Cobal found both Eliana and Grac sitting around a currently cold campfire. They were deep enough into the forest that no one traveling the dirt road that led from Marsolin to the rest of the kingdom would ever spot them. Eliana’s arm was bandaged up pretty heavily. “What happened?” Cobal asked as he stepped into the small clearing.
Both Eliana and Grac who had been on edge after they heard his approach relaxed when they saw it was Cobal. “I messed up and tripped while trying to stay out of sight. Broke my arm something nasty when it landed on a tree root. I’ll tell you, the amount of self constraint it took me not to scream out when it snapped will be written about for years to come.” She chuckled. “I’ll be fine, it’s not my dominant arm.”
Grac looked less convinced. “I told her she should go back to town and rest up, leaving the rest to us, but she won’t listen to me.” He looked at Cobal with a pleading look in his eyes.
Cobal shrugged. “As if she would ever listen to us,” he said.
“But what if she gets seriously hurt?” Grac countered.
Cobal looked at Eliana who just grinned. “Part of the job, isn’t it?”
“You heard the crazy woman.”
Grac shook his head. “I know some of your people say that us Irkans are scary due to our size, but you small folk are much more terrifying when it truly comes to it.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Eliana replied, kneeling down to grab a stick. Over the next minute or so she drew the layout of the Solin manor and marked different entry points as well as guard rotations. “Surprisingly, I don’t think they have a particularly big group of people here. The bandits we fought a while ago when we found Grac said this was their base of operations, but I reckon they were just told that by the cultists. Their proper hideout or base or whatever they work from is likely elsewhere. From what Grac and I could see, I doubt there’s more than a dozen people in the entire manor, possibly even less.” She pointed at several markings on the dirt drawing. “Two people guard the hut where we believe Malana to be.” When Cobal looked a bit confused, Grac clarified, “Malana is my wife.”
“Ah right, I’m sorry.”
Eliana continued. “There are two more cultists guarding the front door. We’ve never seen more than six of them outside at a time, and that’s only when one of the two guard groups is relieved by another group. In total we’ve counted only eight different faces from what we could see. Our best guess is that they’re the guards and there’s the main group of whatever these weirdos are trying to do somewhere in there.” Eliana paused. “Am I making sense?”
“Not less than usual,” Cobal commented. He pointed at one particular part of the drawing. “What is this part?”
“That’s the side of the building that’s partially collapsed. We were thinking that we split up when we go into the manor and one group creeps in through there while the others make a distraction at the front door.”
“That could work, how accessible is the collapsed part of the building though?”
“It should be a little bit of a challenge, but nothing we can’t handle.” She looked at Cobal. “You might be the first prince to sneak into an abandoned manor to face off with cultists, I’m proud of you already kid.”
“Your pride is won by the strangest things,” Grac remarked.
“Don’t you know it.”
“So let’s lay it all on the table, what’s our approach?” Cobal asked.
They’d talked over the dirt map for a while now and it was time to form the plan.
Eliana took the lead. “We will sneak up on the shed where we believe that Malana is being held captive. We’ll try and take out the two guards there without them noticing us. Assuming that works, we’ll then free Malana and once she’s out of sight, Grac and I will storm the front door. While we do this, you and Mana will sneak in through the rubble on the far side of the manor. Hopefully we’ll be able to distract the guards for long enough that you can make your way in and find their leader. From there on it will be all up to the two of you. Mana’s been learning about magic quite a lot lately and I hope she has enough tools to deal with whatever this witch will throw at you. You’re there to deal with any of their more physical threats of course.”
Cobal nodded. He still didn’t really consider himself to be a fighter, but he’d grown up training with the sword and after getting lessons from Dionil he realized just how lacking a lot of his basics were. Over the past few months he managed to improve drastically which he’d already experienced during their encounters on the way from Saphestan to here. On the other hand, he was much more confident in both Eliana and Grac, were it not for the Irkan’s exhaustion and Eliana’s broken arm. Both of them assured him that they were fine, but he still felt worried. They were about to do something incredibly dangerous and he doubted that his feeling of worry would go away. Regardless, the plan was set in stone and Cobal returned to town to inform Mana. They would meet up on the outskirts of town tomorrow at dusk and move from there.
Back in town, Cobal found Mana still in Lysa’s office. After debating it for a moment, he decided to share their plans with Lysa, who was present as well. After Cobal told her he had something to discuss, she sent the two scribes that were working on desks in her room to go get some food while they spoke. Lysa meanwhile made tea for the three of them as Mana finished up what she was working on. Cobal saw a pile of books surrounding her and was reminded of their early days in Ravadier. “At least now you’ll talk to me when I ask you a question.”
“What?”
