4.24 Classified Briefing

Bernt half expected to be marched straight to the Norhold Command Center to resume his work healing the military’s remaining burnouts, but instead he found himself following Archmage Dalbrand up to Norhold’s castle, which sat up on the slope above the city on its southern edge. The guards waved them through with barely a glance.

Without stopping, Dalbrand led him through a large courtyard, up a flight of steps and down a hallway to a beautiful library, probably the duke’s own collection. Bernt would have liked to look around, but the archmage was getting away from him. They marched straight through into a cozy study where they found Duke Renhild sitting with Olias. An expensive, partially gilded bottle made of multicolored glass sat on the table and both men held half-empty cups of wine.

“Ah, finally!” the duke said as they entered. “Have you briefed him already?”

Dalbrand shook his head. “I thought it would be best to keep this quiet. He has a lot of attention on him right now, and we’re warded against scrying here.”

“Ah, right. Well,” the Duke turned to Bernt. “Welcome back! You’re probably wondering what you’re doing here. Won’t you have a seat?”

Bernt sat in the indicated chair mechanically as Dalbrand took another and casually poured himself a drink. Nobody offered Bernt anything. 

“I… well, I thought you’d want me working on the burnouts, your grace.”

“And you will, of course! In fact, I’d like you to rehabilitate all of my burnt out mages, including whichever veterans I can scrounge up in the next few days. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Bernt swallowed and nodded. He wasn’t sure how many mages that would be, but he could hardly argue with the man who had just diplomatically strong-armed a temple and an entire country into letting him go. He owed him a lot more than a few days of his best effort. Still, the time limit didn’t make sense. 

“Why don’t we have time?” The last he’d heard Besermark was winning against the Duergar and the crisis with Madzhur and the conclave was over, right?

Duke Renhild took a slow sip of his wine and set the cup down, propping an elbow up on the table. He sounded older somehow, his tone suddenly less formal. “The Madzhuris smelled blood in the water with Loamfurth and this whole Duergar thing. I guessed that they might, but the queen dowager hasn’t been around that long. There was a chance she would play it straight. When they had the Norukites grab you… well, it’s not that hard to see what’s coming. I knocked them off balance a little, but this was just an opening move.”

Bernt blinked at the old man and glanced over at Olias. The prince looked unusually serious, nursing his cup with more restraint than was typical of him.

“What do you mean? Are they going to attack?”

The duke grimaced and wagged his head back and forth. “Maybe. They’re working with the Temple of Noruk—the main branch of it, anyway, so it might go that way. From what I heard about the conclave, though, I’m guessing they’re aiming for a coup. Wars aren’t always fought with armies. Problem is that we really are in a bad spot for all this right now.”

“Because we’re fighting the Duergar.”

“That, and because we’re basically begging the Invigilation for help. If the temples decide that Besermark’s nobility, its laws and its institutions are corrupt… well, that might not go well for us. The king stuck his neck out, allowing this to happen. He can’t exactly spit in their faces when they come with an answer. And I can guarantee it’ll go badly if we’re still actively trying to fight a horde of Duergar warlocks at the same time.”

Bernt swallowed. “I see… I’m not sure what I’m doing here, then, your grace. I can’t win you the war against the Duergar…”

“We don’t need to win it. At least, we don’t think we do.” Dalbrand answered as the duke leaned back in his chair and waved for the archmage to take over. “We just need to contact the Duergar’s Imperial Council. It’s taken a while, but we’re confident at this point that we’re not fighting the entire empire. The fact that they haven’t retaliated since their loss at Teres is telling—we shouldn’t be doing as well as we are. If we can make contact with the rest of the Empire, we may be able to get them to rein this King Grundrik in. I can’t imagine that they want one of their own summoning greater demons onto this plane. They are an ancient people. Surely, they’ve seen where such things lead. Your role is simple—we need you to get our diplomats down to the Seat of Molten Stone, deep below the mountains on Kallrix’s eastern border.”

