Sacrifice Mage

Ugnash was right. The slums of Claderov possessed a very repellent odour.

It wasn’t bad. Not objectively. I wasn’t reminded of trash heaps, or mouldy food, or anything else even more unsavoury. Instead, it was more like a sense of wrongness pervading the air.

The cloth mask suggested by Ugnash helped. Somewhat. But it still prickled my skin, tugged on my hair, and needled my eyes.

I could feel it, and it was actively making me regret coming here.

“I’ve been eyeing a new whetstone, mageling,” Khagnio said. “It can add an extra edge to both my knives and my scales. If you don’t get me that whetstone for pulling me into this shit heap, mageling…”

“I didn’t even ask you to come, Khagnio,” I said, voice muffled behind the mask. It was honestly more like a bandanna wrapped around my mouth and nose.

“It’s so sharp, mageling. Apparently, it’s also Enchanted by one of the pupils of a Vaunted.”

I just shook my head.

We walked through the murky slums. I tried not to feel too disgusted whenever my foot landed in something that wasn’t solid. The area was located on the old, dried-up riverbed. While the majority of water was gone, there were still a lot of springs and leaks coming up from underground.

This led to half the slums being more or less flooded at all times. A lot of the people here just stayed busy pushing away the water from the more inhabited areas.

“You think you can find the house?” Ugnash asked.

I didn’t answer for a while but eventually gave up and shook my head. “I don’t think so. My memories aren’t very clear after this long.”

It had been months since I had seen that vision. Recalling minute details I had barely glimpsed was a tall order.

But that didn’t mean my visit was aimless.

We toured a good chunk of the slums, mapping it for ourselves as we took note of key landmarks. It probably would have been a little easier if Cerea had come along, but she was basically on a date. Everywhere we went, we got looks that were just as repellent as the strange scent in the air.

Dull red eyes, pale skin smudged with dirt, fangs that hadn’t lost sharpness, only become more jagged and broken. The downtrodden Scarseekers here looked like they’d be happy to exsanguinate us.

I… didn’t particularly blame them. We definitely didn’t look like we belonged there. If anything, we looked rich, almost noble in comparison, even though I wouldn’t have characterized myself as such.

If obviously rich people started wandering around on Ring Four, I’d have given them a good, hard look too.

“Ah, so they’ve got a school,” Ugnash said as we reached a building no less ramshackle than the rest.

It did have signs it was frequently used, though. The muddy path had footprints, many of which were small. Its gate held letters indicating its purpose, drawn with fresh paint. Even some of the packed mud bricks looked fresh.

“What d’you want?”

The croaky voice made us all start. Even Khagnio whirled around a little too fast, hands going to his knives.

It was just an old woman though, a hood hiding her eyes but failing to obscure that half her fangs were gone.

“We’re just having a look see, grandma,” Ugnash answered in somewhat broken Cladian.

The woman didn’t move, an aged lady as resolute as an ageless sentinel. “We don’t take kindly to strangers snooping about here. Best you be gone before you’re caught wreaking whatever foulness you had planned.”

Before we could try and convince her that we weren’t up to anything shady, hurried steps briefly foretold the arrival of a much younger woman. Her youth was marred by old scars, some of which pockmarked her hairless pate. Her frown when she looked at us was distrustful too, but she chose to focus on the crone instead.

“Elder!” she said, drawing close to the old woman. “You weren’t to wander around after sunset.”

The Elder made a disgusted sound. “We’ve need of watchers and lookouts. For sneakthieves and child-nabbers such as these.”

“Woah, woah,” I said, having had enough of the undue hostility. “We’re not thieves, and we definitely aren’t here to kidnap children.”

“Denial. As is the way of the guilty.”

“Elder, please. It’s not child-nabbing. Those kids are going to better places.” For whatever reason, the young woman stopped herself before turning to face us, like it was easier to confront us than her batty Elder. “I don’t know who or what you are, but you don’t belong here. Get out before you start real trouble.”

