(Vol 2) Chapter 53: Um, the Inn Is Burning Down?

The new Merril did not look like Merril except for his eyes. He was bigger and a bit taller, and looked far more mature — a catman in his youthful prime, perhaps just into the mid-twenties. His coloring was changed completely as well, skin an odd charcoal black-gray and white streaked, with a long, glorious mane of white hair… and even a tail. That had always been a curious lack, for reasons she’d never asked.

Three observing women all gasped in amazement, utterly shocked. Bob too.

Oh wow, from adorable kitty to handsome cat rocker. Go Merril!

Merril looked at himself judiciously, an expression just barely approving on his face. He swayed his head, obviously feeling the hair. “Hmmph. I was meaning to grow my hair out.” He blinked a bit, as his voice had changed. Deeper, richer. “That’s… different. Ha. Haha!” He grinned.

“Y-you have a tail!” Estara exclaimed with her hands over her mouth. It was fairly comical, Estara being Estara through the reflection of a tough warrior woman illusion. Who also had a bit of rosiness to her cheeks.

“What are you talking about?” Merril was quite confused, as his tail lashed around. Then he looked behind him at the flicking striped organ. “Shit. So I do… you just move around however you fucking like, huh?”

The tail flicked agitatedly in response, to Merril’s chagrin.

And then Dax, face still damp with tears, dashed in and glomped the new catman in a bear hug, lifting him up. “Merril, thank the goddess! You’re okay! You’re alive!”

“Damn you, Sis!” Merril snarled with bared teeth, trying to fend her off. “Release me at once or I swear I will claw your stupid face off!”

Everyone else laughed at that because it felt all too normal despite everything.

“Hate to burst everyone’s bubble,” Bob said, with a pointed cough, “but this smoke filtering ain’t from the regrown cat! This place is about to burn the fuck down.”

Indeed, acrid smoke had begun to flow through the room, and a glow of flames came from the common dining room.

“Right,” Estara said, taking on a note of stern command. “Let’s get out of here, team. Her Maj- The Seeress can disguise us all while we are in the radius of the mask for a while longer.”

“Good thinking,” Samantha projected as a voice through the mask. “I’ll just have you appear as random folk-”

Just then, someone came running up, and Samantha quickly just cloaked everyone as camouflaged — effectively invisible while standing still. A coughing man — perhaps a merchant — paused briefly, blinking around unsure of what he may have seen and heard in the gloom, then made for the exit, her Followers all watching silently.

Once he was past, Samantha changed the illusion to have them become similarly dressed denizens. A merchant here, a guard there. Just people fleeing a burning inn.

“Let’s move!” Estara called, and led the way out. As they were moving, Sammy dropped a Persistent Illusion in the area, fashioning it to last 15 minutes. She could add repetitive sounds, so she made a blaring alarm to wake anyone up, interspersed with a loud voice calling, ‘Fire! Run! Fire!’

They made their way outside, to only a few spectators, who more or less stood in the road watching the inn burn, a couple of them yelling out ‘fire!’ to no one in particular. Helpful, technically… if her alarm wasn’t blaring far louder than anything. Indeed, more people were fleeing from out of the inn’s exits.

I don’t even see the innkeeper. Or anyone who was there. Either he’s running or riding for help or this level of trouble is just something not worth even a whole inn to tempt and hang around. The fear is real…

“Ya’ll see what even happened?” a puzzled man asked them.

“Think it was some crazy foreign wizard!” Dax exclaimed in a bold lie, her voice entirely different through the illusion. “There was a fight ‘cause I saw bodies. Lots of them. A bloodbath in there — they did a good job all killing each other. Glad we weren’t eatin’ at the time.”

“Wow… starsdamned foreign wizards!”

“Right! Fuck ‘em straight to hell, boyo!”

They moved on quickly to grab ‘their’ horses and get as much distance as possible from the rapidly burning building.

“Do they have firefighting… wizards or something here?” Sammy asked Dax.

“Waterwanders,” Dax answered. “Charged magic items. Probably too late for this one. This side of the bridge is bad news for fires due to the distance they’d have to come. Which is good for us, guilty as it is to think it.”

“We killed a fucking sage… an inquisitor no less. They are going to investigate for sure.”

“Caneboroans aren’t known to be cooperative, though the traveling merchants will talk. Still, that was a weird one, coming out here. An idiot zealot. I don’t think they’re supposed to. This is a place the Dominion leaves alone except for religions or rebellions. About taxes, usually. Tribute, rather. They don’t have any presence here officially. The Inquisitors would work through subtler contacts here, usually. If at all. Trying to throw weight around publicly would eventually incite a mob.”

“He was arrogant in the extreme. And when he got blinded, he turned craven in a heartbeat.”

“Bullies are the same high and low. He had a lifetime of abuse dished out with impunity. No clue that he was entering a situation beyond his ability to control. When he lost that, he lost himself, because that is all he is.”

“Who was he?”

“An inquisitor. A low-ranking journeyman, I’d guess. Names are hard to come by with them.”

“More and more mysterious. Are you sure you have a clue how they’ll respond?”

“Some clue, but it’s just guesswork if you want to be particular. You’re right that no one knows how they operate but them.”

“And what about the… having no fucking soul business, and the weird, bloodless body?”

“Rumor goes that their arts take a lifetime or longer to get anywhere fruitful to their judgments and standards. They utilize the most extreme life-prolonging aids to get there. Those aids have side effects. Or maybe it’s all part of some big, gruesome package deal? No one knows. That guy was the most extreme I’ve seen displayed, though. Not sure why. Like most things with them.”

