Sacrifice Mage-Chapter 12: Ration House

The guards, who hadn’t looked that concerned about the matter when I had first spotted them, got a lot more interested once they saw my and Aurier’s condition. I noted that none of them were human. A mix of a horned demonic-looking race, an adult serpent-person, and an orc or ogre or something like that.
They frowned at our cuts and bruises—my back, shoulders, and arm still felt like they had been beaten my mallets—and then they recoiled when they got a whiff of my breath. Yeah, I didn’t blame them at all.
Thankfully, one of them had a healing Aspect, and that miraculously took care of our wounds in a jiffy. It was very strange, feeling someone else’s lime green mana threads slip into my body and soothe away all the aches and hurts.
That didn’t resolve my upset stomach, but the grateful woman whose daughter we rescued provided enough water for me to wash out the sick taste.
“Thralls, huh?” one of the guards said, still sceptical but not fully disbelieving. Not after the girls’ testimonies had been corroborated by the condition Aurier and I was in. “Are you positive? We’ll go check it out of course, but it can’t be Scarthralls…”
“They were strong,” I said. I didn’t know about Scarthralls, but I knew that much. “Be careful.”
“We’re city guards, friend. We’ll be fine.”
“They
were
Scarthralls,” Aurier insisted. “Not your typical crooks. One was regenerating his head after we—after Ross here crushed it with my hammer, which… I don’t have with me.”
The other two guards who hadn’t spoken looked troubled at that, but their snaky leader’s expression didn’t change.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “But if you’re that worried, make sure you drop off a at the guardhouse. Come on, boys.”
He led his junior guardsmen away. I had to admit, they did project a sense of strength. Their uniforms reminded me of fancy eighteenth century military coats combined with armour, and their sabres were sharp. Considering one of them had a healing Aspect, I figured at least a couple of the others had other strong Aspects too. They
ought
to be fine.
But I didn’t get anywhere near the same sensation of danger and power that I had gotten from the Scarthralls.
“I can’t thank you two enough.” The woman appeared before us after the guards departed. She was holding her daughter’s hand so tightly, I was pretty sure the poor girl wasn’t going to get an ounce of freedom till she was a teenager again. “We are forever in your debt. Forever. Right, Celia?”
She bowed her head, and more or less forced her little girl to do the same.
“Yes, mama,” Celia murmured. “Forever in your debt.”
I wondered how shocked the poor kid was. Had she seen the head-smashing-like-a-watermelon bit ? If so… that had to be high on the trauma list.
“It was nothing, please,” Aurier said with a soft but tired smile. “I’m just glad we were able to get there in time.”
I nodded. Then I looked over at serpent-girl. “Don’t thank us, thank her. Although, now I’m curious why they didn’t just break in and—wait.”
Suddenly, I remembered how Hamsik was knocking and standing outside the temple, like he had been waiting to be invited in. He had said he was a half-vampire, but it looked certain restrictions still affected them.
“We can discuss that later,” Aurier said quickly. And he was right. Guy had more tact than me, and I was supposed to be the older one here. There was absolutely no need to discuss the details of that situation any more than necessary in front of these children. “But yes, Ross is right. We got there in time, but… Sreketh, was it? Sreketh here is the real hero.”
The serpent-girl, Sreketh, smiled at Aurier and me. It was odd seeing a recognizable facial expression on a person who had a snake for a head. “It was nothing! I’m just glad I spotted little Celia on my way back to the orphanage.”
“I’m sorry,” Celia said again, her voice even lower than before. “I never should have wandered off, mama.
I’m sorry
.”
She had started crying, and the woman quickly pulled her into an embrace and comforted her, unable to hold back her own tears either. We all decided to give them some space and part for now. Sreketh promised to warn the orphanage about that specific area, and Aurier said the Sun Cult would be spreading word as well.
But before we left completely, the woman rushed up to us. Her face was still blotchy and red, but she held out her hands.
“Please, take these,” she said, shoving two strange green packets at me and Aurier. “This is all I can spare at the moment.”
“Oh please, it’s not necessary at all,” Aurier said, flushing in embarrassment. “We—”
“Please! You risked your
lives
just for my little girl. This is the least I can do.”
Aurier and I exchanged quick glances, then thanked the woman and accepted the packets full of strange powder.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Ah, just a little drink I’ve been using to help Celia grow,” the woman said, somewhat flustered. “It’s supposed to help her get a good, strong Path once she’s grown enough.”
Ah, it was
that
sort of thing.
Deciding against telling her that she had probably been scammed, I thanked her again before Aurier and I left.