“Listen to her, you fools,” the crone said. “Linger longer and you’ll pay for the crimes you’ve been committing for time immemorial. Time immemorial!”

Khagnio suddenly appeared out of the gloom behind the ladies. “Do you really think we’d get caught if we wanted to steal anything? Or anyone?”

While the old woman didn’t even flinch, the younger one whirled around and bared her fangs, cursing Khagnio. I decided to step in before things started really spiralling.

“Please, listen,” I said. It helped that my Cladian was near-perfect thanks to my Universal Language Approximator. “I came here to investigate the old whereabouts of… of someone I used to know. Someone who was from here.” I went on before they could call everything I had said bullshit. “Do you happen to know Glonek Ilverang?”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Ilverang?” the crone hissed. She was a great deal more agitated than she had been before, even more than when Khagnio had appeared out of nowhere. “What do you want with them, you cur?”

“Nothing! I just… wanted to know if they were alright. Look, I’m not even from Claderov. I’m from Zairgon. From Ring Four, if you’ve heard of it. We’re… well, we’re not much better off than you are here. I’m not your enemy. Believe me. I just came here because I knew Glonek.”

“You know Glonek?” the young woman asked. She frowned some more, especially after her eyes obviously recognized that Glonek wasn’t here with us. “No, you knew him?”

I slowly nodded. “I’m afraid he passed away.”

As soon as I said it, I mentally cursed myself. Lying by omission was no worsethan lying outright. Had I gotten scared? Was I afraid that this aged woman and her malnourished companion could actually do something to me? I felt stupid. Disgusted.

“Ah, poor Ivka.” The old woman looked down, quiet and sad. “She had nurtured a bit of hope before she died. Her little boy was growing up so big.” Then her voice hardened. “But I had warned her. I told her the world didn’t see our kind in a fair light. This is no surprise. Of course they killed him!”

“Elder, please…”

“I’ve told you. A thousand times I’ve said it, over and over. Those children… they’re taking them and killing them, one way or another. That’s all we’re ever good for. To them.”

The poor old lady sank harder into her tragic depression, and it just made my heart clench painfully. The younger woman slowly managed to shush her, calming the sobs with a strong hug.

“How did he die?” the bald Scarseeker asked quietly. “His family is long gone, so I was hoping he’d set down roots wherever he went. In Zairgon, I guess, since he went there. Still, we’ve kept the old Ilverang house—”

“I killed him,” I said.

The silence that fell at that was so suffocating, I could have choked to death. It was impossible to tell how long passed before someone said something.

“Why?” the younger Scarseeker asked.

“Because he started attacking me and my loved ones.” I didn’t need to think about how to phrase it. Honesty was probably not the best thing for my self-interests right that moment, but there were more important things than my immediate wellbeing and stress levels. “Because he created an army of Thralls that nearly wiped out my home.” My voice hardened. “Because he killed the Elder of my temple.”

“Impossible…” the young woman murmured, voice shaking. “Impossible. He had gotten out. He was making something of himself. He would never waste such an opportunity—”

“That’s what bothers you,” Khagnio said with undisguised disgust. “That he wasted his potential? Not the fact that he killed—”

She turned her ferociously despairing red eyes to him. “What? We’re just supposed to take your word for it, are we? That he wasn’t manipulated into doing all that? That he… he committed these wild crimes you accuse him of?”

She had a point there.

“Does it look like I’m lying?” I asked.

Their silence answered that no, it certainly didn’t appear like I was being dishonest. But still. Glonek meant something to these people. His family was known. He was starting to sound like a symbol of hope.

And that made my heart break some more.

It was obvious now that Ring Four was better off than the slums of Claderov. They had been so even before I had arrived and all the changes I had affected. Because these slums looked like they had the most rudimentary of civilization to keep the people going, but they had nothing beyond that. They certainly didn’t have anything like the cults in Ring Four to look after them.