Fucking holy shirtball fuckballs. Are they some kind of undead? If I was undead, I wouldn’t want clerics around either…

The party met back up with (a smaller) Dart and Brynn, as the ‘relic use’ time ran its course and the illusion had to drop. Fortunately, Dax knew of a dingy safehouse in the area carved out of a warehouse. Only one other alive knew about it, and Dax said he had been in the Southlands for years.

Soon they were all ‘settled’ in a cramped space of many knotted poles Dax said were designed to tie hammocks for beds. They sat on boxes and barrels for seats and ate some cold food while drinking watered-down wine. The prisoner was kept well apart, blindfolded, ear-muffled, and well tied up.

Dax washed down some cheese with a swig of wine and shook her head. “Need to decide how we split up here. I gotta make this prisoner disappear into the underground. Might have a little useful info if he works for the Dominion, so it’s practically a favor to certain types. Me, Brynn, and maybe Bob can be pinned as being at that scene. That’s probably particularly bad for our long-term health if we keep the same faces here.”

Merril raised his cup in a salute. “Here’s to new faces. I guess even new names. Hmm.”

“Easy for you to say — I have to secure an illusion, especially. At least we have the coin now. And really, I’m impressed, Merril. You managed to pick an even uglier ass mug than before!”

“Fuck you, Sis! How about instead of an illusion, I rearrange your face with my claws?” He flashed his retractables briefly.

Everyone laughed. Including Dax, who had a huge grin for a moment.

So good to see a little sibling banter again.

“I’d pay to see that!” Dart exclaimed, laughing and wheezing a little overly long about it. He’d taken the form of a large bruiser of a man, wide and thick, with ‘bouncer’ energy.

Samantha spoke through the relic mask, “Dax should take the mask for the disguise benefits. Bob, I notice your helmet kind of obscured your face the whole time, so that helps, and I can enchant your armor to look different with eventually permanent illusions, but I think Brynn should return to Mot Mekess due to his face being seen.”

Dax nodded slowly. “That’s reasonable. Honestly, Bob kind of blended in as a generic guard rather than a knight. Enchantment on his helm and breastplate would do the trick.”

Bob took a sip of wine and shrugged. “I’m remarkable in my unremarkableness. My shithead dad said that. Then he said he was going to get some milk from the farm and never came back.”

“Really?”

“No. But he is a right shithead.”

“Uh-huh. Anyway… I do think I need to shed the heat in this city for a while, even with a disguise. I figure I can lay low long enough to make the connections and sow the seeds for the Seeress to establish here — because some of the fiercest haters of the Wizzies are entrenched in this city. This is an element that… Well, if the Dominion had spies within them, the whole operation would get crippled with assassinations without months, I’ll put it that way.”

“So they’re like that poor bastard that died?” Samantha asked. “The one that talked shit out in public at an inquisitor.”

“Aye. Like I said, if the Dominion came and pushed their weight around, they’d have unrest and mobs forming. Pure chaos that’d turn it into a bloody warzone. Has happened before and it’s bad for trade. Caneboro just can’t be replaced. The Dominion would like to root out smuggling and other criminal elements, but it's a balance of good and bad sticking it at the bottom of priorities while they’re stretched thin. And their fixes don’t stick forever here.”

“So you want to connect me with existing rebels and revolutionaries. And apparently an underground criminal network?”

“Yes to most of that, but there is no revolution… rebels but no rebellion, not exactly. Not for long. I guess if the Borderlands lit up, Caneboro would declare independence, but it would end in a shitstorm. At least right now.”

“And the criminal thing?”

“The Dominion has a massive tedious list of illegal things. Officially, literally anything from the Southlands is. So you got stuff smuggling in every direction. Pipeweed, wine, spices, herbs, magic, so on and so on. The most dangerous and lucrative are things involving spirits. Invested items. That’s what they least want moving through their territories.”

“Some knights we are,” Estara said with a measure of disappointment.

Dax frowned at her. “Don’t let that shit get too much to your head, girl. It meant a lot to me, too, but we both came out of the dirt and we’ll die in it, too. And we’re all liars and cheats, aren’t we? Not any better than anyone else. This group is the tamest rogues and thieves get, the kind that do have a little honor and no taste for running with the worst of the scum. Some of these guys, well… The only reason they’re even in it is to fuck over the Wizzies.”

“We will use all tools available to us,” Samantha declared. “Allies are allies, and this city is as close to the Dominion as we dare to set up. Existing traitors have less to lose becoming one of us as well as a motivation to become forerunners in our future resistance. Beggars can’t be choosers… I don’t think we can pass up these compatriots, nor can we surrender this city.”

Estara nodded thoughtfully. “Yes… Of course, Seeress. I’ll simply… miss Mot Mekess, and the knights there, if I’m to start the church here.”

“You succeeded there in setting up for Pashett to thrive and you’ll succeed here. But it isn’t that far to visit and perhaps we’ll bring some men here from Mot Mekess.”

Estara did brighten a little at this. “I will do my all, Seeress!”

“So I guess the big question now is what Merril is going to do.”

The catman was scratching his chin, sitting in a hammock he’d just made. “Choose a new name, for one…”

“Which reminds me — what class did you take, in the end?”

Dax choked on some wine, coughing. “Wh-pf-... a new class? Huh?”

Merril grinned widely like his teeth were sunk into secrets. A dramatic pause stretched that he was enjoying far too immensely.

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