Marty started counting the coins, but when the peculiar customer informed him that he needn’t bother with the change, the enchanter swiftly scooped them all back into the pouch and tossed the bag back behind the counter. “You realize you’ve paid far too much for just a couple of teleportation scrolls.”
“If they don’t result in the travel sickness, as you’ve indicated, then they’re more than worth it,” said Digby, sliding the second scroll loosely into his belt. “You really should consider charging more for these. Do you know how rare it is to find an enchanter who can perform this spell or lock it to a parchment without that side effect,” he asked, waggling the first one at the quaint mage.
“I hadn’t realized that was a common problem,” Marty admitted. “I don’t recall that from my studies in Palen. Then again,” he said, scratching his chin, “there are a lot of gaps in my memory of my second year studying at the university there. Likely a side-effect of some ritual or other.”
“You see, that, that right there, that’s why people don’t always trust mages,” said Digby, unrolling the first scroll and running one claw along its script. The parchment glowed with a dim, robin’s egg blue light, and in a flash, the vulpesin vanished without a trace.
**
Talya was just sitting down in the den of her lavishly appointed home when a flash of bluish light erupted in one corner, and Digby Narrick came stumbling through the light, pirouetting to one side to avoid crashing into a hulking mahogany-cased stereo system the rogue woman had purchased a week earlier and had installed by gnome technicians. She sat up straighter on her plush sectional couch, setting the fork and knife down on either side of her plate.
“Well, that didn’t take nearly as long as I had anticipated it would,” she said with a genuine smile. The vulpesin arranged himself and patted down his own body briefly, assuring himself that all parts of his person and his property had come through the teleportation intact. Sometimes, these high-powered magics had a tendency to come with their own unique side effects, like the sudden and unexplained development of an extra nose on the back of one’s hand, or the switching of right and left feet to the ends of opposite legs. “I trust you found out what needed to be found out, yes?”
“Indeed, I did,” said Digby, taking up a narrow scroll from his left hip.
“Oh, wrote it out, did you,” Talya asked, rising from the couch and extending one hand.
“Oh, no, no, this isn’t a report,” said the vulpesin. “It’s another teleportation scroll. I’m heading back home, you see, to Desanadron,” he added.
“Well, what did you find out about these people, Digby,” Talya asked. She took half a step to the side, preparing herself to grab the vulpesin. Something wasn’t right here; she sensed trickery afoot, and with his kind, that wasn’t really much of a surprise.
“Ah-ah,” said Digby with a waggle of a finger on his free hand. “The job was, if you’ll recall, to find out what they were up to, and then to report back to you. Those were your exact words, remember,” he said, his eyes sliding half-shut, lips peeling back in a leering grin. “I found out, and now I’ve reported back to you. You didn’t pay me to divulge my findings to you, Talya.”
“That much was implied,” she retorted, perhaps a touch more hotly that she intended. “Let’s be reasonable here, Digby. I’ll pay you extra, right now, to divulge what you’ve learned.” As she came around slowly to the side of the coffee table that had been between herself and the vulpesin, he seemed to be mulling the prospect over. Then, with a snap of his wrist, the scroll unfurled, and began shimmering with a light similar to that which had preceeded his arrival.
“No,” he said flatly. With a thunderclap that pushed Talya to the floor, clapping her hands over her ears, the vulpesin rogue disappeared, leaving an infuriated Savior of Graneck cursing his name for several minutes.
**
Azira grimaced, flinching back and muttering apologies for his intrusion as he slid the sleeper compartment door shut hurriedly and stepping back into the train car’s corridor walkway. He shuddered visibly, sighed, and started making his way back toward the front of the train, Steve crouched on his shoulder.
“You have to admire their enthusiasm, especially at their age,” the rat observed.
“What I admire is that I didn’t throw up all over them,” the goblin skirmisher replied, trying to quickly scrub his mind of the image of two humans, clearly very senior citizens, locked in coitus. It was a blur, all wrinkles and folds and fake hairpieces tossed haphazardly onto the pile of clothing that had nearly blocked off the doorway, and a kind of mustiness combined with the sharp tang of menthol aroma. “I certainly hope Bruce is having a better time of his rounds.”
“Well, he’s a professional, I’m sure he can handle most things he’d come across,” said the rat. “And before you ask, no, I haven’t smelled any hint of the guy Bruce told us was in his house. I’ve caught a couple of cuyotai and one werewolf scent, but no vulpesin.”
“Are they really that much different from one another,” Azira asked, stalking along, excusing himself as he narrowly slipped by another passenger heading back toward the dining car. “I mean, they’re all dogs of one kind or another, right?”
“Very different peoples,” said Steve. “You wouldn’t like being lumped in with hobgoblins and kobolds, would you?” Azira shrugged, but made no verbal concession to the rat’s point. “Besides, vulpesin are very rare in the realms of Tamalaria, from what I’ve read. If there were one onboard, we’d already have known about it.”
