Feral Mage 3: Chapter 14

Walking back into the tavern, Bryce was surprised to see Janna sitting with Vex, her naginata resting against her chair. Omelet was under their table, chewing away on a large bone as Alice placed plates laden with food in front of Vex and Janna. She smiled and waved at him, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Did something happen?” Bryce asked as he watched Alice leave the table to head back into the guild’s kitchen.

Thea turned and followed his gaze.

“Today has been busy for Alice. She even met with one of the Princesses of the Saltland Kingdom,” she stated.

Bryce stopped in his tracks, but Callie was the one who spoke.

“Why?” she asked, hostility slipping into her tone.

Thea gave them both a curious look.

“Something to do with an old journal she found some months back. Alice told me she originally gave it to the Saltland Kingdom ambassador for Witchbrook, and the Princess was just following up on it.”

Bryce and Callie shared a look that Thea failed to notice. Instead, the Princess of Volpin smiled at him.

“I believe there’s a chance Princess Charlotte will be attending the function the Duke invited us to. You might get to meet her yourself, Bryce,” Thea said.

Looking back at Callie, Bryce saw steel in her eyes and knew that, depending on what Charlotte had done or said to Alice, the Saltland Kingdom might soon have a missing princess.

The steel left her eyes the moment they arrived at the table, and Vex started speaking in beastkin to Callie.

“No mating?” the wolfkin asked in beastkin while sniffing Callie. “Though he did get you excited.”

Callie’s face turned red as she glared at Vex.

“Mutt!” she growled.

Vex shook her head and sighed.

“Definitely no mating. You wouldn’t still be this grumpy,” she said again in beastkin.

A stream of cursing left the elf as Bryce did his best to push thoughts about Callie’s and Vex’s conversation from his mind…

She really does have beautiful blue eyes.

…and failed. Hoping to distract himself, he turned his attention to Janna.

“I know you said you’d be using your naginata again, but I didn’t expect you to bring it out for dinner in the guildhall,” he teased.

Janna let out a small laugh.

“I guess you can say I’m getting myself used to it again,” she said, her four tails flicking behind her. “I plan to practice with it in the training yard tomorrow while you’re off to see the Duke. When do you plan to leave?”

“I originally told Bryce noon, but with Princess Charlotte here, I was hoping to leave an hour past dawn. That way, with travel, we will arrive in time for breakfast at the Duke’s estate,” Thea answered. “The chance to potentially recruit the Kingdom of Saltland in the cause against my uncle is worth imposing ourselves on the Duke’s hospitality.”

Bryce scratched his cheek as he looked to the Princess.

“I was going to visit Bellamy and Isabelle in the morning,” he said, hiding his displeasure at Thea changing the plans on him.

“I know Bellamy is away from Witchbrook. She left a few days ago with the catkin sisters,” Thea said.

Bryce’s brows furrowed.

“Wait. Nicole and Olivia took a job from Bellamy? What was the contract?” he asked.

Thea shrugged.

“I only know because Baroness Julia inquired about her at the tavern Bellamy was staying in. The tavern owner said she left with two catkins that match the twins.”

Bryce drummed his fingers on the table.

“Well, shit,” he cursed softly.

He really wanted to talk to Bellamy about the Quill Wyvern.

“We can stop by and see this Isabelle on the way,” Thea suggested. “Unless you believe you would need longer.”

Bryce shook his head.

“No. A time limit is probably the best way for me to meet with Isabelle,” he said, not considering the full implications of what he agreed to. Callie, though, was quick to point them out.

“The Red Lace isn’t a place for a princess,” she said, holding a struggling Vex in a headlock. “Perhaps it would be better for us to wait for you to finish at the guildhall and leave when you return.”

Thea pouted.

“I’m not a delicate flower. I’ve heard about this Red Isabelle, and she doesn’t scare me,” she said.

Callie tilted her head, and Bryce noticed a sly smirk.

“Very well, Lady Thea. If you insist, we will accompany Bryce to the Red Lace and wait for him,” she said.

Thea smiled triumphantly, but Bryce just raised an eyebrow at Callie and saw her smirk grow.

“Well, if we have an early morning,” Bryce stated, standing from the table. “I’m going to head to my room. I have a lot of reading to do.”

Sister Harper did say he only had those books until the end of the week, and she seemed like the kind of woman he didn’t want to piss off. The fact that she knew Alex and Mark made him wonder if she was an ex-merc just like Alex. He decided to pester Mark about it the next time the old berserker dragged him into his office.

No one followed him to his room, well, except Omelet with his ham bone, which told Bryce that Callie most likely still had Vex in a headlock, or Alice had brought more food over to the table. Either way, he was glad for the respite from everyone so he could focus.

Omelet found a place in the middle of the room to lie down and start to chew on his prize from the kitchen while Bryce pulled out the books from his pack.

“The Legends of the Divine,” he read the title aloud and looked to Omelet. “Seems like a good place to start.”

He got comfortable on his bed and opened the tome. Reading quickly shifted to him skimming through the passages, as most were related to moral conundrums and how the Divine would either aid or punish someone based on their choices. The first passage even mentioning someone being blessed by a Divine was over a third of the way through the book.

The story was about a knight blessed by the God of War after he saved one of the God’s priestesses from bandits. The blessing granted him the strength of ten men, which was the number of bandits he had killed, but only if he adhered to the God of War's virtues.

