Emil rode on horseback towards his battlefield - his first true battlefield. He recalled how much he’d once looked forward to this day, charging into battle proudly bearing his House’s crest. He’d wanted to bring glory and honor to the Garbough family, make them something more valuable than just some bodyguard house.
Now here he was, in the middle of nowhere, fighting someone he had no grudge against for people he didn’t know for reasons he didn’t understand. Sometimes he thought the universe had to have a sense of humor because his situation was too unbelievable to just be fate.
The sun beat down across the ragged hills covered with thin trees, barely hanging on after days without rain. The arid climate of Ibinia was amplified here in a weird mix between hills, forests, and desert. Kurga, the Nova Ordo agent who found him, rode ahead of him, prattling on about the so-called Sage Coalition.
“And y’know, they’ve been doing crazy stuff the centuries, we snagged ya right outta their greedy claws, gonna give them a mighty good scare, what with your anti-magic shenanigans and whatnot.”
Emil rolled his eyes. Kurga was a good guy, but he was kind of like a butler in his father’s house. You could talk to them, maybe even confide a secret or two, and they’d listen, but you never really wanted to rely on them for information unless you were paying them for the service.
“So this Sage Coalition you keep going on about - what is it they want to do again?”
“I told ‘ya at the base, didn’t I? They want that firemoth silk the dragons’ve got, it’s real valuable so we gotta stop them, don’t wanna have those crazies get more power.”
“Right… and you know this isn’t just a company making a profitable business move, how?”
“They’d get filthy rich if they get rights to trade that silk! It’s clearly Sage makin’ a move for power!”
“Couldn’t it just be a company being a company and trying to get richer? It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy.”
“Look, the higher-ups clearly think there’s somethin’ up with this company, I don’t have access to stuff like that but ya’ can ask ‘em when you see ‘em. Or better yet, ask yer opponent who they work for!”
Emil gave up trying to find out more. Kurga was just a grunt, he didn’t know anything about the real purpose of this fight. Although asking his opponent might have been a good idea, he wasn’t sure if he’d get the chance to ask if they really tried to kill him.
Eventually, the pair reached the location where Emil would begin his hunt. He unstrapped his heavy new tower shield from his back and checked his equipment to make sure it was all where it should have been. He practiced quickly drawing his sword, daggers, and revolver, too, making sure he would have access to his weapons in a crucial moment. Just as he finished, Kurga spoke up.
“Alright, listen up, ‘cause this is important. There’ll be a little river - a creek, really - directly to the east here. I’d say stay away from it, but those Sage guys were very insistent about water being near, and this was the best we could get. Just stay on your toes.”
That was the first truly useful thing he’d said all day. Why would Arc Trading - or the Sage Coalition or whatever - fight so hard to have water nearby? He was glad that the Nova Ordo people were at least competent enough to limit the water source, but that could be useful information.
Bidding farewell, Kurga led Emil’s horse back the way they came as he rode off, while Emil began to trek north up the large hill nearby. Though the slopes of the hill were covered in trees, the top was barren, offering an excellent view of the surrounding land. The tower shield he held in both hands was very heavy, but as long as he paced himself it was no problem to carry.
After a short hike, Emil reached the top of the hill and surveyed his surroundings. It was as he suspected - small hills much like the one he was on, bare on top with sparse forest crawling up the sides and shallow valleys where the trees were densest. The only thing worth noting was the tiny river straight east, flowing north to south. According to Kurga, that would be where his opponent most likely was preparing.
Emil crept through the sparse vegetation, senses on high alert for traps or ambushes. His eyes flicked across the horizon as he slowly made his way downhill.
He recalled Kurga’s words to him about the arguments over terrain and considered what that could mean as he descended. If they wanted water nearby, it was safe to say his opponent was stronger with the presence of water. Maybe some sort of water mage? Emil gave a small smile at the thought that he’d be fighting a mage - then immediately hated himself for thinking about this gods-blasted curse in any good way. Although if his opponent was a mage, it would be very useful –
His curse suppressed almost a dozen objects in less than a second.
Instantly Emil jumped behind a tree and crouched down, left hand on his tower shield and right hand gripping the handle of his shortsword. He scanned his surroundings even more intently. Where had that come from? Where was his enemy hiding? What kind of attack was it?
Was it even an attack?
Emil picked up about a dozen magical signals, but they were all dim lights - very weak, hard to detect. If it was an attack it probably wouldn’t have even scratched his skin. It was probably just some scanning ability the enemy had.
He didn’t let down his guard as he emerged from behind the tree, gripping his tower shield in both hands, ready to bring it up to defend himself at the slightest sound or twitch of movement. A soft breeze rustled what little cover there was above him.
