The City of Mages
The City of Mages
Anna Heleminus — the Master of Magic from two generations past and an archmage over two centuries old — proved to be a far better cook than anyone could have expected.
Even Aslan, who had long since lost his sense of taste, could tell from texture and technique alone that her skill was remarkable.
Northern Empire-style braised lamb was a dish built around lamb ribs so wild in character they seemed to embody the harsh land wedged between rugged country and sea.
The ribs, marinated in a faintly crimson sauce, held a strange aesthetic appeal even before the first bite.
"Delicious!"
Fay, perfectly aware of how a child ought to eat such a thing, made a deliberate mess of her mouth with the sauce and beamed.
"Hold still, little one. Let me see."
Anna smiled softly, pleased, and wiped the corner of Fay's mouth.
The whole exchange carried the desperate strain of an archmage trying to reclaim years that had been stolen from her — the kind of desperation that left a bitter taste in any onlooker's mouth.
After that, Fay ate her lamb more demurely. The eye-smile she threw Aslan between bites radiated a clear message: I'm doing a good job, so aren't you going to praise me?
"Aslan!"
The demure act didn't last. Having decided to collect her reward on her own terms, Fay jabbed a piece of meat onto her fork and thrust it toward him.
"Say ah!"
Anna's eyes flicked to Aslan, glinting with expectation — whether because she found Fay's antics adorable, or because she, too, saw in this another fragment of the past she had lost.
Aslan let a gentle smile surface and opened his mouth. Fay popped the meat in.
Texture alone raced across his tongue. His deadened taste buds transmitted nothing at all to his brain.
Even so, he could tell the dish had been crafted with extraordinary care.
No gaminess. None of the off-flavors that meat so often carried. The texture, which might have been tough, was tender enough to swallow after only a few chews.
It was a window into how desperately Anna Heleminus had longed for the past she'd lost. Had she practiced this dish meaning to serve it to her daughter once she brought her back? Or had she cooked it again and again, dreaming of that day? Aslan couldn't guess.
A bitterness that had nothing to do with his absent sense of taste spread through him. He swallowed a rueful smile and spoke.
"It's excellent."
Of course, he had no way of knowing if that was true. Poison could seep past his notice; even tainted, inedible food would register no discomfort.
The taste buds he'd burned away through overuse of Equalization had never returned. The compliment could only ever be a placid one.
But Anna accepted even that placid compliment with genuine pleasure.
Because to her, the scene must have felt like her daughter and husband had come back to her, just for a moment.
Laughing and chattering with a child. Cooking dinner and sharing it with her family. Her husband complimenting the meal.
Anna's fingers drifted absently to her pendant, her thoughts reaching toward the blurred figures in her memories, imagining they might have looked just like this.
The thought surfaced unbidden: once I bring my daughter back, couldn't we do the same?
She pressed down the sudden surge of impulse and smiled brightly. The shift in her expression was subtle — invisible to anyone without the observational sharpness Aslan and Fay shared. Aslan exchanged a wordless glance with Fay, and Fay, catching it, let out a breath that no one else would notice.
Fay noted the pendant's position without being obvious about it. Then she shouted.
"Mama Anna, brush Fay's hair!"
"...Ah."
The cry pulled Anna back to the present. She blinked her clouded eyes clear and looked at Fay.
"Yes, little one. Come here."
Fay shot Aslan a sidelong glance and went to her. Moments later, Anna was running a brush through Fay's hair.
To an outsider, it would look like a mother and daughter spending a sweet moment together. Aslan knew better.
Fay was positioning herself to snatch the pendant at any moment.
She was laying groundwork.
A thought flashed through him — does it really have to go this far, this harshly? — but there was no helping it.
The soul inside that pendant was already a priest. If it got loose in the world, people would die in droves.
'If only that were all there was to worry about.'
Pretending to glance out the window, Aslan let the thought settle.
[Ongoing Sub-Quest]
[ ! Survive the Priest Assault]
[ ! Free or Kill Anna's Daughter]
The system window, the semi-transparent pane that had prodded him again and again since he'd fallen into Geladrion, was prodding him once more.
Better a private grief than a death toll.
Make the choice that barely qualifies as one.
Aslan exhaled and rose to his feet. He checked his gear — sword, belt, armor, cloak, a few scrolls he'd bought in the market. Midway through, he realized Anna was watching him and stopped.
"...What are you plotting?"
Anna's question hung in the air. Aslan didn't answer.
Whatever she read in that silence, she set the brush down. Fay's legs stopped swinging, and her eyes darted around the room.
The silence turned uncomfortable. Aslan caught the sound of approaching footsteps and let out a thin smile. There it is, he thought. A voice followed, carrying from beyond the wooden door.
"Master!"
It was the man who had guided Aslan to Anna and Fay earlier. Anna's green-glowing gaze fixed on Aslan as she answered.
"What is it, Beren? If this is about city business—"
"It's not!"
The door burst open. A man named Beren stood in the doorway, his face drained of color.
He was heaving for breath, visibly panicked. This was a man who normally wouldn't open the door without his master's express permission — always careful, always reserved. The sheer rudeness of the act, so foreign to his character, made Anna's brow crease.
"Priests! Priests are coming! Across the sea!"
Priests.
Anna's eyes widened. The priests had ignored her illusion magic. And Aslan — Aslan had been preparing for exactly this.
"You..."
Suspecting collusion was only reasonable. As the woman began to draw up her mana, Aslan gave her a soft smile and shook his head. Anna blinked at the gesture. He turned to look out the window again.
The sea was visible from here.
