All I knew was that someone at the palace had better pay me something. Shutting down a couple portals to hell and saving a city must be worth something to someone...I hoped. Otherwise, the next month or two was going to be rough unless I was able to sell an orb or something.
I leaned on Eneus and glared at anyone who got too close, limping as fast as I could. A small group of people had started following me at a distance, and they were making me nervous.
***
When I finally reached the palace, my heart fell. The place was surrounded by Berber Guard, and they took one look at me before closing their ranks tighter and glaring daggers. After a quiet sigh, I straightened my back and ambled over to someone in clean, impressive-looking armor.
“I need to talk to someone at the palace,” I said.
“State your name and business,” responded the man.
I really didn’t care for his tone. Some man in pretty armor, probably promoted for being handsome over anything else, throwing attitude at me was probably not what I needed this morning.
My grip on Eneus tightened as I slowly and clearly said, “Name is Nora Hazard. I was fighting demons last night and I would like to get paid.”
Even as the man’s eyes tightened, I knew I could have phrased that better. This city had just been attacked, after all. The man didn’t respond, but his eyes shifted over to one side and he raised his eyebrows at someone.
I turned my head and saw another officer in equally impressive armor hurrying over. She was a shiner for sure. Her perfect hair hung in elaborate braids behind her, probably barely longer than regulation. The fake concern on her face was even more irritating than the man’s voice had been. She said, “The Guard has set up welfare check tents near each gate to the city. All refugees and wounded should proceed there and form a line for treatment. Priestesses of several faiths are on hand to offer prayers and counseling.”
“I don’t want treatment, I want money,” I growled. “Counseling is not going to fill my stomach or help me get home.”
Some of the woman’s facade cracked and she frowned at me. “Perhaps you can head to the refugee tent and find a bath too. You might be feeling better after you clean up, Madam—” She raised a questioning eyebrow.
“I already gave you people my name.” I felt a burst of frustration that I couldn’t use my old rank in the Tolstey Army. I’d been expelled and had no right to call myself a Captain anymore. “I would like to talk to someone in charge, because I have some complicated circumstances and I would like to tell the rotting story once, not twenty times while everyone gets their thumbs out of their asses, Lieutenant.” I was tempted to just punch her, but I’d learned my lesson in Soron. Just because I could choke out most people I met, didn’t mean I should. This wisdom wasn’t helping my mouth much right now, though.
The woman’s nostrils flared and I could actually see her irritation growing too. Yes, I had not handled this well, but I hurt all over, and I was starting to get even more hungry. I hadn’t thought it was possible. Still, at least I hadn’t said anything snarky about the woman’s pristine armor. I’d been a soldier, and knew that kind of insult would probably not help me get my way.
What am I even doing here? I thought to myself. I could have just flown to the palace. Then again, with the way the entire city was crawling with soldiers, some of them flying, that would probably end badly. As I stood there, waiting for the uppity Lieutenant to yell at me or call me names, one of my deeper wounds began oozing.
Surprisingly, the man I’d talked to first put a hand on the woman’s shoulder before she could speak. She shut her mouth and grimaced. He said, “It has been a long night for everyone, and some of us have had more time and resources to recover.” Then he looked me in the eyes and said, “Apologies. I may not look like it, but I haven’t slept in two days. Why don’t you get some food, then we can try this again?” He reached down for my hand, and pressed some coins into my palm.
I woodenly looked down at the money, and mumbled my thanks. Maybe I’d been wrong about the man. Part of me whispered that I was lucky to have been treated as well as I had. The entire country had just been attacked, nobody knew me, and I looked like garbage.
Suddenly from behind, an old woman stepped forward from the group following me. The two soldiers started, as if they’d just noticed this group of ragged townspeople. “Can I help you, grandmother?” asked the female soldier. Nearby enlisted Guard edged closer to watch what was going on.
