Who Killed Seltivor Cloudscale?

This story is set two years before the fall of the Ithonian Empire. The city of Greywise is long-since destroyed and abandoned by the time of Mage Errant, but its ruins can be found in the heartland of the Havath Dominion, and the river that once ran alongside it still shares its name.

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The corpse of the dragon Seltivor Cloudscale sprawled across the ruins of the Greywise Governor’s Manse. It wasn’t a peaceful sprawl, nor would anyone ever mistake the great power’s death for slumber.

Seltivor’s corpse most resembled, reflected Legate Serai, a butcher’s shop.

Despite the gaping wounds and broken bones of the corpse, the immense grey dragon still lived up to his name— his dull grey scales still billowed clouds of fog, though thinner than the grey fogbanks that always surrounded the beast in life. The thin fog rose up from Seltivor to join the low-hanging clouds above the city, as though the sky mourned the cloud-calling bandit’s death.

Curiously, there was almost no other damage to the city of Greywise. Beyond the ruins of the Governor’s manse— the Governor herself still buried somewhere within it— there were only two spots of interest. There was a city square whose stones had been half-melted by dragonfire that miraculously had failed to ignite the buildings around it, and there was a river pier that had been crushed by a pair of stolen cows dropping from the sky.

Serai found herself, for the first time, wishing that one of the bandit powers plaguing the Empire had done more damage, that there had been more widespread devastation.

Because at least then there might have been a few more clues as to who had killed Seltivor Cloudscale.

Serai rubbed her aching temples, then called the thirty-ninth claimant for Seltivor’s bounty up to her table, set up in front of the dragon’s corpse.

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“And you say you… cut Seltivor’s head off with your magic sword during an aerial battle?” Serai asked the man in front of her— some aging fifth son of a minor cadet branch of some minor noble family that barely warranted a lesser palace on the outskirts of Imperial Ithos.

“That’s right, Legate,” the man said, offering her his most charming smile. She was sure it would have been significantly more charming a decade or two earlier.

“And where is this magic sword now?” Serai asked.

“I lost it during the battle, alas,” the noble offered.

“I see,” Serai said, eying the man’s soft, uncalloused hands and belt absent any scabbard. “And could you demonstrate your flying ability for me?”

“I sprained it.”

“You sprained your flying ability?” Serai asked.

“My magic in general, just from pushing myself so hard in battle.”

“You sprained your magic?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Serai rubbed her temples again, then glanced over towards the current scribe on duty, who was dutifully writing down the conversation. She couldn’t help but note a faint smirk on the scribe’s face.

“And… you beheaded Seltivor, you said?”

“That’s correct, Legate.”

Serai stared at the noble, then turned to look at the mangled corpse of the dragon behind her.

The mangled corpse which, despite all its injuries, most certainly did still have its head attached.

Serai turned back to the noble and sighed. “Very well then. We’ve taken note of your claim, and will contact you again if we have further questions. Please leave your current address with one of my clerks.”

The noble looked like he wanted to continue, but a sharp look from her mage guards got the man moving. 

The next claimant in line moved forward, and Serai couldn’t help but groan as her headache redoubled.

It was a child, no more than nine years of age, waving around a wooden sword.

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Serai’s predicament was the damn bounty’s fault. 

Seltivor Cloudscale had spent most of a century raiding and pillaging on the outskirts of the empire, his cloud magic and illusions allowing him to evade every pursuit. He’d never been more than a minor annoyance, however— just one of the innumerable pests in the hinterlands.

Over the past thirty years, however, Cloudscale’s raids had gone from annoyances to immense embarrassments. The bandit great power had taken advantage of the ongoing great power rebellion in the southern Skyreach Range to push his ambitions to ever-greater heights.

Raids against lonely caravans turned into raids against entire shipping fleets. Raids against minor trade stations had turned to raids against the great fortress-banks of provincial capitals. The occasional lost patrol had turned into the loss of two entire legions in Cloudscale’s treacherous fog banks.

And worse, it was all done in style.

