chapter 15

Jaune lay on top of the wagon that was slowly making its way along the road, looking at the sky. The only thoughts filling his head were about how bored he was. Thankfully they were set to reach Brorusalem in a matter of days.

The books he had purchased in Sanshu and stored in his inventory had been read. Some had been interesting. Some he'd stopped reading after the first page out of disgust.

Then, after he'd read all the books deemed readable, Jaune had gone back and read the ones he'd discarded, thrown away into the darkest corner of his inventory due to their lack of quality.

The discussions with Emanon had dried up. You only had so many conversation topics to go over before you ran out. She'd offered him a tattoo, free of charge. He was considering it. He would have to think of a design that actually served a purpose in combat as well though. He couldn't justify blemishing his skin otherwise.

And removing it would hurt. Cutting off the uppermost layer of flesh and letting regeneration regrow it would be an arduous process. At least for him it wouldn't be permanent. He was also a hero; he could gather enough money to have it surgically removed.

He was suddenly startled by the cry of a bird that flew into sight. A vulture to be precise.

Jaune considered shooting it down with his arcane bolt. With it upgrading to Journeyman rank due to the constant practice, he was pretty sure he could hit the annoying bird. Practice had paid off, and the skill would have probably grown even more if not for his mana restrictions. He'd had more than enough time after all.

Jaune narrowed his eyes as he spotted another vulture, and then another, until finally, he decided to stand up on top of the wagon and take a look in their direction.

"Now ain't that a big flock of birds," he muttered as he spotted a group of at least fifty of the things circling around something approximately a mile away. Occasionally one of the dots would sweep down. It didn't take much imagination to visualize them gripping a piece of meat in their beaks afterwards.

They were carrion feeders after all. It would also explain why he'd shot down more Grimm than usual. Any event that caused such a flock of corpse-eaters to gather would have to have generated quite a lot of negativity.

Stretching his senses and looking around, he didn't see any patrol of the emperor's men riding about. Not weird; he'd only seen them twice in the last nine days, and he hadn't interacted with them once.

Looking at the birds flying, acting as an aerial marker, he considered if he should shirk his adventurers guild duty to check on the spot where the vultures were gathering.

He shook his head. No. There might still be survivors. And he was a hero, wasn't he?

-/-

It was the smell that hit him first. With only a slight wind in his direction, Jaune's nose was assaulted by the stench of rotting corpses.

Jaune steeled himself, forcing down his gag reflex, and walked towards what he now saw was a small caravan that had been assaulted, its members left for dead.

Flaring his senses, he made sure that there were still no enemies in the area. It would be sad if he failed his quest because Emanon was attacked while he was checking out what more and more looked to be the aftermath of a bandit raid.

But no, the only living beings present were the vultures that almost blocked out the sun by this point and occasionally flew down to pick pieces of meat from the corpses littering the ground. Getting mad, he decided to send a few arcane bolts at the flock.

After six of them were shot, the vultures started dispersing. Cowards. Only capable of feasting on things already defeated.

The closer he got to the grisly scene the more likely it became that there had been no Grimm involved.

The Grimm weren't really inclined or capable of rape after all. He grimaced as he came close enough to the first body to confirm his suspicions

He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.

After vomiting out everything he had in his stomach, he decided in hindsight that doing that probably hadn't been a very good idea.

No matter how disgusting it was, he grabbed the dead woman by the ankles and dragged her away from the scene. Then he did the same for a few others until he couldn't see any more corpses.

He would burn them later. Somehow.

But first he would have to look through the wagons. Looking at the small pile of dead people he'd extracted from the surroundings, it did seem to be a minimal number for a caravan. He didn't know if he would, or could manage it. He already felt sick to his stomach.

Bracing himself, he entered the first wagon. Finding nothing but a few empty crates and another corpse, tortured this time, he continued on to the others, his anger growing every time. It seemed that the people killed outside had been the lucky ones.

After exiting the third such wagon, he looked around and determined that he had four more to go.

The mage looked down at his shaking hands. He could do this. It was his duty.

...No, he couldn't. He couldn't stand the smell, the sights, and his mind imagining what exactly had transpired. Saying sorry to the people whose bodies would probably be eaten by scavengers because of his weakness, he turned and started running back to the wagon.

That was, until he sensed something peculiar.

A body inside of a camel. Shuddering at the thought of bandits cutting up the body of a camel and forcing someone inside until they suffocated, he still walked over to the dead animal, an arrow lodged in its head. The mage's eyes suddenly glinted after looking over the scene.

The body of the camel was lying next to the wagons. Its belly faced the wooden construction, making him unable to see the cut that allowed a person to be forced inside. If he couldn't see it immediately, what were the chances of some bandits being able to? And why would they bother with inspecting a clearly dead animal?

