A Soldier's Life - 398 - Wishful Wisping

Chapter 398: Wishful Wisping

Kyrenic led us across the city to the artificer. As we walked through the town, everyone seemed to know the foreign knight and greeted him by name or with a smile. I checked, and the aetheric haze aura surrounded him. My curiosity finally won out. “What is your aura, prince?”

Kyrenic missed a step as he walked beside me. “Did Lesna tell you?” he guessed.

“She did,” I confirmed. He didn’t need to know that I could also see it without her help.

He hesitated only a moment before telling me. “It is a celestial spell form that protects me from my enemies. Anyone wishing to do me harm sees me in a different way, generally speaking.”

“Does it affect their mind?” Blaze asked on the other side of me.

“Not really. It makes it harder for them to attack me and gives me a higher resistance to any spells cast at me, but they must harbor true anger or intent to harm me.” Kyrenic spoke like it was no big deal. “Imprinting the spell is required by the Knight Order I belong to, but my celestial affinity is much higher than most in my Order.”

“How does your order find so many with the celestial affinity over ten?” I questioned.

Kyrenic patiently explained. “We don’t. Well, I am sort of the exception. The Wardens of the People, the knight order I belong to, harvest celestial essences from a dungeon. It takes about a year to accumulate enough essences to raise a squire to a knight. It takes hundreds of essences. Therefore, the Knight Commander is very selective about who is allowed into the order.”

“The Twilight Warrior dungeon,” I guessed, and Kyrenic stopped walking and turned to me, his gaze piercing.

“How do you know of the dungeon? It has been scrubbed from the histories,” he said intensely.

“Not all histories. I studied at the Adventurer’s Guild Archives in Godok,” I replied unfazed.

Kyrenic appeared to be wrestling with something before ultimately nodding in acceptance. “Godok?” he mumbled to himself. “I will inform my Knight Commander when I see him.” I had clearly unsettled him somewhat, but I only remembered the dungeon because it was so fascinating. A unicorn guarded the final room in the dungeon. “I ask that you do not spread what you know of the dungeon,” Kyrenic said without his normal affable tone.

“You have my word,” I said seriously. Kyrenic continued studying me, and I felt a tingle in my forearms. Was he using a spell on me? I started to feel uneasy when he appeared to relax, and the itching subsided. “This is Jonik’s shop.”

Kyrenic turned into a shop, and we followed. Dust hung in the air, and crates half filled with an assortment of items were scattered across the artificer’s shop. “Thought you were staying, Jonik,” Kyrenic said in a friendly greeting.

A dark-haired dwarf stood, his leather apron covered in dirt and dust. He wiped his sweaty face. “I am not going anywhere. Just packing some things to bring down to my cellar in case the city falls.”

“The city will not fall as long as I defend it, old dwarf,” Kyrenic said with good humor.

“Bah! What happens when you die, knight?” The dwarf snapped back, but it was clearly friendly banter.

“Then I will just have to plan on not dying,” Kyrenic replied seriously. He turned to me, “This is a friend who is interested in your wisp cages.”

The dwarf’s steely blue eyes studied me. “It’s crazy to try and enter the dungeon at the moment, boy. Going to venture in the woods at night? Probably just as stupid.”

“We can handle ourselves,” I replied calmly.

“We can?” Blaze chirped unhelpfully.

I ignored Blaze. “If you don’t want our business…”

“Fine. Fine!” He waved his hands and he shuffled over to a crate and pulled out two urns while mumbling something I thought was dwarfish. “I have two wisp prisons.” He placed them on the table with a thud for me to inspect. “Steel urns lined with silver and a twist on top.” He stepped back.

The urns stood about two feet tall, one appearing as though it had seen better days, its outer steel casing scratched and dented. I removed a blue glowstone from my belt to peer inside, causing Jonik’s eyes to widen. Ignoring the artificer, I examined the silver lining within the urn. It smelled faintly of ozone and was flawlessly polished, adorned with carefully etched runes along the walls. The top featured more intricately carved runes and needed a half turn to lock into place. The urn could hold perhaps three gallons yet weighed about twenty pounds. I sent out an earth pulse into the urn only to find the aether repelled.

The second urn was clearly freshly artificed and in near-perfect condition. The shapes were close, but not identical. I had read about them in the bestiary under wisps, but this was my first time seeing them. They were used to capture the creatures and sold to artificers and ritual mages, as wisps were essentially raw aether with a primal sentience.

“How much?” I asked after my intense inspection.

Jonik’s eyes remained fixed on my blue glowstone. “One hundred gold each but I will buy them back at one-twenty if they contain a wisp. Artificed?” He indicated my blue glowstone.

I chuckled. “Dungeon glowstone. One hundred and twenty? Captive wisps are easily worth fifty gold.”

“Yeah, who are you going to sell it to within fifty miles? You gonna lug those containers to the capital through bugbear-infested woods?” Jonik challenged.

