar sign that he was using his blink cantrip. “See if you can keep up!” he shouted from about a hundred yards away.
“Wouldn’t it be less Mana-intensive to simply use Vis?” Devol asked as the other boy blinked farther away.
“He’s showing off,” Asla muttered as she adjusted the straps on her back. “Besides, do you think he could keep up with us only using Vis?”
“I would have slowed so he could.” That drew a giggle from her before she crouched.
“Come on. Let’s get going.” With that, she pounced and landed at the bottom of the hill before she repeated the action to catch up to Jazai.
Devol charged his Mana and hurried to join his teammates. Vaust, who was seated behind one of the rocks and hiding his Mana, smiled in amusement. It appeared that their mission had officially begun.
Chapter Twenty-One
“According to the card, we’ll make contact by the evening of the twenty-first, and the call sign is…Caw-caw?” Devol read aloud.
“Like a bird call?” Asla seemed unimpressed. “That doesn’t exactly seem inconspicuous.”
“Do you think they may be a bird wildkin?” he asked.
She shrugged as she leapt off a large tree branch. “Possibly, but most guilds aren’t multi-racial. If this was a wildkin guild, I would think they’d have mentioned it.”
“All the card says is that the carrier’s name is Zeke and the guild is the Hunters of Britana.” He slid the card into his pants pocket. “That’s the main hunters’ guild of the kingdom. I’m surprised they reached out to the Templars for something like this.”
“I am too, honestly,” Asla admitted. “I wonder what we are collecting and why the guild wouldn’t want to keep it for themselves or sell it.”
“Some rare item that belongs to the Templars?” he suggested.
The wildkin shook her head. “I’m sure there are many of those around as the order is quite old, but if that were the case, I don’t think anyone is that gracious, at least to us.”
Devol recalled Wulfsun mentioning the Templars’ fall from grace. There was still much he did not know about it, but it appeared it had traveled much farther than he had imagined if people weren’t even willing to do the right thing and return their treasures.
“Hey Jazai!” he shouted, caught the diviner’s attention, and almost made him fall out of the sky.
The boy blinked and reappeared as he landed neatly and his teammates caught up to him. They maintained a quick pace but continued to run along the ground. “What do you need?” he asked.
“We’re trying to work out what we’re retrieving,” the swordsman explained. “We know it’s some kind of box. But what do you think is inside?”
“Beats me,” he confessed. “I don’t think they would send us out here for a simple supply run. It might merely be an artifact or something that needs study. Although if that were the case, Zier would probably have been more excited about the mission.”
“Hunter guilds don’t typically have a scholar division. At best, it’s usually a small research team,” Asla stated. “If they did find something of interest that they couldn’t identify… No, even in that case, I think they would hand it to their kingdom’s academics before they gave it to the Templars.”
“Zier and the other scholars specialize in many different subjects,” Jazai pointed out. “Including areas that aren’t typically studied by most modern academics and Magi. So if it is a case where they couldn’t learn what it was, they probably had little choice other than to hand it to us.” The diviner’s face contorted in confusion. “Well, no. That brings me back to the fact that Zier would have been more eager to get his hands on it.”
“Was he not?” Devol asked.
The boy shook his head. “No, he was more…tepid, I guess.”
“That sounds about normal for him,” Asla replied.
Jazai chuckled. “Finally, someone else gets it. Most of the other scholars have been away for the last couple of weeks. I miss Wadia. She could at least take a joke.”
Devol leapt upward and saw the mountains in the distance. He landed and caught up with the other two. “The mountains are coming up. We should be there in no time.”
“Very well then.” The other boy held a hand up, his thumb pressed to his middle finger. “Meet you there.” He s
napped his fingers and blinked away in a blue glow as his two teammates charged their Mana and quickened their pace.
When they arrived at the edge of the forest only about half a mile from the foot of the mountain, they paused to discuss their options as they stared at the massive red-and-gray bulwark in their path. “So are we headed through or around?” Jazai asked. Devol noticed that he was breathing a little more heavily than before although he was impressed that for all his teleporting, his Mana only seemed to be reduced by a small amount.
