After that bizarre introduction to the camp Dustan, Rico and the other new recruits were introduced to their sleeping quarters by a jittery and high-strung man by the name of Dex who muttered with fervour, for several days, about how his inventory check of the medical supplies came up short. Their first night at camp Dustan and Rico found beds where the male/female dividing wall had a hole they could talk to each other through and they talked.
"Why would that woman have a Dwarven tomahawk? I thought they were sacred" Dustan had asked her while discussing the day's events.
"You can talk about odd weapons, carrying that thing you call a knife around" Rico had retorted, pointing to weapon Dustan had clipped to his belt.
At Vocans Dustan, like all the other summoners, had been given a large, green scrying stone for the purpose of seeing through the eyes of his demon. In a moment of ingenuity, Dustan had taken the stone to a gemcutter in Corcillum, who fashioned the large stone into a knife blade. If scrying in combat, Dustan could use the stone itself as a weapon to defend himself.
"I wouldn't call the stone a very useful weapon" Dustan had retorted "The gem would probably break if hit the wrong way and then I would be without a weapon or a way to see though my demons eyes"
Rico still thought it was pretty genius.
In the passing weeks the new recruits settled into life on the frontier. Every morning at six they would all, save for those who had pulled night watch, be woken and set to work around the camp. The red and white of the kings solders uniforms blurred with the blue, red and gold of the battlemages as the new recruits rushed to their scheduled duties. Rico one day overheard Sakina bluntly breaking the news to Dex that she was responsible for the missing medicine over breakfast one day, with Dex's reaction being something she considered a highlight for the week.
The woman Sakina, strangely enough, did not speak to either Dustan or Rico again after the first night. Keeping to herself and avoiding attention. Dustan didn't concern himself much with he issue but Rico constantly prodded him with questions and theories about the woman, each one more outlandish than the last.
Life for the most part was slow and tense for those few weeks. Dustan, Rico and the other battlemages would work side by side with the regular soldiers; cleaning out the trenches surrounding the encampment, doing sentry duty at the large watchtowers or along the camp perimeter and keeping the muskets, cannons and other weapons clean and functional.
Weeks stretched on and Rico had trouble adjusting. Rico had never enjoyed routine, not here or at Vocan's. Back at home, in the north, Rico didn't have any schedules or any of this pompous crap to deal with. If she was hungry she would eat something, if she was tired she slept, if she wanted to hunt or explore the forests and snowfields, Rico would do so.
Rico missed the north. She was so uncomfortable here in the steaming hot south. To warm and humid for her liking.
To take her mind off the homesickness she messed with peoples heads, she joked and acted like a fool. But Rico enjoyed it. One thing Rico enjoyed was having people try to figure out her gender. Rico was female, but her appearance was so gender neutral that most people couldn't tell what she was. Most mistook her for a guy due to her more reckless, outgoing nature and general fooling around.
Dustan knew, but no one else other than her fellow Vocans students knew exactly what her gender was. She liked it that way, gave her another way to screw with peoples heads. But downsides were it added to rumours that she was a freak.
Rico had hoped to escape that once she graduated from the Vocans. The constant looks from strangers, the underlying air of judgment that surrounded her constantly. A heavy fog that sometimes clouded genuinely nice people from view. She had driven away those who could be good friends before.
And the claims she was a half elf. That was what stung.
She knew elves back home. Her village of Erebus was right between the borders of Hominium and the lands of the elven clans. She knew elves and had often travelled into their borders and tribes. She had met one of the elven chieftains. Seen the war elks with their sharpened antlers and even caught a distant glimpse of the great oaks.
So when she went the Vocans and had heard that Hominium had declared war on the elves... well that had been a shock. Suddenly people took her silver hair and pale skin as a sign that she was an elf and with hatred in Hominium growing towards the tribes of the north her life became much harder.
Sheppard had been the worst. Not the most skilled of the battlemage recruits by far, but he had a savage ruthlessness in combat. One that got him through the final tournament at Vocans with a very high score. Rico remembered how the savage prig had nearly killed Dustan's Barkling with his demon, a high level Chupacabra given to him by his parents. During her fight with Sheppard she was happy to say that she was kicking his ass.
But then he sent his Chupacabra away from its fight with Silkuras, directing it to attack her. The teachers had stopped the fight, but not before Sheppard's creepy lizard had jabbed its fangs into her arm and poisoned her.
Almost a month in the infirmary recovering from the poison as well as severe blood loss. Being the rich bastard that he was, Sheppard got away with only a minor punishment for what was attempted murder. The teachers knew this, but Sheppard's family line was powerful and close the the king, owning lots of land in central Hominium. They couldn't do anything without the chance that Sheppard's parents might try to shut down Vocans, or have some of the teachers fired.
Rico knew they couldn't have even if they wanted too. The Vocans battlemages was too important to the war effort against the orcs. But the teachers wouldn't take the risk. Besides, who cared about the bizarre crazy person.
She hadn't done exceptionally well in most parts of Vocans. Combat training was painful, Demonology made her head hurt and she was only average at scrying. The one thing she excelled at was Spellcraft. She could etch as symbol in the air faster than even some of the experienced teachers and was exceptionally skilled at telekinesis.
Her demons helped. Arach's, especially Springtails like Silkuras, granted their summoner a great amount of mana for use in spells and Rico was good at multitasking, which was important when etching and using spells. Her skill contrasted with Dustan, who was terrible at Spellcraft but brilliant at scrying and direct combat.
Anyway, over the next few days, Rico used her shifts on patrol to scout out the area surrounding the encampment. The valleys and thick jungle and the trenches and craters left behind by previous battles. Their encampment was deep in the jungle, which meant they were at constant risk of being attacked, and with no mana fuelled forcefields like those on the front-lines they were a prime target for bombardment.