Which meant the person inside could have entered the beast willingly, to hide from sure death.

Jaune didn't know when he'd started running, but he was. Jumping over the dead camel, he saw the cut along its stomach that he'd expected to see. Pulling open the flap, he found a body inside. Quickly pulling it out, he determined the person was still among the living. Covered in blood, guts, and looking closer, she was missing its left eye, but the pulse he felt from her chest was going strong. That her name and class were displayed completely confirmed that she was alive. May, archer.

Furrowing his brows, Jaune suddenly noted that he had yet to find a corpse that actually looked like a hero. Which brought along worrying suspicions. Putting the clearly unconscious girl aside, he ran back to the rest of the wagons. If one person survived, then the possibility existed that more had.

The only thing he found were more corpses. Disappointed and afraid he would be forced to vomit again, he ran back to May and quickly pulled her into his arms, bringing her towards Emanon.

He stopped caring about the smell, the blood, and the guts. He only cared that he had found someone who had survived.

Coincidentally also the first person he'd ever saved. As long as she didn't die of an infection due to the fact she had spent what looked to be a few days inside the body of a dead animal with several open wounds and a missing eye.

Fuck.

-/-

"She has a high fever, and there's pus leaking from her eye." Emanon grimaced. "It looks infected."

Jaune cursed under his breath. "Do you think she'll make it to Brorusalem?" Emanon frowned. That was answer enough.

Jaune had some remedies in his inventory but they probably wouldn't be enough. He fished out one of his few health potions. It had cost him a lot of lien, even for his standards. The problem wasn't the money though.

If several health potions were ingested in a short period of time, say, a week, they would become highly toxic and lead to the death of the person imbibing them.

It was one of the reasons you generally didn't force-feed potions to unconscious people you found in random places. You had no way to know if they'd taken some before.

It was a gamble in the end. Give her the potion, and risk her dying, Give her the basic non-alchemical treatment he could offer, and risk her dying.

"If she was a grown hero I would treat her without a potion." Emanon glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, arms in her lap, obviously not knowing what to do in this situation. "It's very likely for a high level hero to survive without treatment due to their constitution, and it's also more likely that they have already partaken in health potions before due to the fact they could actually afford them." He looked at Emanon desperately.

He needed someone to agree with him. Because you want to be able to share the blame if something goes wrong, growled a dark voice in his head.

Jaune rambled on as he shakily uncorked the vial holding the red liquid. "But she's young you see, probably my age. She has no access to potions." He gestured wildly at her class. "Look, she's even an archer. Her constitution stat is probably her worst one."

He babbled on nonsensically as he gently pried May's mouth open and poured the potion into her. His pulse calmed down as he gently massaged her neck to make sure she actually swallowed the fluid.

The droplets that were still left in the bottle he mixed with water. He dunked a rag in the water and tried as gently as possible to wash the empty eye socket of the girl. By the way her body spasmed and her face grimaced, he wasn't doing a particularly good job of it. He would have been mad at Emanon for just sitting there… if she hadn't been the one who'd removed the remains of the eye from the hole. She'd had to lift the thing leaking fluids with her fingers and manually cut the optical nerve with a scalpel.

She'd puked after that.

That's when he'd stepped up to continue trying to help the archer. Once done with the cleaning, the wound already looked a bit better. Jaune poured a small amount of alcohol Emanon kept for disinfecting tattooed areas onto the wound. Afterwards he bandaged it up as best he could.

Hell, was this what Jain had had to do when he'd found him stranded in the desert with a stab wound in his gut? He'd make sure to thank him the next time he saw the man.

After taking care of the rest of the girl's body, treating some small lacerations all over her skin, he leaned back and gave out a sigh of relief.

There was nothing more for him to do. He sure as hell was going to take a course on wound dressing when he got the opportunity though.

Or at least read a book about it.

-/-

Jaune was afraid of falling asleep. He had been drenched in nightmares for many days after killing the bandits that had assaulted him and Jain. It had only gotten better recently. And now, Jaune thought back to the scene of carnage he'd just seen, and the young girl whose eye Emanon had removed.

Now, he had new nightmare fuel.

Jaune hesitated. There was a way out of this. He could enter the shared dreamscape. He remembered feeling like his subconsciousness had no effect whatsoever on that place. Which meant no dreams. He would just have to make sure that he didn't talk to any creature that he met. Try to stay invisible, so to say.

He noticed his hands were shaking again and so he clenched them shut. He couldn't go through more of those nightmares, reliving the corpses every time he slept.

The shared dreamscape would do. What was the worst that could happen?

-/-

The guards at the gates of Brorusalem were politer than the ones he'd met when entering Sanshu.