Or maybe they did. Maybe a single night’s jaunt wasn’t going to reveal all the many ways the people of Claderov’s slums sustained their sanity and mental wellbeing.

But the more I talked with these people, the more I realized I had dealt a blow to their fortitude.

“For what it’s worth,” I said. “I came here to figure out a bit more of Glonek’s history. I wanted to understand what kind of life could ever motivate him to commit the terrible atrocities he did.”

“There is nothing for you to understand!” the old woman cried out. “Nothing! What can a killer hope to know beyond the taste for blood?”

I did my best to hold onto equanimity. “I’m not a killer. I was forced to—”

“I will not leave you until you leave us.” The woman somehow seemed to turn solid as a statue. “You will not harm even a single hair on anyone, not on my watch. Not any further! I will give you nothing, nothing at all, that you can use against us any further. Go back to your masters. Go back to the lords who stole our children, who seduced away our youth, only to ship them off to die on foreign lands. Go!”

Her words had ended in a shriek. The pitch was so violent that I actually found myself taking a step back.

“Come on,” Ugnash said, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go. We don’t belong here.”

Khagnio had already melted away into the shadows.

I gathered up my wits as Ugnash pulled me back. “You don’t have to tell me anything about yourselves or about Glonek. But these lords… one of them tried to kill me too, and pretty recently too.”

It got me nothing. No helpful tips, no directions on what to investigate next, nothing at all but a pure, oppressive silence.

Just more vague connecting lines, much like what I had acquired from Lord Atrin.

So I left.

My mood was pretty low all the way back to the hotel. The others didn’t try cheering me up or anything like that, which I kind of appreciated. I could stew in the silence, which probably wasn’t the best thing to do, most likely, but I had a lot on my mind I wanted to think about.

So Glonek was connected to the Claderov lords. Sure, I only had confirmation from two biased sources, but it made sense when I thought about it.

How else would a lowly up-and-comer from the slums end up as the accountant of another Great House?

Even in the memories I had perused, I recalled finding out that Glonek had arrived at House Kalnislaw from a recommendation. It stood to reason that only a noble’s recommendation would have allowed him to get employed by a different lord.

The frustrating part was that I couldn’t recall a significant amount of specifics from Soul Sight’s revelations about Glonek’s past. The memories I had seen had mostly been concentrated around his time in Zairgon and how that had led him to enact his horrific atrocities. But a part of me couldn’t help but wonder if it was related. If it was all a much bigger conspiracy…

Se-Vigilance had intimated that Claderov—or one or more of its most prominent lords, if not the whole city’s administration—most likely had plans they weren’t being open about. Could Glonek have been a part of those plans?

That seemed like wild conjecture based off what could easily just be a coincidence. But I didn’t want to discount it just yet.

I’d need to talk to Se-Vigilance. And I’d need to send off a letter to Lord Atrin to see if he could add anything about the connection between the slum youth and the lords of Claderov, though that line of enquiry was probably not going to yield any favourable results.

The next day, I headed out early. It would have been great if I could have met Se-Vigilance at the temple, but she had already left to take in the sights on offer in the city. Since it wasn’t an important meeting with Claderov’s nobles and dignitaries, I figured I could drop by and—

And ruin what was probably a peaceful outing with talk of conspiracies and whatnot. I sighed. How the hell was I going to feel if I was feeding ducks and performing yoga, only for someone to dump all of yesterday’s bullshit on my head?

Problem was, I had already left the hotel when that realization had hit me. I really needed to be more mindful and less obsessed with all this crap.

I turned and decided to get back to the hotel, where maybe I’d spend some time training up everything I had been ignoring on my little “holiday”. But just as I started walking, I spotted something—or someone—that made me freeze. A quick dash past several surprised people had me freezing again when I saw the same thing once more.

Yes. My eyes weren’t playing tricks.

Farther up ahead, walking through the crowd like a man on a mission, was the Paragon who had summoned me to Ephemeroth.