Maeori was already up the next morning. It looked doubtful she slept much, if at all. What a pain in the arse. Of all the people who needed to sleep, it was her and Sofia. Mana recharges faster with rest, from what I’ve heard. Aura too, but I was fine, and I was sure Ivili was as well.

  “So, what the hells is really happening, lass?” I asked her while she was trying to fiddle with the bag her devil cat brought her last night with one hand. It was as good a time as any to see if I could get to the bottom of some things that hadn’t sat right with me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ya have us going off on some quest for a god. Glenn’s been killed by some church fucks. That shite’s awfully suspect.”

  “I know what you mean, but surprisingly they’re not too related,” Maeori said, before pointing down at Sofia, who was still clinging to her, then out the back of the wagon.

  It wasn’t a problem for me to get out. Ivili had shifted and curled up over some of our supplies overnight, but it took the lass a bit to follow suit. We moved some distance away out of earshot.

  “Ya better have an explanation. A real one.” I crossed my arms and stared up at her.

  “All I can say is that I’ve been keeping my side of things quiet. The problem is that Sofia’s father is siding with a cult to consolidate power. They call themselves the Severance Knights and fashion themselves as a pious knightly order. However, they’re anything but.” She took a long breath and closed her eyes for a moment as if weighing what to say.

  “They’re well funded and have some of the best assassins, warriors, and mages on the continent working for them,” she continued. “They’re vindictive, and the fact that we killed some of their members doesn’t help. They’ll be after us. Our best hope is that they have a lot of plots going on right now. We’re small fish in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully, that will spread their stronger members too thin for them to worry about us. Even at full power we couldn’t stand against them. If we see more we need to fend them off and run. Make them think they don’t need to send stronger people against us. I’ll guarantee you they won’t just send a scout and a soldier with a handful of hired thugs next.”

  I stared at her for a moment. That’ll be a hell of a claim if she was being honest about it. “And how exactly do you know this lass?”

  “The revelation.” She shrugged after saying that tired excuse. “They don’t think the god that granted me it is a legitimate part of the pantheon. It would probably give them more reason to hunt us if they knew.”

  Maeori’s always been a strange one for me. And things ain’t added up for a while now. I’m not enough of a dullard to believe all her little excuses of seeing it in the revelation or the church’s library. When we met, she claimed some shite about randomly appearing here, then suddenly she’s got all this know-how that goes beyond most of us. Something wasn’t right.

  “Ya know, if we’re out here potentially dying for each other, ya got to tell us what the risks are. If ya knew about them, why’s this the first time I’m hearing about it?”

  “They… weren’t supposed to be a problem for us. If things had gone as I hoped.” She looked up to the sky for a moment. “I could tell you about all the dangers that plague us. Would you still want that even if the act of me telling you would risk planting a target on both our backs?”

  “The hells is that cryptic nonsense supposed to mean?”

  “It’s literal, not figurative. There will be a time I can safely reveal more. It just isn’t now.”

  “Heh, sure. And we’re supposed to trust ya? Put our lives at risk? Off what?”

  “Your lives are already at risk, but as for trust, I don’t know.” She looked at me and sighed heavily. “It’s not like I’m being intentionally obtuse. Knowledge is powerful and could cause some issues. If you all know the wrong things.”

  “And yer supposed to be the arbiter of that?”

  “Strangely, yes.” She gave me that annoying cocksure smirk of hers.

  Maybe I could’ve pressed more, but we ended our chat when we heard the other two starting to stir. In many ways, I don’t trust Maeori. Things didn’t fucking add up, but for now, I’ll trust the lass to at least save her own hide for now.

  Breakfast was another somber experience. Sofia’s only words were letting us know she needed another day to have enough mana to cleanse Glenn’s body, so we’d need to keep bringing him with us. I wasn’t sure what to do with Glenn’s armor. Probably best to bury him in it. Even if we were to take it off him, it would attract too much attention if we tried to pawn it off. I’d keep his sword and shield as a backup weapon.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “So, how’re we gonna un-fuck ourselves?” I grumbled, “Both our casters are spent, and Sofia can’t meaningfully regain yer mana since we need to save it to give Glenn a proper burial. We’re gonna have pursuers.” I ain’t one of the smart ones here. I don’t see how there’s a way we all make it. It was only a matter of time before we’re slaughtered, from what I could tell. Ivili and I could maybe make it on our own if we left the other two. But I ain’t gonna be the one to tarnish Glenn’s death by ditching Sofia. “Way I see it, our best bet is still to make it to some old buddies of mine. We’ll have to risk the grassland or backtrack in the forest.”

  “I say grassland,” Maeori said, her eyes trained back on the forest.

  “If it were flatter, I might object,” Ivili said, “but with the hills and bare rocks, it should give us good places to hide from sight. We should ditch the wagon. Take what we can carry and live off the land. There’re wild horses around here, so they should be harder to track than wagon wheels.”

  “A wagon ain’t cheap,” I grumbled.

  “Life isn’t either,” Ivili replied. “We’ve already spent a lot of it.”