"Can I help you with anything else..." The young guard hesitated for a bit, before awkwardly finishing his sentence. "Sir?"

The sir part caused him to grimace. Which seemed to bring unease to the soldier. What was up with the man?

Maybe it had to do with the fact Jaune was noticeably mad, arcane energy leaking from his body in tiny purple strings.

He had found the aftermath of another bandit attack along the way. This time, there had been no survivors.

And just like last time, almost no hero corpses had been present. It could of course be that the bandits were being lead by a necromancer who needed the remains to create more powerful minions. But the fact that there was only one known necromancer alive at the moment, and he had managed to build himself a city-state in the Grimmlands, made Jaune doubt that someone sharing that particular class would bother with something as mundane as banditry.

Which left the possibility of the adventurers being traitors. It was much more likely on this particular route due to its supposed safety and the consequent action of the merchants hiring people who were green.

Young heroes after all, were more, swayable than old ones.

Jaune looked at the soldiers surrounding him, found the commanding officer and barked at him. "You!" The man sprang up and pointed at himself as if asking, me? "Yes you! Lead the wagon towards the nearest temple, healing place, doctors or whatever, heavily injured adventurer inside." Jaune frowned at the man, who hesitated and started waving the wagon through slowly.

They all seem a bit scared of him, which was odd. He was only thirteen after all. Well, as long as it made them more willing to help. Jaune didn't think the archer would hold out much longer. Her condition had gotten progressively worse.

"You probably know the consequences of a hero dying because of your tardiness." The man paused for a second, then started waving the wagon through a bit faster.

This was getting ridiculous.

"Get to it!" He shouted, aghast at their slowness. The commander of the gate guards finally started moving people aside for the wagon to pass through. He would trust the man for now.

He felt the guard he had previously spoken to try to stealthily move away. Jaune turned around and glared at him. The soldier froze comically. One leg in the air.

"You!" He grabbed him by the arm and started heading into town, pulling the much heavier man behind him.

"Lead me to the adventurers guild." He pushed him ahead of himself, the soldier not even trying to resist.

The man started walking furiously. Jaune was hot on his heels until they reached the adventurers guild, which was quite a lot bigger than the one in Sanshu.

Jaune entered it brusquely. Then, feeling that the man was still standing outside, he poked his head out of the building and stared at him, causing the man to salute. Oddly enough.

"Dismissed."

Not caring what the soldier did now, he ran to the counter, ignoring all the adventurers sitting at the tables in the foreroom.

"What can I do fo-" The pretty clerk, really were they all pretty, was it a requirement to hold the important position of standing behind a desk, asked before she was cut off by Jaune. Her name was Ebby, according to the words above her head.

"Code yellow 2-3."

The hall went still, and Ebby, the scribe quickly stepped from behind the desk and muttered a quick 'follow me' before she started basically running towards the stairs that probably lead to the person in charge of this place.

If nothing else Jaune had to respect the efficiency of the guild as he sat before the branch head of this particular office, Howen, not five minutes after entering the building, giving a report on what he'd encountered.

By the time he was finished, the old man sitting before him had a deep scowl on his face and was madly puffing on his pipe.

Like an aged tree, Howen slowly raised his hand, which was gnarled enough to resemble a branch, discontinuing the waterfall of words leaving Jaune's mouth.

"I think I understand the situation well enough now. Thank you for bringing it to my attention." Even his voice sounded old, and kind of reminded him of a tree. Fitting since he was a druid. "I would rather not ask this of a young adventurer." Here he sighed. "But could you be a part of the expedition that will hunt the bandits down?" Howen grimaced before continuing. "As much as it saddens me, you are the one who has seen the, eh, aftermaths of the attacks and therefore you might be able to give certain... insights helpful to the mission."

Jaune really didn't want to. He had no illusions of what would happen when they eventually found the bandits. They would kill them. The young mage didn't know how he would deal with that. Another problem being the suspected involvement of adventurers.

What would a hero do?

Jaune stared the older man in the eyes. The man looked tired. It couldn't be an easy job, being responsible for so many people. "I'm afraid I can't." Howen glowered. Jaune imagined his non-participation would just make the mission harder. But Jaune couldn't, he needed… time. Yeah, time to think about everything. Time to grow stronger, not throw himself headfirst into another quest. But mostly, he was just terrified. Terrified of coming even slightly closer than necessary to people who had caused that... carnage.

Howen nodded. "I can't force you, and I understand why you wouldn't want to. That is all then, you can leave."

Jaune blinked in surprise. Wouldn't the man try to convince him to go? He stood up and made to leave, but before he could close the door behind him he heard Howen call him one more time.

"Also, your adventurer rank will be raised to C, allowing you to take more strenuous missions. It's a reward for being so fast in bringing this important information to us." The man scratched his head, looking embarrassed. "And also because I think you're a bright boy. I think you can go far if you manage to stay alive."

