Chapter 25 - First Blood

Chapter 25: 25 - First Blood

Adrien waited. He had spent enough time watching the camp to understand one useful thing about bored men: eventually, one of them walked away from everyone else.

It happened near the western edge. One of the sentries pushed himself off a stump, said something to the man beside him, and wandered toward the trees while pulling at the front of his trousers.

Adrien followed him through Absolute Mana Sense, keeping two trunks between them until the man had gone far enough that the campfire could barely reach his back. Umbral Root disappeared from his hand before he moved, the staff breaking apart into drifting specks of mana and leaving him with both hands free.

The sentry stopped beneath a pine.

"Fucking cold tonight," he muttered, fumbling with his belt. "Should’ve taken that blue-haired elf when we caught her, but boss won’t let anyone touch the expensive merchandise."

Adrien stopped above him. He had climbed the neighbouring tree while the man was still walking, using the branches to come around without ever crossing his line of sight, and from up here he could see the camp through the leaves and the top of the man’s head directly beneath him.

The sentry sighed as he started pissing against the roots.

"Been months since I’ve had any fun with the merchandise. What’s the point of catching pretty ones if we’re not allowed to—"

Adrien’s expression hardened.

’Yeah. I’ve heard enough.’

[Frost Lance]

Cold gathered over his palm. Usually the spell formed ahead of him and launched the moment he released it, but Adrien had cast it so many times against the dragon that the structure no longer felt fixed in his head. He held the mana back this time, shortened the lance, compressed the point and kept the ice connected to his hand.

A narrow blade of frost took shape between his fingers, and the sentry never looked up.

Adrien dropped. One arm went around the man’s mouth from behind, and the Frost Lance went under his ribs before he had time to make more than a muffled sound. Adrien drove it upward, felt the body seize against him, then held on until the struggling stopped.

It happened quickly, much more quickly than Adrien had expected. He lowered the man rather than letting him fall, though the corpse still slipped from his grip at the end and pitched forward, and his face landed directly in the puddle he had made seconds earlier.

Adrien stared down at him for a moment.

’Well. That’s fucking undignified.’

The Frost Lance dissolved from his hand. For several seconds he stood there waiting for something to happen inside his head. Guilt. Panic. His stomach turning. Anything that would tell him crossing the line between planning to kill someone and actually doing it was supposed to feel different.

It did feel different, and he was not sure what to call it.

’Didn’t exactly feel good.’

His eyes went toward the camp. Metal cages sat beyond the fires. Ariane was inside one. The elves were inside another, being discussed like expensive livestock by men who apparently argued over who got to use them before they were sold.

Adrien looked back at the corpse.

’Then again, I wonder how many people you’ve done that to.’

That made the question a good deal easier. He dragged the body deeper between the trees and worked quickly. Most of the men in the camp dressed similarly. Heavy dark coats, rough trousers, boots made for mud, and hoods or scarves pulled high against the cold. There was no proper uniform, but there was enough of a look to them that an unfamiliar coat would stand out more than an unfamiliar face.

Fortunately, he had no intention of showing his face.

"Sorry," he murmured while pulling the dead man’s coat free. "Actually, no. I’m really not."

The clothes smelled terrible, which was probably useful. Adrien put the coat over his own, pulled the hood forward and wrapped the man’s scarf high enough to cover everything below his eyes. He took the knife from the belt as well, then went through the pockets and came out with coins, a flint, and a key.

Adrien turned the last one over in his palm. Iron, simple, three teeth.

’There we go.’

He had seen the guards beside the cages carrying similar ones. Whether this opened the cages themselves or something nearby, he would find out later.

Adrien left the body hidden beneath a fallen branch and headed back toward the camp. Nobody stopped him, which was almost insulting.

He walked with his shoulders slightly forward and his head down, copying the loose, tired pace he had watched half the camp use for the last hour. One man passed within three paces of him and barely looked.

Absolute Mana Sense did the rest. Adrien knew where everyone around him was without turning his head. A man coming around a tent to his left. Two behind him. Another sleeping inside a shelter ahead. He adjusted before anyone had a reason to wonder why.

’Forty people and apparently nobody knows everybody. That’s convenient.’

He crossed the perimeter. The black resin burned inside the nearest metal burner, sending its thin grey smoke into the air, and from this side Adrien could feel the structure inside it much more clearly.

The camp really was sitting inside a bubble. Outside it the forest was alive. Inside, almost nothing with animal instinct wanted to come near.

Adrien kept walking until he found an empty place beside one of the smaller fires, lowered himself onto a log and rested his hands between his knees. The cages were less than forty paces away, and Ariane could not see his face from here, which was exactly how he wanted it.

He closed his eyes for half a second.

[Winter’s Reach]

The spell unfolded quietly, with no sudden explosion of ice this time. Adrien had learned something while fighting the dragon: Winter’s Reach did not need to arrive all at once. The domain cared about being established and maintained, and how quickly he fed mana into it was his choice.

So he fed it slowly. Cold slipped into the soil beneath his boots, and the first layer spread under the camp thin enough that nobody noticed. Mana moved outward beneath the tents and fires, reaching toward the perimeter while Adrien held the entire structure in his head.

And the temperature began to fall.

A cup left beside one tent gathered a pale rim around its edge. Moisture on a wooden post turned cloudy. The grass nearest Adrien stiffened beneath people’s boots without becoming visibly white.

He kept feeding it. Slowly. Carefully. Winter’s Reach expanded through the camp while forty men continued eating, drinking and talking inside it, and Adrien rubbed his hands together whenever someone passed, pretending to feel the same cold he was creating.

Footsteps approached from behind. Three presences, and Adrien recognised them before he turned his head. The same three men he had listened to earlier by the fire.

One dropped onto the other end of Adrien’s log while the second crouched near the flames. The man with the knife sat opposite them and held both hands toward the heat. For a few seconds none of them paid Adrien any attention.

Eventually the one beside him started rubbing his arms.

"Is it me," he said, looking toward the trees, "or is it getting way too cold? It isn’t even winter yet."

...

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