Chapter 348

Vultures circled overhead in slow spirals, their grey shapes blending against the sun and easy to overlook. However, Nick’s senses instantly detected them the moment they shifted focus to attack and began their descent.“Another one,” he said, pointing in their direction.

A shadow fell from the sky, wings folding tightly around a lean body with a hooked beak and claws that shimmered like metal. It dove straight at Lina, shrieking.

The Shard’s orb flashed, and a lance of golden light shot upward.

The vulture twisted with incredible agility, but it wasn’t quick enough, as the bolt clipped its wing, sending it spinning away with a strangled screech, and it crashed onto the ground in a chaotic tumble.

“You can finish it,” Nick said absently as it tried to push itself up.

Yvonne didn’t need the encouragement as her axe swung down, and the vulture’s head rolled across the dirt.

More shadows broke away from the circling flock, picking up speed.

“Here we go,” Malik muttered, bringing his shield up.

The vultures weren’t individually terrifying, but in large groups, and with their nasty habit of diving for eyes and exposed throats, they could become a problem.

Unfortunately for the monsters, their team was very skilled at handling such problems.

Joran’s beads of green fire turned several into shrieking comets as they dove, burning wings to cinders, and made them plummet. Raphael twisted space so two more collided mid-flight, and Mikel’s implosions turned others into bursts of blood and feathers.

Nick didn’t even need to call lightning for most of them. A few precise to pierce through wings, a to a particularly large and resilient one, and the rest fell apart under his teammates’ assault.

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“There are too many monsters to be this far out,” Willow said once the air cleared again, brushing dust off her sleeve with a faint frown, and her words had a prophetic tone to them.

Around an hour later, they found goblins.

The first clue was the smell, as a strong mix of sweat, old blood, and something both sour and greasy filled the air. The second was the high-pitched laugh.

“A dozen goblins,” Nick said after a moment. “They’re not a variant, but they seem slightly stronger than regular goblins, mana-wise.”

“They’ve probably been gorging themselves on the local monsters,” Malik said. “We should be careful; goblins can be tricky.”

Raphael sneered, seemingly not a fan of the little gremlins, and his mana surged, coalescing into a single spell.

The goblins gathered around a partially broken-down wagon in a shallow depression, communicating through wordless grunts near a pile of rusted swords, spears, and a few bone clubs.

They never saw the attack coming.

Infinitesimally small panes of warped space materialized between them, then sawed through the tribe, sending limbs flying and carving through flesh and bone with no resistance.

It was very messy, but it solved their problem quickly, so nobody complained.

The pattern persisted as more beasts appeared, moving in large groups that should have been the exception rather than the norm. It wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle, but the feeling that they were in for a tough fight grew stronger.

By early evening, the second hamlet appeared over a hill.

From a distance, it looked like the first, with fields stretching outward and a few larger buildings near the center. Yet no smoke rose from the chimneys, and no figures moved through the rows.

“That’s creepy,” Malik muttered.

Raphael raised a hand. “Let’s be careful. Nicholas?”

Nick was already shaking his head. “There’s no one,” he said. “I can only tell you that this place has been deserted for at least a week, maybe more.”

They ascended in silence, and up close, the signs were impossible to overlook.

A shattered fence, splintered inward. Deep, wide, ragged gouges in a doorframe. A shutter hanging from a single hinge. A water trough cracked down the middle, as if something heavy had slammed into it.

Dried blood stained the doorsteps and had soaked into the packed earth of the main path, leaving brown-black streaks with the occasional indecipherable smear where something had been dragged.

Yvonne knelt beside one of the stains. “It’s not that old,” she said. “A couple of weeks, at most.”

Nick traced the trail of emotions lingering in the ether. Fear, aggression, and pain were all there, but they were blurred by time, and without corpses to hold onto the resentment, it was hard to figure out what had happened.

“They fought hard,” he said, as that much was clear.

“Any idea what against?” Willow asked.

Joran called out from near one of the barns. “There are some tracks over here,” he said, and they went over to look.

The prints were humanoid but much too large for a human or even a werewolf. Deep, too, pressing far into the dry earth, indicating the thing that made them was heavy and moved with a lot of momentum.

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Nick frowned, crouching to get a better look. “Three-toed front, with an elongated heel. That’s not a grumbler.”

“It’s too big for hobgoblins,” Malik said.

“A troll then,” Raphael decided.

Yvonne’s mouth thinned. “Must have been the ones we killed.”

