03 — The Sage’s Prophecy

With the miasmic fog having dissipated, the vespians were slowly making their way out of their dangling homes.

“That stuff must be pretty poisonous without the right resistance,” I muttered to myself.

Suddenly, a swarm of them flew towards us, a few leading the pack, including the older one who’d called me “Sir Sage.” I think?

“Thank you for saving our village and queen, Sir Sage,” he said.

“Without you, we’d have lost our homes!” another remarked.

“We owe you our lives.”

“I’m just glad I could help,” I said. “But why do you keep calling me ‘Sage’?”

The vespians looked at each other, puzzled.

“The story goes that a long time ago, when a fog of miasma had covered the forest, a powerful sage appeared and rescued us with a brilliant flash of light. And then, should the fog ever come back, he said that he or his successor would return at our most dire hour.” The vespian stared at me. “You appeared, there was a brilliant flash of light, and the miasma is gone, just like the prophecy said. Are you not Sir Sage?”

How heroic of you, Sir Sage, you son of a...

So I was second fiddle to a complete stranger, was I? I couldn’t believe it.

“Unfortunately not. I’m just a plain old healer-in-training. I came to negotiate with your people, but I take it your queen isn’t in a state to talk right now, is she?”

“Oh? In that case, I’ll bring Prince Honeur,” the elder said, flying off to one of the nests.

“So, why was your queen in that thing?” I asked. “And why didn’t you all leave the forest if things were that bad?”

“We would never abandon Her Highness!” a young vespian cried. “It’s unthinkable. We’d never entertain the thought.”

The others raised their voices in a passionate clamor, singing the praises of their beloved ruler. Just when I thought they’d never stop...

“That’s enough.”

A commanding tone cut through the pandemonium. The queen appeared at its source, accompanied by the elder and a young, yet noticeably larger, vespian. The crowd immediately parted and made way for Her Grace.

“You have my thanks for rescuing my people, Sir Sage.”

She lowered her head, her wings shimmering with a distinct kind of magical energy.

“I’m glad things worked out.”

“I hear you want to negotiate? What about, I wonder?”

“To my understanding, your people make and produce honey. Is that correct?”

“Yes, you...have the right of it.”

Shoot, I’d gotten ahead of myself and forgotten step one to all business dealings. I had to recover from this ASAP. First, explain your purpose.

“You see, I have a plan. And it starts beneath the City of Freedom...”

I went on to explain my entire scheme, concluding with a plea for the vespians’ cooperation.

“This is an intriguing idea, to be sure. However, as indebted to you as we are, this isn’t something I can offer an answer to immediately.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

You had to see it to believe it, really. An underground world? Even I wasn’t naive enough to expect someone to go along with such an absurd concept without a second thought.

“Instead, I will have my son, Honeur, bring several retainers to judge the situation for themselves. If you’ll have them.”

“Wait, you mean...”

“I don’t think you’re a liar, Sir Sage. If what you say is indeed true, and I hope it is, we will gladly join your venture.”

I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. “Thank you for giving me a chance.”

I’d never thought she would have that much faith in me, to be honest. I’d already been considering gifts or other ways to earn their favor, but this changed things. Boy, did it change things. With the vespians in on my underground orchard plan, the ursans were in the bag too.

“You have a unique way of thinking, Sir Sage.”

“Do I?”

“You do. Most humans strike me as brash and prideful, but you surprised me.”

The vespians probably didn’t have the best history with my kind. That was something I ought to look into.

“Apologies for changing the subject, Your Highness, but I’m curious about that slime. Were you incorporated into it or just stuck inside?”

“Well, it happened nearly half a month ago. At daybreak. A wyvern was flying overhead when it seemed to hurl something down at us.”

“Then someone had to have been riding it.”

“I suspect as much myself. The wyvern then flew north, and the younglings went to investigate the scene. There, they found a mysterious broken jar and the slime, ejecting miasma.”

Half a month ago. That was right around the time I had left for the labyrinth.

“Physical attacks had no effect, and its core, its one weakness, blended into the mass,” she continued. “I’m the only one capable of wielding magic, you see, so I tried using wind spells, but the monster suddenly sprang at me. The rest is a blur.”

“We tried fire next,” the elder continued, “but the fiend used Her Highness as a shield to protect itself.”

It was intelligent? Or could it have been some sort of self-defense instinct? I looked at Lionel, but, strangely, he was too focused to notice me.

“It kept growing and growing, attracting monsters with its miasma then swallowing them up. Just yesterday, it started spitting out undead creatures. All we could do was pray to the great spirits that the prophecy would come true.”

Not to the gods, but the spirits. Well, they were probably one and the same to some people in this world. And this sage guy sounded like another one of the reincarnated, so I had to remember to look into him. Er, after this. Focus, Luciel.

“And that’s when we showed up,” I said. “I’m surprised the monster’s ooze didn’t melt you, Your Highness. The creatures we fought were disfigured, so it’s good you made it out safely.”

“I would not have without this.” The queen revealed a familiar charm.

“What is it?”

“A talisman from the Spirit of Tides. It’s been passed down, from one queen to another, for generations.”

Her voice was lifeless. She gently traced the charm, holding it to her body, and it slowly began to fade. All the spirit had wanted was to save its devoted followers, to answer their prayers. Maybe the spirits were more human than I gave them credit for.

“Oh...”

