54: A Sense of Wrongness
Ragnar
Ragnar looked over to the “good” fire. There wasn't any laughter. There never would be when that bastard, Colin, was sitting there running things.
No, it was a polite and quiet terror. Nobody wanted to step out of line in front of him.
But Ragnar sat back next to the coach. Away from the important bastards on this expedition. He looked up at it. He'd brought food to the human collaborator a little while ago, but he'd refused. Eventually, Ragnar had simply shoved it through the bars and heard it land with a muted thump on the inside.
"Ungrateful bastard," Ragnar muttered to himself. “Doesn't even accept the good food we’re giving him. Eating better than some of the good people living around here.”
He said that last bit with a snort. He had opinions about the “good people” living around here. There had to be something wrong with them to want to live so close to the Scar. No wonder they found a human collaborator, and a demon walking on two legs!
Not to mention it looked like this collaborator had been living a good life for far longer than just the past day when he'd been under the care of the Inquisition's gentle and magnanimous hands. That cabin on the baron's country estate told the story.
There were collaborators everywhere. People who wanted to undermine the human kingdoms. People who were working with the demons and trying to destroy everything they'd won so hard and paid for in so much blood in the Demon Wars twenty years ago.
His eyes narrowed as he stared at the coach. It was almost enough for him to want the human to have an unfortunate accident before they got to Rivenwood and handed him over to the mission who could properly take care of the bastard. Give him everything that was coming to him for his sins.
But he pushed those thoughts down and away. It wouldn't do for the human to have an unfortunate accident. After all, everyone had to be brought to justice in their own time and in their own way.
Though there'd been that incident earlier. The odd feeling that had him leaning over and puking his guts up, followed by the unproductive conversation with that bastard Colin.
High Inquisitor Colin. He always thought he was so much better than everyone else. Like they hadn’t come up in the same class. Sure, he always got better marks and seemed to be the teacher's favorite, even going through classes. That good fortune followed him rising through the ranks.
But that didn't make him better than Ragnar. It just meant he outranked him. He continued staring at the coach. There was something odd about that one being held in there. How he simply sat there being quiet after that odd conversation earlier.
Even that conversation had seemed off. He talked to Tobin in an almost friendly way. Not at all the terror Ragnar expected from somebody who was in the Inquisition's hands. He’d been on so many of these expeditions and taken part in bringing in far less guilty collaborators, and they were always terrified.
This one? Who’d been caught with a demoness rather than simply confessing their sins when the Inquisition investigated them? He was too calm. It was all wrong. Everything about him was wrong.
And there was still that vague unease. That feeling of nausea that had settled in the pit of his stomach after that oddity earlier. Something that seemed to linger around his arcane core. He didn't like that.
Again, he glanced over to the campfire. He almost thought about saying something, but that could be dangerous. Especially when Colin was running things. Always so assured of his own ability to know more than everyone else all around him. And here Ragnar was stuck going to all of these outlying villages in the middle of nowhere, always trying to bring in collaborators and who’d fallen to the seductive call of the demons.
This case was far more cut and dry than most of the time when they had to really do some proper investigative work to try and get somebody to confess. Though they always got their confession in the end. That was the way of the Inquisition.
He glanced over to the demoness. He thought about the unsettling way she stared at him. Her eyes glowed yellow, and he could see their glow now.
He jumped with a start, realizing she was staring straight at him. Even from a distance, it was disquieting. Like she was looking at him and trying to think of all the ways she could eviscerate him.
He didn't think the demoness was planning any of the more interesting ways that a demoness could supposedly take care of a human. Those stories had always gone hand in hand with the thought in the back of his mind that it might be interesting to be taken by a demoness under those circumstances. He might almost understand why somebody was willing to betray everything they'd ever known if some of those stories were true.
But not with this one. No, there was only murder in her eyes, and no doubt in her traitorous demon heart.
Something started to happen as she stared at him. As though there was a spell pushing at his arcane core. Something he didn't quite understand. Something he couldn't explain. Something that filled him with dread in a way nothing in his long years working with the Inquisition ever had. Even when he was tasked with going out and hunting scourgelings and other demon spawn along the edges of the scar.
It was odd the way Baron Riven didn't seem to need their services nearly as much as some of the other border nobles. Almost as though there was something going on there. Almost as though the baron had made a separate peace with the demons.
They would certainly need to go back there and find out what was going on. All those thoughts ran through his head as they always did. Going after a noble was always a difficulty, for all that a mere baron wouldn't be a great difficulty for the Inquisition. Just something that they weren't able to do this time around because they didn’t have the proper paperwork for that sort of thing.
But there was something far more worrying happening now. There was that feeling. He even heard some of the people over by the fire talking with one another and sounding like they were unsure of themselves. Like they realized something was happening this time as well.
He almost would have smiled if he wasn't so terrified and filled with dread. Maybe Colin was finally realizing there was something going on and he should have listened to Ragnar.
And then it hit him again, only it was a far more intense feeling this time than what had hit him the last time.
