The Diffident Hero - Chapter 14, pt. 2

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“Hold up,” Rich said, a puzzled note in his voice calling Brandon and Lena up short. “Something’s wrong with this trail.”

That was nothing new to Brandon, but he inspected the area anyway. There were tracks all over the place this close to the city.

“What’s the problem?”

The other man stared at the ground with a faint frown creasing his features. “He’s hiding his trail. I can’t tell which way he’s gone anymore.”

“This is a city, it was bound to get harder with the population this place has,” Lena said.

“I expected that, yes.”

They were just inside the city proper. There was no wall to mark the boundary of “city” versus “non-city,” but the road improved from barely more than hard-packed dirt to cobblestone that looked like it actually saw some cleaning now and then. The number of buildings was fast increasing, too. They stood at a crossroads with three directions to choose from before them.

The Diffident Hero - Chapter 14, pt. 1

Sorcha moved like the wind, freed of the constraints of a more human walking speed when she left the others behind. She danced with the breeze as she went, but it was a dance with direction and deadly purpose.

For all that she could move more naturally, she still couldn’t move as fast as she’d have liked; she had to track carefully if she wanted any hope of catching signs of Myra’s passing. Those signs were few and far between, and she spent the first several hours after the separation locating the first of them. It took her so long, she’d started to fear she would find no sign at all.

Her senses were sharp though, and her intuition strong. She quickly decided Myra had not gone the same way as the Necromancer, and so she returned to the site of the ex-guide’s resurrection.

The area was as still and dead as it had been when they’d left hours before, and remained so while she searched for yet more hours to find any sign of where she’d gone. As the time passed, she had to focus her concentration against a rising tide of impatience and anxiety; Myra was as fast as she was. The longer she spent searching, the more impossibly far ahead she got.

The Diffident Hero - Chapter 13, pt. 7

“Alright, it’s settled then,” Brandon said. A sense of calm settled over him at the words. “Rich, you’ll track him and lead us to where he’s holed up and resting. What do we do with him once we have him?”

“Don’t try to kill him,” Sorcha said, which eliminated a faint anxiety he hadn’t been aware he’d felt. “It might not work. It certainly didn’t when Myra attempted it, and we don’t know what other tricks he has up his sleeve.”

“And just because he’s exhausted doesn’t mean he hasn’t set up contingency spells like that resurrection trap.”

He must have paled a bit because Sorcha smiled reassuringly. “I wouldn’t send you on this task if I didn’t think the three of you could handle it. He’s powerful and extremely dangerous, but nobody is infallible. With Rich along, you’ll be fine.”

“Then why not put Rich in charge?”

“Me? Oh no, not on your life. I make a terrible leader, believe me,” Rich protested. “I’m far too headstrong.”

Sorcha broke out in a grin. “Yes, you sure are! Maybe you’ll learn something from Brandon here while he’s learning from you.”

The Diffident Hero, Chapter 13, pt. 6

Plans were quickly hashed out. Sorcha wasted little time, putting Brandon in charge of the Necromancer team, as she called them. Rich accepted the leader assignment without hesitation, almost as if it was a given. Brandon found himself surprised, and if he were honest, a bit apprehensive.

He set that part of his mind aside and concentrated on what needed to be done. They couldn’t hope to take on a powerful necromancer head-on; they’d have to catch him off guard. How do you catch a wizard off guard? he asked himself. Very carefully.

“He just died and came back, that has to tire you out, right?” He couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth.

“I’ve never done it before, so I wouldn’t know,” Sorcha said, “but magic in general is exhausting, and that was some very high-order magic. That’ll be key to dealing with him,” she added with a note of approval in her voice, “so, good observation. He’s going to be off his game, in need of some serious rest. He’s not going to be back to just pick back up where he left off.”

The Diffident Hero - Chapter 13, pt. 5

“We have to get down there,” Rich exclaimed. “He’s gotten too far ahead of us.”

“We can’t just charge in blindly! That’s what Myra tried, and things haven’t gone so well for her,” broke in Lena.

“We don’t even know what’s happened to her!”

“We need a plan if want to do any good against this guy.”

“Hang on, both of you,” Brandon said. “Lena’s right, we do need to have a plan. But Rich is also right. We can’t spend too much time on it. It sounds like if this guy was well-respected enough to be studying necromancy and has gone rogue, he’s really serious trouble. He’s already shown what he’s willing to do, and that was just in a small village. Sorcha?”

She’d been staring intently at the city and their route down to it. She turned her attention back to them at Brandon’s call. “I’d advise you all to take Brandon’s lead on this,” she said. “I’m afraid that this is where we part company.”

Brandon’s mouth dropped open. She smiled at him, with just a touch of regret in her eyes.

“You’re just leaving us?” He was a little stunned, especially after Lena’s own tale.

“I’ll be back as quick as I can, but we have two highly dangerous people on the loose, and as dangerous as this Necromancer is, Myra is much worse. We can’t wait to deal with either of them, and none of you are up to taking on Myra yet.”

The Diffident Hero - Chapter 13, pt. 4

What kind of well-respected wizard would want to study necromancy, and why cause all of this trouble? Brandon tried to keep focused on keeping up, but the questions gnawed at him.

“He stopped here,” Rich said abruptly. He was kneeling in the grass. “Stayed a good fifteen to twenty minutes I’d say, then moved on that way.”

“He knows how far ahead he’s gotten,” Sorcha said, flatly.

“Or he doesn’t care, yeah.”

The spot was a good one for observing the city. It was close enough to see the lay of the land; even as inexperienced as he was with this part of the world, Brandon could make some general observations of the city. It was large, at least by the standards he’d come to recognize since Sorcha brought him away from the familiar world. There was an obvious area of wealth and influence, while most of the city seemed pretty poor.

And most notable, there was a clear line of sight to the graveyard.