Emil made his way to the rough location of the magical signal he suppressed. It was gone now - his spell had broken whatever control the mage had over the object - but remnants of it might still be there. As he got closer and closer, he readied himself for every possibility he could think of but found… nothing.
He sighed. “Must’ve been some long-range seeing spell, then,” he murmured. But as he turned, he saw something shiny in the corner of his eye. Curious, he turned toward the source of the light and grinned.
A small droplet of moisture on a leaf.
Normally that wouldn’t be a great discovery, but for Emil, it meant two things. One, his opponent was indeed a water mage and could control water at great distances since he was still a ways from the river. Two, his opponent was near a source of water.
And there was only one source of water nearby.
Confident in his assessment, Emil relaxed his guard slightly and strode to the river, not flinching whenever he suppressed more droplets. He only slowed down to his previous pace and vigilance when he heard the creek nearby.
~~~
Emil watched the river and shores intently, looking for any sign of movement. He’d suppressed roughly several hundred more droplets, the enemy no doubt trying to figure out how he was doing it. The droplets had only gotten denser as he moved towards the river, irking him slightly. He didn’t want to give the enemy too much information on his field, but he couldn’t exactly stop the droplets, either. The only thing he could do was get to the river quickly and take the mage out before too much information got leaked.
But he was here now, where the drops were at their densest, and nothing. Not a flicker of movement from the opposite treeline, or on either side of him. Unless the enemy was hiding in the river, they weren’t here.
He considered the possibility that he had been led here on purpose, so his enemy could sneak up behind them. But that would place Emil between the water mage and the river, so he could cut them off from their source of power by driving them away from it. He was slightly concerned about an ambush from the water, though; he’d heard stories of powerful water mages able to walk on the bottom of shallow lakes, and Arc Trading might be wealthy enough to hire such a powerful mage.
Or the Sage Coalition, according to Kurga, but Emil wasn’t quite ready to accept the existence of a shadow organization spanning the globe, slowly taking over for centuries.
In either case, all he had to do was keep a safe distance from the water, and the mage would be powerless. No matter how skilled they were, it didn’t matter if they couldn’t use their precious magic in the first place.
But that still didn’t solve the problem of actually finding the mage.
If they were in the river itself, they would have to come up to breathe at some point, and Emil could get them then. But that would bring him dangerously close to the water, and if they were skilled in close combat then he didn’t want his enemy getting the upper hand in any way. He’d rather save that as the last resort if he really couldn’t find the mage.
Emil chewed his lower lip as he ran through the possibilities. The surest way to find his opponent was to walk directly into whatever trap they were setting up. There was a high chance it was magical, meaning it wouldn’t affect him, and it would force them into revealing themselves. All he could do was keep searching and stay vigilant, in case they managed to sneak up behind him.
Now, upriver or downriver?
He decided to check by drop density - wherever the drops were densest, that was where his opponent wanted him to go. And that would be where he eventually found them.
Emil first walked south downriver and found that the droplets got thinner as he moved farther south. Satisfied, he only moved about a dozen more meters before turning around and beginning the hike upstream.
~~~
This is ridiculous.
Emil had been walking for nearly a half-hour upstream, cautiously staying within the treeline with the river in his full view. He’d suppressed so many water droplets in his surveying, he was almost able to fully ignore them whenever they showed up on his radar. His opponent had wanted to lead him here, and they had to know he was here, but… where were they?
His idle thought that they might be in the river itself was starting to sound pretty reasonable right about now. To keep up this many water drops while remaining out of sight, they must be very skilled, so hiding at the bottom of a river would be trivially easy.
Actually… how deep is that river?
If they were inside the river, they must have been using magic. The river was fairly wide, around twelve meters, and fairly consistent the whole length he had seen. He might not be able to reach across to the opposite bank with his field, but even just brushing it against the enemy mage would give him a location.
Assuming, of course, that this wasn’t a deceptively deep river.
More cautious than ever, Emil began to walk forward, then stopped when he realized he still had his tower shield. A mage in the river might be carrying a gun, but it was unlikely, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to carry a bow and arrow while using it effectively. More importantly, Emil couldn’t fight effectively with his sword while lugging the slab of metal around, since it required two hands to move effectively. After a brief pause, he propped the tower shield behind a tree and, staying low with his right hand on the hilt of his sword, approached the river.
He made it around halfway across the beach before glittering chains of water leaped up from the dusty ground and attempted to wrap around him, only to collapse as soon as they entered his curse. Emil swore, he’d been too focused on the river and had neglected to check for traps on the beach. At least this time it was a magical trap.
When he reached the bank of the river, he still hadn’t managed to suppress anything on the level of a mage, just more droplets. The only good was that at this distance, he could see the bottom of the shallow riverbed, only about a meter deep. More cautious than ever, Emil slowly began walking upriver, keeping his eyes glued to the riverbed in search of the elusive water mage, periodically glancing up at the trees in case of an ambush. He seriously doubted the water mage would leave their source of strength, but with how cautious and tricky they were being, he might as well cover all his bases and make sure he didn’t get jumped.