“I’m curious,” Asla began and caught the attention of her companions as she pointed to the mountain. “It is called King’s Fall Mountain, correct? Why is that? Did a king fall off it?”
The boys chuckled and the diviner shook his head. “That would make a better story than the real one.”
“It used to be called something else,” Devol said and tapped his chin as he tried to recall the details. “Red Ravine or something like that? Because of the red stones along the path. But a few hundred years ago, the Monleans king was ambushed in the mountains during a Britana invasion. It is said that he was able to hold off most of the attackers while he ordered his followers to retreat as they had a more important mission to undertake. Legend has it he was such a powerful Magi that he managed to rout the attacking army himself but died in the process.”
“Yeah, King Piero.” The other boy nodded. “I think they wanted to name the mountains after him but over the centuries, a couple of other kings met their ends in these mountains and not as heroically. The range earned the morbid name as a result. I hear both Monlean’s kings and visiting royalty don’t cross it to this day.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But King Jeauxn doesn’t leave the castle much anyway. I think the only time I’ve seen him in person was during the thousand-year celebration of Monleans when I was six years old.”
Asla looked at the mountains again. “I get an ill feeling looking at them,” she said and dragged her gaze away. “We are not kings but perhaps it is best that we take a path around?”
“It’ll be a little longer but most likely safer,” Devol agreed. “I’m not sure if the mountains are cursed or anything, but there are reports of bandit activity in the area. My father would often have to send teams out to search or scare them away, but they always seem to be replaced or return after a time.”
“Is it worth merchants traveling through, then?” Jazai asked.
“Well, most can’t move as fast as we can,” he pointed out. “I have heard that they are building a teleport network between merchant and supply channels, but it’s still in the beginning stages.”
“It’s something to look forward to and it would make these missions way easier.” The other boy adjusted his pack and looked around. “All right, Devol. Which way?”
“Let’s go left,” he said. “The forest stretches to the side of the mountain for a fair distance so we’ll still have some cover.”
“Sounds good to me.” Jazai lifted a hand to snap his fingers but Asla reached out and stopped him.
“Run with us,” she said. “Conserve Mana. It is a long trek.”
Devol studied her curiously. The seriousness in her tone seemed more like a warning than a simple suggestion. The other boy gave her a brief questioning look before he lowered his hand and nodded. “All right, I’ll keep up. Let’s move.”
The three set off again. Vaust had watched them from within the cover of the forest and was pleased to see that Asla’s instincts were as sharp as ever. There was something there, although it did not appear to be anything he should be too concerned about, even for them. They should be safe henceforth. He stepped into a clearing, continued to shadow the trainees on their journey, and made sure to hide his Mana along the way.
“We’re almost out of the forest,” Devol announced. “There should be nothing but fields. I think the next town beyond the mountains is Granvy, but we’ll be able to go farther than that, so we should think about camping for the—”
Asla held an arm to stop him out and her ear twitched. Jazai stopped of his own accord, took his book out quickly, and opened it. “I have eleven names,” he stated quietly and peered into the trees around them.
“We’re being followed,” the wildkin noted and her gaze darted in all directions. “Or trapped, rather. They are wearing thieves’ oil. I could hardly discern their scent.”
“Bandits?” Devol asked and slid his hand to his majestic. Before he could draw it, however, dozens of arrows whistled through the trees toward them.
Jazai moved quickly between Devol and Asla, held his arms out, and pointed to either side. “Shield!” he yelled and two large circular shields made of Mana formed in the directions in which the young Magi pointed. They were barely in time to block the projectiles, which dropped harmlessly when he dispersed the magical barriers.
“Got some Magi in our midst, eh?” a rough voice commented. Devol drew his sword and held it in front of him as a group of men in dark-brown jerkins and pants walked out of the forest and surrounded them. Some were armed with bows or crossbows and others with swords or bludgeoning weapons on their hips or back.
