“Sounds simple enough to remember,” Zorian said. “And… could I now trouble you with the reason I came here for?”
“No,” she snorted. “What, you think that just because you know a couple of people close to me and agreed to help me with a simple request like this that I’ll jump into whatever crazy problem you need help with?”
“You don’t even know why I’m here,” Zorian pointed out.
“Nobody ever comes to me for help with the little things,” she said with a grin. “If Kael sent you to me, that means he’s truly stumped for a solution.”
“I… suppose I can’t argue with that,” Zorian admitted. “You see, I—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Silverlake said, pointing her bloody palm towards him to shut him up. “Until you make it worth my time, I don’t want to listen to your sob story. If you want my help, you’re going to have to earn it.”
“How do I even know you can help me at all, then?” asked Zorian. “I could end up paying you for nothing in the end.”
“You could,” Silverlake grinned. “You will have to risk it.”
Damn witch. She was probably just wasting his time, but…
“Fine,” he sighed. “What do you want from me?”
If anything, her grin just got wider.
Space blurred around Zorian, and then he was back in Knyazov Dveri, in one of the less traversed streets where he was fairly sure no one would see him teleporting in and out. It wouldn’t be a huge problem if it got out that he could teleport, but at the same time it would be notable and would attract attention to him. Few mages would be willing to teach the spell to a 15-year-old, and even fewer 15 year olds would be capable of learning it. It would be best if he were discreet about it for now.
Seeing how his arrival appeared to have gone unnoticed, he promptly exited the street and went towards the town square to grab something to eat, only to get distracted by the newspaper boy’s shouting.
“Shocking news!” the boy yelled. “A Cyoria mercenary company found dead to a man in their homes! Monsters stalk the streets of the city! Coincidence or conspiracy, read all about it in today’s edition! Shocking news, shocking news!”
Well… that sounded interesting. Zorian wordlessly shifted his course towards the boy and bought the newspaper in question. He then found a quiet corner to lean on and started to read.
Like he suspected, the mercenary company that was found dead was the one he and the aranea hired to participate in the ambush — there was a picture of the man who led the group next to the article and Zorian would recognize the man anywhere thanks to the distinctive scar he had above his right eye. Apparently they were all found dead at the start of the restart, with little clue as to who killed them and why. Naturally, that immediately produced a lot of interest from anyone, since it clearly wasn’t natural. The obvious conclusion — that someone managed to off an entire group of experienced battlemages in the span of a single night, not all of which were asleep at the time of death and some of whom were under heavy wards — was highly disturbing, but there were very few alternatives.
Another complication was that immediately after that discovery, there had been a stream of incidents involving various monsters moving out of the Dungeon and into the sewers… and sometimes then even emerging into the streets of the city. The experts were baffled as to why this was happening now, and the city leadership was hastily organizing an operation to descend into the Dungeon in order to bring the situation under control before the summer festival.
Well, that certainly put a damper on the invader’s plans. Zorian wondered how they would deal with that. In retrospect, it wasn’t hard to explain why monsters were invading the sewers and the streets of the city — the invaders were putting pressure on them from below, so they went upwards as a response. In the past restarts, the aranea were there to act as an unwilling anvil to the invaders’ hammer, preventing the inhabitants of the Dungeon from breaking into the upper levels. But the aranea were dead now, and with them gone a whole layer of Cyoria’s defense that most people hadn’t even known about had collapsed.
Zorian couldn’t suppress a nasty grin at the thought that maybe Red Robe ended up shooting himself in the foot when he enacted his ‘soul killing’ tantrum.
Interestingly, the mysterious murders and the monster attacks seemed to have had an effect on the academy too. There was a short sub-article next to the main one about the families who withdrew their children from schools in Cyoria, including his own academy. Jade, one of his classmates, had been pulled by her parents from the academy. She was listed among the names of notable students who opted to leave the city for their own safety — her father was a high-ranking member of House Witelsin — while the other notable names included… him?
Yes, there was no mistaking it — ‘Zorian Kazinski, younger brother of Daimen Kazinski’, was listed in the article as one of the students pulled from school by his parents. He wondered what that was based on — he was certain no one had managed to contact his parents before they left for Koth, so either the academy or the newspaper had decided to interpret his absence in light of current events and trends.
Zorian shook his head and closed the newspaper before continuing on his way.
After spending a week in Knyazov Dveri, Zorian had decided he kind of liked the town. It was a busy, lively pace where the arrival of a newly-minted mage like him was unremarkable and raised no eyebrows, yet not so large and prosperous that people like him were common and underappreciated. Thanks to the town’s position as a regional center and the presence of both a notable mana well and a dungeon access attractive to dungeon delvers, the town was full of shops catering to mages or requiring mage employees, and thus offered plenty of employment opportunities for a young mage… enough so that people sometimes offered him employment without him even asking about it.
He didn’t accept any offers, since a regular job would eat up a lot of time and would just distract him from his real quest, but it was something to keep in mind if he ever got out of the time loop.
“Why hello there. Mind if I join you for a bit?”
Zorian peered up from the map of the surrounding region he was studying and took a good look at the man who interrupted him. He was middle-aged, had a prominent mustache and a pot belly, and had a wide smile plastered on his face. Despite the fact that Zorian took several seconds to study him in silence, the man’s smile never faltered. Judging by the clothes he was wearing, he seemed to be one of the more well-off residents — a small time merchant, perhaps, or one of the craftsman-mages that had stores in the town.
He was probably going to get another job offer, then.
“Sure,” Zorian said, gesturing towards the empty chair on the other end of the table. “Help yourself.”
He thought for a moment whether he should get rid of the map while he talked to the man, but then decided not to bother. There was nothing incriminating on it anyway — a couple of marked down locations that would mean nothing to the man without some kind of context and some equally unhelpful notes scribbled on the margins. Silverlake had given him a task of gathering rare magical plants all over the damn forest, but gave him only the vaguest clues about where they could be found, so he was reduced to deciphering her statements and consulting the local herbalists for more information. And the local herbalists weren’t terribly cooperative. He had a feeling this was only the start of her demands, so he was trying to finish it quickly.