The old woman shouted, “You lot watch how you talk to that one, you hear?” She shook her cane. “That is the hero of Mensk! While the Guard spent hours trying to get into that shield last night, wasting their time, this woman did your jobs! She is a hero!”
I inwardly groaned, and took advantage of the soldiers’ confusion and yelling back and forth with the group of townspeople to escape. Memories of Soron came to mind. I didn’t want recognition, I wanted money and food. The coins in my palm, kindness from a stranger, were a reminder that sometimes I could be completely wrong about people. I was definitely not a perfect person.
Maybe the male Lieutenant had been right, that I should eat before actually...trying to talk to anyone again. I nodded my head, agreeing with myself, then used bursts of Flight to air skate down side streets, making sure I’d lose my little group of admirers. Whenever I ran into new people who seemed to recognize me, I sped away again.
Unfortunately, food seemed hard to come by. With so much of the city burned, and people mourning the dead, the regular food vendors I’d expect to find in the streets were mostly absent. Most shops were closed, and soldiers stomped down every other major street I ran into. Any time they gave me more than a passing look, I immediately went the other way.
What the hell did a woman need to do to find some food in Mensk?
I looped closer to the palace again, heading down an alley when I smelled something delicious. Following my nose, I limped down a couple more alleys before finding the source—a few people cooking eggs and vegetables at a dead end. A few Mensk residents stood in a line against one wall, and as I watched, a richly dressed Mo’hali boy doled out some of the food to a very grateful young girl. The Mo’hali’s face lacked any expression now, but his face seemed like it would actually usually be smiling. After the young girl had secured her food, she scampered away, her sister and brother following close behind.
My eyes were drawn back to the people cooking, and my first thought was that they looked as injured as I probably did. Then I did a double take at the strangeness of the overall scene. What I’d mistaken for log rounds used as stools before were actually solid stone, like they’d been drawn up from the flagstones themselves. The frying table, a crude oven, and even the pans were also made of stone.
The group was all armed, or gave off the impression of having weapons on hand. I was surprised by how many of them were male. The person frying eggs was an Asian man with a goatee, handsome despite his wounds and dirty clothing. Behind him, fiddling with an oven, a tall, sandy-haired man was making some sort of casserole. I assumed that the longsword leaning against the wall nearby was his, and his cold eyes passed over me once as he glanced around. Both men were Terran, or Ludan, humans.
The last man I saw, chopping vegetables at a makeshift stone table was definitely not human. I might have thought he was a young Fideli in the past, but I’d actually met Fideli now. Instead of full Fideli, he looked like he was a half-breed, which was strange since Fideli and Terrans didn’t usually have mixed children. Like most other races, the children would be the same race as the mother.
The man with Fideli features held my attention in a way I couldn’t explain. He had such a strange aura of...goodness, but also something dangerous. His eyes looked gentle, but haunted, like he’d seen terrible things. He turned to grab something off the ground, and the dagger on his back made me shiver.
There was definitely something odd about this group.
I noticed a hole in the stone wall behind them as a wom
an came out of it, tall and beautiful. She was dressed like a noble, and carried herself like one. The shiner looked in the direction of the line and when she saw me, her posture changed, her shoulders squaring. I knew aggression when I saw it, so when a small clay man grew out of a patch of earth between broken flagstones, I didn’t hesitate. My movements were slow, pained, but I evaded the dirt man as it reached for me.
Motion behind me gave me warning as another appeared in my blind spot. Then a shadow fell as a long arm of solid earth grew from the roof above. The civilians around me screamed or stumbled back in surprise, and some gathered to run before the tall man stood to his full height and shouted, “Stop!” He frowned between the blonde woman and the frightened, hungry people.
“Volleyball, what the hell are you thinking?” asked the Asian man at the grill. “Put those things away.” Then he went back to his cooking like the matter was settled.