“So…” Aurier eventually said. “You want to keep going, or just call it a day for now and go back to the cult? I won’t blame you at all, after…”
That wasn’t a bad question. Now that we were moving again, my hands were shaking once more. I once again wished there were pockets on these robes for me to stuff them into. The emptiness was clawing me from the inside like it wanted to drag me into the abyss of mana exhaustion.
And then I remembered my deadline. Two more days.
“Let’s keep going,” I said. “My legs are working fine, so.” I looked intently at Aurier. “Unless you want to take a break. You look healed, but… I won’t blame you either. For calling the day off, that is.” I smiled sardonically. “And I made you lose your hammer. Your master won’t be pleased at that.”
Aurier laughed a little, slowly brightening up. “Actually, I think he’ll be pretty happy to hear what we went through. So yes, let’s go pay him a visit after we get our other tasks done.”
We were making good progress towards the gates in the wall that led to Ring Three. Despite the earlier brawl against the Scarthralls and my mana exhaustion, my physical body was going fine. Bless the Sacrifice reward for food.
I took a peek at my status since I’d received several rewards from that fight.
This content has been misappropriated from NovelFire; any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
[ Ross Moreland
Profile
Race
: Human
Weave Access
: Full
Universal Language Approximator [Sovereign I]
Paths
Path of the Newborn Star
: Iron III
Path of the Acolyte
: Iron II
Core
Mana Implosion
: [Unawakened]
General Attributes
Vitality
: Iron II
Power
: Iron III
Agility
: Iron I
Path Attributes
Spirit
: Iron II
Fervour
: Iron III
Aspects
Gravity
: Iron IV
Infusion
Siphon
Sacrifice
: Iron II
Windfall
Time until Mana Implosion
: 2 days
]
My growth felt encouraging. I had been here for about two days or thereabouts, and I already had Gravity nearly halfway to Silver. The others were steadily coming along too. Of course, I suspected that the higher I ranked up, the harder it was going to get to become even stronger. But still. This felt like a good start.
Also, I needed to check my status more often. A nice, uplifting reminder of my progress and the results of my hard work was always helpful.
A meagre but satisfactory consolation for the lack of ice cream.
“What
are
Scarthralls?” I asked as we started slowing down. There were more people closer to the gate. “They’re related to the vamp—to the Scarseekers, aren’t they?”
Aurier lowered his voice. “A Scarthrall, or just Thrall, can only be created
by
Scarseekers.”
“Ah…” I was starting to see the complications. Vampire stories
did
have vampires biting and converting regular people into vampires too, so it made sense the ones in this world were capable of the same. “Can half-Scarseekers do it too?”
“I
really
don’t think Hamsik would do something like that, Ross.”
“Just making sure.”
Truth be told, Hamsik definitely didn’t strike me as the type of person who would create random vampire minions that attacked little girls. But then again, I had known the guy for one day. I hardly knew him.
“I’m hoping…” Aurier sighed. “I don’t
know
what to hope. There might be a rogue Scarseeker in our area. Or these ones might just have come here secretly from somewhere else. It’s bad either way, although the former is certainly worse. The real problem is that we’re defenceless against them.”
“Hmm.”
He wasn’t wrong. We hadn’t won. Not really. Sure, I had been able to use Gravity in ways that had taken those Thralls by surprise and thus restrained them enough for us to get away. In a fight to the death however, I’d be dying nine times out of ten.
We reached the gate soon. There were a bunch of people there, gaggled up and trying to squeeze through the raised gates.
I whistled. “Where did all of these people crawl out from?”
“This is actually better than usual,” Aurier said with a short laugh.
Sheesh. I had no wish to see how bad rush hour got here.
There seemed a bit of a holdup. One of the guards kept stopping people. Another guard tried to let people go in faster, but the first one rebuked her companion before making sure everyone was being stopped intermittently.
It was only when we got close enough that I understood.
“You just need to say the right words,” the guard said. I was close enough to see the look of disdain on her demonic face. Her skin was dark green, her hair hardening to horns at the tips that curled around her head. Whenever she talked, I caught a glimpse of her thin, sharp tongue. “Say it,
citizen
.”
“Praise the Woven Way,” an older man said before he was let through.
“Praise the Woven way,” said one woman, who rushed away as soon as she was allowed into Ring Three.
And so it followed, everybody forced to repeat the same weird mantra like some kind of passcode to enter Zairgon proper.
I turned to Aurier. “Isn’t that the same thing…?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Aurier said through gritted teeth. “Just say it when it’s your turn and we’ll be through.”
It didn’t feel quite right, but I wasn’t in any mood to cause a scene after what had happened earlier. We repeated the same phrase and were soon within the bounds of Ring Three. The exacting guard looked at me a little too intently for comfort, but we didn’t face any trouble.
“We should head to the Ration House,” Aurier said. “Secure the food first.”
