Gourry obediently sat down again in front of me, his eyes alight with worry. I appreciated the concern and all, but I’d never exactly been comfortable with this kind of attention.
“So you were wounded at the start of the fight?” Gourry asked.
“I underestimated them, yeah.”
“Then you were focusing on your healing... I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions.”
“I told you, it’s fine.”
Gourry said nothing more after that. We stayed put for a while, simply letting the breeze blow past us.
“So, about what those guys are after...” I finally spoke up, breaking the silence. “After we parted ways last night, I looked into a few things.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Remember what I said yesterday? About how the mummy man had probably marked the item with magic?”
“Did you figure out what it was?”
I disappointedly shook my head.
“What I swiped from the bandits included an orichalcum statue, a large knife with an enchanted blade, and a few gold coins that would make a collector go bug-eyed. None of it had a marking spell on it.”
“But then...”
“That means it’s safe to rule out the coins; they’re not innately trackable. That leaves the knife and the statue.”
“Isn’t all this talking irritating your wound?”
“Huh? Oh... No, I’m fine now. I’m nearly all healed up.”
“Nearly?”
“I’m fine, really. Now, as for what we have left, the knife’s enchantment... is kinda nasty, but it’s trackable. On the other hand, the statue is made of a metal called orichalcum, which has some degree of magic-sealing properties.”
“So it’s not trackable, then?”
“It is, actually. When you run a search on the astral plane, the spiritual waves traveling in the direction the metal lies in— Are you following any of this?”
“Nope.”
“Well, the point is that the statue is indeed trackable too.”
“Then it has to be one or the other, right? But why are those guys so desperate to get their hands on it?”
“That’s the question, yeah. I’m still working on that. Orichalcum is a ton more valuable than gold, and the enchanted knife is a real piece of work. Yet neither object is worth the trouble they’re putting themselves through to nab.”
“They even said they’d pay you triple your asking price in six months, which tells us just how much it’s worth to them. Maybe it contains the location of a big hidden treasure or something.”
A somewhat whimsical theory, but not impossible.
“Or perhaps it’s a key of some kind,” I added.
“A key?” Gourry asked, looking at me quizzically.
“With certain applications of magic, you can turn something into a key. I’ve heard of noble estates in the City of Magic that are rigged up that way. If a young woman enters a fountain in the courtyard, for example, it opens up the door to the treasure vault or something... In that instance, the young woman is the key.”
“So the key doesn’t have to be magical itself?”
“Exactly.”
“So either the statue or the knife...”
“...might unlock something. That’s one possibility, at least.”
“I don’t feel like we’ve narrowed this down at all.”
“We’re still short on clues. Ah, here we go...”
There, I managed to pick myself up. My legs still felt a little unsteady, but I could walk, at least.
“Hey now...”
“I’m fine. I swear. I’m just a little tired. But we’d better get going, right?”
Gourry looked at me disapprovingly as he stood up, and then...
“Yeek!”
I let out a little shriek as he swept me up into his arms.
“H-Hey! What are you doing?” I shouted, well aware I’d turned beet red.
“I’ll carry you awhile. I don’t think you’re in any condition to be moving around on your own.”
“I told you that I’m fine! And you’re still pretty wiped out, aren’t you?”
“My grandmother always told me to be kind to children,” Gourry said with a wink.
There were footsteps out in the hall. And I wasn’t just hearing things.
I’d been resting in bed at the inn for a while now, and despite being tired, my churning thoughts were making it hard to sleep. That restlessness might have just saved my life, however. These weren’t the footsteps of a drunk old man heading back to his room after a nightcap. It was a group, trying as hard as they could to not make a sound.
I sat up in bed. There was no way to know for sure that I was the one these intruders were after, but given recent events, it seemed pretty likely. I decided to play it safe and prepare for the worst.
Little by little, the footsteps drew nearer.
I grabbed my cape hanging next to the bed. As a precaution for times just like these, it was the only thing I took off when I slept.
I silently made my move. Soon after, the footsteps stopped. Right outside my room. Just as I’d suspected.
Suddenly, the door burst open and a group of strange figures poured into the room. They were expecting me to be in bed, so when I wasn’t there, it threw them into confusion.
“Where is she?!” one of the intruders shouted.
“Right here!” was what I wanted to say, but decided against it.
Instead, I simply stood up. It probably sounds a little silly, but I’d actually only been sitting next to the door. Sitting wasn’t all I was doing, though—I was preparing.
