NOVEL NEXT Chapter 194: Signs
“We should probably message the others that the tribunal is over.” Hilda suggests. “Otherwise they might be angry at Lise for not telling them.”
“Hey, why would they only be mad at me?” My sister crosses her arms.
“You are the tank, aren’t you, you take up all the agro?”
My sister scratches her cheek and nods slowly. “That does make a lot of sense to me.” She then shrugs. “Yeah, let’s send them a message.”
“I’ll message Sam.” I reply, since she’s my girlfriend after all.
But before I can open the chat UI, my sister bumps me with her elbow. “Looks like you don’t need to anymore, sis.” She then points to the other end of the square where Sam walks from inbetween a couple of houses with her wolf in tow.
She looks a bit confused, but when I wave her over she does so without any hesitation. When she reaches me she gives me a quick kiss on the cheek. “Is it over already? I’d expected this to go on for a lot longer than it did.”
“So did we.” Hilda nods. It looks like she just got done sending everyone a message. “But thanks to a certain very useful skill we used, things turned out well rather fast.”
“Huh. Well, I’m not going to start complaining because I’ve found quite disturbing things myself.”
“Right, you did say you found something.” My sister walks up a bit closer to us so Sam doesn’t need to talk very loudly.
Sam nods. “I’ve both found rather clear signs of both transformation magics as necromancy.”
“That’s a strong conclusion.” Hilda tilts her head slightly.
“I know it is.” Sam nods. “But trust me, even with my rather limited knowledge of magic, the signs were rather obvious.”
“What were they?” I ask.
“Well, first off, I found a set of animal tracks that suddenly turned into boots. Since I’m sure that werewolves are not a thing in this setting, that can mean only one thing.”
“And they weren’t riding the wolves perhaps?”
Sam shakes her head. “No, I would have been able to tell by the depth of the tracks.”
“Hmm, that doesn’t sit quite right for me. Transformation magic like that is very rare. I really wouldn’t think that befits the modus operandi of bandits. But then again… it would explain how both the soldiers and the adventurers saw someone of the opposing side mess with the well. And you said you also found traces of necromancy?”
“Mhmm.” Sam nods. “I followed the tracks quite a bit deeper into the woods and found a pit dug in the ground nearby some ruins. I assumed it was some kind of ancient mass grave from a past battle or something like that, considering the leftover scraps of rusty pieces of metal. There were also some crushed bones nearby. Whoever cast the spell could probably not use those parts, otherwise I’d probably have not found anything.”
I look at Hilda and my sister. “Do you think that has anything to do with the people the soldiers and adventurers fought some time ago?”
“Maybe.” My sister shrugs. “But wouldn’t they be able to tell they were fighting undead? To me it sounded like they all believed they were fighting plain people.”
“But it would explain them leaving no trace after perishing and their rather suicidal nature.” Hilda interjects. “I’ve not seen so myself but I believe I have heard that some high level necromantic magic leaves no trace when their puppets get slain. Or… that’s just some confirmation bias kicking in… But we should definitely look further into it.”
At that moment, Nikki, Carol and Max also rejoin our party. Reporting in that during our tribunal, they’ve not really seen anything noteworthy.
We quickly bring them up to speed with what has happened on our end and what Sam had just told us.
“Did you see the tracks go further from the pit, Sam?” Nikki asks. “Or did the trail stop there.”
“Well, from that point on the trails diverged a little.” She replies. “But I think that we could still follow the one trail that I think is most likely to be the one of the perpetrators. I just decided not to continue on my own as it might be a bit much for me to handle by myself since I’m pretty sure it leads in the direction of one of the big bandit strongholds.” Sam takes the map out that we had gotten from the bandit camp we raided yesterday and points to the south of our position. It’s quite a bit deeper into the forest, a lot further away from any road than the camp we had found yesterday. Although it does appear to be somewhat close to the place I spawned it weirdly enough.
“Should we head there with the rest of the army?” Max asks.
“I don’t think we should.” Hilda shakes her head. “I think this is something we should handle as a party of seven.”
“If we move a lot of troops, it will be obvious what’s happening and the bandits will just pack up and leave before we can act.” Sam says. “Just like the bandit leader told us.”
“Ah, right.”
Sam nods “There’s more to it than it seems at the moment I think. So gathering more information by cleaning one of the bigger marked camps by ourselves, might make us learn a lot more about what’s going on. Especially if we manage to find either the shapeshifter or the necromancer there.”
“And it’s definitely not a camp big enough to prove much of a challenge to us. But I do suggest we tell the people where the other camps are, so they at least know where possible attacks and incursions could come from.” Lise looks around to find a couple of people who are in a leadership role so we can tell them all they need to know before we disappear into the unknown.
The people we talk to are a bit confused as to why we are leaving so fast after the resolution of the tribunal, but in the end they do understand that the problems appear to be solved for now and that finding out what the bandits are planning does hold a higher position in the list of priorities than just staying put.
“I would recommend putting at least four people on guard at the well at all times.” Lise says to the representatives of the soldiers and of the adventurers. “That way you are sure there’s always at least three people to one possible traitor at each moment in time. And I would suggest you do the same for our noble prisoner.”
“We definitely will.” It’s one of the officers who replies verbally. “Will you be back after you’ve gone to the encampment?”
“Yes. We can get back in a rather short time.” My sister looks at me and smiles. “We will try to figure out as much as possible. Right now we are still as good as blind and that’s not a good position to be in when you are at war.”
“But at least our two arms aren’t tied anymore because they are fighting each other.” Hilda comments.
“Yeah, our apologies for that once more.” This time it was an adventurer who speaks up.
“Don’t worry too much about past transgressions.” I reply. “You were in a position in which it was very hard to trust the other party. But I would still recommend you working on getting to know each other a lot better. That way it will also be a lot harder for any outside wrongdoers to get mixed in because they will clearly be ‘out of the loop’ so to speak.”
“We will continue to work on it when you are away and afterwards too of course.”
“Good.” Sam speaks up and then shows the locations of the other camps. Saying that we have already shared these with the people at the capital as well.
The representatives look very adamant to make sure their defenses are up to snuff. Motivation seems to be at the highest level it has ever been and I’m very happy about that.
“Okay, if you don’t have any more questions. It might be time for us to start heading off.” Sam rolls up the map once more and swiftly puts it away in her bag.
“Feel free to take anything from our supply cache before you head off.” The officer comments.
“That won’t be necessary, we have enough supplies.” My sister straightens her back and rests her hand on her sword. “We wouldn’t want to dig into them even more after what has already happened to them before.”
“Fair enough.” The officer replies and gives us a respectful nod. “We wish you good luck on your investigation.” He then looks over to me and smiles. “Although I’m pretty sure you won’t be needing any luck.”
“A bit of extra luck has never hurt anyone.” I smile back. -After all, good luck can take many different forms and bad luck is never positive.-