A Soldier's Life-Chapter 284: Revelations

Chapter 284: Revelations

It wasn’t long before our group had ventured beyond the surrounding farmland and headed into shrub and bushlands. At midmorning, I was riding next to Glasha, whose excitement was contagious. She had Benito and Mateo talking energetically about finding some ancient weapons of the giants and wielding them in battle.

It passed over both their heads that they would have no way to lift them, much less wield them. I had seen a storm giant’s blade firsthand, and it was longer than both of them end to end. I also didn’t know how well artifacts would hold up over five thousand years. Normal weapons would be a pile of rust by now.

I thought I would use the riding time productively. “Glasha, can you teach me your language?” I asked. Raelia turned around in her saddle, her face clearly annoyed, before turning away.

She laughed. “The orc tongue is an amalgamation of a dozen different tongues. Unlike the elves or Telhians, we have no formal education across the Caliphate. With how much the language has morphed, I am sure I would have difficulty talking to a Boutan orc from five thousand years ago.”

“Still, I would like to pick up a little just so I know when I am being insulted, at least,” I replied seriously.

She laughed again. “There are more ways to insult your opponent than praise them in my language.” Seeing that I was still serious, she shrugged. “Fine. Be warned, I have been told by other humans that our language will corrupt and rot your mind.” We began with a basic vocabulary and then progressed to verbs.

The only dangers around us were prairie dogs, and that was more for the horses, since they could accidentally step into one of the burrows and break a leg. By her frequent glances, I could tell Raelia was upset with me for not asking her to teach me the orc language. But learning from a native and a linguist was too good an opportunity to pass up. Baldo even picked up on Raelia’s mood and was eyeing me with disapproval—that was easily assuaged with a tossed piece of raw bear meat.

Around midday, we stopped to eat in the middle of a sea of knee-high grass. At least it was early in the season and the grass was not high enough to hide serious threats. Dismounting, I sent out an earth pulse and found nothing of interest.

Glasha was orienting herself as Maveith prepared food for everyone. He had slid into the role of the group’s cook, and he enjoyed doing it even though he ate very little of what he prepared. He lacked the skill of Lirkin, but it was good fare, and he was good at balancing his seasoning. In return, I gave him the thermal stone to carry. 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

Glasha closed her eyes, and I could tell she was using a spell form. Maybe something similar to Castile’s all-seeing eye. When she opened her eyes again, she nodded and smiled. “We will start our search two miles northeast of here and move due north for ten miles, then turn northeast for ten, and then repeat for a few days.” We were going to zigzag northeast then. I just nodded. The length of each leg we traveled would be imprecise, but this job was just for ten days, and we were moving in the right direction.

The rest of the day was pretty monotonous. We would walk the horses one hundred yards; I would pulse earth speak, wait for Glasha to confirm which direction she wanted to head, and then do it again. We generally followed her original plan, moving mainly northeast, but she seemed to have gut feelings that she tried to follow. As we moved, I continued my language lessons, and the others formed a perimeter to watch for danger.

We had no luck that first day and camped in the open plains. Glasha only had a bedroll and no tent, but was accustomed to sleeping under the stars. I paired with Mateo for the first half of the night watch, and Raelia paired with Maveith for the second half. Raelia was the only other person in our group who had good low-light vision besides me.

I spent my time in the dreamscape practicing my Orcish, but I infused my manifestation of Raelia with the orc language I was learning from Glasha. Truthfully, Glasha was a much better teacher, encouraging and patient, while my manifestation of Raelia was arrogant and mocking whenever I made a mistake—not that I made many in the dreamscape.

When I woke, Maveith cooked a feast for everyone, and we resumed our search. Glasha was suitably impressed with my overnight improvement in the orc language, which still sounded like French to me. There were even some words derived from Latin. I found my first buried treasure midmorning of the second day of searching: a rusty scimitar buried a few inches deep. It broke apart as Benito excavated it.

“No, not old enough,” Glasha said, disappointed. “And not deep enough either. Ancient structures of the Titans are usually buried a few feet below the surface in similar terrain.”

My next discovery was a partial skeleton alongside some coins. The skeleton bore no discernible marks or weapons but could have been dragged here by a predator. When I informed Benito about the coins, he became enthusiastic in his digging, unearthing twenty-two copper coins and eighteen silver ones.