The knight grew in renown and eventually rose to the status of a Count, but with his higher status came arrogance, and in time, he forsook the virtues of the God of War. As punishment, God removed his blessing when the man needed it the most, and he was slain by common thieves for his coin purse.

More moral conundrums…

Still, the mention of the blessing and God punishing him had sent a cold chill down Bryce’s spine. He could almost feel the healed cuts on his back start to burn again as he recalled how Ciarra had been disappointed at him.

What virtues did the Goddess of Monsters encompass?

He looked from the book to Omelet, frowning as he saw that the ham bone was now broken in half, with fragments scattered across the floor.

“Damn it, Omelet.”

Bryce closed the book and was prepared to stand to clean up the mess when he saw the griffin chick’s beak pulling marrow out of the bone and eating it.

He had seen the griffin do this more than a dozen times, but this time reminded Bryce what Omelet really was. A monster. Sure, Vex had trained him, and he was obedient to her commands, but in the wild, his mother would have been feeding him whatever she could catch. Wild game, other monsters, and even people. Griffins were the apex predators in many areas outside of the Wilds.

“Survival of the fittest,” Bryce said, causing Omelet to look at him with a tilted head.

He stood and made his way over to the pile of bone fragments. Omelet quickly grabbed the largest half of the ham bone and darted away as if he was afraid Bryce would take it away from him.

Is that why she was angry at me?

The Quill Wyvern had seemed like a dangerous enemy to Bryce. Strong, fast, and with a range attack, plus the swarm of Carrion Fairies looking for a way to burrow into your flesh. It was a fight Bryce would need to prepare for, even if he wasn’t fighting it on a narrow bridge.

But there was another way to look at it. The monster was injured, pushed from its pack, and infested with parasites eating it from the inside out. Given enough time, it would die from either an infection or the fairies finally eating their way into its organs. It was weak, and Bryce still failed to kill it even while using two Aspects.

A knock at the door drew his attention, and he quickly picked up the bone fragments before answering it.

“Hi, Bryce,” Alice greeted. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

He pushed the thoughts aside and smiled at her.

“No. I need a break from the books anyway,” he said, stepping aside to let her into the room.

Alice took a few steps inside before he heard her laugh.

“Does Omelet need help?” she asked.

Bryce looked to see Omelet’s rump sticking out from under the bed, and let a laugh escape as well.

“He was worried I’d take away his ham bone. Seems he’s not a good judge of the space he can actually fit into,” Bryce said, gesturing for Alice to take a seat. “Lady Thea said you met a Princess today.”

The amused look on Alice’s face fell away to one of worry, and she nodded. Bryce moved to take a seat beside her on the bed, reaching down and pulling Omelet out of his hiding spot by his tail feathers.

The griffin chick gave a disapproving squawk as his feathers poofed out and he hauled his ham bone far away from Bryce. Glaring at him as he resumed chewing on it.

“What happened, Alice?” Bryce asked, cutting to the heart of the matter. “I know you well enough to tell this meeting wasn’t good.”

She bit her lip as she looked down at her feet.

“I might have just read into it too much…” she said softly. “But I felt like Princess Charlotte knew who I am. She was asking me questions about the journal we found in the vampire coven, but she also knew we went to the Red Pine Kingdom and that I’m a snow elf.”

Bryce nodded.

“We did give the journal to the Saltland ambassador while on the ship heading there, and that was before you dyed your hair,” Bryce stated.

“So you think I’m overthinking?” she asked.

Bryce shook his head.

“Your gut reaction is usually right. The fact that she was deviating from the journal makes me think she was fishing for information. Did you give her anything she could use?”

Alice sighed.

“No, or at least I don’t think I did. I shifted the conversation back to the journal fairly quickly,” Alice answered, then looked at the stack of books on the bed. “What have you been reading?”

Bryce took the question as Alice wanting to move away from the topic of Princess Charlotte.

“Old fables about the Divine blessing someone. Kind of a stretch, but we have a lead on what kind of magic Harold Volson uses,” he answered.

“Thea said you found out he’s a Soul Mimic,” Alice stated. “Or something close to it.”

“Alex from the University believes that’s what he is, but his magic is a lot stronger than the stories about that school of magic. Plus, Soul Mimics are supposed to be extinct,” Bryce replied. “The practitioners hunted down after the Three Prince War on the Silkie Isles.”

Alice frowned as she picked up one of the books and began to flip through it.

“So you think he’s a champion of the Divine?” Alice asked.

Bryce shrugged.

“I don’t know what he is, and honestly, I don’t care. I just want to find a way to stop him that doesn’t end in collapsing three Kingdoms.”

If there is even a way…

It wasn’t like he was controlling living people. According to Thea, Harold’s puppets were corpses merely playing the role of the person they once were. There was no way to bring those people back to life, and Bryce figured the best outcome they could hope for was a controlled removal of the puppets. That way, maybe the Kingdoms could at least adjust to the changes when some of their nobles and important figures started dropping dead.

“I can help you look through the books,” Alice offered. “It’ll go faster that way.”

Bryce smiled at her.

“I’m sure you have other ways you’d rather spend your night than skimming through old stories.”

Alice returned the smile.

“Nope,” she said as she resumed flipping through the book.