“What?” Bernt blinked. “Why? I—“

“We need someone particularly qualified to deal with a fire spirit,” the archmage cut off his protests. “You see, as soon as we got word of the approximate location of the Seat of Molten Stone, we began looking for access points. We sent out teams of adventurers to explore the Depths and to feel out the Empire’s borders. We need an access point that’s outside of Grundrik’s territory, but that also isn’t held by anything especially nasty. As far as we could confirm, there’s only one. We didn’t think it would work, either, but we've been assured that you would be able to help. We suspect that someone unfriendly might have overheard, because you were arrested the very next day…”

“So, it wasn’t about the burnouts?” Bernt had wondered why Renhild would go so far to get him back. He’d expected the duke to pull some strings or lean on the temples to have him released—he hadn’t expected him to start mobilizing his armies and threaten a foreign country with war. “You got me out for this? What’s the situation?”

“It was the goblins,” Olias explained. “Xul… whatever her name is. The old one, and Nirlig and the young female. They took the druid girl and delved down into the mines on the border—the ones we’re always fighting Margrave Aziri over. We had a dungeon down in there when I was a boy—goblins, you see? The Madzhuris took it, and when we took it back, the Kallrixian Accords were in effect, so the dungeon wasn’t reinstated. They’re not really inside Beseri territory, though, so we didn’t make contact at the time, either. We just sealed off the mines. But someone at the Adventurer’s guild realized there might be an opportunity here, so they sent the goblins down to make contact. The greenskins say they know how to reach the border of the Duergar’s Igneous Dominion, ruled by one 'Queen Zorgrun'. The thing is, the normal underground way is apparently impassable, and the route they suggested involves surfacing in the Phoenix Reaches—twice.”

Bernt looked over at Dalbrand, who was nodding along. “Why wouldn’t you just send a few mages? Anyone who can cast a reliable temperature barrier could do this, right? And the burning rain doesn’t come down that often—shouldn’t you just be able to wait for good weather?”

The archmage grimaced. “The second surface leg is, as far as we can tell, located near the southern peaks of the Sunset Range. The entire region is too hot to travel through without protection. We could send a few mages to create and cool a corridor for our diplomats, but we’d need to send additional support to protect them from any of the local wildlife as well—and there’s known to be a wing of red drakes who range there. We would need to bring half an army, and that would certainly draw the wrong sort of attention.”

Cold fear settled into Bernt’s stomach. “And you think I can do it?”

He couldn’t. Sure, he could probably walk anywhere in the Phoenix Reaches and he wasn’t terribly worried about even a dragon’s breath at this point, but that didn’t mean he could protect an entire delegation of diplomats from a bunch of drakes while shielding them from a hostile environment.

“No, no, of course not,” Dalbrand laughed, causing Bernt to exhale in visible relief. “You’re going to reopen the original path—underground. Your goblin friends were quite thorough, you see. They inspected the impassable tunnels and the shaman insists that you, as a sorcerer, are uniquely qualified to bring them back into normal use. She was notably light on the details, but prince Olias vouched for her expertise.” His tone made it clear that he didn’t think very much of Xul’evareg or her assessment. Belatedly, Bernt realized the archmage had probably been insulted at the idea that he and his fellow mages might not be able to make up for a single sorcerer.

“Don’t strike that tone with me,” Olias defended himself. Bernt realized only then that his words were slurring slightly. He might not be drinking hard now, but he’d clearly been at it for some time. “The old goblin knows what she’s talking about. She killed two of my cousins, you know, back in the day. Real assholes, those two. They thought they’d go adventuring as if it were a game. But it wasn’t a game—not to the goblins. That was the start of it. My father knew we weren’t going to wipe them out properly, and the people needed a solution... Anyway, if she says we need him, then we do! Besides, you wanted him for your damaged mages, anyway.”

The duke cleared his throat, silencing both of the men before they could break out into an argument. He frowned at them and took a swig of his wine. “Neither of you will second-guess my decisions in my own house. We are going to try it the old goblin’s way as soon as we can. In the meantime, Sorcerer Bernard, you are going to heal every burnt out mage in my city.”

***

When Bernt followed archmage Dalbrand into the medical research lab at Norhold Central Administrative Command, he found it nearly as packed as it had been during his initial demonstration. Unlike the last time, though, the tables full of gadgets and alchemical supplies had been pushed to the sides of the room, replaced by benches and a handful of chairs that had been squeezed in around the edges. 

