The Infinite Bk. 02 Ch. 05

"Easy, Marcus. Don't go lashing out like Gradius. We can't have you going crazy on top of everything else."

"Lady Zodiac, what are you doing here? You've been removed from service."

"I may be stuck on the sidelines, but I can still impart my knowledge, and I still keep my ear to the ground. That you would ask Joyce for advice on the Harajin instead of me is rather insulting."

"You're just hoping this is a lead to Valon, isn't it?"

"And if I do, does that not prove my innocence? Is your trust in me really so shaken?"

"Shaken, not broken. Your wisdom is much appreciated."

Knights Berholm and Zodiac continued to the next dungeon, deeper underground, but while the last chamber was for holding the living, this one was for keeping the dead. All the corpses from each Red Revelry were stored on shelves and tables, with countless herb branches hanging from the ceiling that warded off insects and the stench of death.

Here, underground with only lamplight, Gradius's servants would examine the dead for signs of identity so they could be returned to their families, but not for humanitarian reasons. For a noble son, especially one about to enter the academy, dying during a Red Revelry would be a black mark for the family.

Depending on the family's level of loyalty to the king, the bodies could be quietly returned and the secret covered up, or the bodies could be disposed of with the rest of the revelers, and the scandal could be made public. They were currently absent, off researching crests found on bodies.

"There he is."

Valia pointed to a table where a body in a black robe lay, and beside it stood Sir Elyot, cleaning his glasses.

"I knew you'd be here. You can never resist a good puzzle," said Berholm.

"I didn't know it for sure, but I did have an inkling about you being here as well, Royal Adjudicator. You aren't after the Harajin; you're after the knight who handed over his sword."

"Gradius was sure it was a knight's sword. Now for all we know, it could have been taken off a dead knight or bought on the street, but it's possible that the knighthood has been infiltrated. If that's so, we need to know and act quickly."

"What have you found so far?" Valia asked.

"Well, he had been looted, so there isn't much to go on. Beneath the cloak, he's got wool clothes and a layer of bandages that covers almost his entire body. The cloak is filled with pouches and pockets to conceal various weapons. The fabric itself is interesting, so I think I'll hold onto it."

Valia stepped forward and examined the wound in the back of the Harajin's neck. She was spared the sight of the face, molted and disfigured. "You two were right to come here. The blade slipped right between the vertebrae, didn't even chip or scrape the bone, and it severed the nerves and nothing else with minimal blood. This was no accident and not done by a ranged weapon. This is the work of a real contender."

"Sneaking up on a Harajin is supposed to be impossible. I've seen them dodge arrows aimed at their blind spots," said Berholm.

Valia began looking the body over for other injuries. "It most likely was done by another Harajin, though the wound doesn't quite fit their style, unless they were covering it up. The question is: What were they fighting over?"

"Probably the decision for a peace accord. What's important is the sword, and whether or not it was actually bestowed by a knight," said Elyot.

"I'll start turning over stones, see what crawls out."

"Unfortunately, this is where you and I must part," said Valia. "Without the king's order, I can't interfere any more than this, though I wish you two the best of luck in finding your culprit."

A question from Berholm stopped her as she turned to leave.

"Did Valon ever possess an official sword? Even just a ceremonial one?"

"No." She said it automatically, but once she left the room, that question became the spade with which she dug through her memories.

Berholm and Elyot left soon afterward, and all was quiet. Then, a figure appeared in the corner as if born from the darkness, though his white mask stood out against the shadows. He was sure he was alone, but he did not allow himself to display any signs of fatigue or even exhale in relief upon ending his spell. He approached the body with his eyes averted. It was a sin for a Harajin to see the face of another, the same as it was a sin to reveal it.

"Oritz, you fool. You brought shame not only to yourself, but to the clan."

What should have been a small blessing, his reckless subordinate lying dead and looted on this table instead of Grond, had become a big problem, for the man now felt plagued with the same questions as the knights. Despite his behavior, Oritz didn't have a liar's instinct and would rather fight than try to escape through deception. He was an honest scumbag, if such a thing could ever exist. But which was more unlikely, that Oritz had simply lied to try and save himself from a knight's wrath? Or that he had a secret mission that even the group leader was unaware of?

