4.9 The First Step

The cultist’s name was Ranna. She was the same woman who had originally found him at the confluence, together with a dwarf and a human man both of whom Bernt had killed. She had left them to die while she ran off to get her master to ambush him. He told Song about it the moment he recognized her, of course, but the cultivator hadn’t cared at all what the woman’s past might be – Ruzinia had told him to save her, and so he did. He hauled her back most of the way on his own using some kind of spell to reduce her weight as he carried her, but she stumbled into the temple on her own feet.

Bernt would have rather left her out there in the wilderness, but he knew better than to argue. A living cultist could provide a lot more information than a dead one. There was no telling what they might learn once they got a healing potion into her. She might know of other cells of cultists in Besermark, or where the Duergar were planning to strike next. Even some clearer information about the demons they served might be useful – even though he knew Zijeregh was already dead. 

Still, his skin crawled every time he looked at the woman. She’d tried to kill him, and her group had probably been the same one that ambushed them on the road. What kind of person joined a demonic cult? Why did they do it? Was she a fanatic, or was she deranged? Or, maybe the demons had simply promised her power. Whatever it was, Bernt was going to have to watch his back.

“The demons lied,” Ranna said, her voice hollow. She was sitting on a bed in one of the tiny rooms in the back of the temple complex. “They promised… but they’re all dead. We’re all dead, and it was for nothing. All lies. I knew that, when the imp turned on me. I thought I’d be safe when he found me, but he wanted to trade me to some kind of warlock. Said he’d get a reward from his mistress.”

Bernt knew that Zijeregh was dead, so the cultist’s kidnapper probably wouldn’t have gotten anything. He’d already heard this story, and it hadn’t made any more sense the first time. Maybe Jori or one of her demons would know something – she’d been recruiting, after all. What drew Bernt’s attention more than the story was the Ruzinian priests.

As she spoke, Doreen and the broad-shouldered Illurian priestess gently treated her wounds with the same care they would offer anybody else. That bothered Bernt on a level he couldn’t explain. She was an enemy and a cultist – exactly the kind of person that the Invigilation was supposed to fight.The Illurian carefully removed crusted makeshift bandages and cleaned her wounds, Doreen handed the woman a healing potion and Song went to fetch her a washcloth, a large bowl of water and something to wear.

“A demon, you say?” Doreen asked, clearly more to distract the woman from her obvious pain than to get information out of her. “How did you escape?”

“Well, I wasn’t about to let some warlock take my soul,” she said, handing back the empty vial. “I killed the damned thing. Put my knife right in his eye, the little shit. But there was fire – so much of it.” She stopped and stared at her stump, which ended in an eye-watering black and red burn wound that wept blood and pus in equal measure. A bit of burnt bone stuck out of the end.

“And then you called out to Ruzinia?” Doreen prompted her.

“Heh. No, not really. I killed one of Varamemnon’s servants.” Ranna rasped. “There was no rescue coming from them. I was going to die on the mountainside. Slowly. So, I called out to all the gods, by name. But I didn’t expect… this. I wasn’t calling for help. I cursed them. Thought they would make it quick, at least.”

“Ruzinia is not a goddess of judgment, nor of justice.” Doreen chided her gently. “Her purpose is simple. Where hope dies, she rekindles it. You called her name in despair, and so she heard you.”

The woman looked up at Doreen warily, but she didn’t respond. Her burns were starting to take on a less-angry shade of red and her eyes looked slightly less addled as the potion began to take effect.

Bernt cleared his throat. The woman’s head jerked up as if she’d forgotten he was there and her mouth worked for a moment. It was clear that she remembered who he was, though she hadn’t said so. She was obviously terrified of him, and that suited Bernt just fine.

“I have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind, about your cult,” he said, his voice hard. “I assume some of them were involved at Loamfurth. Do you have people in Teres? And what about the Duergar? I assume you would have been working with them closely – did they tell you anything about their movements?”

Song, who had just arrived with a washbasin, gave Bernt a reproachful look and shifted slightly, subtly interposing himself between Ranna and Bernt.

“There will be time to talk later, if you wish.” He said gently. “You are safe here, and free to stay or leave at any time. I would recommend you get cleaned up and rest for now.”

Then he turned, grabbed Bernt by the elbow and firmly led him out into the courtyard, leaving her alone with the priestesses. As soon as they were out of earshot, he stopped and met Bernt’s eyes. “This place is a temple, not a prison. You should watch your words more carefully than this.”

Bernt ground his teeth. That woman was an enemy – she’d tried to kill him, and they’d saved her anyway. Worse, now that they had her, they wanted to keep him from getting critical information out of her? It was crazy! He opened his mouth to say as much, but Song’s grip on his elbow tightened in warning. 

“Control yourself! Your actions dishonor the celestial immortal.” He emphasized that last part as if to force its meaning into Bernt’s skull. As the words sank in, Bernt’s anger evaporated and his breath caught, teeth audibly clicking shut.

He’d forgotten where he was. Ruzinia was essentially the goddess of salvation – of sanctuary. If he turned Ranna’s rescue into something that more closely resembled capture and an interrogation session, the goddess would take offense. Especially here.

It was a mistake he would never have made in another temple. Even at the relatively humble temple of Garrus in Halfbridge, Bernt had taken extreme care not to give offense. The general appearance of this place and the casual kindness he’d experienced from Ruzinia’s clerics had lowered his guard, but this was the only temple of a goddess. A temple that he’d very nearly just desecrated by undermining its very purpose.

