The Last Echo of the Lord of Bells Preview Chapter 3: Riverboat Gamblers

Their riverboat came under attack just a few hours into the voyage. 

Well, less a riverboat than a floating gambling den. 

Talia had always wanted to ride one of Highvale’s great riverboats when she was young, but sadly, it had never worked out— so when they were choosing their vessel, she’d pushed hard for them to ride on the Sunset Queen, rather than any of the other options. 

There’d been a Radhan riverboat that could have gotten them to Oldfort a few hours faster, but since that would have meant disembarking in the wee hours of the morning, it was easy enough to persuade the others to ride on the riverboat instead— especially given all its luxurious comforts. 

Still wasn’t as nice as the Kemetrian ship-chain they’d ridden, but definitely nicer than any other ship they’d taken.

The motion of the riverboat was almost nonexistent compared to many of the ships Talia had ridden before, and she wasn’t experiencing even a hint of nausea. 

The Stoneknife River was massive, one of the biggest on the continent, and even though there were dozens of other ships in sight, the river felt mostly empty. 

At one point, they passed a pod of river dolphins, dancing through a maze of waterspouts, floating bubbles, and illusions of their own making.

Talia was glad the dolphins weren’t feeling mischievous— dolphin mages would sometimes trap ships for hours for their own entertainment. They never meant any harm, but Talia and her friends didn’t have the time to spare right now.

Ocean dolphins, from what Sabae had told her, apparently trapped ships far less often, but when they did, their festivities and pranks could last for days.

Past the dolphins and the ships, past the wide placid waters of the Stoneknife, the stairstep terraces of Highvale rose up towards the sky.

She was enjoying the view from the railing when the bandits erupted from underwater and shot up to the deck. As she turned away from the immense staircase cliffs and towards the bandits, Talia activated her scrimshaw ward, felt the usual odd tingling in her bones as the spellforms tattooed onto them ignited with red light.

“You know, even I’m actually getting a little tired of getting attacked on literally every ship we ride,” Talia complained.

Godrick looked up at her from his massage table as his masseuse fled. “We didn’t get attacked on our way to Dragonclaw Yardang. There weren’t any pirates on the Rising Cormorant or the… what was the name of the ugly little ship that took us through the Ylosa Delta again?”

“Fine, sure, not on the way to Dragonclaw, but are you forgetting the sea serpents and man-eating tiger?” Talia asked, as bandits charged their way.

“Fair point,” Godrick offered, as his stone armor began pouring out of his tattoo enveloping him.

Talia sighed heavily and started hurling dreamfire.

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Talia ducked under a tentacle made of water, then blasted another with a dreamfire bolt. The water collapsed into a huge cloud of flower petals— cherry blossoms, looked like.

Talia charged straight through the falling petals and stabbed at the bandit water mage with one of her wrist-blades.

The bandit flailed wildly and threw herself back, then somehow managed to hit her head on the railing.

Talia gave the woman a baffled look.

That had just been… buffoonish.

She shook her head, then looked around at the rest of the attackers, and found herself equally unimpressed. Godrick had already thrown several of them off the boat, and was mostly ignoring a lead mage who was trying and failing to batter apart his armor with lead weights. Hugh had imprisoned a fire mage with the Stormward’s Crown, and the man had managed to knock himself unconscious by exhausting the good air inside the confined space with fire spells. Sabae, meanwhile, was blasting mages off the side of the ship one after the other.

Talia scowled, and stalked over to Hugh and Godrick.

“What is this nonsense?” Talia demanded. “This is pathetic.”

Godrick nodded. “Ah don’t think most a’ these mages have ever been in a fight before.”

“Have you noticed they’re all coming after us? And shouldn’t there be guards helping us?” Hugh asked, launching another bandit over the railing with a Crown node to the gut.

Sabae slammed down onto the deck next to them, followed by Mackerel. Both of them were carrying struggling bandits of their own.

“The guards are just here to settle fights among the guests,” Talia said, nodding at Sabae and Mackerel in greeting. “There haven’t been river pirates or bandits for… I don’t even know how long. Decades? Centuries?”

“Are you all talking about how weird this is?” Sabae asked. “Because I’m pretty sure this lot aren’t even real bandits.”

“Seriously, those cultists that attacked us in Theras Tel were scarier than this lot, and they were pushovers,” Talia said.

“Are you even a real bandit?” Sabae demanded of the man she was suspending in the air with one arm. Talia idly wondered whether Sabae was performing some sort of contact levitation spell, or whether she was boosting her strength with her wind armor. She wasn’t really sure how that would work, but…

Sabae shook the bandit, and he finally answered. “We’re not bandits! We’re bounty hunters!”

“There’s a bounty on us?” Talia asked excitedly. “How much?”

“Hundred crowns a head!” the man babbled.

Talia slumped in disappointment. “My brothers are going to make so much fun of me for a bounty that small. Is it even an official bounty?”

The man gave her an awkward look, and Talia’s mood sank even further. “It isn’t, is it?”

Sabae sighed. “More importantly, what’s the bounty for?”

The bandit just gave her a blank look. “What do you mean, what’s it for?”

Sabae sighed audibly, then launched the man into the Stoneknife river with a windstrike.

He actually skipped across the surface of the river three times before sinking.

Hugh shook his head, then launched most of the remaining attackers overboard with the ward segments of the Crown. “This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Godrick shook his head. “It makes perfect sense. Someone, probably Havath, at least, has been watching fer us and spreadin’ the word— ah’m betting not just here, either— and some greedy idiot spotted us and sent a bunch a’ random idiots fer the bounty.”

Talia brightened up at that. “So there’s probably a much larger bounty on our heads, and these suckers were supposed to make a lot more money for whoever hired them?”