The fact that he had died in this style was a red flag, leaving the rest of the Harajin as suspects. If this really was an inner conflict, and none of his subordinates had stepped forward, then either one of them was covering it up, or it was Grond. Adding the detail about the sword brought the leader to one conclusion: there were traitors on both sides, and something was happening under his nose.

After examining the corpse, the leader removed a jar from his cloak and poured several small scarabs onto the body. They wasted no time burrowing into the dead flesh, and soon a rancid smell began to rise. By nightfall, those scarabs would number in the hundreds, leaving no evidence of the body behind.

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Noah trekked through the city towards the docks, his mind abuzz as he re-evaluated his options every time he took a step. Should he bail on this task and hope Cyrilo wouldn't follow through on her threat? Should he collect this potion and use it to threaten her? Collect it and then kill her? Kill the seller and keep it secret from her? Fulfill the task and give her what she wanted? At the moment, all options seemed equally bad. He needed a new variable to help him decide.

But there was more on his mind than just Cyrilo. He was also thinking about the new detail of his magic. He could take on the appearance of someone dead, at least fresh, but couldn't end the spell so simply.

A large part of him wanted to experiment with this development, possibly replicate the process and see what he could learn. It wanted an excuse, a scenario where he could play with his new toy. That part scanned his surroundings, sizing people up to determine who would be an excellent candidate to mimic. Who wouldn't be noticed or missed? Who could be disposed of? The homeless? Other adventurers? Participants in the Red Revelries?

It was not his conscience that reeled in those thoughts, but a nagging worry, like a festering bug bite in the back of his mind. Reckless. Lifetimes of experience fueled his survival instinct, but to Noah, death was little more than an inconvenience or even a relief. He lived each life in pursuit of new experiences, feelings, and knowledge, living on drops of meaning while mortals basked in fountains, which required taking many risks.

This life was different, his first experience in a magic world, and there was no telling how long it might be until he got another. He needed to be careful with his life, but the excitement changed him from risk-taking to reckless. His overreliance on potions in training, nearly dying in the dungeon crab because of a lack of preparation, the wounds he suffered while fighting beside Alexis, and now this whole situation because he wanted a closer look at the Red Revelries; all were because he let himself get carried away.

If he played it safe, he knew he would miss out on too much. Should he savor this world one tiny bite at a time or eat it whole and enjoy the full taste? It was a question he failed to answer, even after grabbing some breakfast and reaching the docks. Here, great groaning vessels filled with food, monster pieces, and wood were departing and passing by others, coming to deliver treasures from lands across the sea. It was late in the morning and expectedly busy, with sailors and fishermen crawling about like ants.

Noah found the warehouse with the seagull, but he didn't approach, not while visible, and not without giving it a look around. He scanned the area, searching for signs of traps or an ambush. If any traps were set inside, they'd most likely be placed around the doors and activated when he opened or stepped through them.

There was an open window thirty feet up, the second most likely place, and his only way in. It required him to climb onto the roof of an adjacent building, where he summoned his clone and had it jump into the open window and climb among the rafters. It was dark inside, and he couldn't see, hear, or feel anything through the clone, but from his perch outside, nothing appeared to pass through it.

He jumped into the window and went no farther than the frame. No traps activated. Sunlight streamed through him at full brightness, and he scanned the warehouse for signs of another presence. It was full of barrels and chests just coming in from across the sea or soon to be loaded.

"Hello? Is anyone here?" he asked through his clone, standing several feet away. No response. "I'm here to pick up a package for Madam Cyrilo. Speak up."

Nothing. It appeared he had arrived before the seller, excellent. He moved into the darkest shadow among the rafters, where he had a view of everything. There was no telling when this person would arrive, so he deactivated his spells to conserve his mana while trusting the darkness to conceal him.

Several minutes later, he reactivated his invisibility as someone finally appeared in the window, and their appearance set off alarms for Noah. Dark cloak, porcelain mask; they were an associate of the man Noah had killed the previous night. Was this a set-up by Cyrilo? Had one of them tracked him down to avenge his comrade?

