Broken Soul

Inquisitor

Wandering the wilderness in the north-west of Emall was difficult even for experienced travelers. They had to leave their wagon behind at a small village over a day's march to the south because Fell had to heave it out of potholes or ditches at least once an hour, and that slowed them down too much.

It didn't help the mood that their map was virtually useless, and the mark the bard had made was so generic that they had been wandering for days looking for their destination.

Liz had a lot to say about that inconvenience. "Why can't those fucking bloodsuckers ever live anywhere reachable by wagon. I want a nap!"

No one engaged with the cranky fire mage; they were too used to her antics and knew that if they addressed their concerns, then it would only lead to her trying to get them to carry her while she slept. That had happened too often for anyone to risk it anymore.

At least that was with the group. Kiran didn't know that, but the Inquisitor suspected that Liz wouldn't have great success in making the old man carry her.

"You seem to be unusually adverse to traveling for a mage and Inquisition goon," he commented in a neutral tone.

"Ah, you get me wrong, old timer. I love to travel. I sleep much better on the move, but sadly, I haven't learned the ancient technique of sleeping while walking yet," Liz replied, not even bothering to seem offended about being called a goon.

Kiran fell silent for a few minutes while he walked, but then addressed her again.

"I have been wondering ...," he started, but Liz immediately finished his sentence.

"Why a mage like me would serve the Inquisition?"

Kiran nodded.

"I expected that question much sooner, to be honest. For a while, I honestly thought you were mute or something," Liz laughed, but then got serious when Kiran didn't react.

"Fine, you want to know my tragic backstory? In exchange, you will have to carry me, so that I can take a nap once I am done telling it."

She grinned triumphantly, her black hair framing her face.

Kiran looked at her emotionlessly and then nodded. "One hour."

"Four," she shot back.

"Two, and I will make it comfortable for you."

Liz looked at the mage with suspicion but agreed.

The Inquisitor smirked behind them as he watched the entire exchange. He had hoped that Liz would be able to draw the old mage out of his shell. Kiran had entirely kept to himself for the months they were already traveling together to such a degree that it bordered on unnerving.

"Alright then. I was born in a kingdom to the north of here. They were adhering to the Idas church, so when I awakened my fire affinity, my parents were less than stoked, as you might imagine. Adding to the fact that I have always been a dumb brat, it quickly became known that I had that affinity.

"Fire always excited me, so I ignored my parents' will to never use my powers. They meant well but never understood that ignoring my affinity would be like denying myself, and I couldn't do that.

"They were kind of right in the end. People quickly had enough of my bullshit, and someone told a priest, who then called in the big boys."

Liz began playing with an orb of fire like others would with a coin. Moving it in between her fingers, flipping it into the air, and doing other things to keep her hands busy.

"The Inquisition came in like a horde of starving hounds that found a bleeding sheep. They had little trouble finding fires to pin on me, some of which I actually was the cause of, so yeah, at least not everything was fabricated. And so they grabbed me, and yeah. Burning fire mages isn't a great plan, so they proceeded to chain and drag me to the nearby stream to drown me in."

The Inquisitor watched Kiran closely as Liz laid bare her past. It was impressive that even now, with a story that should hit very close to home for any mage, Kiran was showing only a blank slate.

"Not much to say after that. He saved me," Liz pointed at the Inquisitor over her shoulder. "There was some vampire infestation nearby, and he needed the firepower, and I was very glad to cut loose and burn some things to the ground. It helped that he chased off the witchhunters. Now I am in his debt and really don't wanna be nearly drowned again, so I chose to stay close."

Kiran regarded the fire mage for a few moments. "You could choose to live in Reen now. It is safe from the Inquisition, and you could live openly with your gift."

Liz chuckled. "Safe for now. Your little experiment is decades away from being even remotely safe. No, I owe him just like the rest of our little band of misfits."

She then began pointing at the other members one after another.

"Harmond was a thief in ... whatever that shithole was called. Nearly got his hands chopped off when the boss found him," she pointed at the brunette halfling.

"Xvenera was hunted by a mob of angry peasants after killing a monster for them. They thought that she was the cause of the monsters. Bad luck and such." The cursed woman didn't react.

"The grey fellow was a slave brought in from the east. Beaten, bloodied, but unbroken. So the boss bought him."

The orc looked over at the talking duo and tipped his pipe in a greeting.

"And Ethan was just a dipshit that couldn't agree with his superiors to such a degree that he nearly got branded a heretic if our boss hadn't taken him," Liz finished her explanation while pointing at the spellbreaker.