Suddenly, Emil noticed a slight discoloration on the riverbed about seven meters upstream from his position. As he crept closer, he tried to make out any discernible shapes. There was a patch of black, and slightly above that was an oddly-shaped lump of turquoise. Were those arms…?
Before Emil could get close enough to bring it into his range, the shape suddenly launched out of the water, followed by several water lances that ripped towards his body. Emil lurched backward in surprise and whipped his sword out of its scabbard before remembering that magic couldn’t hurt him. The lances harmlessly splashed him, doing nothing more than getting him a little wet, and Emil could finally focus on his wide-eyed quarry who had settled on the opposite bank.
The first details that jumped out at him were the woman’s pale, blue-tinted skin, and the fins on the sides of her head. Emil’s own eyes widened slightly. A mermaid? That certainly explains the water manipulation, but why is a mermaid here? They’re a famously reclusive species, what could Arc Trading have possibly offered as compensation that she would come all the way here? Kurga’s words briefly flitted across his mind. If she increased the distance between them by going to the opposite bank, she either didn’t have a blade or wasn’t confident in her ability to beat him in close combat. With her magic rendered ineffective, he might be able to incapacitate her and get her to talk about her employer.
Before he could plan any further, however, the mermaid woman muttered something under her breath and jumped back into the river, transforming mid-dive and swimming as fast as possible upstream. Emil bolted after her, transferring his sword to his left hand and drawing his revolver in his dominant hand.
As the mermaid swam, Emil noticed a small wave beginning to form on top of her position. She’s gathering water as she’s swimming? That’s pretty impressive control. Emil slowed enough to raise his revolver, take aim, and pull the trigger. The gunshot shredded through the previously quiet surroundings, while the bullet itself missed the swimming mermaid entirely. Emil grimaced, he’d never been the most accurate shot. Sure, he could hit a target with relatively good accuracy, but he’d never been a marksman by any stretch of the word. The gunshot startled the mermaid, however, since she briefly glanced backward and started moving even faster. Emil was starting to fall behind, and he didn’t want to exhaust himself from chasing her before the fight even started. Looking ahead, Emil saw that a tree had fallen into the river at a slight bend in the river. The tree obstructed the deepest part of the river, directly in the mermaid’s swimming path. If she didn’t stop at that tree, she wasn’t stopping anywhere. With this knowledge, Emil holstered his revolver and transitioned from a hard jog to a dead sprint.
At this point, the swell above the mermaid had gone from a small bump to a veritable hill of water, and the level of the river was significantly lower than it had been. Emil was very wary of the size of the wave; even if she couldn’t control it once it entered his radius, depending on how hard she launched the water at him it could knock him off his feet. His best option would be to sit back and take shots with his revolver; however, he wasn’t confident in his ability to hit the mermaid at a safe distance, even if she wasn’t surrounded by the swirling water that acted as both offense and defense at range.
Emil’s tactical mind kicked into overdrive. At the moment, his opponent was in her mermaid form, and there was at least a slight delay whenever she chose to shift between her current form and human form, shown when she jumped into the water from the riverbank. She was strongest in the water with her tail, but without legs, she was a fish out of water on land. With her magic sealed, she couldn’t use water to help her in melee attacks, nor could she attack from range. Her only option would be to get close before he could stop her and tear him to bits with her claws and fangs, and that wave would be moving pretty fast if she threw it at him. Emil began running through counter-strategies as fast as he could, and finally settled on a fairly risky one, but one that would also drastically reduce his opponent’s offensive power and mobility if he managed to sell it well.
Confident in his assessment, Emil dashed forward, unsheathing his sword for the second time as he did so, straight toward the mermaid that was rapidly running out of swimming space. She had seen the same thing he had and had come to roughly the same conclusion about her options, since she finally rose a massive sphere of water from the water, with her head poking out from the side.
“I’m sorry,” she cried, “but I have to win this.”
The mermaid sent the sphere hurtling toward Emil, with her directly in the middle of it. The momentum of the water would try to knock him back, while any first strike she made would have many times more force from the added speed. Emil grimaced and made his move.
He was around fifteen meters away from the mermaid’s position when she turned, and he would only have a few seconds before she was on top of him, so he had to sell his act well, else he was doomed. First, he swiftly transferred his sword into his left hand, drew his shortsword, and drove it into the ground almost to the hilt. Then he knelt on the ground as if bracing for a large impact. He adjusted his body slightly; twisting his body to have his right shoulder catch the impact, left leg uncomfortably curled in a position that would provide maximum springing power. The water had barreled to barely seven meters away in this time, and Emil eyeballed the radius of the sphere in the half-second he had. Less than 5 meters, perfect.