Nick followed the pattern outward, tracing where the tracks led. They circled the hamlet in a loose ring, as if the trolls had paced the perimeter before committing, then converged near one of the larger houses.

“They probably came in at night,” he said, feeling the sympathetic ping in the ether. “The people tried to rally, but they simply couldn’t put the monsters down.”

The others stayed in grim silence. They all remembered how difficult it had been to kill the trolls, even though they were trained apprentices. For regular farmers, with just a few hunters, they would have had no chance.

Every house, barn, and shed displayed the same sign. Even the cellars were not spared.

“We should stay here for the night," Willow finally said. “We’re all tired, and crossing the savannah in the dark isn’t exactly smart, especially since we’re approaching the dungeon’s boundary."

“I agree,” Raphael said. “Pick two central buildings; they’ll be easier to defend.”

They chose a pair of large houses near the center of the hamlet, among the few that were still structurally sound despite the damaged doors.

Cleaning up could have been a grim affair, but magic made it relatively painless.

Willow rolled up her sleeves with a serious air. “Right,” she said. “We’ll need to get this place clean before anyone sleeps in it. Mikel, Lina, you help me with the interior. Joran, you and Malik can sweep the perimeter.”

Nick conjured some water and got to work.

“No,” Willow said sharply.

He blinked. “What?”

“Water can only clean so much; you’d be leaving behind all kinds of grime and dirt,” she said, sounding mildly scandalized. “Use a cleaning spell, for gods’ sake.”

“This is a cleaning spell.” Nick gestured. “Water and wind to give it pressure. You blast everything, then dry it off. It’s very efficient.”

Willow looked as if he had personally insulted her. “That’s not cleaning. You’re just making it rain inside people’s homes.”

A couple of snorts followed her words.

Willow pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fine, come here. You are going to learn an actual cleansing spell.”

Nick raised both brows. “Are you seriously—”

“Yes,” she said. “I will not have my junior go around without being able to cast a simple cleaning spell.”

“Alright,” he sighed, deciding it’d be faster than arguing. “Show me.”

The spell proved to be deceptively simple. She drew a sequence of three patterns linked together: one to identify grime, one to loosen it without harming the underlying material, and one to disperse it safely.

Willow then demonstrated on a soot-stained patch of wall, and the discoloration faded, removing the lingering smokiness, leaving a perfectly clean patch.

“See?” she said. “It’s not that hard, and the results are worth it.”

“That’s actually pretty good,” Nick admitted.

Willow preened a little. “Now you.”

He mimicked the patterns, adjusting the mana flow to match each step, and let it ripple across the floorboards.

Dirt and dust lifted and vanished, even the old, rusted bits that he knew his methods would have missed. “Huh,” he said. “Fine, this is better.”

“I am mildly horrified this is new to you,” Willow said, but she was obviously delighted to have taught him something.

By the time they finished, both houses had been cleared of debris, scrubbed of obvious gore, and reinforced with a few quick spells. It wasn’t cozy, but at least it wasn't actively depressing.

They then began preparing dinner, scavenging what was left of the hamlet’s supplies. A few sacks of legumes hadn’t spoiled, Nick found some onions and roots in the coolest corner of a cellar, and almost every kitchen had small jars of salt, though they were likely kept for preservation rather than seasoning.

Willow even contributed meat from her ring, with thick slabs of what Nick recognized with amusement as thunderhoof. Lina produced a small bundle of herbs from her pouch, earning a grateful nod from Yvonne.

Soon, a pot of stew simmered over a rekindled hearth, filling the room with a surprisingly comforting smell for a place that had seen so much violence.

They ate in relative quiet.

The conversation drifted as they discussed who would take which watch, estimated the distance to the next settlement, and grumbled about the nastiness of trolls.

When the pot was scraped clean, Raphael clapped his hands. “First watch will be Malik and Joran. Second, Yvonne and Lina. Third, Nicholas and I. The dawn watch, Monte and Terence. Willow and Mikel, you should sleep. You’ll be the ones doing most of the work when we reach the dungeon, setting up our camp.”

No one argued, as it was an eminently practical plan.

Nick found a spot along one wall, rolled his cloak under his head, and let himself drift away, too tired to bother fighting the sleepiness.

“Up.”

Raphael’s voice was a gentle murmur. The hearth had burned down to embers, and the house was cloaked in shadows.

“Midnight already?” he muttered, rubbing his face.

“Close enough,” Raphael said. “Come on, if anything’s going to attack, it will be now.”