"Not my fault that they were too stuck in their ways to recognize true genius," Ethan shrugged.

"As you see, we all owe him our lives. He has been good to us, so no, I am not an Inquisition goon, I am his goon," Liz finished calmly and pointed at the Inquisitor. The others nodded in agreement.

Kiran seemed to consider this for a few moments and then simply said, "I see."

Liz returned to a less serious expression and came to a halt. "I think it is time for you to hold up your end of the bargain."

"It seems so," the older mage replied, but made no visible effort to approach Liz to lift her. He rather raised his hand, a magical sigil constructing itself out of blue light. Everyone tensed at that, but Kiran didn't seem to mind.

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The snow began to gather and melt from all around until a waist-high blob of water had gathered.

"Get on," Kiran said and pointed toward the large bubble of water.

Liz looked at him incredulously. "You want me to ride on that?"

"You thought an old man like me would carry a young woman on his shoulders? That seems a little inappropriate, don't you think?"

Liz scratched her neck and then seemed to just go with it. She climbed onto the bubble while everyone watched, but strangely didn't seem to sink in.

"This is very wobbly and cold," she complained.

"Just make yourself comfortable and stop moving, then it should stop wobbling," Kiran admonished her. "Also, you can inject some of your fire mana to heat up the water to your liking."

Liz did so, and a few minutes later, she was snoring away, while the blob moved over the ground next to Kiran.

"You can keep this up for two hours?" the Inquisitor asked curiously.

"I can," Kiran replied shortly.

The Inquisitor could sense that even if the mage's opinion of him might have risen a little from Liz's stories, he still didn't want to interact with the Inquisitor.

A pity, the Inquisitor thought, but didn't press it.

They continued their journey for three more hours. Liz's complaining had gotten even louder when Kiran had kicked her off his blob exactly two hours into her ride, but Kiran seemed entirely immune to her nagging.

At some point, Xvenera suddenly stopped and held out her hand to make the rest do the same.

"What is it?" Ethan asked, but the cursed woman simply held her hand in his face to shut him up while her cat ears twitched.

They waited patiently until Xvenera spoke, "I hear screaming. Humans and something bigger. That direction, between one or two kilometers away."

"Monster attack?" Harmond suggested.

"Probably," Fell replied with a grin. He grabbed his large metal club and seemed ready to charge off into the forest.

"So what's our play?" Xvenera asked the Inquisitor.

The Inquisitor calmed his mind while he thought about it. Most eyes were directed at him, with only Fell being more interested in peering into the distance.

It could be a clue, he thought. Maybe it is even a vampire attack, but that seems unlikely if Xvenera has heard something large. Normally, I would like to be careful and scope out the situation first—no reason to put us at risk with an unwanted distraction.

He then caught the deep blue eyes of Kiran.

It seems like I won't have that luxury this time. I need him to lower his guard, and he won't as long as he thinks me a heartless hunter. If my hunch is true, then I don't want to upset him. This is not the time to think about that either way.

That entire train of thought took less than a second before the Inquisitor began throwing orders.

"We are going to investigate. Xvenera and Harmond, go ahead scouting, but keep a distance from anything you have the faintest doubt about being able to handle. Fell and I take the vanguard, the mages behind us."

He was already turning into a jog as the last words left his mouth. His team was well practiced and was quickly on the move, too. Xvenera vanished into the woods at breakneck speed while the much shorter Harmond took a little longer to disappear.

The Inquisitor's mind ran through dozens of possible situations they could be running into. From the most likely being a monster attack, to his regular suspicion of vampires, to a simple accident with some strange noises.

He didn't have to speculate for long as Harmond returned out of breath. "Big fleshy undead with some fleshhounds. They have chased a few people up some trees, and there have been casualties already. Xvenera is observing, but you know how she is, so we should hurry."

Undead? the Inquisitor thought. Those hadn't been high on his list of probabilities.

"Maybe vampire created?" Ethan suggested.

Vampires had a natural advantage in acquiring death affinity due to them having died once already, so finding a vampire who dabbled in necromancy or animated flesh horrors wasn't unusual.

"Why would they draw attention like this?" Liz argued. "They have been able to hide out here quite effectively if our theories are correct. Having undead run around attacking people seems like a shit idea for staying hidden."

The Inquisitor tentatively agreed with Liz, but there were too many unknowns to make an informed judgment.