“I’m sorry,” he said, speaking as much to Ruzinia as to Song. “I’ll leave her alone. But we do need to discover what she knows, somehow. It could be critical for the Conclave and it could save thousands of lives wherever the Duergar plan to strike next.”

Song nodded placidly. “You are welcome to ask her. Just not like that – and certainly not today.”

Bernt shook his head, thinking through the problem as he spoke. “I’m going find Torvald. I should have asked him to talk to her in the first place. He understands what’s at stake, and it’s better if he hears it from her directly. He’ll be the one to bring whatever he learns to the Conclave, anyway, unless you want to do it. Nobody likes second-hand sources.”

The cultist was a distraction – one that might very nearly have just gotten him killed. Torvald would be better equipped to handle her. From now on, he’d stay as far away from her as he could.

Torvald was easy to find, fortunately, having already turned in for the night. He readily agreed to speak with Ranna as Bernt had guessed he would, and just a few minutes later Bernt found himself alone once more in his own room, peeling blood-crusted socks from his overtaxed feet.

It was getting late, but he still had one more thing to do. He dug all his magical materials out of his bag and laid them out in front of him. He had his coal grass florets, a bit of bark from the burning trees, a worn down chunk of burnt termite clay, a small antler and a feather. The last one – a tail feather from an odd flaming bird – had been burning when he’d collected it, but it had gone out at some point in the weeks since. Still, Bernt could feel the mana inside it. Maybe it was a little weaker than before, but he couldn’t be sure without having another one to compare it to. It would still work, if he could come up with a way to consume it. He didn’t really want to try eating it, but if it came down to that, he’d grind it up.

For now, he would stick to the coal grass.

Relaxing, he allowed his mana to leak out into his flesh. He could feel the heat radiating from him now, though it was still more subtle than it should be.

Selecting a stalk of grass, Bernt put it in his mouth and chewed, focusing inward. Mana coursed through his spirit unconsciously in a complex pattern, looping out from his spiritual sea into the oddly organic-seeming sorcerous portions into the smoother, more structured channels on his left side and back again.

Swallowing, Bernt pushed the mana in his spirit to go faster. As he did so, he locked his attention to his spiritual sea. Just like the first time he’d tried this, he felt warmth radiating from his stomach. Back then, he’d assumed that a spiritual stomach would work much the same as a regular one. You put something in, and it does the rest. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. Jori had described the feeling of absorbing new power, even just small slivers of it, as intensely satisfying. Bernt hadn’t felt anything like that, so far. Besides that, there was Song’s reference to “refining energies” in the spiritual sea to explore, though he wasn’t sure if that was necessarily related to what he was trying to do right now.

Focusing on the warm sensation, Bernt realized that it didn’t suffuse the entirety of the dense nest of spiritual channels that sat at his core. Instead, it was concentrated at the top, among a handful of branching channels that curled through where his physical stomach would be.

It was as good a place to start as any.

Experimentally, Bernt tried simply willing the warmth to spread down. Nothing happened. Next, he manually circulated mana through the spot. That worked in the sense that he could direct his mana to flow precisely through those few channels – but that didn’t actually do anything noticeable. Next, he tried stopping and reversing the flow of his mana through his spirit, which also didn’t produce any results beyond the fact that it was unexpectedly uncomfortable.

Fighting back his frustration, Bernt took a deep breath and tried to consider the problem more academically. He wasn’t trying to absorb mana, so why should moving his mana around do anything? He wanted more magical potential – the stuff that held mana, and allowed him to channel it.

Whatever it was he needed to do, it had to be something a sorcerer could do. Direct mana manipulation wasn’t something a sorcerer would necessarily be able to do – not unless they were also mageborn, blessed with the ability to sense mana. He needed to think more like a sorcerer.

Taking a deep breath, Bernt found the branching channels where the warm sensation was centered and followed them down. He tried to trace their exact shape – how they connected to other channels and the spiritual sea in general. The absurdly complex spiritual organ didn’t make it easy. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he spent untangling it, but eventually he found something. While most of the channels connected to others that eventually led out to the rest of his mana network, one of them was different. It was a thin little thing that wound its way through his core only to loop back around, connecting almost back to its point of origin right over his stomach. 

Bernt couldn’t read the specific winding pattern by feel, but it felt like some kind of glyph. And, most curiously of all, no mana ran through it that he could sense.

Experimentally, Bernt forced some mana through the odd loop. When nothing happened that time, he wasn’t discouraged. He got excited. 

Changing his focus, he tried to open the channel itself. Nothing happened for a long second, but then it twitched fitfully. It felt like trying to flex a muscle in his leg after it had fallen asleep. In a flash, heat was pulled down into it and Bernt sighed in relief as the sensation hit him. Warmth radiated out from his core, circulating through his entire spirit and warming him from the inside out.

It was like curling up under a blanket in front of a fire in the middle of winter and sipping on a hot cup of tea. Knotted muscles in his back and shoulders released all at once, and even the pain in his feet felt far away. He’d done it.

Before long the sense of warmth faded and Bernt reached for another stalk of coal grass. Then he put it back down, reached into his bag and pulled out his notes along with a pencil. He needed to record his results.