Hasio never liked mage guilds. Sure, he had great experiences in the Redclouds working with mages on their own, and it seemed like his current party had nothing but mages, even the only other pure aura user. But mage guilds? In his experience, nothing but a gathering of the most over-intellectual and emotionally stunted people he could imagine.
The Crow’s Black Feathers didn’t seem any different, though the ones who had the privilege of working around the ruin site seemed a fair bit more enthusiastic than the rest. That should be most of them, but he knew that some of the mages had gone out with the Blooming Grove’s hunters. The ones that stayed shouldn’t have been allowed to leave the grove, probably to not arouse suspicion, but Hasio could not help but notice, as he slunk around, unseen, someone sneaking off and attempting to leave.
What else could he do but follow them? Even if it didn’t lead to anything, someone leaving and directly disobeying his guildmaster’s orders had to be for something good, or at the very least, worth the time to look into. Concealing himself with aura, Hasio followed the thin, wiry man, who looked around as if he expected someone to jump out at him at any moment, as he ducked through the shadows between tents and wooden buildings to exit undetected, or at least he believed.
Following him, Hasio noticed a couple of things. Mainly, this guy moved fast. Faster than any mage should without an aura pool. He didn’t cast any spell to make himself as fast while Hasio watched him, so he would have had to do it before he left the Blooming Grove. At that point, any of the mages nearby would have recognized the spell. Hasio had to really work to keep up with the guy, at least while remaining invisible. Even then, he couldn’t tell if the person he followed through the woods noticed him. Even before Hasio started tailing him he kept looking around and over his shoulder, so Hasio couldn’t distinguish between nerves and knowledge that someone managed to keep up with him.
Whatever the case, it didn’t seem like he doubled back or did anything else to get Hasio off of his trail, so Hasio continued after him through the woods, for a number of miles in fact, until he reached what appeared to be his destination. An absurdly tall tree compared to the others around it, reaching over 100 feet in the air, compared to the surrounding ones that only reached 60 at best. Hasio hid at the edge of the clearing and simply watched.
The mage took another frantic look around at his surroundings, before taking out a very shabby staff, and chanting out a spell. In moments, he made his way up, gently floating and grabbing on to branches to propel his way up. An oddly weak sort of levitation spell, by Hasio’s guess. Which he found odd. The sort of spell Tahir would use since he and Theo hadn’t actually worked out flight just yet. A beginner’s spell at best, and coming from someone in a mage’s guild?
He could make an argument that he was trying to conserve energy, but for what exactly? Hasio kept his eye on him as he floated all the way to the top of the tree, and then he couldn’t tell precisely what he did. It didn’t look like he did much at all, ready, just looked and reached for something, but when he came down, he didn’t have anything new. After a while, he started heading back in the direction he came. Hasio tracked him for half a mile or so, and when he determined that he was heading back to the Blooming Grove, he turned around to head back for the tree.
He’d see what was up there for himself. He paused a bit to let his aura recover. Normal movement while he kept it up didn’t drain his aura, but using aura while invisible made it much harder to maintain. After a while, he started climbing, hopping from thick branch to thick branch when he could reach them, until he made his way all the way up to the top of the tree, about where he saw the mage looking. Halfway up, he spotted something that shocked him. A kind of tear in reality, an open patch that simply led elsewhere. He saw another sky, a dark gray tinged with red against the open blue that he only noticed when he got up about 50 feet up the tree.
Proceeding cautiously, he climbed up to about where he saw the mage. At the top of the tree, where the last few branches spread out from the trunk, a little nook formed, and inside it sat an orb. Black and marble-like, with glowing runic symbols carved into it. It didn’t take long for Hasio to put two and two together regarding the orb. Before he could reach for it, he spotted a shape in the rift above him, and stood stock still as a massive bird flew right out and landed on the tree. It didn’t seem to be in response to Hasio reaching for the orb, and it didn’t even notice him, at least not yet. Not willing to take any chances by himself, Hasio started climbing down. Slowly but surely, pausing any time a creak or a crack would make the bird glance down at his invisible form, before it seemingly lost interest and flew off.
Hasio climbed the rest of the way down after watching it disappear over the horizon. He didn’t know what Tahir and the others were up to right now, but he’d need to come back with them before he could actually do anything. He also had some interesting information to share when they got back.
Making his way back to the Grove, he checked the exact route that the mage left it, through the space between two buildings, and found the woman, the Blade of Frost as she was called, leaning on the wall, seemingly waiting for something. She glanced in his direction, though didn’t seem to lock in on his exact location. Swallowing hard, he slowly crept back to reenter the grove from a different route.
Murabi wasn’t kidding, huh? Hasio remembered him saying anyone they let out of Shinevi on business would probably be around as strong as he was. He’d have to keep an eye on her, but for the moment he had other things to worry about.
###
Once the injured hunters had been healed, and the able-bodied ones stripped the octopus bare, they split up severed meat and tentacles among everyone to make their way back to the Grove. Tahir and company carried their fair share. Meti managed to secure several vials of blood, as well as a strange ink that went unused during the fight. With her part in the hunt done for the day, Tahir thanked Dahlia and released their bond while they made their way back to the grove.