Cloudscale might have started off as a petty bandit, but as he took advantage of the growing distraction of the Empire, his showmanship had grown apace with his boldness. His raids were done in the light of day, with immense light shows echoing through his rolling cloud banks. He posed immense cloud-statues of himself next to sites of his raids, that would hold together for days or weeks unless dispelled. 

He’d once even sent agents into Ctesia’s streets to hire hundreds of musicians, actors, and show-mages, and put on an entire festival for the commoners, with great cloud simulacra of himself leading parades and directing shows. And, during the midst of that great festival, one of his cloud clones had turned out to be the dragon himself, who had then raided Ctesia’s great bank, tossing half the coinage to the commoners partying in the street.

There were far greater enemies to the Ithonian Empire, far greater threats to stability— but there were no greater embarrassments. And as the shame at the hand of Seltivor Cloudscale grew, so did the size of the bounty on the grey dragon’s head.

And now that bounty sat off to Serai’s right, two armored wagons filled with enough gold and silver to buy half of Greywise City— the nicer half south of the river, at that. Even she couldn’t help but gawk at it at times, and the claimants attempting to prove they deserved the bounty for killing Seltivor? They couldn’t take their eyes off the open, albeit ward-guarded, doors of the armored wagons.

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“So… you choked Seltivor with hay?” Serai asked.

“Yes ma’am,” the farmer said, ducking his head nervously.

“You… threw it at him from the ground with your magic?” Serai asked.

“Nah, my hay magic isn’t strong like that,” the farmer said. “He ate it, then I took control of it while it was inside him.”

Serai raised an eyebrow at that. “I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a dragon eating hay before.”

“He didn’t,” the farmer said. “He ate my neighbor’s cows, who had stomachs full of my hay.”

Serai sighed, then jotted off a quick note for her investigators to check for the presence of hay inside the dragon, as well as whether his death showed signs of choking. 

The farmer, meanwhile, had transitioned into a long rant about the aforementioned neighbor, who was always sneaking their cows into the farmer’s field to eat his hay without paying for it.

The pounding in Serai’s temples grew worse, and she couldn’t help but feel like the overcast sky perfectly reflected her mood.

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As if figuring out who’d killed Seltivor Cloudscale wasn’t annoyance enough, there were three other problems demanding Serai’s attention.

The first was the most prosaic— with the Governor dead, Serai was now the ranking Imperial official in the city. Most of the Governor’s duties had already been managed by various clerks, scribes, and functionaries throughout the city, but there were always issues that rose up to the highest level of appeal available to them— usually issues raised by pompous nobles who would never deign to have their petty complaints resolved by any but the highest available authority.

The fact that Serai had never been to Greywise before— would likely never have visited Greywise if not for the current situation— only made the nobles more eager to appeal to her, expecting her unfamiliarity with the politics of the city to make her gullible and easy to manipulate.

They all found themselves quickly disillusioned, but never quickly enough for Serai’s taste.

The second issue was no more unexpected, but was just as irritating. If Serai had her way, she would never have brought Seltivor’s bounty with her, would have kept it safely tucked away in some bank vault secured against even great powers. The gold and silver, after all, would be put right back in a vault once it was claimed by Seltivor’s killer— its ownership only truly mattered on paper.

It was out of her hands, however. The order had come from the Emperor’s palace itself to display the gold as a show of might and wealth, to convince the populace that the Empire still stood strong.

The entirely predictable result?

Thieves.

No less than three times a day attempts were made on Cloudscale’s bounty. They ranged from drunken local louts foolishly rushing the wagons to elaborate heists by professional mage thieves. There’d been an attempt to tunnel under the wagons, even an attempt by flying mages to levitate the wagons away.

Between the elite mages guarding the wagons, the wards stretching around them, and the enchantments built into the wagons themselves, all of the attempted heists had been pointless, but they were still a drag on Serai’s time and attention.

The third problem, however, was worse than the other two combined.

The Empire’s officials had decided to throw a festival to celebrate Seltivor’s defeat, and Serai’s every waking moment in this horrid city was plagued by jugglers, bards, illusion-plays, and wind-mages taking children for flights above the slain dragon. Even the perpetual drizzle from the unseasonable weather didn’t serve to dissuade the celebrants.