As soon as Emil felt the leading edge of the sphere enter his suppression field, he put his right foot on the hilt of his shortsword and bolted sideways, feeling a wave of water crash against his back, then turned around and took in the effect his maneuver had on his opponent.
As Emil expected, the mermaid wasn’t able to change directions fast enough to account for his sudden dash while keeping all that water directed towards him. Although she had wisely decided not to give chase with the water falling outside her control and sent some of the water behind her at him, Emil had felt her clip his field slightly with her body, and her powerful light was extinguished for the briefest of moments. All of her water had fallen at once and landed on the dry sand, which greedily sucked it up. Currently, the mermaid was scrambling to regain her bearings as she tumbled head over tail, her momentum not abating due to her heavier body and the shock of having her magic sealed creating a brief moment of panic in her mind, or so Emil assumed.
Ever cautious, Emil drew his revolver and stepped forward until he felt the mermaid in his field once again. With her magic suppressed and in the middle of transforming back into her human form, she was a sitting duck for Emil. Although he couldn’t hit a moving target from ten meters through another meter or two of water, he was very confident in his ability to hit a nearly motionless target from five meters. Emil mentally patted himself on the back for his certain victory and pulled the trigger.
The mermaid cried out in pain as the first shot pierced her newly-reformed legs, embedding itself in the firm muscle there. The second shot ripped through her right shoulder as she tried to stand, the impact making her stagger and fall again. The third and fourth shots also hit her legs, effectively crippling her movement entirely, while the fifth shot somehow missed when she desperately threw herself out of the way with the waning strength in her legs and her one good arm. Emil finally holstered his empty pistol and transferred his sword to his right hand while speaking.
“You know you’ve lost at this point. You can barely drag yourself across the ground, let alone walk, and you’ve got no weapons or magic to keep me away. All I have to do is run this sword through your throat and call it a day, and you couldn’t do anything to stop me. I really don’t want to kill you ‘cause I have some questions, and I’d really like you to answer them in exchange for your life.”
The mermaid looked up at Emil while he approached, and he could see a range of emotions pass through her eyes in mere seconds. Confusion was the strongest one present, but there was also rage, sadness, fear, apprehension, and - for some reason - hope.
Although why someone in as dire a situation as her would be hopeful of anything was beyond him.
Emil stopped about a meter and a half from the mermaid, close enough to have a private conversation but far enough to react to an ambush. Although he doubted the mermaid was dumb enough to try something when he was so clearly in a superior position, he didn’t discount the possibility of a desperate move.
“Oh right, there are those observers that are supposed to be watching us. Don’t worry, they can’t hear or see us through magical means, courtesy of this curse of mine,” he said. The mermaid’s eyes widened.
“So it is natural,” she murmured. Then, in an even quieter voice, she whispered, without moving her lips, “What did you want to know?”
Emil grinned. Finally, he was getting somewhere. “Only one thing, really. Who do you work for?”
The mermaid narrowed her eyes, barely-controlled rage flashing across her features, and whispered, “The Sage Coalition.” Then, louder, “I work for Arc Trading. Did you really believe those Nova Ordo nutjobs?”
Emil frowned. He trusted Kurga, but he still harbored some doubt that they were actually fighting a mysterious, centuries-old shadow organization, but there it was straight from the mouth of his opponent. She had no reason to tell the truth and every reason to lie, and yet she answered ‘Sage Coalition’. Emil’s mind flitted back to the first words he heard her speak to him. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to win this.’
Emil nodded. “Alright, thank you,” he said. “And I’m gonna need you to concede. We both know you have no shot at winning, I really don’t want to kill you now, and I’m in this tournament to win.”
The mermaid grit her teeth, then relaxed her jaw. “Fine,” she sighed, then shouted, “I CONCEDE!”
Emil finally relaxed his guard. “Thank you,” he said, then sheathed his sword and walked away.
He was only walking for around five minutes when a Nova Ordo observer found him and led him back to Kurga, who was waiting with two different horses. By this point, he had managed to dry off a little bit from the final wave the mermaid sent at him, and Kurga’s wide-eyed stare at his slightly dripping but unhurt body caused Emil to let out a burst of laughter. As they rode back to the base, Emil tuned out Kurga as he began to mentally sift through the information he knew, a combination of Kurga’s ramblings and the mermaid’s whispers; the Sage Coalition was real, they were working through Arc Trading, and they were threatening people if they didn’t win.
‘I’m sorry, but I have to win this.’
After these past few weeks drifting aimlessly, Emil might have finally found a new purpose. He could start to put things together when he got back to base and had time to write things down.
Large brain