Azira supposed the rat had a fair point. They had already been travelling for five hours, steadily heading north and slightly east along the tracks. The train had made only two stops to perform pick-ups and drop-offs at other stations, and to the best of the goblin’s knowledge, there only remained now two other stops for them to make, one just outside of the town of Fernet, and the second just south of Palen itself.
Azira had inquired of Bruce why there didn’t seem to be any train stations inside of the major metros proper, and the retired constable’s response was enlightening. “The engineering companies who laid down the tracks, built the trains and the stations themselves, they were largely multinational concerns. They built the rail systems we have to promote the business of travel and transport, and didn’t want to see their creation used as a tool of warfare. So, to keep any nation or power from abusing the rails, they kept most of the stations well outside of the protective barriers or walls of the major capitals.”
The goblin skirmisher hadn’t thought about things from that angle, and he found himself once more admiring the retired constable’s tactical thought process. His potential was wasted as a beat constable, Azira thought. If he’d been militia, he might’ve been able to put a hard stop on Pel Droma’s campaign early on.
Azira was into the next passenger car when a compartment door slid open on his left and the head of a young human child poked out. “Excuse me, sir,” the kid said, only having to look up a couple of inches to meet the goblin’s eyes. “Do you know how long it’s going to be before we reach Fernet?” Azira checked his time piece, comparing it in his head to the chart of expected arrival times he’d seen listed on the ticket schedule in one of the front cars of the train.
“Should be about another hour and a half or so, kid,” he answered. The boy nodded and disappeared back into his compartment, leaving Azira to resume his patrol. Steve remained largely out of view, tucked into the pocket atop the skirmisher’s sling bag, but he piped up once more.
“You sure that’s right,” asked the rodent. “Because we’ve already had to stop twice for animal crossings.”
“Shouldn’t be much of an adjustment,” Azira replied, halting long enough to use the tip of his boot to shove a bag strap through a compartment door that stood an inch open due to its blockage. He eased the door shut, having spotted a young human couple fast asleep on the pull-out mattress within, trying not to disturb their slumber.
Ten minutes later, in the next car forward, a broader and more open lounge car, arranged with numerous plush couches and a slender drink-and-snack dispensary, the goblin and rat spotted Bruce standing in the corner across from them, near the door to the next car toward the engine. The retired constable stood with his arms casually folded over his chest, one foot raised up and planted on the red cushioned wall plate behind him, eyes locked onto some point the goblin couldn’t quite determine as he approached.
“All quiet for you, Bruce,” Azira asked quietly, coming up alongside the dark-skinned hume.
“So far, yeah, but I’ve got a feeling about that young man,” he replied in a similarly quiet tone, inclining his head slightly. Azira scanned the other passengers in the car, and found himself narrowing his own eyes on a lizardman dressed in simple gray tunics, his waist covered with two crossing belts filled with a brace of thin throwing knives and several vials of multi-colored liquids.
“Lizardman?”
“Yes,” said Bruce. “He came in here about half an hour ago, got a ginger ale from the server, and then sat at that little table. Hasn’t said a word to anyone, but keeps looking back at the other door every time someone comes through it.” Azira considered the other passengers using the lounge at the moment, and though they were almost all humans, he could tell that they were, for the most part, merely in the lounge to pass some of the lengthy trip outside of their own cabin compartments.
“Did you ask to see his ticket stub,” Azira asked.
“Yeah, already checked on that, he’s a paying passenger, all the way to Palen,” Bruce answered. “Car 6, cabin 12.” Azira reached back and undid the clasp that kept the top pocket of his bag mostly closed, and repressed a giggle as Steve scampered down his side and leg to the floor.
“You know what to look for, right,” the goblin skirmisher asked, looking the rat in the face. Steve gave no verbal response, but raised one forepaw and gave the thumb’s up, or, at least, his best approximation of one. The narrow rat bolted away then, in search of Car 6, cabin 12.
“Very handy, having someone like Steve around,” said Bruce. “You did tell the other guards about him, didn’t you?” Azira smacked his own forehead, and Bruce let out a long-suffering sigh. “Well, let’s just hope we don’t end this trip with a dead talking rat friend to bury, eh?”
**
Melissa tried not to think too much about the speed with which the world was passing by the window, drawing down the solid beige blind to block her physical view. It hadn’t been bad at first, when the train was just building up speed as it pulled away from the station. But after about ten minutes, it was all she could do to not at least feel dizzy when staring outside for more than a few seconds.
She turned her attention instead to Jacobson’s memoire once again, flipping to the last few chapters. Most of this late material focused intensely on the Saviors’ making their way into Duke Henry’s massive keep, which had been captured by Pel Droma’s forces and served as the sorceror’s base of operations for the last days of his conquest campaign.