The benches were occupied mostly by soldiers—uniformed mages with colored armbands holding boxes and containers of various shapes and sizes. Near the back and in the chairs sat a more heterogeneous mix of older men and women dressed in robes, street clothes and in one case, metal-reinforced armor. They were humans, dwarves, gnomes and a single half-elf. These would be the burnt out veterans. By the look of them, Bernt thought a few might also be former adventurers.

Two chairs sat at the front. Someone had already thoughtfully drawn out a diagnostic circle in front of the empty chair in charcoal—most likely the man sitting in the other one. He was old, but sat with impeccable posture, his grayish white robe carefully arranged around him. The garment bore far too many stripes for a normal mage. 

Bernt stared, nonplussed. It was that Madzhuri “old order” mage that he’d already met twice before. What was he doing here? He smiled in greeting as they approached and offered a small, seated bow, but Dalbrand didn’t appear to notice, turning to Bernt.

“This is Grand Thaumaturge Jopuri of Kalpur,” he introduced the man. “He’s been authorized to witness your procedure by the duke. It was part of the settlement to see you released. He will not be asking any questions.”

“Ah… “ Bernt had never heard of this kind of title before, but the city sounded vaguely familiar, at least. “That’s on the western coast, right?”

“It is,” Jopuri confirmed in his oddly musical accent without elaborating. “It’s nice to see you again, young man. I’m curious to see this new magic of yours. It’s a rare thing, you know, inventing something new. You should be proud!”

“Thanks,” Bernt said, a little confused by the man’s friendliness. If Madzhur had sent a representative to observe him, it was either to gauge him as a threat or to try to recreate his procedure. Watching him work would give them some clues, to be sure, but he couldn’t imagine that they would easily be able to reverse engineer it.

Then again, Jopuri wasn’t a regular mage. Who knew what he might learn from observing a spell? Josie had an ability that would theoretically allow her to recognize spellforms on sight, after all. Should he say something?

Bernt looked over at Dalbrand, but the archmage wasn’t looking his way. Well. There was nothing he could do about it now. In the end, the duke was the one who’d decided to take this risk. He’d have to try to talk to the strange mage later to gauge what he’d learned.

Clearing his throat, he turned to the crowd. “Alright. In case anybody doesn’t know how this works yet—there are risks to this procedure. It hasn’t happened yet, but if either of us makes a serious mistake, your spellcasting could be ruined completely. If that sounds like too great a risk to you, you should leave.”

Bernt didn’t think he would actually cripple anybody—if anything, he was getting better at controlling the hellfire flame. Besides, even if he did, he could always try turning them into a true sorcerer with a spiritual sea. That would allow them to circumvent even this sort of damage. But he wasn’t about to mention that in front of what he had to assume was an enemy. Better to let them assume it was extremely dangerous.

He scanned the crowd, looking for movement. Nobody moved to leave.

“Alright, great. Who’s first?”

Nearly all hands went up eagerly, and two near the back even called out.

He should have expected this, Bernt realized. Everyone here was the sort of person who would knowingly injure themselves to serve a greater purpose—to protect someone, to complete a mission, or just so they wouldn’t let their unit down in a critical moment. Spiritual injuries were rarely suffered all at once. In most cases, the damage was cumulative, growing worse as the mage continued to overtax strained channels repeatedly until natural recovery became impossible. The injury itself was a reflection of the mage’s sense of duty, their uncompromising stubbornness or their lack of respect for their own mortality.

No wonder Renhild wanted them rehabilitated.

When Bernt didn’t immediately choose someone, Dalbrand gestured for one of the mages in the front row to rise and sat down in his spot. The man was an aeromancer who opened a narrow box to reveal a thunderbird’s tailfeather—exactly the same material that Siina the pyromancer had used for her healing investiture.

For a moment, Bernt idly wondered if it was actually part of the man’s architecture, or if he’d chosen it as a sort of good luck charm, but it didn’t matter. He had a lot of burnouts to get through today. Accepting the feather, he placed it into the diagnostic circle and let it unravel as a room full of burnouts, an archmage and a grand thaumaturge—whatever he was—looked on.