But the encampment was strategically placed. In the event of being overrun any people still alive could retreat to the north. Down the muddy trail, maybe half a kilometre, was a massive ravine which stretched farther in each direction than Rico could see.
A massive drawbridge of bamboo bridged the gap, the survivors of the attack could cross the bridge before destroying the whole bridge using the massive barrels of gunpowder underneath each of the bridges towers. Using the ravine to stop the Orc's onslaught.
But something bothered Rico about that setup. Dustan had helped enlighten her on it on their fifth day in camp.
"The whole system with the bridge relies on trust" Dustan had said while they were performing maintenance on the perimeter cannons "The first few solders across could guard the bridges, giving others the chance to get across. Or the first person across could bomb the bridge immediately"
It took a moment for that to sink in.
"Leaving everyone on the other side to be slaughtered" Rico said quietly. Dammit, Rico hated it but Dustan's cynicism sometimes made him a hell of a lot more intuitive. But it wasn't really very hard to be more intuitive than Rico.
The encampment suddenly felt a lot less safe and secure after that. Rico found herself observing people more closely, trying to gauge if they would be spineless enough to leave their comrades to die in the way Dustan described. Rico knew that most of the nobles wouldn't think twice about it, stuck up prigs they were, but a lot of the commoner solders seemed genuinely nice and selfless, with a few exemptions. Hell, even a few of the nobles Rico has found to be incredibly kindhearted.
Rico doubted that any of them would abandon their comrades like that. Even the nobles. Dustan was more skeptical about it but that was how their dynamic worked. Rico was the optimist. Dustan the pessimist.
One person she knew with certainty that would leave them to die though, was Jeronimus. The smug bastard cared nothing for the commoners, and even showed the younger nobles what could only be called mild annoyance. He reminded her of Sheppard. Smug, arrogant and borderline sociopathic. That man would kill his own parents just to save his own skin.
What made it worse was that the Ausadius family, Jeronimus's family, were leading the fighting here in this part of the jungle. Rico, Dustan and all of the other solders worked for Ausadius family at the moment, so that meant Jeronimus had total control over their lives. They all wore the mans crest on their uniforms.
Even though they were away from the Vocans and has graduated the sadistic comments and attempts of intimidation from Sheppard continued in the camp. Rico wasn't bothered by it. The half-elf comments stung but not because she felt ashamed at being compared to an elf. She hated the fact that elves were treated as such, her friends in Erebus would have suffered much more than she had if they were to come to Corcillium. Rico had heard of the muggings that had occurred.
Sheppard would try to intimidate her. Threatening a repeat of what happened during the final tests. She would be lying if she said it didn't scare her. Sheppard was probably violent enough to do it. But she had been beating him during the tournament. Sheppard had only been able to do what he did because his Chupacabra had taken her by surprise. She had no time to react.
For a while, life in the jungle seemed to dull Sheppard's knifelike tongue. None of his close friends, all of them brutes from Vocans, had been assigned to this part of the jungle. With none of his friends to back him up the tormenting had gone down in severity. Things looked up.
Unfortunately things turned grim in an instant one night in the mead hall. A night Dustan was out on patrol.
Rico had been talking with Jorrsk, a massive and kindhearted man from the Vesanian Sea. The man was telling stories of his times as a pirate. His grin as wide as his muscular body.
"We were eventually captured by the Pinkertons" Jorrsk boomed "It was bound to happen eventually. None of the crew were very bright, myself included. Too lazy to cover out tracks, plus we had a habit of boasting about our crime sprees in bars and taverns all over the coast. They busted us while we were drinking our lives away in our ship. They arrested us but we were so drunk that we kept saying we had no idea what was going on. This was happening in the room where we had stockpiled the goods we stole from a noble family not earlier that day! So our denying was rather pointless of us!"
Jorrsk was, surprisingly, a noble. The man had told Rico, who had been bonding with the man over stories and jokes in the recent few weeks, that he was a member of a small noble family on the Vesanian coast. He had turned to piracy because he didn't enjoy the strict etiquette and carefully chosen words that were the noble social world. So he had created a new, more exiting life for himself.
When he had been arrested Jorrsk hadn't committed any serious crimes besides stealing from nobles, most of the goods stolen being from his own family, so the Pinkertons had released Jorrsk and his crew members on the terms that they joined the kings army. Put their fighting skills learnt on the Vesanian sea to good use against the Orcs. Sadly fighting Orc's was a hell of a lot more different than fighting the nobles private guards.
The stories were fascinating, but Rico's mind was on other things. Dustan was out on a standard group patrol, two summoner recruits and a handful of younger soldiers. Nothing new, this part of the jungle was quiet so the risk of Orc's attacking was... relatively low. The problem was the other summoner on patrol was Sheppard. Jeronimus had to maintain some shadow of equality between commoners and nobles so on occasion he sent a noble out on patrol, normally with a friend, but Sheppard had shown as much distain for the harsh commander that all of the commoners felt about their commander. Jeronimus was not oblivious to this and had given Sheppard a much harder time than the other nobles. This was bad because if Sheppard was pissed he would take it out on someone. Dustan was likely on the receiving end of Sheppard's pent up anger.
Voices's suddenly rang through the hall. Confused shouts and mixed messages. Through the chaos Rico was able to discern that something was wrong. She caught the mention of a patrol being attacked and in an instant Rico had leapt from the seat, startling Jorrsk who was halfway through a story.
No no no no no.
A crowd had gathered near the barracks. Doctors already there, treating the wounded. Rico saw Sheppard, covered in blood and grime and mud. As she got closer Rico realised none of the blood was his own.
Dustan was nowhere to be seen
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