“So Dahlia said she had multiple feelings from the grove, right?” Theo asked, falling into step beside Meti and Tahir.
“Right, so at least a couple more of those are scattered around the area. Explains the increase in monsters, but not exactly why.” Tahir answered.
“The orb was certainly an arcane creation of some sort, Definitely not the kind the nomads would be able to make, but we still don’t have a reason.” Meti said. “I cannot picture the guild as a whole involved in this for any reason that makes sense, at least based on their responses. Why do it at all if they’ve been allowed to research the ruin? And if they’re doing it to hinder the nomads, why send mages with their hunting parties?”
“We’re still missing pieces to the puzzle. Maybe Hasio’s found something out. In any case, we can at least work to close the rifts they’ve opened up, and then go from there. Tomorrow, though. Definitely, I’m feeling pretty drained.” Tahir used all of his mana to cast the lightning spells, and that was with the minor affinity that the air spirit gave him. He had maybe half of his aura left, and Dahlia spent much of her spirit energy healing the injured. Spending the rest of the day to rest, recuperate, and prepare for their next steps seemed better than rushing blindly toward the next rift to Tahir.
Once they got back to the grove, many of the hunters, Shukri included, increased their pace and rushed over to the center of the grove. Tahir, Meti, and Theo looked between each other and moved to observe the scene in front of them. Several hunters lay in cots and stretchers, with varying levels of injuries. Claw marks across the chest, bite marks in arms and legs, and bruises all over. Tahir noted at least three with sheets pulled entirely over the bodies. With his gaze sweeping over the scene before him, he resummoned Dahlia, asking to help with the spirit energy she had, and he’d refill the pool as his own energies recovered to supplement it.
He walked over to Shukri, who knelt behind a horrendously injured Hayat. “What happened here?” He asked. He’d seen Hayat talking to Shukri earlier, but it seemed that he’d fallen asleep. Soundly, it seemed, despite his injuries.
“An ambush.” Shukri spat. “They were hunting a pack of large catlike creatures, but once they found them, another pack of them enclosed from behind, and they had to fight their way through.” Her hand balled into a fist, and Tahir spotted her clenching it. “The area they were hunting in overlapped with ours, if we’d been there…” She paused, took a deep breath, and shook her head. “No, we’ve made progress on solving the issue as a whole. Perhaps this was inevitable.” She looked back to Tahir. “We’ve three dead and several in recovery from sustaining major injuries, I’m not sure we’ll be able to help you deal with any other rifts so we can defend the grove. At least not in the same way.” Her gaze flicked between Tahir, and Theo and Meti who’d come to join him. “I’ll make sure you have some help, at least. Though I would understand if you’d want to simply leave after seeing all of this. Even I can’t guarantee the safety of the grove anymore.”
“It seems like Dahlia’s the only one who can find those orbs, so we can’t leave now.” Theo replied. “I’d feel terrible to just leave you guys like this.”
Tahir nodded in agreement. “Theo’s right. We’ll keep helping as long as we’re able to. I can only imagine something that could do this to Hayat getting in the grove.”
“Hey, there you guys are.” Hasio walked up and gave a wave in greeting. “Not to interrupt your moment or anything, but can we talk? I found some things out that you might wanna be aware of.”
A moment passed where Tahir looked between him and Shukri, but she waved them off. “Go, we will handle things here for the moment. Make sure to come back later tonight, when we shall cook what we’ve caught.” As they started to leave, she added. “You all have my thanks, unfathomably so.”
They made their way back to their tent, and Hasio told them everything he saw while they were gone. Shocked, they took a moment to process what he’d said before giving a shortened version of their own hunt.
“So we’ve all but confirmed the guild’s involvement then.” Hasio concluded. Metilia cast a spell around the tent to prevent sound from escaping - one she learned to keep the sound of her smithing from disturbing others around her, but one that worked well for the situation. “But something’s off. I couldn’t confirm it directly, but the way the guy moved, he seemed more like an aura user than a mage, though he did cast a spell. It wasn’t a very good powerful one, nothing like the kind we saw that guy Harris use. The casting didn’t exactly seem stable, either, like it was a spell he’d only recently learned.”
“Someone with aura and mana isn’t entirely uncommon.” Meti noted, sharing a glance with Tahir. “But by your description, it seems like someone whose only recently learned to manipulate mana and magic. Should we ask someone from the guild, maybe even the Raven, when he joined?”
“Still too risky.” Tahir replied. “We need to move fast, especially if he’s going to check on the status of the orbs. Since Hasio knows where one is - depending on the help we get from Shukri, we might have to split up and go after all of the remaining ones tomorrow.”
“Very well.” Meti said, and turned to reach for her storage bag. “Since we’ve come back with the rest of the day ahead of us, Theo, you can give me the status of that adhesive you were working on while you help me with something.”