Nick nodded, and they slipped outside, muffling their footsteps.

The savannah under starlight was like a different world. The tall grasses looked like black shadows against a sky full of stars, and the waning moon hung low, nowhere near bright enough to chase away the darkness of the night.

They climbed onto the roof of a nearby house, both floating up using their own methods. From there, they had a clear view of the hamlet and the surrounding fields, so Nick sat with his back against a chimney, the Shard propped beside him, expanding his senses.

Nothing large moved within range, although some critters scampered in the distance, and a bat brushed the edge of his awareness. There was no approaching pack, no troll lumbering, and no creeping mass of goblins.

It was almost unnerving.

“You know what?” Raphael asked after a moment, settling on the edge with his legs dangling. “I’ll take the eerie quiet.”

“Don’t tempt fate,” Nick warned, only half joking.

Eventually, as the watch remained undisturbed, the thing he’d been anticipating happened.

"This is probably the calmest window we’re going to get for a while," Raphael said.

Nick sighed. “Go on, interrogate me.”

“‘Interrogate’ is such a strong word.” Raphael looked at him. “Let’s just say that I have some questions.”

“Very subtle,” Nick snorted, though there wasn’t much heat in it.

He raised his hand, tracing a small pattern in the air, and a bubble of wind formed around them, muffling any sound inside into a muted hum to outside ears.

Raphael looked at the distorted air but didn’t complain, turning and folding one leg up while the other still hung over the edge.

“I won’t ask for all your secrets,” he began. “Every mage is entitled to some, but I do want to know this: how, exactly, are you capable of doing what you’ve been doing with souls?”

Nick kept his face carefully blank.

Raphael spoke calmly, but his eyes were very alert. “I am familiar with the Tower’s curriculum and what is typically taught to first-year apprentices. Soulwork and curses aren’t included. They are banned, rarely attempted, and highly risky. Even most senior mages seldom practice them. And yet, you managed to destroy the curse of lycanthropy from many a soul, something that I didn’t even know was possible.”

Nick could have pointed out that what he did was not that easy, but that wasn’t the point.

“For now,” Raphael said, “I’ve kept the others distracted, but that won’t last. Word will spread about your deeds, especially after what you did in Long Reach.”

Nick gazed at the stars for a moment to give himself time to think. He could refuse to answer, and he’d be fully justified.

But he could also see very clearly the consequences of that choice: it would foster suspicion, which would eventually turn into real wariness.

He remembered the dungeon in the Green Ocean, and how his father’s men looked at him after he’d done things they didn’t understand. Hell, leaving Floria had been as much an escape from that as from anything else.

He exhaled slowly. “Okay,” he said.

Raphael’s shoulders eased a fraction. “I’m listening.”

“First of all,” Nick said, “you’re correct. Soul magic is forbidden and obscure, but I have been practicing it safely. Master Lasazar has been guiding me, with Tholm’s knowledge and approval."

Raphael whistled softly. “That explains a lot. You used your prize for winning the tournament for that, then?”

“Yes,” Nick replied. “Lasazar taught me how to defend against the monstrosities that can affect the soul, and how corruption can piggyback on mana, which gave me enough knowledge to affect even a curse like lycanthropy.”

“That explains the how, but not the why. I’m guessing you requested that because you’ve fought monsters like that before,” Raphael said, more a statement than a question.

“More than once,” Nick said quietly. He paused, picking his words.

“I didn’t wake up one day and decide to do this,” he said. “I know I will have to fight this kind of thing again, so it was mere necessity that drove me to study this field.”

Raphael studied him for a long moment.

Nick let him, as he didn’t intend to explain further.

“I don’t particularly like this field of magic,” Raphael eventually said, "but I trust Tholm’s judgment. And if Lasazar was overseeing your training, then you couldn’t have done anything that bad. He would have taken you out himself if you did.”

“How comforting,” Nick said dryly.

Raphael snorted. “In a way, it is.”

He was quiet for a few seconds, then added, “Others will find out sooner or later. I imagine Tholm will be keeping a lid on it, but eventually, it will spread.”

Nick nodded slowly. “I can live with that.” Hopefully, by then, he would already be long gone, and the rumors would run wild enough to make it impossible to pin him down as responsible.

“Good,” Raphael said. He looked over, mouth quirking. “And Nicholas?”

“Yes?”

If you ever decide to experiment on anyone without their consent, I will personally drag you back to Lasazar and hand you over.”

Nick rolled his eyes.