"Concentrate on the immediate problem for now. We will worry about the why after we have banished these creatures from this plane," he quashed any further speculation.

The screaming had become loud enough to cut through the dense foliage for everyone to hear a few minutes before the forest finally opened up a little. This was not a natural clearing but rather an opening trampled into the undergrowth by something large.

The situation was as described. Half a dozen corpses lay on the ground or had already begun to twitch back to life. Two women, a man, and four children were screaming from two different trees where they had found temporary shelter.

Those shelters were only of questionable safety, though. A three-meter-tall, and nearly the same in width, fleshy hulk was currently smashing the stump of its arm into one of the trees while a pack of seven fleshhounds rounded them both.

They all looked like their skin had been flayed off them, with raw red flesh and bones sticking out of them in multiple places.

The corpses are animating on their own. These are not artificial undead, the Inquisitor noted in passing.

"Fell, engage that flesh hulk." Fell had charged in the moment he got the order with a loud warcry that immediately focused the attention of every creature in the artificial clearing on him.

"The rest of you, let's go." He didn't need to give any more directions. Pointing Fell at a target was always a good idea to know where not to go, but the rest knew what to do.

The Inquisitor charged the flesh hounds, his rapier in hand and mana flowing freely through his body. Behind him, the crashing of Harmond's sling echoed through the forest.

From the right, the telltale heat of Liz's magecraft was quickly followed by the overwhelming smell of burned flesh as the mage began pummeling the hulking mass of flesh.

Xvenera appeared out of nowhere with her double-pointed spear and slammed one of the fleshhounds into a tree with enough power to crack its spine.

Just as the Inquisitor reached the first hound, the snow began to move all around the flesh creatures like it was alive and turned into whips that held onto every limb they could get a hold of. The hounds fought fiercely against their restraints, but every time they broke one, it simply morphed into a new water leash.

Kiran's magic made this fight comically easy for the Inquisitor. He weaved through the restrained beasts, his rapier finding brains, cores, and spines, leaving the creatures either immobilized or dead.

The flesh hounds were only one skull monsters and not very well-evolved ones, so they fell easily; the Hulk was another story.

Fell was driven back by a heavy strike. He was grinning broadly as he swung his thick metal club against the offending arm. The impact ripped flesh apart, but it seemed to reknit itself just a few moments later.

The Inquisitor watched the fight for a moment as the flesh hulk and Fell exchanged blows. The Hulk was probably a three-skull at most, but impressively durable. Its regeneration would allow it to punch way over its class, considering you needed a lot of power to kill it outright.

"Fell, get back," the Inquisitor ordered.

The orc did so, but didn't seem very happy about his fight being cut short. It didn't happen often that they found something that could take his augmented strikes without crumbling to dust.

"Don't pout at me. We do not have time for this," the Inquisitor told him with an amused tone. "Liz, cook it."

"Alright," Liz said, grinning broadly. "Hey, grandpa. Please make sure I don't burn the entire place down."

"Why are all fire mages like this?" Kiran grumbled but still began constructing a sigil.

The Inquisitor watched the water mage more than the flesh hulk as Liz conjured a flaming tornado around it. The Hulk didn't make a sound as it tried to escape the fire, but the tornado simply moved with it until it was just a charred mess.

Kiran, meanwhile, had conjured a fine mist to wet every surface and let the mist converge on every fire that broke out in spite of the humidity.

"Now I am hungry," Fell said while sniffing the air.

"Don't even think about it, you savage," Ethan complained and weakly hit him in the shoulder.

"You can come down," the Inquisitor ignored their bickering and turned to the trees. "The danger has passed."

The survivors climbed down and whinced as Xvenera went around stabbing the corpses of their former friends in the heart to prevent them from reanimating.

"What happened here?" the Inquisitor asked a man in his thirties with empty eyes.

"It's those cursed girls. We tried to flee our village to escape, but they sent these monsters after us," he replied, eyes wide and panic making his voice tremble.

The Inquisitor was pretty sure that these undead were mana beasts, which made it unlikely for them to be sent by anyone, but if any mana beasts could be controlled, then death-aligned ones were the easiest. Considering that vampires were often strong death mages, it would fit.

"What girls?"

"In our village. Oh my god, Dristen," one of the women cut in with tears running down her face as she fell next to one of the corpses..

The Inquisitor frowned. These people had completely lost it, but the terror they exhibited made him curious. He wasn't sure how much was the monster attack and how much was what they were running from, but he very much wanted to know.

"Where is your village?"