Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 25: Invitation

Lawrent Joan

I glared at the young mage before me, the weight of my anger causing her to shy away in fear. She was dirty and unkempt, and with the darting fear on her face, she seemed nothing more than a prey animal instead of a proud mage.

"I said, speak!" I snarled, clenching my fist over my desk. "You are the only one to return from the Clarwood Forest expedition. That is unacceptable, and I will have answers!"

The woman flinched at the heat in my words. Were I in a more amiable mood, I might have enjoyed the reaction. But the glaring problem of Blood Joan's doomed convoy boiled the blood in my veins.

"I- we made it to the nest just fine, sir," she stuttered. "All the mages made it there. Lost a few unads, but nobody cared about them." The woman looked at me, then averted her gaze. "We planned to attack the nest before dark because the beastwards would go bad if we waited through the night. We got set up to attack the nest just fine. You know, throw them at the hive then detonate them?"

The woman licked her lips. The light was low, but the light from the sconces on the wall highlighted the sheen of sweat over her dirt-stained forehead. "Yeah, we managed to do that just fine. Knocked the awful hive out of the tree, then slew the queen. Our unads started harvesting the acidbeam paper not long after. Didn't go as fast as a mage would've, though."

The mage peeked behind her at Kaelan, who stood silent as a tomb a few paces back. My sister's posture was rigid and sharp, taught like a bowstring ready to fire. No, it was closer to a barely restrained viper waiting to lash out. Through my own simmering anger, I noted that. Kaelan was deathly angry as well.

"They got along for a few minutes, but then we heard it." The woman shuddered, clutching at the wand held in a holster at her side. "The buzzing, like a thousand tiny lightning spells coming for us. It grew and grew, and we knew that something was coming for us..."

Kaelan's eyes flashed. "Tell him what you told me," she said with a growl. "About the mage."

The caster nodded. "Yes, sir. Before we saw what was coming, a mage leapt from the trees. Someone not from our convoy. They threw fire at the horde, but it barely killed half a dozen. There were hundreds." The caster shook her head. "There was another nest somewhere."

I resisted the urge to call my mana into my hands and smite the ground. "Another mage, you said? And this was a person not with the expedition?"

"They were dressed in dark colors, and when the monsters surrounded us, I didn't get a chance to see him better. They started raining hell from above. It was awful. Some of us managed to put up shields; protect ourselves. But the screams, the buzzing... I was lucky to get out alive."

I slammed my fist into my desk, sending a tremor through the wood. It creaked from the pressure I forced into it, and I had to restrain my urge to break it in two. The girl yelped, stumbling back at my display.

"Tell me. About. The mage." I annunciated through clenched teeth.

"Right, sir. I'm sorry," she said, shuffling in place. "Later on, he came to me in the area–I was holding a shield over myself–and told me to go to the rest of the shields that were holding out from the attacks. But I didn't stay. They were all doomed."

"What did he look like?" I interrupted.

"He had a dark metal mask," she said. "An old vicar's mask. It had the horns and everything. But the voice was strange, grating and painful. He told me to help–"

The recollection of a few days ago when I had discussed the last survivor of Named Blood Daen lurched to the forefront of my mind in dreadful clarity. Pieces began to fall into place in my head as the girl continued to ramble.