The woman with the strange name, Volleyball, pointed. “You are all too lax! What if that woman there with the spear is an assassin, or a cultist? Look at her. She is covered in blood and has a weapon—”
“So do we,” said the goateed man.
The tall woman continued, “—and she was studying us. Can’t you sense her strength? And she evaded my animata!”
“A ten-year-old with a stick could evade your golems,” said the man at the grill. Then he amended, “Well not really, but any mage or orb-Bonded who survived as many wounds as she has would be able to.” He punctuated his point by flipping some sausage.
“Sir Henry, you are not taking this seriously enough!” complained the young blonde woman. “What if she is an assassin? Things have changed! Now we have—” She shut her mouth with a snap, but glared at the man.
“I am not a rotting assassin,” I said, exasperated. “What I am is hungry. If I were an assassin, I would have come from the roof, not waited in a line in an alley like this.”
“Oh?” The tall man quirked an eyebrow at me.
“Yes.” To demonstrate, I easily floated off the ground to rooftop level, did a flip in the air, and settled back down on the ground. The clay men and the arm began to melt away once I’d landed. Good. I was getting really tired of silly questions, and I was also tired of walking on the ground to spare people’s feelings. Well, spare feelings and keep breathing, I corrected.
A few more gasps and little cries erupted from the line of people waiting for food, but they must have been as hungry and tired as I was. Nobody ran away. I thought I heard one of them whisper, “It’s her! That’s her, right?” but the voice trailed off and I was grateful they didn’t continue.
The Fideli-looking man put a hand on Volleyball’s arm. “Tanushree, peace. Hasn’t there been enough of this?”
“Yes, but we are so exposed! We shouldn’t be here! There is an entire army at the palace, safety in numbers, but we are in an alley, cooking sausages for commoners! We should—” She faltered as the man tightened his grip on her arm. After glancing at his eyes, she trailed off, turning to look at the patient line of people.
“It can wait,” said Henry. “The spies are being cared for in the palace, Uluula is sleeping and Mareen—” He paused. “Mareen needs more time. Let’s let her keep sleeping too. The moment we go back to the palace, everything is going to get crazy again.”
“But,” began Tanushree, or Volleyball. I wasn’t sure exactly what her name was. Tanushree seemed more likely.
Henry banged his spatula against the stone grill. “We will go back when Tony thinks it’s time to go back, right, Tony?” He winked at the young man with Fideli features.
Tony patted Tanushree’s hand. “It’s not time yet. Maybe this afternoon.”
“What about what Sir Jason said,” she asked, pointing at the tall man with her chin.
“Jason doesn’t exactly trust the Berber government,” said Henry.
“Why are we talking about all of this in front of other people?” asked Jason.
Henry grunted. “Probably because we’re all tired and don’t really give a fuck.” He called out to the line, “Hey people, do you care if we babble about dumb shit as long as we keep cooking?”
There were a few mumbled words from the line. Annoyance grew in my back and I limped forward. “Are you all just going to ignore the fact that I was just threatened?” I almost added that they were ignoring that I’d flown too, but stopped myself from saying so. Maybe I was just used to people being shocked at this point, so it felt weird when someone wasn’t.
Henry banged the stove again. “Well, we are basically feeding everyone here, and you’re in line, right? Would you rather we say we’re sorry or give you some eggs?”
My stomach growled. “Good point.”
I suddenly noticed Tony giving me a sneaky look, and I realized he probably found me attractive. A few years ago, such a thing would have been unthinkable to me, and I definitely wouldn’t have noticed. Things changed. I was still shocked I could get such a look now, especially while covered in wounds and wearing damaged, filthy clothing.
Part of me was flattered, but unless I was wrong, the magnetic young man was tied to the noblewoman somehow, and there was no way I was going to approach her about the availability of her man. That would be a dicey conversation even if she wasn’t a noble, and I didn’t look awful—and in an alley.
