Four Horsemen: Chapter 8 Part 1 of 1

Chapter 8:

Petor kept one hand close to his dagger as he and Mya walked through Sorelli, hunched against the rain, she looked positively happy under her hat.

Movement caught his eyes down an alleyway, slowing his steps. A muddied girl, barely ten pulled off a guards boots with practiced ease while her father and elder brother relieved him of his purse, armor and anything else of value with quick flashes of their blades.

The boy looked up, barely older than his sister, holding his blade at the ready.

Mya pulled Petor onwards.

“Best we don’t get into a fight with the locals.”

Petor grunted, he was not naieve to the world anymore. Even in this ‘holy’ city there was bound to be crime, those that were taken advantage of, others that went to sleep beaten and hungry.

“So how did you get the ability to tear someone’s essence out of them? Its pretty cool.”

“Helped out some demons and they gave me something in turn I guess,” Petor shrugged. “What do you see when I do it?”

Mya frowned.

“Each attack you land that piercers their body draws out a bunch of mana and a sliver of essence. If you stab into their core, or kill them, its like you just opened a hole in the hull below the water-line. You drain the essence tithe for killing them and all their remaining mana. Gods still get the rest of their essence though. Wish there was a way to cut them off.”

“Vultures,” Petor shook his head.

“Yeah, though we do create them.”

“We do?”

He’d been told the story of how Yasseen defeated a scourge of demons and from that she was brought low, killed. Then the land nourished her and she rose again, this time commanding the heavens and the ground, armed and armored she defeated the wretches.

“Yup, few thousand believers, a bunch of mana, cores turned souls and a constant and interlinked belief. It creates a celestial realm, then a god.” Mya shook her head. “Alright, back to you, so your skill, ability? You can pull out someone’s essence to use yourself basically?”

“Yeah, I kind of leech off of them for every attack.”

“That would be great to whittle down some powerful bastards,” Mya nodded. “When you healed the guy, what was that?”

“I just forced mana into him like I took it in.”

“Interesting, that doesn’t usually happen, but I guess you’re taking from one body and putting it into another. Injecting mana, usually it would just dissipate. Probably charged up his mana good if he had a core.” She trailed off. “Do you think there’s an upper limit?”

“As long as I have mana I can probably let it out?”

“Well fuck a kraken with a peg leg,” Mya shivered. “You’d best not tell anyone about that ability.”

“Why?”

“You regenerate mana through your core, and if someone could drain you, you could act like a big ole mana battery just filling up something with power. Rituals are tricky because you’re usually pulling power from several sources at the same time and have to make sure they’re in balance. With you, you could pull in the mana from all those sources and push them out in one go, one single source.”

They lapsed into silence as they walked.

“You’d be no worse than the souls in the celestial realm. Celestial realms and gods feeding from the mana they produce, without a say on what that mana might be used for. Some secrets are worth keeping.” She pitched her voice low as they approached the gate into a walled off compound.

“Halt!” A guard held up his spear, blocking them. “Papers.”

Mya pulled them out with a flourish. “Just your local adventurer guild laborers.”

The man read them. His fellow guards standing behind the wall, watching the situation but more interested in talking with one another than heading over.

“Checks out, head to the seventh warehouse, if you take anything from the stores or you go anywhere you aren’t supposed to then you’ll be arrested, and I hear that the inquisition is really interested in adventurers right now.” He handed her the paper back with a glower.

“Understood,” She tapped the brim of her hat with a wink and pocketed the papers.

The guard let out a suffering sigh and looked out into the rain, boredom etched into his very being.

The compound was filled with warehouses, guard towers posted at every corner.

“When people talk about the inquisition I get a real punchy feeling,” Mya muttered.

“You and me both.”

“Death to the inquisition,” Mya said darkly. “Those guys, I’d consume their souls for free.”

“No killing anyone before we figure just what the hell is going on first,” Petor said.

“Fine,” Mya sniffed, and sniffed again as they passed between warehouses. Priests were filling several carts with crates, guards stood around them and the warehouse.

Mya sniffed harder.

Petor grimaced at the mix of smells caught on the wind and rain.

“You enjoy that?” Petor asked.

“Alchemical supplies,” Mya muttered. “There’s something sinister about those ingredients,” Mya said.

“What you mean?”

Mya shook her head as they kept walking.

Out of sight she drew a pencil and paper, using a warehouse wall she wrote a list of smells. “Old man feet mix with swamp, black oil bones?”

“I don’t know what the ingredients are called, but with the smell characteristics and knowing they’re used for bad shit. I should be able to slim it down.”

“How do you know that they’re bad.”

Mya sniffed a few times and put the paper and pencil away.

“Because it smells similar to the potions I have.”

“Are you sure you’re a good person?”

“I’m a great person, just misunderstood.” She waved her pencil, nodding at the list and put it away. “I only kill those that try to kill me or need some good killing. Or they taste good!”

They passed a guard riding a cart laden with arrows, chests and sacks of gear. They turned the corner the doors to the seventh warehouse opened wide as gear was hauled out and loaded into carts.

“Manual labor, the horror! These fingers aren’t made for it!” Mya raised her hands, pleading at Petor.

“What are they made for?”

“Well, stabbing, shooting, pickpocketing, trading, conversation,” Mya raised fingers.

“You used hands for conversation.”

“Body language is fifty-seventy percent of language and there are people that use just their hands to talk to one another, all secretive like,” Mya pounced on the chat.

“No killing anyone,” Petor sighed. Valter was right, she did have a lot of energy.

She dragged herself forward, to a woman with a clipboard watching everything.

The woman looked down. That hurt more.

“More helpers. That cart there, the guard will have a list, get the items on the list, load up the cart and when a new one comes in, help load that one.” She returned to her clipboard.

Mya turned to Petor, pouting.

This is going to be a long day.

“Clemens, two more for you!”

A man grunted from within the warehouse and turned around.

The man from the inn door?

Clemens frowned as they reached him. “You were part of that group that saved Ingrid and her little one, healed Jacque up.”

“Yeah,” Petor said.

Mya leaned back her hands relaxed on her hips, ready without outwardly looking so.

The man studied them both. “You got my thanks, they’re good people caught up in this shit.” Clemens sighed and turned back to the warehouse.

“They got us pulling out boxes of gear for the guards,” Clemens voice became blunted. “Just pick up the boxes, put them in the cart and off it goes.”

“Well think that’s in my range of smarts,” Mya grinned.