Using a thin bookmark to keep track of her place, the young woman then took from her travel bag another, much more slender volume, one that had not seen nearly as much fanfare or publicity, due to the author having been a relative unknown in the realms. Written by one sergeant Trent Acker of the Graneck Royal Army, his accounts of several battles throughout the conflict seemed to Melissa to strike an entirely different tone from Jacobson’s best seller. It was not a huge stretch to imagine they’d have different styles of presentation, she thought. Jacobson, for one, was part of a small band of adventurers, where Acker was a military man, in charge of a small battalion of soldiers. There was also the fact that where Jacobson was a career rogue, given to embellishment and lies, Acker had a reputation even among his peers within the military for having little imagination to work with.
Melissa had only read through Acker’s book once, but now, she determined to read through it again, checking for anything that might be inconsistent with or contradictory of Jacobson’s account of those last days of the campaign. “There’s got to be something more we can use here,” she muttered to herself. She took out a blank notebook and pen, ready to jot down anything she came across.
**
“You really shouldn’t be doing this right now, I’m on duty,” Bruce said as Melissa held her notebook clutched to her chest in front of him.
“Do you really think something’s going to happen here,” she asked briskly.
“Well, there’s that lizardman fellow there with the knives and vials,” Bruce said, inclining his head toward said suspicious fellow. “Steve went to go rummage through his things in his cabin, hasn’t come back to report yet.”
“Who?” Melissa looked around, spotted the fellow in question, and harrumphed aloud. “He’s obviously waiting for some attached woman he’s been having a tryst with and hoping he doesn’t spot her husband.”
“What,” yelped the lizardman, shooting up from his seat and disappearing like a blue streak out of the louge car. Bruce watched the scaly fellow leap like a track star over Azira as the goblin skirmisher returned through the attachment link between cars, Steve perched on his shoulder. Bruce blinked rapidly at Melissa, who had turned her fierce attention back on him once more.
“Now will you hear me out,” she asked plainly. Azira came up beside her and shook his head at Bruce.
“Steve says all he found was a messenger bag with a bunch of very graphic love lotters,” said the goblin, as Steve blushed on his shoulder. “I found him just leering at one of them right in the middle of the guy’s cabin.”
“How did you do that,” Bruce asked Melissa vehemently. And she just shrugged.
“You work in a tavern as a server long enough, you start to recognize the signs,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, you guys are more familiar with magic than I am, right?”
“Barely,” said Bruce.
“If by ‘familiar with’ you mean ‘been blasted by’, then yeah, I’m your huckleberry,” Azira chimed in.
“There’s potions apparently to increase stamina and size in certain erotic situations, which that lizardman was promising to use again in those letters, if that counts,” Steve added.
“Explains the vials,” Bruce muttered with a shake of his head. “Go on, Mel.”
“Well, there was another book written about the Pel Droma Conflict, by a sergeant in the Royal Army, a Trent Acker,” Melissa continued. “I have a copy of it, I’m re-reading it right now. He mentioned something called a,” she began, now referring to her notebook. “A ‘life force sigil trap’. Do you guys have any clue what that means?”
Azira just shook his head, as did Bruce and Steve. Someone nearby cleared their throat loudly and meaningfully among the other passengers in the lounge car, and the quartet turned their attention to the source. They found themselves looking at a rather peculiar fellow, dressed in a long black duster coat, a black hooded sweatshirt beneath, and faded blue jeans. On his feet, the newcomer wore a beaten pair of hiking boots, and his hands appeared to be covered with some kind of thin work gloves. His face, however, was concealed behind a kind of golden mask, hewn in the shape of a screaming skull, its teeth parted, the mouth and eye holes veiled within by a kind of black mesh to conceal the eyes and real mouth of the man wearing the mask.
“I believe I may be of some assistance there,” said the strangely dressed passenger, his voice thick but plumy, educated.
“You got a ticket, pal,” Azira asked abruptly. The masked passenger reached into his duster coat, handing the goblin skirmisher a stamped ticket stub, which Azira handed back after a moment’s inspection.
“A life force sigil trap, my dear young lady,” began the passenger, “is a little like a magical booby trap. They are intensely powerful, extremely dangerous things to meddle with, and their formation requires a great deal of power and skill in the arcane arts.”
“Can they be disarmed like a normal mechanical trap,” Bruce asked.
“Not so easily, no, but it can be done, if one is versed in countermagic,” said the passenger. “The surest way to negate such a trap, however, is to kill the one who constructed it. As the name implies, the sigil trap of this sort is tied directly to the magic user’s life force; hence, if they should die, the trap is permanently disarmed.”
Melissa listened to this, jotting down notes in her little notebook rapidly in shorthand. “Thanks,” she said to the masked man, ducking away without another word to her companions. When she was out of sight, Azira and Bruce turned their attention back to the masked passenger, but found him missing from view.
The goblin and hume looked to one another then, and shared an unspoken understanding; they would not mention this peculiar passenger ever again, not even just among themselves.