Of course, she wasn’t looking too fresh either, but in this situation, it didn’t matter. Oh well. I would have never imagined that I’d be so affected by a younger man with Fideli features, but I couldn’t deny it.
The tall man, Jason, gestured me over. “What is your name?”
“Nora Hazard. Shouldn’t I be waiting in line with everyone else?”
He answered, “Well, everyone matters, and we have some food to go around—”
“Yeah, we stole it from those stuck-up fucks at that snooty restaurant a few hours ago,” muttered Henry.
“We didn’t steal anything, we requisitioned it,” corrected Tanushree.
Henry angrily flipped a sausage. “I don’t care what you want to call it. When Mareen wakes up, I’m not going to be standing around with nothing to feed her,” said Henry. He didn’t look up from his cooking, and the mood of the group seemed to plummet.
Jason rolled his shoulders, focusing his attention back on me. “Are you a soldier, Nora?”
“No.”
“Adventurer?”
“Sorta.”
“Well, how did you get so wounded?” Jason was polite, but I could tell he was curious and I wasn’t going to shake him.
“Fighting demons.”
“Well, if you were fighting true-demons last night, that means you helped protect some of these folks in line with you, and I don’t think it’s unfair if you eat first.” He addressed the people in line, “Do any of you have a problem with that.”
A chorus of answers all said no in different ways, but one old woman went a step further. “She looks like rotting garbage. Feed her.”
Then a nervous teen piped up. “Please give her food! She—she—she’s the hero of Mensk!”
Oh rotting hell, I thought. Not this again.
Henry’s head came up. “What?”
“She saved the Market Street orphanage! I heard she fought a demon lord with her magic spear, and took down the shield around the palace!”
I felt embarrassed, and Henry’s obvious amusement wasn’t helping. He pointed at me with a spatula and said, “Alright, Hero of Mensk. How about you tell us your story while we cook? That should be decent payment for the food, right?”
The situation felt like a bad dream, but I really needed food. I was pretty sure my regeneration abilities were driving the ravenous hunger I felt right now. Right now, this odd little group seemed like my best chance to find something to eat, short of breaking into buildings. I was no thief, but I did keep a set of lockpicks handy. Finding another option first would be best, though.
After a few seconds of hesitation, I launched in a very abbreviated version of the last
month. I told them that I’d been a member of the Tolstey army, that I’d come to Berber, and run into some gangs and some cultists. While I told my story, I either left out or changed a few things, including traveling through Brecken, the hell world. In my new version of events, Lisa was a high-ranking cultist that I found before she escaped. I explained that after fighting the cultist leader, I flew around killing demons the night before, rested, and then came here. Nothing I said was a lie, but I was definitely not in the mood to tell a bunch of strangers my entire life story.
I ended my tale with the fact that I didn’t have any money, and the Guard hadn’t been super helpful. Getting into the palace to talk to anyone in charge had been a long shot, and I admitted that to Jason as I spoke, but I hadn’t been able to think of another way. I still needed to find someone to tell my story to, at least someone who might be able to help me get back on my feet.
Part of me was surprised that I felt so comfortable spilling my guts to this extent. By telling my story, I’d basically all but admitted that I was orb-Bonded; mages wouldn’t have such diverse abilities. For months now, orb-Bonded all over Ludus had been jumping at shadows because of Dolos’ bounty, but maybe Henry had been right earlier. Maybe last night had been so terrible, so draining, I just couldn’t bring myself to care anymore.
After my story was done, the nervous teen Mensk resident, the girl behind me, cheerfully confirmed my tale, saying she’d even seen me battling five demons at once in the sky. I knew that was a bunch of rot, but didn’t say so. The reality was that she hadn’t even known who I was until she’d seen me fly, then probably put that together with the fact that I was carrying a spear.
The entire time I’d told my story, Jason and the rest of his group had stayed quiet, listening to me. Finally, it wasn’t Jason, but Tony who nodded slowly and said, “I think she deserves some eggs.”
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