My chant was now complete. I took my hands, held close together in front of my chest, and slowly pulled them away from each other. In the space between them, a glowing ball of light appeared.
This one wasn’t a Lighting spell. It was an honest-to-goodness Fireball!
The intruders whipped around in a panic, but it was too late. I unleashed the Fireball on the room as I ran into the hall (which I’d checked in advance to make sure it was assassin-free) and shut the door behind me. A Fireball going off in an enclosed space tends to be about twice as destructive as the regular deal.
Bwoom!
Right on cue, there was an impressive-sounding explosion inside the room. When I’m in top form, a direct hit from my Fireball can melt iron. But...
“What? What’s going on?!” Gourry said as he flew out of his room next door. Typical mercenary; he’d apparently had the same idea I did and slept in his usual gear, sword and all.
“Assassins!” I shouted.
With that one word, he was up to speed on the situation.
“Did you get them?” he asked.
“I don’t know!” I answered honestly.
If this had happened yesterday, I could have replied with more confidence. But as I suspected...
The second I said that, the door to my room burst open. The strange figures came running out, wreathed in flames and smelling of char.
“Tsk!”
Gourry immediately drew his sword and tore into the intruders, dropping one of them in a flash. I could see now that they were mostly trolls, armed with swords and simple armor.
Not good!
Gourry sliced at a second intruder, but even with smoke still rising from his body... he managed to block Gourry’s sword with his own. And that was no mean feat. This guy—a well-built middle-aged man who was the only human in the bunch—must have had some real skill.
“Are you with her, young man?” he asked.
“You’re not bad, old man,” Gourry responded.
“I’d better be after all these years.”
Both of them jumped back at the same time.
The troll Gourry had cut down a minute ago was already slowly getting back on its feet. Their regenerative powers were really something to behold... but I didn’t really have time to sit around and enjoy the show. We were in a pretty dicey situation here, no matter how you sliced it.
Since Gourry was occupied with the old man, handling the trolls fell to me. Gourry was talented with a blade, but the old man was nothing to sneeze at either. He was keeping Gourry too busy to help me out any.
Unfortunately, there was no way I could defeat the trolls by myself right now. My magic was in a sorry state.
Any other night, I’d have polished them off before Gourry was even out of his room. He’d say, “Did you get them?” And I’d wink and say, “Easy-peasy!” Then we’d clean up the aftermath of my Fireball, and that would be that, but...
Sadly, here in reality, all I’d done was scorch the assassins’ clothing and singe off their eyebrows. Otherwise, they were still in perfect fighting form.
I couldn’t deal a fatal blow with my magic right now, and my sword wouldn’t be much use either. I’m a pretty good swordfighter—maybe even as good as Gourry—but only against human opponents. As I mentioned before, when fighting trolls, you have to take them out with one strike... say, by lopping off their heads, for example. But while I might know how to get my sword up against a troll’s neck, I didn’t have the power to seal the deal. I needed to decapitate them in one strike.
And if I couldn’t do that, then I’d just have to fight smart.
My plan was to leave the real fighting to Gourry while I used some cheap magic tricks to distract the baddies and back him up. The narrow hallway we were in would keep them from all crowding him at once, so we needed to take advantage of that and thin their numbers one by one.
That was pretty much our only option. It was gonna be annoying, but... Ugh. So be it!
“All right, here we go.”
But just as I was getting ready to roll...
The trolls suddenly froze in place. The old man fighting Gourry suddenly stopped too, just standing there stock-still. The light had left their eyes.
Ah, this was a “Marionette” spell.
It wasn’t a particularly difficult spell, and it was no surprise to see simple creatures like trolls falling prey to it. That said, the man who’d succumbed to it along with them was another story. Humans were a bit more complex, after all. Meaning... there had to be an exceptional caster behind this.
Your typical Marionette spell typically only worked on one target, and even then, casting it required a certain amount of time and materials. To take over this many people, and to do it instantaneously... The caster must have specifically studied how to apply the spell to large groups. Maybe next time I had time to kill, I’d give it a try myself.
“What’s with them?” Gourry asked.
“I cast a minor spell on them,” someone answered.
And no, it wasn’t me.
“I don’t know who started things here, but I’m afraid all this noise will bother the other patrons,” said the same voice.
I looked down the hall, past the trolls, and spotted a priest. He was standing there so silently that there was no telling when he’d arrived on the scene.