The Lilliad chapter 36

They followed Mairi out of her family’s grand estate. They walked and walked through the city. The sun reached its zenith and then began to set before the sorceress pointed a long elegant finger at a stone wall.

“...there?” Lilli glanced back. “It doesn’t look that old.”

“The mortar is quite neat,” Benk agreed. “There is no sign of the decay of time.”

“Yes, well.” Mairi examined her nail bed. “This wall is new. The old city just made everyone sad and uncomfortable. It has terrible energy.”

“There are many colorful paintings of hands and ugly birds on this wall,” Igni added. They bent to look in closer detail. “Why are the paintings so short?”

Mairi shrugged. “The wall had bad vibes too,” she said. “So we had children paint on it. That made it more cheerful. Now we don’t have to look at anything unpleasant.”

Lilli eyed the wall and privately thought that it was hideous. She thought she would probably prefer the creepy old ruins to this garish mess of primary colors.

“Is that a chicken?” Igni sounded fascinated.

Arelt bent over to look. “I’m not sure. Benk, you’re the expect.”

“Definitely not a chicken,” said the only parent in their group. “I think it’s a phoenix. See the fire?”

Igni scoffed, unwilling to be wrong. “Sometimes chickens are also on fire. That’s how you eat them.” Sullenly, Igni drew themselves up to their full height. “How do we enter? Shall I knock this down?”

“Please don’t,” Mairi said silkily.

The tone was polite. But it somehow put up the hairs at the back of Lilli’s neck.

“I can open an entrance.” The sorceress tapped at her chin. “For 3 of you. I’d like to borrow the other 3.”

“Borrow?” Lilli said.

“Done,” Elathor said briskly. “Do what you will.”

Everyone ignored them.

“To finish the quest you accepted from the temple,” Mairi elaborated. She tilted her head. “I don’t want the college to profit. So I need muscle to come with me and find the necromancer responsible. I’ll let your party have half the proceeds.”

Lilli opened her mouth to bargain and then thought about it. They needed Mairi to let them into the old city. They might need her to let them out. And they wouldn’t be getting a brass coin of profit from their previous quest if she didn’t help them find the monster who was killing people and puppeting bodies. “Who did you want to come with you?”

Mairi hummed. “Close combat fighters, to make up for my deficit. I am sufficient at the middle and long distance by myself.”

‘...are we supposed to have people who fight from different distances? Is that how this works?’

Lilli pursed her lips. She looked at Benk, Arelt, Igni, and Ser Alcuin. “What do you 4 think?”

Igni was the first to sigh and shrug. “I quite like the scary witch. I shall go with her.”

Benk frowned momentarily. Lilli had the surreal thought that he seemed protective of their stone companion. “I’ll go with you, Igni.”

Arelt looked between Benk and Lilli. “I’ll go with them as well.”

That left Lilli, Elathor, and Ser Alcuin to go together into the ok’d city. She looked over her group. “Alright then. It’s settled. Please help us enter, Mairi?”