“I was just thinking of when we had only just met, and you would answer every question I asked with a nod or a word at most.”
Mana smiled. “I thought you were basically my captor and you would get rid of me if I became an inconvenience, of course I wasn’t going to say anything that could anger you.”
“I felt so lost those days, I’m glad we managed to smooth things over.”
“Me too.” Mana smiled.
“Lover’s quarrel?” Lysa asked, as she returned with the cups of tea.
They both laughed. “Far from it, we were just reminiscing on how poorly we got along when we first met.”
“I can imagine. Mana being dragged from her normal life to being a prospective hero and being dragged around by a prince can’t have been fun.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m the problem here,” Cobal said.
Lysa smiled. “I’m being a bit mean here, you’ve both done wonderfully for the situation you’ve been put into.” She sat back down in her chair. “Now, what did you want to discuss?”
Cobal explained the plan that he had discussed with Eliana earlier and Lysa listened intently until he finished talking.”
“I see, there are members of the Jasmine order hiding out in the ruins of Solin Manor, and they might know more about the disappearance of Sapher Blueyerd. You’re planning to free the wife of your Irkan friend and then confront the cultists in this way.” She sighed. “That’s incredibly dangerous and I would normally advise against it. In this case however, there’s not much I can offer as an alternative. I could tell you not to go, but I doubt that would change anything. I could have you arrested but that would cause immense diplomatic problems between our countries and doing so on the verge of war would be a terrible decision.” She chuckled at his shocked look. “Come on, it’s not like I was actually planning to arrest a prince.” She continued. “I am however quite worried about a Blueyerd royal dying or getting seriously wounded in our city. I doubt your father would believe us to be innocent if that happened.”
Cobal nodded. “You’re probably right, I understand this is very selfish of me, but I need to know more about what happened to my brother. It might be our only chance at avoiding a large scale war between Blueyerd and Rilodar.”
Lysa nodded. “You’re right. That’s why you have my support. As a matter of fact, I think I can be of some assistance as well. Wait here for a moment.” She got up and left the room, leaving Mana and Cobal to talk amongst themselves.
“So what do you think of the plan?” Cobal asked Mana.
“I think it’s as solid as it will get. We’ll still be fighting against cultists, people who are likely prepared for such an eventuality. If we can catch them off guard as much as possible, we can probably get the upper hand. And although I’m not very good with magic quite yet, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve. If any of them are mages I’ll be in serious trouble, but against normal people I can pull out a few tricks with the wind and catch them unawares. I think we’ll have to rely on Grac and Eliana as much as possible and now that Eliana’s arm is broken that worries me.”
Cobal nodded. “I agree.” He looked at the large pile of books on and around the desk that Mana had been using the past few days. “Any luck on your magic studies?”
Mana nodded. “We’re getting somewhat close to deciphering the magic circles and their structure. I’m confident that with a few more days of studying I can learn how to read them and understand how they work. Replicating them would be a whole different story but that’s not the goal.” Mana had an almost hungry look in her eyes as she continued talking. “If I’m right, and both Lysa and I believe that I am in fact right, then we can extract a runic language from these ancient runic circles. That language, once properly figured out and parsed, can then be used to form new sorts of magic. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what the cult is working on as well. The circles are great for complicated magic that require a lot of power, but they’re highly impractical in most situations. I think that whoever first introduced the magic into the world knew this, and hid the more practical applications of the type of magic from the world so that people wouldn’t get too powerful without understanding what they were doing.”
Cobal nodded along. “I have no idea what you mean.”
Mana smiled. “Basically, just like how my language, Might’s language and your language are all different from each other and Might’s language even used a different script from ours, this is another different language. The runic symbols used for it are needlessly complex but that is because the symbols are designed to hold power inside of them.” Mana paused for a few moments, trying to come up with a better way to explain what she was talking about. Eventually she seemed to give up and said, “I think I’ll be able to explain it in more detail once Lysa and I have figured out if we’re right in our assessment and once we’ve been able to actually produce a magical script.”
Cobal nodded. “I’ll take your word for it then, it sounds very complicated. But if this is a magical language, why haven’t our court mages figured it out yet?”
Mana shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s still a chance that we’re wrong about this, or that there is some other reason why it’s not more commonly used. But if it is indeed as effective as we believe it to be, then the only thing I can think of is that the way magic is taught by most mages is very rigid and structured and searching for alternative ways to use magic isn’t done often enough. If you combine that with the runic language itself being very rare – Lysa and I have only found three books that actually have the symbols on them during our search – then it’s not strange that it’s not well known.”
“I see, I guess that makes sense.” They waited a few more moments until Lysa returned.
Opal Kaharis 