Her friends all gave her weird looks, and Talia rolled her eyes. “Right, that’s not something I should be excited about.”

  Sabae shook her head. “Let’s hurry up and get these idiots off the boat. And be careful not to use too much mana, it will take hours to refill.”

Hugh made an exasperated noise just then. “No, Mackerel, you absolutely may not keep your prisoner as a pet.”

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It only took a few minutes to clear the rest of the ship and toss the rest of the aspiring bounty hunters in the river, and at no point did Talia ever feel remotely threatened— even avoiding showing off her new affinities. The group had decided to conceal their pact until they reached Havath City and avoid any overt uses of their new affinities— they didn’t have a chance against Alustin without the element of surprise.

There had been an annoyingly large percentage of water mages among the attackers— clearly how they’d reached the ship— and a few of the less intelligent ones tried to reboard after being thrown overboard.

None of those got a third chance to board the ship.

The most difficult part of the process was Hugh trying to convince Mackerel to finally drop his captive in the river.

Then, of course, it took most of an hour to calm down the crew, guards, and passengers.

They did not, of course, mention that the attackers had been after their group, rather than the ship. No need to go from the heroes of the hour to figures of concern, after all.

When their group finally got a chance to sit down, and Hugh warded their table with the Crown, Talia immediately turned to Sabae. “Alright, how did you hold that guy up with one arm like that? Was it your armor, a contact levitation cantrip, what?”

Sabae shook her head at that. “That was just me.”

Talia gave her a skeptical look. “You lifted a grown man up into the air with one hand.”

Sabae raised her hands. “I’m serious. It was just me. And besides, he wasn’t that big— probably no heavier than I am.”

Talia raised her eyebrows even higher. “Even if that’s true, lifting your own weight up into the air and holding it with one hand is still pretty absurd.”

Sabae shook her head. “Have you actually tested the limits of your strength since Limnus, Talia?”

Talia frowned. “Limnan magic was only supposed to make us a little stronger, well within the bounds of normal.”

She looked at Hugh, who shrugged. “Galvachren’s Guide did say it wouldn’t push us past normal human limits, but he wasn’t exactly precise about it otherwise. What Sabae did was pretty nuts, but not entirely out of the realm of believability?”

Talia gave him a considering look, then fixed her gaze on Godrick.

“Talia, why are yeh lookin’ a’ me like that?” Godrick asked.

Talia got out of her seat and stepped around the table towards Godrick. “Stand up.”

Godrick gave her an uncertain look, then did so.

Talia took a deep breath, wrapped her arms as far around Godrick’s waist as she could, and lifted.

She’d tried to pick Godrick up a hundred times before— to universal failure. Her friend weighed several times what she did, and her attempts usually ended in him picking her up easily and teasing her.

For a moment, Godrick didn’t budge, and Talia was sure that he wasn’t going to.

And then, ever so slowly, she pulled Godrick up off the ground. 

Not far, just a couple of inches, and she had to set him back down immediately, but she hadn’t been imagining it. There hadn’t been any levitation spell involved, just her.

Talia was smiling widely when she sat back down. Her new strength was hardly a game changer, but… 

More power was more power.

“That was a real eye-opener, wasn’t it?”

“We already knew we were stronger,” Godrick said, looking a little nonplussed.

Talia shook her head. “No, not me picking you up, the fight earlier.”

Everyone gave her confused looks at the abrupt change of topic.

Talia shrugged. “I’m so used to battling monsters, archmages, and elite battlemages that it was kind of a shock fighting, you know, normal people again.”

Everyone’s whiplash at the change in topic vanished, and they all nodded at that— even Mackerel. 

“We can’t assume that future ambushers will be so inept,” Sabae said. “We can definitely assume there will be more, though. I can’t believe I didn’t think to disguise our return, after all our caution traveling via labyrinth.”

Talia raised an eyebrow at that. She could already tell Sabae was beating herself up over this whole situation, which wouldn’t do at all. Even aside from them needing Sabae focused on the mission at hand, Talia had zero intent of allowing any of her friends to blame themselves for enemy action. “Disguise us how? Between Godrick’s size, your scars, my tattoos, and Mackerel’s… Mackerelness, we’re not precisely inconspicuous. Well, outside of Hugh. Sorry, Hugh.”

Hugh grinned at that. “I’m absolutely fine being inconspicuous. Also, don’t forget our eyes— they’re hardly normal.”

Talia smiled back at him, then turned back to Sabae. “Maybe Hugh could have rigged us attention wards or something, but none of us thought of disguising ourselves either. We got sloppy depending on Mackerel.”

“Ah should also point out that we were all exhausted after the labyrinth,” Godrick said.

Talia nodded, then continued. “What matters now is how we use this to our advantage.”

“I’m struggling to think how our enemies knowing where we are can be an advantage,” Sabae said.

Talia smiled again at that. “That’s where the single most important lesson of Clan Castis comes in.”

“Set everything on fire?” Sabae asked.

Talia shook her head. “When all eyes are on you, your enemies aren’t watching their backs.”

“Except we haven’t contacted any allies who can back-stab our hunters yet,” Sabae said.

Talia sighed at that. “You’re being too literal. Let me rephrase: Bright light can be just as blinding as darkness.”

Sabae’s frown deepened, but it wasn’t the angry, self-blaming look of before— it was a look of thought.

“You’re saying we shouldn’t hide at all,” Sabae said.

Talia shrugged. “I’m just offering suggestions, oh fearless leader.”

Sabae rolled her eyes, but a smile slowly spread across her face. “You know what? You’re right. We’re not going to hide at all.”

She leaned forward, and the others did the same.

“We’re going to make sure that all of Highvale knows we’re here. We’re going to lure out anyone after us, then make them regret it.”