Glasha took the coins and cleaned one of the silver ones, as the copper was too corroded to clean easily. The mostly black coin revealed its secrets to Glasha. “Stamped with Supreme Cleric Khavgu’s mark. He guided the Caliphate some two hundred years ago. Not what we are searching for.” She handed the coins back to an eager Benito.

Mateo and Benito worked together to clean the coins and split them as we continued. It wasn’t long before Mateo had a proposition. “Eryk, you can find these coins so easily out here. There have to be dozens of abandoned villages and towns in the world with thousands of coins lost.”

“No, Mateo. I am not interested in becoming a treasure hunter,” I replied dismissively.

“But we will do all the digging!” Benito offered in a pleading tone.

Trying not to dampen their enthusiasm, I offered a compromise and reminded them that our goal was Maveith’s sister’s rescue. “I will consider it. We have other goals currently.” I nodded to Maveith, who had been getting anxious at our slow pace. To distract him, we were all playing checkers with him at night. He was not showing his normal enthusiasm for winning, and I reassured him that we would get to his sister soon. I did not mention the possibility that she might not be alive. If that was the case, then vengeance was on the table.

My next discovery had me somewhat in awe. I circled a long area of the plains, pulsing my earth speak. Everyone was mounted, following my movements and anxiously awaiting my pronouncement. “There is a tunnel at the extreme range of my ability, but I don’t know where it leads,” I finally said. This was only a partial truth, because at the extreme range of my earth speak was a skeleton of a dragon.

I was tracing rodent tunnels that wove through the bones. The grave stretched more than two hundred feet, and the tail appeared to curl around the body. Scattered among the remains were great scales—unmistakably draconic. If dragon bones truly never decayed, then these remains could be unimaginably old. Artifacts from a battle five thousand years past were found just a few feet beneath the surface—so how ancient must something be to lie fifty feet below the plains? That was the dilemma: they were fifty feet down. And getting to them was going to be difficult.

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I planned to research dragons when I had the chance to see if an expedition to recover the bones or scales would be worth the effort. As we left the site, Raelia eyed me curiously while we followed the orc cleric to the next site. I might have shown too much awe in mapping the extent of the skeleton. I looked for landmarks and mentally cataloged them in case I returned.

Late in the day, the sun was particularly hot. We were sweating as we looked for a place to camp for the night. Glasha suddenly spoke. “There is water that way, about two miles. A small gully with some aurochs. The horses need the water, no?”

“How many aurochs?” I asked, knowing the wild bulls were ornery beasts.

“I saw six, one bull,” she said. I nodded, thinking it was manageable.

“Raelia, if it charges, fireball the head to blind it. I will take down the bull quickly, and the heifers will flee,” I said.

“Heifers?” Blaze asked, unfamiliar with the term.

“Females,” I corrected. I had worked on a dairy farm one summer. Before coming here, it was the hardest work I had done in my life.

We didn’t need to worry about the aurochs, as they spilled out of the gully as we approached, trotting off into the plains, being urged on by the bull. The water wasn’t running clear, but it was the best we had for the horses. Glasha had healing magic, so I was not overly concerned. A few young trees lined the stream, cutting across the plains, and we set camp under one of them. I walked the camp with earth speak, but did not find anything worrying beneath us.

After our dinner, Blaze asked Glasha some pointed questions. “If you are a chronicler, why did you have to hire adventurers?”

Glasha was chewing on some fatty bacon as she talked. “The orcs only record the history of the present. My sect does not care about the past or the future. I save my coin and search for the past on my own when time permits. My pursuits are frowned upon by others in my sect as a waste of my time.”

“Do you know about the Titan city near Macha?” Benito asked. I rolled my eyes at Benito. I had asked him not to talk about it. He winced under my stare, having suddenly remembered.

“The excavation of Atlantium?” Glasha replied, unfazed. “I am aware. If it is Atlantium, and I have my doubts that it is, it will draw more than the elves to it in time. It served as a good distraction for the Supreme to call for a crusade and reclaim lost land.”

“I heard the Caliphate lost a great warlord riding a roc in the conquest,” I said offhandedly.

“How do you ride a stone?” Benito asked.

Raelia laughed. “A roc is a dragon-sized raptor. The second-deadliest beast in the air.”

Glasha was nodding, studying me. “Warlord Trakor was killed in the campaign. He stole the egg from Talon Fang Peak far to the north before his Warlord Trial. He raised the beast from a hatchling and used its strength to become one of the four strongest warlords in the Caliphate. He used that influence to assume command of the crusade to reclaim the lost lands of his ancestors.”

