After following Rulfar to the nearest guard station where he turned in his target and received a rather hefty number of shards, if the purity of the orb was anything to go off of, the bloodhound finally agreed to speak with them. Asher wanted to have the conversation privately in the comfort of their tavern room, but it would be a tad cramped with all four of them pressed in there, and Rulfar demanded getting something to eat regardless.

  Asher supposed if he’d spent the last couple of days lying in a dirt hole, he’d probably be pretty hungry as well.

  So it was that the four of them found themselves at a small table in the back of a restaurant famous for its massive cuts of meat, according to the signs advertising it from the road at least. Almost immediately after placing an order and sitting down, they got to business.

  “Alright,” Rulfar started, sitting ramrod straight in his chair and still towering over them all as he looked around the table. “Let me start by saying I appreciate you not trying to convince me to abandon the job I just finished. That said, based on some of Moxy’s comments, I have an idea as to what it is you’re going to ask of me, and there’s a few things you need to know if I’m right. Of course, I might be getting ahead of myself here, so why don’t you make your pitch and then we go on from there?”

  “Sounds fair,” Asher said, triggering Spatial Lock to prevent sound from traveling beyond their table. Though now that they had their potential bloodhound right where they wanted him… Asher realized he wasn’t actually sure how to go about convincing him to join them. Moxy had been easy. Asher knew exactly what got her excited, so showing her the memories he had of fighting the greater demons was simple enough. Rulfar, on the other hand, was a far larger mystery. “Rulfar… why do you work as a seeker in the first place?”

  “I’m good at it,” Rulfar said, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow as he looked down at him. “My father was a hunter who trained me to follow game and provide for my family. When I left my country, I realized I could take many of those same skills and make a life for myself as a bloodhound.”

  “You’re not from the Noala Kingdom?” Samantha asked, peering at the man’s peculiar style of dress as if only just noticing the large pelt wrapped around his waist. Maybe it was the fact that she’d grown so used to Moxy’s outfits, which consisted of having numerous pelts draped over her vitals to better utilize her element, that she hadn’t realized just how different Rulfar’s outfit was compared to everyone else.

  “No. I come from a country far to the north. And before you ask, I don’t wish to get into why I left,” Rulfar said, his voice gaining a bit of an edge to it as he stared them down, as if daring them to ask anyway.

  Asher reached out under the table and jabbed Moxy in the side with a use of Distortion, stopping the warrior from doing just that as she opened her mouth.

  “You’re more than entitled to your secrets,” he said, doing his best to smile through the sensation of one of Moxy’s pelts sinking its teeth into his leg in retaliation. “Sorry, I didn’t ask you about why you entered your line of work to dig into your background. It’s just that the three of us are in the middle of doing something rather dangerous, and I realized I didn’t know how to best pitch it to you.”

  “I’m a professional,” Rulfar said, frowning slightly as he looked between him and Moxy, as if he had an inkling as to the silent battle being waged under their very table while they spoke. “Just tell me why you came for me, and I’ll judge for myself whether or not I’m interested.”

  “Fair enough,” Asher said. “In that case… What do you know of The Council of Death?”

  “The Council of Death?” Rulfar repeated, looking more confused than anything. “They’re an old wives’ tale. Yet another one of the dozens of secret societies I hear people discussing in the back corners of taverns every other week. Why do you ask?”

  “Well… they’re real,” Asher said, deciding just to come out with it. “Not only are they real, they’ve got something of a bone to pick with me.”

  “Hah!” Moxy snorted, chuckling to herself as they all stared at her. “What? Come on, ‘bone to pick?’ That was funny!”

  “You expect me to believe that there’s really a society of liches who secretly rule over the countries on this continent?” Rulfar asked, ignoring Moxy’s outburst. “If you three hadn’t gone through so much effort to get to me, I would have assumed this was some sort of joke.”

  “They don’t really rule over anything. It’s more like they just do what they want,” Samantha admitted. “Asher has a skill that lets him share memories. He can show you one of the liches and the demons we’ve been fighting if that would help.”

  “Normally, I’d refuse to let anyone lay their hands on me, lest they use a dangerous skill,” Rulfar said, scratching his chin as he thought. “Though I suppose you three did come upon me while I was deep in Hibernation and could have done whatever you wanted to me if that had been your plan all along. Alright. I’ll allow this.”

  Nodding, Asher leaned forward, motioning for Rulfar to lean down so he could actually get a hand on his forehead. Once his hand was in place, he picked out a few select memories and pushed them to his target.

  Rulfar sat back in his chair, his eyes fluttering a bit as his mind sifted through the foreign memories. The lich summoning Asher to this world for the very first time. The beginning of his battle against the greater demon. Even the burning of Horntho village and the swarms of imps and lesser demons that had slaughtered everyone. As he’d hoped, the memories seemed to jolt the bloodhound out of his impassive stance. By the time his eyes opened once more, wider than Asher had ever seen them, Rulfar was practically shaking.

  “They’re monsters…” he muttered under his breath, almost too quietly for Asher to hear. Shaking his head, Rulfar collected himself, staring down at Asher as he seemed to come to some sort of decision. “I take it you want my help in tracking down this lich that was the cause of your village’s destruction?”

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  “It wasn’t just one village, and it’s not just one lich we want to take down,” Asher admitted, taking Samantha’s hand and squeezing it. “They burned down a dozen villages bordering the Lavash forest, just for fun. And the entire council, all fourteen liches, are after me. I can’t tell you why until you agree to join us, but you want the pitch? Here it is.” Taking a deep breath, Asher went straight into it. “…We want you to join us in taking down The Council of Death. We want your help to not only find them, but fight with us. Also, I suppose it’s only fair to add that we’ve also made a bit of an enemy of the Head of the Assassin’s Guild here in the Noala Kingdom, so we’ll probably be fighting them at some point as well. Oh, we do have the backing of the High Prince, who should be able to help with the Guild, but he can’t do much when it comes to the Council, for reasons we can’t tell you just yet.”

