[NR] Prophecy - Chapter 668

And despite expectations to the contrary, the town guard manages to clean up bandit travellers. It wasn’t like they were talented travellers or anything. After all, if they were actually talented they would have been out with a proper team instead of in such a large group. While the System didn’t stop people from forming “raid” groups, as it were, you lost out if the threat you faced wasn’t dangerous enough to justify it.

Despite the ease at which they managed their capture, the guards’ return to the town does not bring peace. Rather, they are met with a panic. Siegfried looks around and sighs. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

Siegfried walks towards the town hall. His path taking him through the crowd and yet without them moving out of his way, he walks straight through without interference. Each step taking him farther than the last.

Jason turns to Rosha, “See that? That is what my movement technique is designed to eventually be like. Though without the build up. I want to be able to side step and end up meters away.”

Rosha shrugs, “Shrinking step style movement isn’t that rare. Stuff like the classic thousand league boots and what not are also popular. Though I must admit, they tend towards using magic and the concept of walking to piggyback a teleport effect.”

Jason shakes his head, “Neither of us are going for something that flashy. Though I won’t claim to know Siegfried’s actual intent. I can only say that my own goals won’t have me skipping across space like a stone over water.”

The chatter continues for about a quarter of an hour before Siegfried returns.

Siegfried sighs, “Well, we’ll get this over with first.” He turns to the prisoners, “Bippity Bippity, boo! I’ma banishing you. Don’t come back until after this event.”

Siegfried gestures to the people guarding them, “Okay, let them go, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Seems we’ve got a clue to the event we’ve been caught on. A diviner was given a System sourced vision.”

As the now banished travellers are forced to rush towards the edge of the settlement, everyone gathers around Siegfried.

He nods, “You heard me right, a message from the System itself. An early free with the cold of death unrested. That or some other vague nonsense to indicate we’re getting a freeze and some undead. The diviner said we had a couple weeks so I’m expecting we actually have a week to get the fields fully harvested.”

Helina walks up behind him and a bunch of the guards reach for their weapons before they notice it is her. “And worse! The diviner decided that after their vision, the best course of action was to run through the street, shouting their vision for all and sundry to hear.”

Siegfried facepalms, “I wish she was lying. Though as the low-grade panic behind me might have tipped you off to already, she isn’t. At least the damn diviner blabbed about it in their usual riddle tongue nonsense.”

Helina nods, “Yep! Anyway, Courtney, I think we’ll be requesting the help of your group for this. But let’s get to somewhere more private to talk this through!”

Later on, they gather in Helina’s office. At first Siegfried wanted to handle things in his office, but had to admit that the guards were almost worse than a gaggle of grandmothers when it came to spreading rumors.

Helina smiled, “So, I managed to get the exact wording of the original message.”

Siegfried, “Of course you did. Best as I could interpret, the council doesn’t even have that. How did you luck into this?”

Helina shrugs, “If by luck, you mean careful planning.”

Siegfried, “No, I mean luck. You like to hang out around the diviners office and this is probably the first time you got anything from doing so.”

Helina pouts, “Ahh, come on! Don’t rain on my parade. I hang out there for this sort of thing!”

Siegfried, “Fine, what was the original message?”

Helina smirks, “A fortnight passes, a chill surpasses

“Frozen crops and death walks

“Crafted vile, chilling bile

“outside help, chance is felt”

Siegfried grimaces, “You would think that given their requirement to rhyme, they would at least practice it enough to make something that sounds good. Though I doubt that was the actual original prophecy. Did you actually hear it or was this just what they were shouting in the streets?”

Helina, “He was shouting it when leaving his house. From what I heard, by the time he got to the crowd, it had already changed.”

Siegfried shakes his head, “Yeah, that’s not going to be the original version. True System-based prophecies will be much more robust. It might now be the best rhymer, but that’s just too stripped down.”

Helina shrugs, “Should be close enough, though.”

Siegfried, “Doesn’t matter. As it stands, it could mean so many different things. In particular, that last line is going to make people target our friends here. ‘Outside help’ could mean them in so many different ways. They’re from outside, they’re travellers, and so on and so forth.

“I won’t even try to claim it doesn’t mean them. Except the System refuses to predict how people will act outside of broad strokes. I trust the System to predict a volcano eruption with near 100% accuracy, but I’d be willing to bet against it predicting if a person will have pork or chicken for lunch. Even if you do attempt to limit them to those options exactly.”

Helina, “Sure bro, I know that last line is a trap. No, what is more important is the line before it. The whole ‘crafted’ bit. We’re going to be facing corpsecrafted undead. Not necessarily controlled undead, but they won’t be your standard walkers and clackers. Well, and the first line gives us a timeframe.”

Courtney, “But given how such things usually work, I assume we’ll be ready as early as next week? Prophecies usually have a decent margin of error added to the date, even if the System can predict the exact second something will happen.”

Siegfried nods, “The council will probably drag their feet, but my guards will be ready. Especially since it does specifically call out ‘outside help’, if only because it doesn’t say that it will be an outside force helping us.”