The royal executioner called these folks the Harajin, and considering the response it brought, Noah knew it would be bad to be seen with this man. Should he bail and risk Cyrilo fulfilling her threat? Or make contact and risk a fight? After mulling it over, Noah decided to see how this masked man would act.

The stranger looked around from the rafters as Noah had done and could detect no one else in the warehouse. He then dropped to the ground and stood in the corner near the door. Was he planning to ambush whoever came through the door? He didn't appear to have a weapon in hand. They both waited in the darkness, Noah testing the man's patience.

After a while, he deemed it safe enough to make contact. He summoned his clone and left it in his spot while he climbed away through the rafters. His mana flowed through the wooden beams, keeping them from making any sounds. Once a safe distance away, he spoke through his clone with a deepened voice, one rehearsed enough to sound natural.

"Are you here to make a trade?"

The man became tense, his head darting back and forth, searching for the voice and settling on the clone. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I was sent here to pick up a potion in exchange for a scroll. Are you here to deliver it?"

"I don't know what you are talking about. Identify yourself!"

"My name doesn't matter. I just need to take the potion and give it to Cyrilo. Do you have it or not?"

"I will only give it to her, no one else."

Noah conjured his bow and shot the man with an invisible arrow. It was planted in his thigh, prompting him to curse in pain and drop to his knees. He stared at the wound, feeling the arrow but not seeing it, then gasping as it seemingly materialized out of thin air.

"Hand it over, or I'll loot it from your corpse. I'm just going to take it to Cyrilo."

The man paused, trying to steady the mental scale he was using to weigh his options. He gripped the wound to slow the bleeding and try to ease some of his pain. "Do I have your word?"

"Yes," Noah replied.

The man slowly reached into his robe, pulled out a ceramic bottle, and then set it on the floor. His gloves, now bloody, left several red smears on the bottle. Noah tossed Cyrilo's scroll onto the floor by the man's feet. Wrapped in his mana, it didn't appear until it hit the ground.

"There is your payment. Now exit through the door and close it behind you."

"I can't walk."

"You can limp."

With a suppressed growl of pain, he snapped the arrow shaft but did not remove it out of fear of bleeding out. Instead, he pushed himself onto his feet and limped to the door. He managed to get outside and closed the door behind him. After a few minutes, Noah climbed down from his perch and collected the bottle. Hopefully, this was what Cyrilo wanted. Should he give it to her so easily? Try to extort her? Either way, if there was one thing he had learned since coming to this world, it was to get potions appraised as soon as possible.

He left the warehouse and headed for the Knight's Sheath. However, rather than walking through the streets, he moved through the dark alleys occupied by the homeless. He got a tail within minutes, some mangey thief, and once Noah reached a quiet area, he made his move.

He cast both his spells and stepped out of reach of the man's dagger. The blade passed through his clone without any resistance. The man didn't understand what was going on, but his adrenaline wouldn't let him stop to ponder, and he began swinging wildly at the clone. No matter how hard he tried, nothing he did inflicted any damage, as the real Noah was standing several feet away, waiting for this thief to tire.

The foolish fish had taken the bait, but not until its fins went slack would he reel it in. With every attempt, the thief became more agitated, unable to understand what was happening and why his blade wasn't harming Noah. He finally stopped to catch his breath, and Noah stepped forward and lopped off his head.

Noah deactivated both spells and then reactivated his invisibility. He crouched down, placed his hand on the cooling body, and summoned his clone. He felt it again, foreign mana from the man latching onto him and shrouding his body like a nasty odor. Or perhaps that was just the smell of the corpse. This guy and his ratty clothes stank to high heaven. Noah's clone appeared, giving him the appearance of the slain man.

"Now we're talking."

It was confirmed: he could now take on other people's appearance. The mana use was heavy, and killing people each time could get him in trouble, but it was worth it to know that his magic still had room to grow. Whether he had more tricks waiting to be discovered or his magic would evolve on its own, that potential was priceless. Now he could experiment.