His covetous eyes on the glowstones gave me some leverage. “I will trade you ten blue, ten yellow, ten violet, and ten red glowstones for both wisp prisons.”

“Bah! Forty glowstones for two urns that took me a month each to make,” the dwarf spat.

“More than fair as you will not find them anywhere else in the world,” I said patiently. That was not entirely true; besides the demon dungeon in the Caliphate, there were other dungeons I had skimmed that had different colors of glowstones, but those were very rare, and they usually only featured a single shade.

“The stones and one hundred gold,” he countered.

“The stones and forty gold,” I said, sounding irritated.

“That sounds fair, Jonik,” Kyrenic said, interrupting. “You are not going to be getting many customers for a time.”

“Argh,” the dwarf growled. “Fine! But I am going to inspect the stones first, and I will only buy back the prisons for a hundred gold IF they have a wisp!”

I laid out all the stones on the table, brightening the artificer's shop. He was fascinated as he inspected each one as if it were a precious gemstone. He muttered something about them actually being dungeon stones and was pleased with their condition. I paid the gold, and walked out of the shop with Blaze reluctantly carrying both urns.

“I would hunt with you tonight outside the walls, but I swore to protect the women and children in town during the night. I am hoping you will join me on a raid against the bugbears when I can pull together a large enough group,” Kyrenic said as we returned to the inn.

I looked at Blaze, who shrugged. “We can discuss it when you do.” The tavern was crawling with children and women when we returned, and they greeted the knight enthusiastically. It was clear they were there to make it easier to defend them if the city walls were breached. I just didn’t understand why they stayed—but I guess some people had nowhere to go. 

Over the noise, Blaze leaned into me, “I am guessing he led us here so we would help defend them.”

“Undoubtedly,” I replied as we stepped over beds being set on the floor. The innkeeper took us to a small room for Blaze and me to share, but I could tell he had kicked out some of the kids so we could use it. I placed both wisp prisons in my dimensional space. I let Blaze get a few hours of sleep before waking him. Rather than disturb the sleeping children in the common room, we used the window to drop to the street and made our way to the walls.

I stood on the wooden walls with Blaze at my side. Neptune’s Tear was on the horizon, but its light was not needed. In the northern woods, lights were still rising from the forest floor. The myriad of lights danced above the trees. It was mesmerizing, even from a distance. “It is pretty spectacular.”

“We are. If you look closely, you can see they form a line. That mirrors the ley line deep in the earth. Willow-o-wisps only leave the earth when it is dark,” I explained.

“We are going to hunt them? Our runic weapons cannot reach them,” he replied skeptically.

“Good thing I have the best bowman on the continent. You should be able to draw them down one at a time if you shoot an arrow through them,” I said with a grin.

There was no need to jump off the wall since we were allowed to exit through the gates, but we were told that we wouldn’t be permitted back in until after sunrise. The city guards seemed incredulous that only two of us were heading into the woods. I watched the drifting spheres of colored light as I sent out earth pulses. With so many wisps, the forest was illuminated, but shadows danced menacingly in front of us.

After we walked a hundred yards into the woods and I was certain there were no threats within sixty feet of us, I challenged Blaze. “Think you can hit one?” Blaze smirked.

His first arrow missed as he misjudged the distance to the wisp, which caused Blaze to curse and me to chuckle. His second arrow passed through the wisp and bounced in the air, confused about where the attack had originated from. This was going to be more difficult than I imagined. “I am already out two arrows,” Blaze reminded me. 

I was thinking maybe we could find one of the creatures closer to the ground when Blaze slapped my shoulder. The wisp he had hit was slowly descending toward us. I had the urn uncapped and ready, and as it picked up speed, I angled the vessel to catch it. The sphere of light was slightly larger ahead with a bluish-white glow. I thought I had angled the vessel perfectly, but then I felt my hands burning and my spider silk gloves growing hot. I capped the vessel and took off my gloves to discover ugly red burns on both my hands.

I handed the urn to Blaze and focused on healing the burns. The burns were resistant as they they were caused by raw chaotic aether, but slowly I was able to heal them.

“Feels empty,” Blaze said, shaking the heavy device.

“Oh, we definitely caught it,” I said happily. “I just hope it was worth it.”

I placed the collector in the rune-scribed canister. I carefully activated the collector with the convergence affinity. Blue wisps were pulled through the walls of the canister. The sphere formed quickly on the collector, but it was just a minor essence. The sphere contained a blue cloud with sparks of white lightning dancing around inside.

Blaze asked, “What is it?”

Slightly disappointed, I replied, “An energy essence. Wisps have a chance of giving an aether pool essence, which is what I was hoping for.”

Blaze looked up into the canopy and the colorful wisps flittering above. “Well, the night is young and I have twenty-one arrows left.”

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