Glasha smirked. “He crashed his roc, aptly named Chaostail, on the expedition and died. The clerics with him managed to heal Chaostail, but without Warlord Trakor to handle him, Chaostail attacked the fleet, throwing the crusade into, well, chaos.” Glasha smiled at her description of the events, clearly not fond of the slain warlord.

“Was that the only roc in the Caliphate?” I asked. It was I who had caused the massive avian to crash by removing part of its wing when it attacked in a dive.

“There are none that I am aware of, but there could be one being raised in secret. A hundred young warriors head to Talon Fang Peak every winter to try and repeat the feat of Trakor. The few that I know to have returned have come back empty-handed.”

I was curious about the ripples my actions had caused but too worried to inquire further, in case I accidentally revealed my participation. In the end, the orcs had captured Varvao despite my actions, and the western part of the Telhian Empire had been annexed by the Caliphate. We settled into our bedrolls soon after, with our watches remaining the same. Raelia seemed to have forgiven me for letting the boy necromancer go, but she was focused on keeping Maveith in good spirits.

Although Neptune’s Tear was absent tonight, the stars were bright and gave the landscape an eerie glow. I slept restlessly after my watch, waking every twenty minutes. I thought it was the running water nearby that had me on edge. Mercifully, dawn came without incident. Benito had come up with a thousand questions for Glasha about rocs by breakfast, almost none of which she could answer. It appeared the young Benito fancied himself riding atop a dragon-sized eagle one day.

We followed the water source at Glasha’s direction, and I pulsed earth speak when told. I had thought this was going to be a quick and easy assignment, but if we never found anything, it was going to take the entire ten days. Blaze whistled twice from the front, and everyone immediately went on alert. Blaze hissed back, “I don’t know what it is, but it hasn’t moved.”

I rode up next to him, producing my spyglass. By the water’s edge was an odd quadruped. Its large body looked feline, but the torso of a woman rose from the beast’s frame. Glasha motioned for the spyglass, and I handed it to her. She studied the distant creature for a few minutes before handing it back. “It is a lamia. Malicious creatures of deceit and guile, but it looks like the basilisk already got to it. We should head east. Hopefully, that will keep us out of the basilisk’s territory.”

Mateo, not understanding the danger, said, “How do we even know it is still around?”

“Basilisks don’t abandon their victims. It will be back to snack on that one,” I stated for her. Glasha nodded in confirmation. At least we hadn’t wandered near the burrow of the basilisk.

We took a wide route around the statue of the lamia. I didn’t know much about lamias other than that they were shape changers and not native to this continent. I recalled from the bestiary I had copied from the Mage College that they were from the Scorching Waste and preferred the taste of human flesh.

“How is there a lamia here?” I asked Glasha after I felt we had safely distanced ourselves.

“Warlord Karnak tried to breed them a decade ago. Don’t ask me why but the rumor was he had a fetish for the creatures. Karnak was killed by his lamia slaves, and a dozen of the vile creatures escaped; all were thought slain over the years. And yes, that statue could be a decade old. But I do not feel the need to investigate.” I nodded at her explanation. I also did not feel a need to investigate.

Three days and a hundred miles later, I finally found something worthwhile. It was like a bright beacon reflecting my earth pulse. The artifact clearly had synergy with the earth affinity. Mateo and Benito eagerly went about digging up the artifact, which was buried beneath thick sod. It was a few feet down and it took them some time to reach it, but Mateo proudly held up the metallic pauldrons, sized for a large man or orc.

They were easily cleaned, and the steel matched that of the dungeon-forged blades. Glasha was reverently running her hands over them. Even if they were not what Glasha was seeking, the artifact should be enough to fund dozens of future expeditions.

All our eyes focused on Glasha as she studied and completely cleaned the artifact. “Is that prize enough for you to return triumphant?” I asked hopefully after letting her admire the piece.

“Yes, it is proof. This is from a powerful extinct dungeon. It is over five thousand years old,” she said happily. “A great orc warrior probably wore it on the battlefield here.”

“How do you know that?” Blaze asked, confused but interested.

“I just cast the revelation spell on it,” she said with a tusky smile. I knew there was a spell that mimicked the revelation scroll used by the Adventurers Guild Halls. This unassuming orc cleric had apparently learned it. There were several things in my dimensional space whose functions I still had no idea about. Maybe I could get a little more out of this job …

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