To call them a mercenary band was a gross overstatement. The “camp”, such as it was, was a campaign tent and small two man pup tent set up beside a cooking fire. Cormag snorted as the “guard” did not look up from rummaging through a sack of food at their approach. Inwardly, he was kicking himself for letting the two Rhodarcians bully them into going to their camp. While not a perfect match-up, they could have reasonably fought the Commander and his lackey off. While the archer boy was probably useless and could be sacrificed in a pinch, Morana had shown herself as a competent mage, possibly terrifyingly so.
Thinking better of meekly walking into their potential captor's hands, Cormag surreptitiously snagged at Morana’s sleeve with his shackled hands and slowed his pace. To his surprise, she complied and followed suit, her gaze fixed forward as to not arouse suspicion. The gag was still in place, but remarkably, it either did not work or she had found a means to counter it.
“Are you trying to break for it?” She whispered from under the gag.
“Uh, yeah…” Cormag stammered, surprised once again at her perception. “You ready?”
Morana allowed a slight nod. “Yeah, I want to get my ingredients before they spoil or the scavengers make a mess of it.”
Cormag rolled his eyes, any admiration he had welling up inside instantly vanished. “Of course you are.”
Ahead of them, Chauncey glanced back with a querying gaze, and gestured for them to pick up the pace. He was nearly abreast of the two Rhodarcian officers, who were carrying on an unintelligible conversation in their native tongue.
“What about him?” Cormag whispered, tilting his chin in Chaunceys direction.
“What about him?” Morana retorted with a hint of disgust and irritation. “If they spend too much time in the sun and air, the blood gets all gross and gloopy, and I won’t get as much use out of it.”
“Alright, alright! Shut up.” Cormag hissed, glancing over his shoulder and towards their escorts. “I need you to make a distraction or something to slow them down, and we’ll–”
Cormag stops in his tracks, nearly choking on the words as the cold steel of a blade presses against his throat. He slowly inched back, only for the blade to follow, he heard the scrape of the razor edge as it shaved away the stubble on his exposed neck. Cormag exhaled, allowing his eyes to follow the slender blade, more akin to a knife than a sword, including the absence of a hilt, down to the demon who wielded it. And demon it was, to so effortlessly sneak up on them and put sword to neck with such precision.
“Killian, so you kick around with Rhodarcian mercs now?” Cormag sneered with forced bravado.
The man, Killian, removed his blade with a flourish and stood erect. Wisps of smoke and shadow rolled off his shoulders and evaporated in the weak sunlight. The weapon was a Flyssa, a straight backed single edged weapon, a cross between a knife and a sword, about as long as a man's arm. They were exceptionally rare to come across, originating from some nation or tribe in northern Eurithania. Killian was the only man he had ever seen wield such a blade. Despite his complexion being a warm brown like varnished birch and his black-violet hair shorn short with tight curls when grown out, he was not from the continent where the shades of men range from the color of milk tea to loamy soil.
“I kick around with whoever can meet my price.” His golden eyes were sharp, like a predator, with a glimmer of joy at the reunion just beneath. “Though that says nothing to why you would return. With such strange company.”
Rotger stopped and turned around to face them, a sly grin upon his face. “Now isn’t this a surprise. Killian, you two are acquainted?”
Killian nodded and sheathed his weapon. “We are. Served in Sarevon together in the last stand of Thiudoricus.”
Rotger visually assessed Cormag as if seeing him for the first time. “A fighting retreat across sixty kilometers.”
“Sounds about right, we were a bit too occupied to keep track of distance.” Cormag croaked through a tightening throat, drumming heartbeat and a stomach attempting to crawl out of his mouth. “I take it you were there?”
There was a pregnant pause as Rotger both stared at and past them. “No. We had left before the war end.”
Rotger half-heartedly gestured first towards Killian and then towards the bindings on Cormags wrist. With a touch and a small surge of magic, the manacles unlocked and fell to the floor.
“Uhg finally!” Morana gasped as she tore off the silk gag, the bindings about her wrist having disintegrated into black and azure flames.
Leander flash-stepped to stand between the mage and the general, his hand on his sword as he muttered a prayer of abjuration. Behind him, Rotger stood frozen, his face a mix of horror, surprise, and admiration. After a moment, he snapped back and placed a hand upon Leander’s shoulder.
“At ease. I doubt she aims to harm us.” Though the general spoke in the declarative, there was a hint of a question in his tone and gaze.
“Depends on how you answer.” Morana spat defiantly. “Who are you people, and why have you brought us here?”
“What did you do, witch?” Leander growled. “That gag was blessed and imbued with Elysian silencing glyphs!”
Morana looked incredulously at the gag. “I don’t know who told you that, but this is clearly a first tier silencing hex. Quite simple to just brute force your way through honestly.”
Morana dropped the silk rag, and it erupted into violet flames and disintegrated, much like her bindings. With the rise of The Order of Dawn’s increasingly anti-magic rhetoric and roving bands of ‘inquisitors’, a new market of magical items had arisen as a means to circumvent the ban on magic in Rhodarcium and Catharone. Often sold under guise of being Elysian, the former seat of the Church, to avoid too much scrutiny. Elysia was also a continent and a half away, and discouraging verification. To say nothing of Elysian not utilizing runes or glyphs in the first place. The healing magic of The Order was inherited in the blood, it was something you were born with or weren’t. Claims of blessed relics and Order of Dawn approved anti-magic devices were more oft than not simple to elaborate scams.
Rotger tapped Leander on the sword arm as he stepped forward, signaling his subordinate to stand down. “This is the camp of the Forsaken Guard, a modest mercenary outfit founded in Rhodarcium, but one that knows no borders.”
Morana rolled her eyes. “Oh gods, what are you, twelve?”
“And what do you mean by that, witch!” Leander snarled. “You dare insult our General in our own camp?”
“I’m not the one who named a mercenary company after the doodles in some angsty teenagers journal.” Morana snapped back, crossing her arms across her chest. “It's cringe inducing.”
“I thought it was pretty bad ass.” Killian said with a shrug.
Rotger gestured towards killian. “There! See? It's a good name.”
“Thematic too.” Leander said with a solemn nod.
“Exactly! Each of us were guardians of our respective realms, we fought, died, and shed blood for our motherlands. And each of us were discarded once our perceived usefulness was exhausted. We are the guardians whom were forsaken, and whom also have forsaken our past oaths.”
“Whoa, that is pretty fucking deep.” Cormag murmured with approval. “Well done.”
Morana shook her head in resignation. “You’re all children.”