Reaching the City of Mages by swimming triggered a dedicated event — a quest, essentially. Aslan knew from experience that the Veil of Compassion would dispatch its priests the moment that event began, seeking to reclaim the soul it now considered its property.
The protagonist was meant to fight those priests, to protect Anna Heleminus. But in the end, Anna always died at the hands of her own freed daughter.
That was the City of Mages quest as Aslan remembered it.
And there was the crux of it.
Anna Heleminus was fated to die.
He was here to stop that.
The man rested his hand on his sword-hilt and stared out at the sea for a long, melancholy moment before he spoke.
"Anna. Get up. Prepare to fight."
Before she could press him further, he was already moving toward the door.
"Their targets are you and your daughter."
He stepped outside. A dull thunder rolled in from the distance.
*
BOOM!
A pale mist billowed outward with the blast. Nothing was left where it spread — only frozen humans and the shattered remains of those who had once been human.
At the center of the mist that streaked white across the sea itself, priests advanced.
Men and women wrapped in clean robes of sheer white fabric that seemed nearly transparent. Their faces were twisted with something that looked like terror, and they ran as if their lives depended on it.
"Kill the mages! Find the sister!"
At one priest's shout, they fell upon the fleeing townsfolk and mages, swinging arms and legs indiscriminately.
A white death bloomed wherever their limbs passed. People caught in it froze solid and died.
"P-please, spare me! I—"
The priests blanketed the begging voices in killing frost. Even screams froze, leaving the dead with twisted, silent expressions.
Beyond the carnage, the priests found their next target: a line of soldiers. Armored figures crouched low, crossbows leveled.
The priests shielded their heads with both arms and dropped into a full sprint. Their bodies blurred forward, trailing ghostly afterimages. The thunder of displaced air chased them.
A terrifying charge. But the mages raised their crossbows with mechanical precision.
"Fire!"
The command was swallowed by the roar, but the well-drilled mages reacted instantly. They dropped to one knee, sighted, pulled mana into the mechanisms, and squeezed the triggers.
TWANG!
Blue crossbow bolts sliced through the churning mist. The moment a bolt struck home, the mage who had fired it extended a hand, lips moving, a hand sign forming. Mana bled out of them.
KRA-KOOOOOM!
The mana reached the blue-iron bolt, and the bolt erupted in a blaze of heat and force, swelling massively.
The bolt expanded from inside a priest's body and tore him in half.
White death tumbled across the ground. The mages swung their crossbows toward the next target.
"Cover, cover, cover!"
A staccato of crossbow strings filled the air, and armored mages rose from cover to duck deeper into the alleys. The priests, bleeding casualties, tried to pursue — but four bolts shrieking out of the alley mouth stopped them cold.
Each embedded bolt flared with a different spell. One by one, the priests fell.
"Rotate, fire!"
TUNG-TUNG-TUNG!
Crossbows spat blue volleys. Spells detonated. The armored mages killed another priest and moved to reload.
KRA-KOOOOOM!
The wall at their backs exploded inward. A priest burst through.
A giant whose forearms alone were the size of a man's head. The creature made a low, grinding noise and stamped its foot down on a mage in the rear rank.
CRUNCH!
The sound of a human being crushed alive inside his own armor. A grotesque, chilling noise. The killing frost rushed in, and the mages groaned through clenched teeth.
"Fall back, fall back, f—"
CRACK!
Another mage pulped underfoot. The rest gritted their teeth and fled deeper into the alley.
They died as they ran. Mages who had spent their lives guarding this city with pride were butchered one after another, their entrails scattering as they froze solid.
Ten mages remained by the time they broke into open ground — nowhere near enough. The man at the front swallowed a groan of despair.
"Open ground! Rally, everyone! Here we—"
His despair peaked the moment he staggered clear of the alley.
Priests were already waiting in the open space, encircling them.
The mages, pushed out of the alley in a panicked cluster, took in the cordon and turned ghost-white. Some shook so hard their teeth chattered. Some wept. Some vomited onto the cobblestones.
They were still gathering themselves to die when —
SHWIIIIICK — CRUNCH!
Something tore through a priest's chest and burst out the other side.
An arrow.
The priest's eyes flew wide as the shaft punched through his heart. He toppled, the arrow — as long as a short spear — humming faintly as it drained the life out of him into the dirt.
Every priest turned toward the archer. Two figures emerged from the darkness, moving with a fluid, almost dance-like ease.
One was a woman.
She strode past the fallen priest as he twitched and tried to rise, pivoting her whole body into an axe swing that cleaved him open.
The blade gouged the ground in its wake. The priest's head tumbled free.
Behind her, a hulking figure in red scales strode into view.
THWUMP!
The giant's foot came down on the severed head and crushed it flat. He blew out a long snort.
"Those bastards are off. I aimed for the head — I know my aim was perfect — and the shot still went wrong."
"Veil of Compassion priests can freeze time and space. The arrow probably drifted."
The white-haired woman answered as if they were having a perfectly casual conversation. Neither priests nor mages could make sense of it. The red-scaled giant swished his tail, grinning.
"Oh yeah? They freeze things? Fine. I'll just shoot harder."
A cheerful smile on a dragon's face. The man glanced down at the mages cowering at his feet.
"Oi! You lot... ah, what was it again?"
"Aslan called them the Blue Arrow Legion."
"...Tch, what do names matter? We all stand equal before Struggle! Names don't count for anything!"
The mages blinked at the exchange. The Dragon-kin pulled another arrow from his quiver, nocked it, and laughed.
"Reinforcements from the Master of Combat, Aslan. You're welcome."
Before anyone could form a question, the bowstring thundered and the arrow was already in flight.