  Rulfar stared at Asher, not even blinking as he seemed to process all this information in a split second. Finally, he nodded, letting out a deep grunt. “Alright. I’m in.”

  “Wait, seriously? Just like that?” Asher asked, before Moxy leaned forward and spoke over him.

  “Too late, he said it! That means he has to join our sparring practices!”

  “Are you sure you don’t want any time to think about it?” Samantha asked, looking concerned. “It’s a lot to ask of someone.”

  “I have my reasons,” was all Rulfar said, reaching into a pouch at his side and pulling something out that he kept hidden in his large grasp. “That said, it is my turn to reveal a secret to the three of you. Before I truly join your cause, there is one thing you must know about me.” Opening his hand, he revealed a tiny plaque with a little gemstone in the corner, almost like a bedazzled business card. Curious, Asher took it, reading over the contents and blinking in shock at what they said.

  “What?” he asked, looking from the card up at the stone-faced bloodhound. “You have a Blood element?!”

  “Yes,” Rulfar grunted, watching as Moxy took the card from him and read it herself. “In my home country, the Blood element is not forbidden. Not many people know this, but those with certain elements that are considered forbidden in the Noala Kingdom are actually still allowed to enter, provided they undergo extensive screening and register all of their skills associated with the element. My skills were deemed ‘acceptable,’ and thus I was allowed in. On the grounds that I carry that identification card at all times, and withhold from using any of my skills that would visibly give away my element to outside observers.”

  “I had no idea,” Asher admitted, passing the card over to Samantha. “What other forbidden elements are given conditional permission like that?”

  “Blood is the most common one, but Mind and Love are occasionally allowed in as well, from what I’ve heard,” Rulfar explained. “Of course, that’s only assuming their skills don’t allow them to influence a person’s thoughts or feelings.”

  “Still, this is my first time ever talking to someone with a Blood element…” Samantha said, handing Rulfar back his card and hesitating before just coming out with it. “How did you...?”

  “I don’t wish to talk about how I got my element either,” Rulfar said coldly, before catching himself and letting out a heavy sigh. “Apologies. My past is… not particularly pleasant. All I will say is it is not my origin element. That would be Strength.”

  “Strength, Bear, and Blood,” Asher ticked off his fingers, shaking his head as he took in Rulfar’s muscular frame. “Oh yeah, we definitely want you on the team, that’s for sure. You could probably arm-wrestle one of the greater demons all by yourself.”

  “From your memory, I severely doubt that,” Rulfar said. “Now, I’ve agreed to join this team of yours. Why is such a powerful group of wizards so desperate to get their hands on you in the first place?”

  “He stole their Eternity element,” Moxy said, waving her hand dismissively as she leaned back in her seat. “Something they’d been working on for centuries, never before seen, and so on. You get the point. What?” she asked, seeing Asher frown at her. “You were probably going to make it a whole big thing, I thought I’d save us some time!”

  “Eternity?” Rulfar asked, peering at Asher a bit more closely. “…Is that how you took down Loratta?”

  “Among many other things,” Asher nodded. “Like Moxy said, the liches apparently have a ritual that allows them to rip elements out of a person’s soul. They want their Eternity element back, which is why we’ve got a small army of demons chasing after us.”

  “Remove a person’s element?” Rulfar asked, recoiling in shock at the news. In fact, Asher thought it was just about the most emotion he’d seen on the man’s face so far. A strange blend of disbelief and pain that vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. “I thought that was impossible?”

  “Nobody told the liches that,” Asher shrugged. “So yeah, I have a lot of rather powerful skills nobody’s ever seen before. Oh, and I’m a realm wanderer. I have the Spatial element as well, which is really useful for traveling around. It’s how I make stuff vanish and reappear.”

  “I actually largely figured that one out for myself after your trick with the daggers,” Rulfar said aimlessly, his eyes clouded as if still hung up on the fact that the liches could tear out a person’s element from their very soul. “Still, that will be useful. We will need supplies and the ability to travel quickly if we are to take the fight straight to the liches.”

  “See, this is why I was down with bringing Rulfar on board,” Moxy grinned, nodding along eagerly. “We’ve been far too reactive lately, it’s time we struck first for once!”

  “I agree, but that all depends on Rulfar, doesn’t it,” Samantha said, peering at the not-so-gentle giant. “Can you actually track down the liches?”

  “Actually, that depends on you,” Rulfar said, finally snapping out of whatever strange state mention of the extraction ritual had put him in. Whatever the case, he seemed reinvigorated and more into the idea of teaming up than he had just a few minutes ago. “In order to track a target, I need one of two things. Either some of their blood, or something that they touched. The farther away a target is, the longer they would have needed to handle the object. With the distance I expect is between us and this first lich responsible for the destruction of your village, I’ll most likely need something they spent quite a lot of time handling,” Rulfar explained, leaning across the table and practically casting a shadow across Asher. “You were summoned to their tower, correct? Did you happen to pick up anything along those lines?”

  “Actually…” Asher said, laughing as he pulled three different staffs out of his Personal Rift. They’d yet to get around to having any of them looked at by an actual enchanter, but based on the names Identify had given them and how they’d found them tucked away in a secret room, they were all but certain these were three of the lich’s personal staffs that it rotated between for who knew how many millennia.

  “…Would these work?”

  find the things they want to kill), the team is looking good! Also, shout out to those of you who called Rulfar having a Blood element as his third one, I saw at least a few people make the guess!

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