And then the treasured heirloom was gone. A deity had only wanted to protect its believers. Plus, had the slime been left alone, it could have gotten big enough to be a danger to all of Yenice. When I thought about the situation in a positive light, we had not only averted that crisis, but saved the vespians and even made a deal with them. All’s well that ends well, as always, thanks to Monsieur Luck.

I didn’t even want to think about how bad it would’ve been if the slime had gotten large enough to cover the entire forest in miasma. Our hopes of attracting adventurers would’ve gone up in flames. The Adventurer’s Guild would want to hear about this incident, minus the spirit business. Not that I’d forgotten about it, oh no. The Spirit of Tides wasn’t out of the woods yet.

I felt a little calmer.

“Will you be staying with us?” the queen asked.

I looked up at the precariously dangling hives. Yeah, no. I was not brave enough to test those waters.

I smiled. “We actually have others waiting for us, so I have to refuse. Thank you for the offer, though.”

“That is unfortunate. All the same, please take these as thanks for what you’ve done for us.” She turned to her attendants, who presented us with a small, hefty barrel and a yellow crystal roughly the size of a baseball. “The barrel contains honey. Fill another of the same size with water, then place the crystalized honey inside and leave it overnight. The next morning, you will have a delicious mead.”

That sounded like a nifty way to make alcohol and a nice gift for Her Holiness.

“Thank you very much. Now, when should we come back to get Prince Honeur and his people?”

“Actually, we would like to go with you today, if it’s not too much trouble,” the prince replied. His attendants bowed.

“Not at all, but are you sure?”

“Of course. I’m very excited to see the outside world.”

They were certainly prepared. That settled it, then.

“All right. We’ll treat your son and his attendants well, Your Highness. You have my word that they’ll join us on our periodic visits.”

“I wish you the best.”

And with that, we left the vespian colony.

We exited the forest not ten minutes after leaving the queen. The rest of the team awaiting us stared at the new arrivals with confusion.

“The colony’s closer than I thought.”

“The sprites of the forest confuse and mislead visitors. The Spirit of Tides also maintains a barrier,” Honeur explained. But should he have? That sounded important.

“So it’s true that you might never make it back if you stray too far.”

“That’s right. It’s no real secret.”

He’d read my mind. People seemed to do that a lot with me.

Ketty wrapped up her conversation with Lionel and came over. “Nothin’ to report.”

“Good. We had a bit of a rough time, but some good came of it, at least.”

Ketty glanced at Lionel, then shot a glare at Milphene, but I held up a hand between the two.

“It’s fine, Ketty. She wasn’t trying to stab anyone in the back, so go easy on her.”

“Sure.”

I gestured to the bee-like people who had joined us. “These are the vespians. They’re going to play an important role in the plan, hopefully, but for now, they’re here to observe.”

“My name is Honeur of the vespians who Sir Sage so gallantly saved. I hope your ideas turn out as promising as they sound.”

My team bowed politely in greeting.

“Let me introduce you to everyone,” I said. “This is my team. Well, technically, they’re my slaves, but I consider them a retinue, if you will. My companions.”

“Slaves?” Honeur tilted his head. “Ah, my apologies. I was just surprised. I never would have guessed.”

“I know. I’m not particularly fond of it, personally, and I wish they’d let me free them already.”

“He treats us well, so we protect him with our lives. He has our loyalty,” Lionel said proudly.

“How gallant. Just like Sir Sage.”

“Right...” I trailed off. “Anyway, I want you all to keep the vespians safe from now on.”

“Understood!” they cried.

It was still quite a distance back to Yenice, so we decided to have a small dinner before setting out. By the time we finished, the sunset had tinged the sky a beautiful orange. If only we’d been able to camp out for the night... But I didn’t feel comfortable leaving Yenice unattended.

“Stay alert, everyone. It’s going to get dark soon.”

“Understood!”

I cast a precautionary Area Barrier, and then we were off.

The sun had sunk below the horizon, and we were taking a short break. We used the opportunity to install a magic light onto the wagon, which I had asked Pola to make to help us spot enemies from a distance. Streetlamps didn’t exist in this world, so I’d had it made a while back just in case. And this was one such case. You can never be too prepared. The downside was that it also made us stand out, but that still beat getting jumped in the dark out of nowhere. It might have been redundant in a world where you could sense people and magic, and others could flat out see in the dark, but not all of us were so lucky.

Pola went about attaching the light, boasting to Lycian all the while about how amazing her creation was. Lycian, of course, didn’t take this sitting down and continued to insist that she, in fact, was the better artificer. Dhoran, meanwhile, looked on with a smile.

Our path now illuminated, the journey back to town was an easy one. But as we neared our destination, Lionel tensed up and warned us to be on our guard.

“Fortunately, they seem to only be watching from a distance.”

“That’s good. Who do you think they are? Council protestors or insurgents?”

Dolstar had warned me about a group of people who weren’t very happy with my place in the government. And on top of that, there had been bandits popping up in defiance of the establishment itself.

“I see ’em. Centaur,” Ketty reported. “There’s a monster too.”

“Are they fighting? Should we step in?”

“Don’t think so. Looks like they’re hunting.”

“I guess that’s fine.”

“They see us, but it doesn’t seem like they’re after us.”

“Good. Let’s hope it stays that way.”

“Tonight will only be scouts,” Lionel said. “We ought to prepare ourselves in case of attack on future excursions.”

“Got it. Stay on guard, everyone. Remember, stay alive.”

“Understood.”

Soon after our foreboding encounter with Yenice’s dissident side, we made it back. Relief washed over me, but we weren’t out of the woods yet.