Two more of these bandits stepped onto the road, followed by a much taller man with an unkempt beard and dark eyes. He was dressed in a black coat and pants with a red bandana tied around his arm and wore an iron helm with metal gloves and bracers. They must have been enchanted because they neither clanged nor shuffled as he walked.
He studied them with amusement. “You seem quite young. Sorry about the attack. We felt considerable Mana coming from ya. Can’t be too careful in these parts.”
“He’s the leader,” Jazai stated as he peeked at his tome. “His name is Jett and he has an exotic but I can’t read it clearly right now. The Mana of all these other bandits is getting in the way.”
“Should we be worried about them?” Asla asked and slid her pack off slowly.
The diviner shook his head. “Nah, not at all. A couple of them have more Mana than your average academy graduate, but they know nothing about Anima like the big guy does. He probably didn’t teach them so he could keep them in line.”
“What are ya scheming over there?” Jett asked with a grin that revealed large, yellowed teeth. “No need to be making any grand plans, children. Drop your supplies and those pretty items of yours and we’ll leave you be.” He placed a hand over his heart. “My promise.”
“I’ll take the ones on the right,” Jazai said and slid his gaze to the four bandits on his side.
“Then I’ll take the four on the left,” Asla replied and let her pack fall as she glared openly at the group. At least one winced and looked at the others.
“I’ll take him and his guards,” Devol stated, drew his sword, and prepared himself to attack.
“Focus on getting rid of his buddies first,” the other boy recommended. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say you could defeat the leader easily, but we don’t know what his exotic is capable of so keep your guard up.”
“Got it. Be quick and safe,” he stated as they all prepared to attack.
Jett began to reach into his coat. “Don’t go doing anything foolish now.”
“Go!” Devol shouted and the trio separated to attack the bandits.
Vaust scowled where he lay prone behind a tree stump. This certainly was not the plan but it would be a good warm-up and a chance to see how they worked in the field. He peered over his hiding place and watched the fight, paying particular attention to Devol and his light-bladed majestic. It was time to see what he could do with it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jazai was the first to lure his group away from the road. He blinked quickly behind one of the four bandits and, in a display of ingenuity or simply a desire for expediency, he thunked him on the head with his magic-imbued tome. The man fell and when the other three focused their attention on the young diviner, he led them deeper into the woods.
The wildkin pounced on her targets much faster than any of them expe
cted and caught them all unprepared. She drove one onto his back when she leapt into his chest and delivered a heavy kick before she landed on top of him. In the same motion, she slashed the legs of two other bandits before the fourth attempted to swing his mace to crush her head. Alsa rolled to the side and the mace almost pounded into the fallen bandit's chest before its wielder managed to stop it. She scurried into the woods with both the injured and uninjured brigands in pursuit.
Devol decided the best way to draw Jett’s bodyguards would be to feint an assault on their leader. He surged into a mock attack and as expected, the two men intercepted him. With his sword held ready in both hands, he slid along the path as both guards swung their weapons in aggressive arcs. He lifted his blade to catch theirs and the two struggled against him.
“What the hell?” one of them protested. “How is this kid so strong?”
His comrade directed a vicious kick at the young Magi, who strengthened his limb with Mana seconds before the bandit’s boot struck his knee. The impact made the man cry out in surprise and he almost buckled from the pain. “My foot!” he yelled. “My toes are broken.”
“Hey—don’t back off, idiot!” his comrade yelled. “He’s going to—”
The boy did not let him finish and instead, shoved him back and broke their stalemate as he thrust the pommel of his majestic into the guard’s chest. The force of the blow dented the light armor he wore under his jacket and he hacked painfully and spat a glob of something vile before he stumbled back and collapsed.
“You little bastard!” the man’s comrade roared, steadied himself, and attempted another wild swipe with his weapon. Devol intercepted the strike, blocked it with ease, and used his strengthened leg to deliver a powerful kick to his opponent’s jaw. The ruffian staggered and flailed to regain his balance before he landed heavily on his companion.
A New Light (The Astral Wanderer Book 1) Page 16