Just like the previous night, he could not separate from his clone or dispel it simply by covering his eye. He tried to remove the illusionary shirt he was wearing, but the spell refused to alter. Typically, removing clothes or drawing weapons was within his clone's capabilities, so either that would change in time as he trained and experimented, or this wasn't a clone at all but a third type of illusion he could create, one with its own rules.

He looked at his hands, no longer recognizing them, and covered both eyes at once. He had tried it before, and all it did was activate or terminate both of his spells simultaneously. Maybe this time... no. He lowered his hands to find that the illusion was still active, even though his spells had ended.

'Damn. Will I really have to wait for my mana to hit zero for this spell to release? After last night, that's not something I want to be stuck with. Maybe if I just repeat the process, that'll undo it.'

He covered his left eye with his hand, and to his surprise, he returned to his original appearance. So casting his invisibility spell undid the illusion? A welcome mystery. While still invisible, he put his foot on the dead body and conjured the illusion once more. There were no issues. He released his invisibility and recast it, and the illusion was dispelled.

"That's one issue out of the way."

Like the spell, his bitter mood from dealing with Cyrilo untwisted. There it was, that spark of excitement, pushing the shadows from his mind. He savored it as much as he could, like the meager sunlight in winter.

Now that he knew how to use the illusion, it was time to put it to good use, but he had to deal with this body first. Noah pulled out his bottle of high-proof liquor and poured it on the severed head, then lit it with his flint and steel. The flames wouldn't remove the evidence; they'd just disfigure the face so it wouldn't be recognized.

Disguised, he left the alleys and made his way through town, soon arriving at an apothecary shop he had passed on his way to the docks. Cyrilo told him that the potion would immediately draw the attention of the authorities, but this time, Noah could make a proper escape.

He had been in these shops several times since arriving in this world, and they were all the same. The walls were lined with shelves of merchandise, primarily jars of ground-up herbs and potions, while various plants hung from the ceiling to dry. Behind the counter, an old man was working a mortar and pestle the size of a punch bowl, with biceps that shamed most of the blacksmiths Noah had encountered so far.

"Can I help you?" he asked. He looked uncertain as he sized Noah up, but his disheveled appearance would naturally bring such mistrust.

Noah laid out all his ceramic bottles on the counter, including the one he had received in the warehouse, six in total. Each had a different label written in an unknown language, except for the warehouse potion. "I pulled these off a body earlier this morning and want to know what they are."

The man got up from his seat with a grunt and came over to examine the bottles. "Well, judging by the ceramics, I'd say western Ezeria." Noah vaguely recalled the name. It was a nation to the southeast, across the sea.

The man uncorked one of them and gave it a whiff. "I'm detecting filo berries, fermented lizard blood, some keel mushrooms, and a hint of... rose cactus. This is a slow-acting health potion." He studied a second. "Hmm, smoky, with hints of melted fat. I'd say honey root, dried over a cooking fire, with malin sage and water. A second healing potion, faster acting." The third: "Scorpion venom, mixed with velmon fruit juice, a bit of... harken, and some... camel urine. This is a paralyzing agent." The fourth, he described as musty with the scent of desert flowers, cactus juice, wildebeest eyes, and ash, all ingredients for a deadly potion, and the fifth bottle was the antidote. When he came to Cyrilo's potion, the old man grimaced. "I've never smelled something like this before. It would take time and money to research."

Noah smelled the mysterious potion, and he, too, was thrown for a loop. It was a smell that came out at first as subtle. Then, once it filled his nose, a sharpness made him twitch. Organic, metallic, chemical; it seemed like a combination of all three and yet different from all of them.

"I'll pass. Anything else you can tell me?"

"Well, all these potions here are used almost exclusively by the Harajin. The bottle shape is their handiwork, and they're labeled with some code they use in the field."

"What are the Harajin?"

The man began examining the bottles once more. "Long ago, a plague swept through Ezeria, one that rotted the body inside and out. People started wearing masks to protect themselves from the disease, hide their deformed faces, or even commit crimes. Eventually, the citizens banished the infected, casting them out into the desert to die.