Serai would wager all the gold and silver in the wagons beside her that her headache was one of the best-earned headaches in  history.

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“Absolutely not,” Serai told the woman in front of her.

“But…”

“No. Not a chance.”

“Aren’t you supposed to listen to everyone who comes before you?” the woman asked.

“Look, I’ve listened to a lot of ridiculous stories in the past week,” Serai said. “I’ve had wood mages claim they’d built flying ships to fight Seltivor, healers claim they’d given Seltivor heart attacks, and tavern keepers claim that they’d killed Seltivor with flying wine-amphorae. But this is absolutely ridiculous.”

“But… don’t you have to actually listen to everyone that comes before you?” the woman asked, a knowing look in her eye.

Serai scowled, then begrudgingly nodded.

As the woman began to relate her long and graphically detailed story of slaying Seltivor through a bout of vigorous love-making, Serai found herself desperately wishing that her headache would prove fatal.

Hopefully sooner than later.

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Despite the sheer ridiculousness of most of the claimants, by the end of the first week Serai and her staff had narrowed the possibilities down to a mere dozen serious claimants.

They hadn’t, of course, been the only powerful mages who could have plausibly slain Seltivor— there’d been half again as many other claimants with the power to have done so. Simple investigative work had been enough to disqualify them, however. 

Estella the Tailor, for instance. She used her iron and hemp magic to do battle with needle and thread— the needles eight feet long and two hundred pounds, the hemp threads strong enough to bind dragons— and was one of the most mobile archmages in the region. She defended and concealed herself with thread-woven wards, and could reshape entire battlefields with ropes and rope wards. There were many who considered her a great power, though she’d never defeated an acknowledged great power in battle, nor performed a comparable feat— or even, for that matter, claimed the title. Serai had not the smallest doubt that Estella could have slain Seltivor— at least, with the element of surprise.

Serai’s investigators, however, had found multiple credible witnesses to Estella’s drunken presence in a village tavern thirty leagues away the night of Seltivor’s death.

The remaining candidates were a remarkably mixed bunch— mercenary archmages, retired siege mages enjoying their twilight years in Greywise, even an illiterate farm boy with remarkably powerful wind and pressure affinities that he could combine to fire invisible spears of compressed air that could tear apart stone. All of them could verify their presence in Greywise the night of the city, none of them had any pressing reasons to dismiss their character or trustworthiness, none were wanted for any crimes of their own. All of them had the motive, means, and opportunity, and the corpse of Seltivor behind Serai offered no meaningful clues as to which had done it.

Of course, regardless of whether the farm boy had killed Seltivor, she fully intended to recruit him for the Empire.

She was finishing one of her long days in front of the dragon’s corpse when she heard gasping and shouting from the crowd. Even the guards keeping them away from her open tent and the wagons had turned to look at her.

No, not at her.

Behind her.

Serai turned in her chair, and found her own gasp joining the exclamations from the crowd.

Seltivor Cloudscale’s grey scales were turning bright red, the fog emanating from them dissolving entirely. In mere heartbeats, an entirely different dragon was revealed behind her— one equal in size to Seltivor almost to an inch, but clearly not the bandit great power.

As if compelled, Serai’s gaze drifted to the wagons carrying Seltivor’s bounty, just in time to see them dissolve into light and fog.

The later investigations would reveal most of how Seltivor had pulled off his heist— how the wounds he’d left on the red dragon had obliterated any noticeable differences in their build; how he’d carefully spent the entire time since the bounty’s arrival using his mists to scout out and disarm the protective magics of the armored wagons; even how he’d gotten a hold of patrol routes and scrying schedules in order to fly away without a trace.

At the time, of course, Legate Serai knew none of this— but she knew, with immediate conviction, that this had all been planned by Seltivor, and that they’d all played right into his talons.

Seltivor Cloudscale had stolen his own bounty.

As the clouds above formed into a colossal simulacra of Seltivor Cloudscale and winked cheerfully at her, the most pressing thing on Serai’s mind was the knowledge that her headache was about to get so much worse.