~Mirror Reality 34, teleport staging area #1~
A grinning proud smile jumped through the portal with a sword ready to strike - yet the smug smile was soon wiped off of Mathesons face.
Matheson found himself in a large room with Lannister and Anya - right before everything turned black.
The last thing he saw was a confused look on Lannisters face; the last thing he heard was Anya saying “What the f-”.
Suddenly, reality twisted and bent, the world around him reverberated and waved wildly as he felt weightless for just a single moment.
Next thing he realised was that everything turned black and cold. His body was fine, just heavily disorientated.
He almost fell over as he felt dizzy and was in complete darkness; the ground felt hard and cold compared to the forest.
After he found his feet, he took out his luminous orb - it was not very bright as he required Hodley to charge it with mana, and it hadn’t been replenished in quite some time, but it was bright enough to see that he was in a completely sealed, cylindrical stone room.
The roof was higher than he could see with his dismal light. There were no doors and no windows, but there was a faint cold air drifting in from above, so he at least could breathe, though it smelt stale and musky.
There was nothing in the room except a small round stone which was inbuilt into part of the wall, along with a small hole on the opposite side of the room.
He furrowed his brows in anger as he looked around.
He stashed his luminous orb back into his inventory to save its remaining charge and went to sit down on the round stone.
“Fucking Hodley.” he thought as he sat in the darkness.
It seems Hodley got some bad information or simply made a mistake. Either way, he blamed Hodley for his current circumstances.
His captors didn’t immediately execute him, so that was a good sign, and he decided to just wait - though it wasn’t like he had other options.
“Clearly they’re not done with me. Not yet at least.” he thought.
He had no bargaining chips other than his wealth and his noble status, but he himself didn’t hold those in high regard as he pursued power instead.
Slowly his anger was building, but instead of releasing it in a rage, he decided to channel it into a workout as he began doing pushups in the cold darkness.
He had learnt to build himself up instead of tear everything else down - not that there was anything to tear down in here anyway.
“...the cold will feel nice soon.” he whispered to himself as his chest muscles began to squeeze.
~Losla~
With the signs of skeletons, the mage hunters quickly went to search the west forests of Losla - that was the way the skeletons were heading after all.
Lieutenant Marsh was wiping blood off his armour as he heard reports of skeletons in Losla, and a cunning smile grew on his face.
He was already having a good day today, as many of the guards in the adventurer guild decided to rise up against him and his mage hunters, so they were cut down like grass.
Quelling a revolt was enjoyable, however it was nothing compared to finding traces of the necromancer, and this was his opportunity for advancement through the ranks.
After the situation was stable at the guild, he dashed down the hill and to the west side of Losla, finding the skeleton corpses as well as the mage hunter who slayed them.
He interviewed the mage hunter, wasting no time, and he soon found out some intriguing, or at least some strange information.
- The skeletons were running out of Losla: what were they doing inside Losla anyway? Why would a necromancer put them in there only to have them run out again? Shouldn’t they be attacking Losla if anything?
- The skeletons didn’t attack anyone. Usually necromancers' skeletons would cull all the surrounding lands and collect bones for their master without rest.
- Some of the skeletons appeared to have armour but none of them carried weapons. This was unheard of. Their records stated that necromancer skeletons nearly always had weapons, but never armour.
- The skeletons were all at such a low level, and there were only five of them. The lowest skeletons ever recorded were in their thirties. It made no sense.
- The skeletons ran out of Losla shortly after the powerful mana fluctuation, which they were already familiar with: a sign of the variant rebellion. But were these events connected, and if so, how were they connected? Perhaps teleport magic somehow summoned undead?
- Then the most strange part was that one skeleton which turned around and stared at the mage hunter before it was summarily executed. Not normal undead behaviour at all. Marsh asked the soldier about this multiple times before he accepted it.
After lieutenant Marsh got every single piece of information out of the mage hunter, he sent the mage hunter back to the capital to be punished for not keeping a live specimen.
Next, he had another soldier gather the bones into a pile and create a magic time-pause barrier around them, to protect them for analysis later.
Using an expensive long-distance communication crystal, Marsh contacted his commander, who in turn contacted theirs, and eventually he received word that now there were seven thousand mage hunters coming to Losla: a whole division.
There were also two more divisions coming to search the entire region.
With the standard procedures completed, Marsh could now start his own investigation.
He went back to the association and began to go over the facts, along with every other piece of information about Losla, with scrupulous attention to every little detail.
Marsh was also known as the inquisitor after all, and he planned to live up to that name.
Under his command were currently four squads. He did initially send some to Tolgard, but he decided to keep most of his men with him.
Currently he had one squad searching Losla, another searching the west, and another searching the south-west near the stink rat marsh for any other necromancy signs.
Since the skeletons came from within Losla, there were likely to be traces of the necromancer somewhere in the small town.
A fourth squad was with him in the guild, but at the moment they were mostly focused on removing dead bodies and making sure the building wasn’t about to fall down; the revolt had caused serious structural damage.
Even the timing of the guards’ revolt seemed peculiar, and Marsh didn’t believe that these events were separate or coincidental.
Three big events happened all within an hour: The Losla guard revolt, the rebel mana signature, and the skeletons running out of town.
He was sure they were connected somehow, and he believed it was just a matter of time before he found out.
Suddenly a mage hunter entered the room and stood at attention.
“Report.” Marsh said in an annoyed tone, not even looking up from the paperwork and notes on his desk.
“The guards which didn’t revolt have been relieved of their duties for the time being. We have control of Losla. Viladore survived the fight and is imprisoned but he wishes to leave urgently. All the other guild staff have been sent home, though there are some who lived here who we have relocated into tents in the courtyard.”
Marsh looked across his notes for a moment and scratched his chin.
“Viladore… he reported a thief right before this all happened,” he thought for a moment before he looked up from his notes.
“Why did Sullivan attack him?” Marsh asked.
“We will find out.” the mage hunter nodded, but before he could turn to leave, Marsh stopped him.
“Wait. I will find out for myself,” he grinned, “I haven’t used my tools in a while anyway.”
Some time later, screams began to ring out from the ruins of the association; Viladore’s desperate screams.
It wasn’t long before they became coarse guttural screams that no longer even sounded human.
