The Resting Place
"Screw you. Like we're just going to talk. You're all dead anyways. This marsh is going to be your grave." The middle aged man said to us.
"Please, I don't want to die. Please don't kill me." The young man that Thelora was threatening directly was starting to break down.
"Pull yourself together. These idiots don't understand how things are going now. They're following a dead woman." The middle aged man said.
"How about you? Do you have anything to say?" Thelora pointed her dagger at the older man among them that had kept quiet the whole time.
"What do you want to know?" He said.
"You spirit damned bastard. You'd really betray Torfredr. He'll kill you and everyone you love, you old snake." The middle aged man yelled.
"Hahaha. Are you really that stupid? We betrayed the Bandit Queen and unless these people are about to betray her also, we're already dead. Besides, I don't have any loved ones." The old man said.
"He's going to kill you. Not just kill, you'll beg for…." The rest of the middle aged man's word turned into gurgles as his throat was slit.
"So annoying." Thelora said.
"I walk in the Light, There can be no Darkness." The young man had fallen into prayer after the other's death.
"Ha, you think the Holy Light gives a crap about you. You can't choose the dark and think it's all going to be okay if you just say a few words." Cedric started to mock the young man.
I took the opportunity to knock the young man out. "Let's get down to business."
"So what can you tell me about what's going on in this marsh?" Thelora said.
"Torfredr hasn't been too happy with how the Bandit Queen has been handling things for a few years now. His whole thing about killing weak crew members has been more about taking out those he couldn't turn to his side. It's only been in the last few months that he's started recruiting outside his inner circle. He's been using the chaos of last fall and a promise of more coin to get people on his side." The old man said.
"How'd he get the guides to turn?" She asked.
"It wasn't too hard since he's been here so often we all knew him better than the Bandit Queen. A lot of them felt unhappy that she left us out in the wild instead of giving us a decent place to retire." He said.
"How many people are in the center of the marsh?" She asked.
"Around 20 though about six of them are alchemists, most of them were kidnapped." He said.
"Why did he kidnap alchemists?" She asked.
"His number one grip with the Bandit Queen is that he feels she limits revenue streams. The marsh has a number of unique plants and monsters that can be refined into drugs. He's been wanting to get the Bandit Queen to expand her reach for years but she's against selling that type of thing. For the past few months, he's been secretly selling batches to the Night Mistress to help fund his bid to become a Bandit King.
"The other things he's looking to get into are slavery and ransoms. Slavery is legal the kingdom states of Kievhenia so he's wanted to send people from ambushed over the mountains but again the Bandit Queen doesn't want anything to do with that business. The last thing he's wanting to do is kidnap some of the lesser nobles and hold them for ransom. From what I've overheard he has one of his best people checking out the security around an Earl's son." Once the old man started talking he just kept going. He overheard a lot about their plans from those he guided in and out of the marsh.
As Thelora gathered every drop of information from him, I started harvesting what we had gathered along the way. The scales of the Ganmudr were valuable for making armor and it's stomach was full of Janir leeches. There was also a water gland that produced its Waterbolts, it would work as a minor mote catalyst.
On its own there was a good chance that it would fail but with the library in the Flask and Anvil there was a good chance it would succeed. Another Ganmudr water gland would make it a sure thing but I wasn't too thrilled about hunting one down. The insects provided a few glands that would be good for alchemists and the three eyed gators had good hides and one had a monster core.
Once Thelora had all the information she felt she could gather, she had the old man tell Lariss about the different path markers that led to the center of the marsh. Among the information that she learned was that they were expecting a group to be coming into the swamp to pick up a shipment of drugs. They could be here in the next few days. We needed to decide if we wanted to head to the central tower and hope we could take it over or wait for the reinforcements to reach the resting place to take them out.
In the end we decided to set an ambush for the reinforcements. Without knowing how the defences in the center of the marsh were set up, we'd need a day or two to scout the area and that would mean risking those coming in joining in on the defenses. I set up wards on both sides of the resting place and we set up a watch.
While I was keeping watch on one of the walls Lariss approached me.
"Do you think they're going to kill those two?" She indicated the old and young man that had been bound and gagged. They were in one of the many tents that was inside the walls.
"They already betrayed the Bandit Queen so Thelora doesn't have a reason to keep them alive. In the end I think it will depend on if she thinks she can use them." I replied.
"Are you fine with leaving their fates in her hands?" She said.
I knew she was asking if I was okay with Thelora having complete control of what we were doing.
"It's not our call. They are already on the wrong side of the law and we can kill them with consequence." I said.
"What about the kidnapped alchemist? If Thelora decides they don't serve a purpose do we let them die?" She asked.
"She wouldn't kill without reason and if they truly didn't have a choice, there'd be no reason to kill them." I said.
"Are you sure?" She was pressing me to see where I'd draw the line. Her trust in me was still mostly based on what others said about me.
"I don't plan on letting her kill anyone that is innocent and I think she knows that. They still need me and I'm banking on that keeping her in line. But we need to be ready if I'm wrong." It was the wrong time to not have the warning in my heart working right. If Thelora did decide to betray us while in the marsh it would have come in handy.
"Well if we plan to keep them alive we might want to keep our identities secret. We can't exactly let ourselves be identified as bandits." She said.
"That is something to think about." I started to think of superheroes from Earth wearing masks with secret identities.
Our expected guest didn't show up that night and since it took about a day to reach the resting place we were a little more relaxed throughout the next day. Lariss and I took this opportunity to work on her sword skills. Eventually Thelora joined us and we ended up in a three way sparring match.
With her Shadow Step spell going I found it hard to hit Thelora and had to heavily rely on my Speed spell to even block her quick attacks. She was also quick enough that I couldn't activate my Lighting Rebuke in time to hit her after her strikes.
Lariss would take advantage of our close combat to put some distance between us and take some shots. Her focus would remain on one of us until it gave an opening for the other to take a decent strike. After that she'd switch her main target, trying to wear us down equally.
We caught onto her strategy pretty quickly and moved to keep her in close range. While this definitely put her at a disadvantage, she focused on defense, using what I recently taught her, and would follow up with an attack when Thelora and I went after each other.
After nearly an hour of this we finally called it a draw. None of us were really going all but it was more than what a friendly match usually would be.
"Boo, I wanted to see some more blood." Cedric had been cheering us on the entire time.
"Come on, we had a bet going. If you stop now no one wins." Feadr said.
"What are you talking about? I said they'd stop without a clear winner so pay up." Hrothgar said. Thorarinn handed over a few copper while Feadr reluctantly handed over a silver.
We took the next few hours to rest and as it got closer to night, my wards started to go off as a group approached us.