Jaune wondered how the druid had gotten that impression. He didn't really consider himself that special.

"Thanks," Jaune said and closed the door behind him. He slowly walked down to the main hall where he stood around for a few minutes trying to sort out his mind. Then he decided to upgrade his adventurer's card, bring the proof from Emanon that he had successfully escorted her to Brorusalem, and chat up the clerk about the city he was now in.

The new clerk, Naila, also cleared up the reason why the guards at the entrance of the city had been uneasy around him, maybe even a bit scared.

Apparently the royal magician was the 'mayor' of this city, and he wasn't really a man you wanted to get on the bad side on. He was a wizard, oddly enough, a class that had to wave a stick around to do any magic.

And thus, all magical classes were treated carefully, by non-adventurers at least. Well, that was the gist of the story at least.

-/-

Jaune made his way to the Dmetri Hospital, which also served as the academy for all healing-based professions in Brorusalem and its surrounding villages.

On his way there he took a look around the city. He wasn't really in a hurry. He was only going to say his goodbyes to Emanon, enquire about the archer's chances of surviving, and then be on his way to do whatever.

The city was a city, this was noticeable. Bigger than any place he'd been to before by a large margin. The variety of the people present surprised him though. Why were there so many woodcutters and farmers here?

There was no wood to cut and no land to farm. Then he remembered that some people didn't necessarily follow the call of their class, and some that were unable to.

Like the soldier missing one arm and half his leg, who was sitting before a workshop and working on a small wooden sculpture. It was contradictory, and he didn't like seeing something like that.

It was weird.

Jaune bet that he, himself, could still fight even with missing limbs.

Another thing that he noticed was the fact that people went out of their way to avoid him, or more like stay just a few more feet away from him than was strictly necessary.

He shook his head, wondering how the reputation of a magic user could drop so low that everyone else in town started to avoid people whose class even resembled his. What had the man done?

The looks he was getting were starting to become uncomfortable. They weren't filled with hate or disdain. He had seen enough of that in Aschen and Sanshu that he could ignore it. The eyes of the people around him were filled with fear and uncertainty, like Jaune was some unpredictable animal that they didn't know the behaviour patterns of.

Therefore he was glad when he finally arrived at the hospital. He was even more glad to note that the library he'd heard so much about was situated right next to it, which would make running his errands a bit smoother. He yawned. As long as his tiredness didn't catch up to him.

Entering the hospital, he looked around the waiting room, and upon seeing Emanon walked over to sit down by her side.

The woman had an uncharacteristically blank gaze adorning her face. He nudged her. "So?"

She shrugged in response before answering. "The girl had heavy internal bleeding or something. If we'd taken two more days to bring her in she would have died." Emanon pointed down one of the spotlessly white corridors. "They're patching her up in one of those rooms. They said they would get me when they were done. It wasn't seen as a real emergency to be honest. Adventurers get treatment from healers exclusively, after all."

As if summoned by her words, a young man with the class of doctor walked up to them, and after eyeing Jaune warily led them into one of the operating rooms, where they finally found the girl, May awake, eyes wide open.

Well, one of her eyes was open. Jaune winced at his thoughts.

The archer looked at them, her expression empty. "Thanks for saving me." She glanced at Emanon, before fully focusing on Jaune, probably dismissing her for being an NPC. "I probably would have died."

May turned away and stared at the ceiling. Well, she didn't look very grateful, Jaune noted. Not that he could fault her for letting her facial expressions slip in her situation. He furrowed his brows, what were those loud sounds he was hearing in the background?

"I will com-"

She was suddenly interrupted by a shout of, "Where is my granddaughter!" and the doors being forcefully pushed open not a few seconds later by an elderly man also sharing the name of Zedong and class of archer. Not willing to intrude on the family reunion, Jaune pulled Emamon out of the room and closed the door behind them.

"Let's let them reunite." Emanon shrugged, black circles apparent under her eyes. Jaune remembered that she had been the one getting by with less than five hours of sleep per night so that she could steer the wagon.

Jaune pulled out a piece of paper and a pen and wrote that he would be staying in the adventurers guild commissioned inn for at least a few days. He gave the paper to the doctor that had led them to May in the first place, instructing the man to give it to the archer when he could.

Then he nudged Emanon, who was slumping at his side, eyelids fluttering outside towards her wagon, and then wrestled with the reins towards her inn where he laid her down in a bed.

Noticing how tired he himself was, Jaune pulled his sleeping bag out of his inventory, laid it onto the ground, and also went to sleep. The library could wait.

He drifted away into the shared dreamscape, pleasantly noting that the wooden floors here were more comfortable than sleeping on sand.