  “Nox did find a goodie for us.” Maeori held up the bag I saw her messing with this morning. “I was hoping to use it for my papers so the elements don’t ruin them, but one of them had a Planar Pouch on them. It has some supplies in it currently, but we can fit more in it. Maybe not the whole wagon, but we can take what we have.”

  “Ya, shitting me. Those things cost a fortune.” A magic storage item like that didn’t come cheap. Ain’t too sure how much it could hold, but it’ll do us good. “Ya couldn’t have told us this last night?”

  “I had to make sure it was what I thought it was. Also, to check that it didn’t have any tracking sigils on it.”

  “Heh, free supplies will do us well.” I grinned. “The church didn’t give us any by the time we left so all we’ve got is scraps.”

  Maeori gave me a concerned look before turning to Ivili. “I don’t suppose you know anything about poisons.”

  “Some, why?” Ivili responded.

  “Could you check this?” Maeori pulled a crate of supplies from the pouch. “I have a gut feeling they might be tainted.”

  “Heh, I get it,” I mumbled, staring at Maeori. This was one of her games. That ain’t a suggestion or gut feeling. She knows they’re rotten.

  Ivili took a bit, but confirmed it was laced with a certain poison that you can build an immunity towards. I grinned a bit at Maeori, who eyed me curiously. I was onto her games. Sofia said she made the claim about her revelation under a truth spell, so that must be real. But I’d bet my arse no revelation was going to mention something like this. Somehow, she knows where they’re based, what their ranks are like, and how they poison their supplies. Maeori must’ve been a part of them at some point, likely right before we found her.

  “Looks like it’ll be up to Ivili to hunt us some food,” I grumbled. “Our scraps will only take us another day.”

  “We shouldn’t have to worry too much about food.” Ivili glanced over at one of the horses.

  I gave her a death glare. “We ain’t doing that unless we absolutely have to.”

  “I never said it was my first choice, did I?”

  “We’ve been wasting too much time,” Maeori said with a sigh. “We’ve got a cart to disassemble and hide. You two should be glad divination magic’s notoriously vague and lackluster, or else they’d be on us by now.”

  “Heh, of course ya know that. Less than a year’s made ya an expert on all things magic eh?” I moved over to the wagon and began working on disassembling it. A damned shame we’d have to part with it. Ain’t like them Planar Pouches can fit a whole wagon in it.

  “What can I say, magic’s easy,” Maeori cast that smug arse grin at me. “If you want to be impressed with anything, be impressed that I started developing my own theory on magic in that short time window.”

  “If ya looking to impress someone, ya best talk to someone who actually gives a damn about magic. All I care about is that ya can use it to pull yer own weight. And then some if ya can.”

  “I’ll need some more time to get to that point. Only being able to access Untiered and First Tier magic has its… limitations.”

  “Heh, and what else can ya access, lass?”

  “What’re you implying?”

  “Only it’s rather odd that some god’s chosen would be as weak as ya are.” I went over to the back of the wagon and grabbed one of the nicer swords we swiped. “Here. I’m sure ya’ll do well with it.”

  She took it and looked at me questioningly. “We’re still burning time.” She took the sword and got back to work loading things into the Planar Pouch. Sofia came over to help her, while the devil cat looked at me and whipped its tail from side to side.

  “What was that about?” Ivili whispered to me.

  “There’re things the lass ain’t telling us. That wasn’t a gut feeling that those supplies were poisoned. She knew. All I can guess is that once she was once a part of them. The cult people who came after us last night.”

  “And what makes you say that?”

  “Don’t ya find the whole revelation nonsense too simple? Somehow the lass seems to know more than she should, and when pushed, that’s all she says.”

  Ivili shrugged. “I’m not exactly one to question the gods. They work in weird ways.”

  “Keep yer ears open. I don’t think she ain’t on our side. The lass had plenty of chances to screw us. But something ain’t right, and I don’t trust it.”

  “So you say. Maeori does have a strange air to her. One I’ve never been able to place. I’ve been happy to believe it was because of her connection to the gods. Though we can worry about that once we’ve made it out of here.”

  “Heh, I suppose. Wish I knew what the hells we got ourselves into,” I grumbled, while taking off a wheel.

  “That’s the thing about focusing on the moment. You never know what’s to come, and that’s the fun of it. Now, will you take Maeori or Sofia? I don’t think either knows how to ride a horse.”

  “Give me Maeori.”

  We hid the disassembled wagon and what supplies we couldn’t manage in some bushes along the tree line. Made my damn stomach turn having to leave it behind, but they were right.

  I looked out over the grassland. The shit ain’t natural out there. Large cratering holes and rocks that seem like they were flung from the sky. We’d taken some hunting jobs in this area before. The region was a battlefield long ago. They say magic was stronger in the past. Damned mages and monsters shaped the land. Leaving it the scarred gumbled mess that it was. Ya never know when a monster’s hiding in the shadow of a stray boulder or inside a crater. We had to cross that if we wanted to get out of here.