Before, it had felt like somebody had punched him lightly. Like a hit from somebody who didn't have the strength to follow through. He'd taken hits like that from some of his subordinates over the years. People who were tired of his unique leadership style and decided they were going to take it out on him.
They always learned the hard way what a mistake that was.
Only this was no mistake. This was a solid punch to the gut. But then it kept going. It moved inside him. Into that void he went to whenever he was trying to work with his core. It punched straight for that point of light within him. The core that was a point of pride that he'd managed to accomplish so much when so many from the small village he came from on the other side of the human lands had amounted to nothing.
He'd shown them.
And it had brought him to this moment where somebody was attacking that point of pride. Going straight at his arcane mana core. He’d heard of this sort of spell before, but he’d been far from the front lines towards the end of the Demon Wars so he’d never felt it.
The reality was even less pleasant than the terror of hearing about a dampening spell. A direct dampening spell. Not being put into a dampening room made of arcana oak that allowed him to do new spell work in relative safety.
It was like a mix of darkness and light that was going straight for his center, and then it wrapped around his arcane core and it winked out.
Ragnar stumbled back like he’d been hit with a powerful physical blow, doubled over, and then he fell to his side as that familiar nausea washed over him once more.
That fool Tobin had been an idiot. He never bothered to take a bite. As though he'd been so distracted by the human, thinking he was actually a danger, that he'd concentrated on that rather than keeping up his strength.
Which was to be expected for someone as young as Tobin. It rankled him that someone so young was the same rank as him. So many of those upstarts blew past him while he was stuck doing the same work seemingly for all eternity.
Ragnar had been at this long enough that he knew to take food and sleep whenever and wherever he could, and so he'd eaten from his saddle bags all day long. All came up in this moment, even some of the things left over from breakfast even after losing it earlier on the road, and landed in a steaming mess in the grass.
The forest seemed to quiet all around him. There was no sound at all. No animals. No chatting by the fire. No nothing.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Tried to find the darkness his core lived in deep within himself. He frantically searched for that point of light, a panic and terror seizing him unlike anything he'd felt since…
Well, perhaps since the day he'd first joined the Inquisition and thought he'd made a terrible mistake as Inquisitors went down the line punching the recruits in the gut and hurling abuses at them and making them get down and do push-ups and other ridiculous things.
Only there was nothing waiting for him there. The comforting point of light that had always been there, at least since his First Ascension when he came of age, was gone.
He rolled on the ground, grabbing hold of his gut and feeling at where that pain was. Feeling at where that absence of any arcane mana was, for that matter. He knew that moaning wasn't going to do anything to save him.
Something moved in the darkness. Light danced from flames of the various campfires they'd set up, though he couldn't see the campfires now. He could see the light reflecting off of it, and he could hear other groans and pained moaning.
Something appeared over him. A darkness that blotted out that flickering light from the fires. He looked up and he saw a horrific creature. A monster that was far more terrifying than any demon he'd ever seen, and he'd seen plenty of scourgelings in his day. Terrifying things that could overrun a town if they were left to their own devices.
Only this was something different. It was the human from before. A boy, really. Barely old enough to have his own Ascension and yet he stood over Ragnar, staring down at him with pity. And within him…
He’d been too busy concentrating on the fight and providing support for Captain Garv in that ridiculous armor to pay much attention to the boy and the power he was putting out, but the fact that he’d been able to fight someone in arcana-infused armor to a standstill twice should’ve been a warning.
And he felt it now. The power within this one. Not just a First Ascension. More powerful even than his own Second Ascension, if that was to be believed. Though even that sense was a flickering thing. Not the solid sense that was usually there.
Because his arcane core was gone, and this boy was staring down at him not with hate, not with even annoyance, but with pity.
That made Ragnar even more upset, if that was possible. He didn't deserve this creature's pity.
The boy had a cat on his shoulder, which looked even more ridiculous, and he stood there staring down at Ragnar with pity.
"Look," the boy said. "I'm terribly sorry about all of this. I did try to talk to you and see if we could come to a better solution, but I suppose that wasn't going to happen as long as you thought I was consorting with demons."
Ragnar moved his lips to tell this boy that he was collaborating with demons. That the demoness wasn't going to get far even if he managed to get away from them tonight. But the words didn't come. There was no breath in him to give voice to those words.
"And I'm also afraid that I can't have you following me," the boy said, leaning down closer to Ragnar. "I really wish it didn't have to be like this, but you are the one who refused to listen to me."
The cat’s tail swished. Like it was anticipating something. Like it was excited about something. Then its lips pulled back in a smile that was terrifying both because a cat shouldn’t be able to make a human expression like that, and because that smile seemed positively rapacious.
It promised things. Terrible things.
Terror filled Ragnar at that. For all that the boy seemed even more reluctant about what he was about to do. All sorts of terrified ideas filled his head. This boy was consorting with demons, and it was the worst case Ragnar had ever seen in his long career traveling the hinterlands near the Scar. Which was saying something.
All sorts of terrible things ran through his head, and then the boy reached down and touched him. There was a bright flash of light for a moment, and then the world went dark around him. Without the glowing comfort of that core that had been with him through so many trials and adventures.