“Ration House?” That had to be a weird translation from the Weave, right? “You mean like a restaurant or a grocer?”
“I… don’t even know what that last word even means. And we only have restaurants on Ring Two or higher. Come on, it’ll be easier to just show you.”
As we walked, I noted how Ring Three felt like a proper city, compared to the slums of Ring Four. The streets were paved and lined with mostly working streetlamps. Their lights were strange, though. Definitely not gas or electric constructions. Threads of blue mana glowed from within each lamp, casting soft glows everywhere.
Very rarely, self-driving carriages would pass by, their engines glowing with mana threads. None were anywhere near as ostentatious as the one that had visited the temple.
The other thing I really noticed was the lack of humans here. Oh, they were there. But where Ring Four seemed to be comprised entirely of them, Ring Three hosted a multitude of races. I saw demon-people, serpent-people, bird-people. There was one guy I was sure had to be a cyclops. Giant, craggy skinned folk—those ogres, or maybe trolls—strolled down one street.
Ring Three looked like a multicultural hub.
“Do you know who the nobles were?” I asked Aurier. “The ones who were at the temple the other day.”
“Yes…” Aurier said. “One of them is House Kalnislaw. That’s the vampire you saw. He’s, uh—” Aurier cleared his throat. “He’s Hamsik’s half-brother. The other one, the Rakshasa, is from House Brasvay.”
I blinked. “So I ended up humiliating Hamsik’s brother. Interesting.” I laughed. “He didn’t seem to mind, so credit to him, I guess.”
“Yes, Hamsik doesn’t really get along with his family.”
I had a feeling there was a lot more there, but Aurier sounded uncomfortable, like he was revealing more than he should have, so I showed him mercy and didn’t pry further. For now.
We reached the Ration House. It turned out to be a weird mix of a grocery store and a warehouse. Apparently, food was limited in Zairgon—and, in fact, all of Ephemeroth—so the Council controlled the supply of it pretty carefully via rationing. The Ration Houses were their way of doing so.
It wasn’t that different from a grocery store, except people could only buy a pretty limited amount of food, and bigger purchases required very strict documentation.
We eventually got our turn to speak to the proprietor. Apparently, Escinca had listed a very large order, so we couldn’t just shop for a crate of stuff and take it away on our own. We would need to initiate a delivery.
The proprietor, a shrewd Rakshasa, inspected the list Aurier handed him through his half-moon spectacles. “Hmm, big order this. Council won’t be happy.”
Aurier shrugged. “All the documents are filed and ready. Cult’s hosting a celebration.” He tried for a welcoming smile. “You’re invited too!”
“Thanks, though I might pass.” He didn’t sound very thankful. “Cult business…” He shook his head. “This is going to be almost thirty-thousand gold.”
Aurier winced. Even I frowned. I thought I had no reference for the amount I’d be provided by the cult, but I had it now. My monthly stipend was two-thousand gold. Either I was being paid peanuts, or Escinca was planning an entire gala,
or
this guy was scamming us.
“That’s a lot,” Aurier said slowly.
“Well, it’s a big order. They tend to
be
a lot. Lots more stuff to deliver and everything.”
He looked at us like we were fools for even voicing our concerns. His foot had started tapping too. We were holding things up and he wanted us gone. This guy…
“Can I see the order for a second?” I asked, holding out my hand.
“Why?” the proprietor asked.
“Because I want to make a small modification to it.”
“Modification? Who says you have the right to modify anything? This—”
I looked the guy straight in the eyes. He was taller than me, but who cared. “This is from the Cult of the Sun. From
my
cult. You want the order or not?”
He tutted, then handed the documents to me. “Make it quick.”
“Sure.”
“Is this a good idea?” Aurier whispered.
I smiled at him in reassurance. “Trust me.”
I took the document and scanned through it quickly. Ah, I could hardly believe it. All my experience working as a glorified PA for my boss was actually coming in handy.
Without bothering to ask for permission, I took an ink-dipped quill from the proprietor’s desk. Bless the Universal Language Approximator for not only letting me understand the written language of New Zair made of squares and triangles and other symbols strewn together in an interesting fashion, but also for letting me
write
it.
“Here,” I said, handing the papers back to the proprietor after I was done.
He took a quick look through it, then glanced up at me. “Who in the Pits are you?”
I shrugged. “Just a member of the Cult of the Sun.”
“I’ve never seen you around.”
“You’d think that would suggest I’m new.”
The Rakshasa proprietor scowled at me, but ultimately, he accepted the order.
Aurier couldn’t help but stare at me. “What did you do?”
“Come on,” I said, leading the way out. “I’ll tell you as we head over to your master’s place.”