A Wandering Soul - Rider 1.10

"I still don't understand why you are sulking. You won the duel, did you not?" Sandra asked as she placed another drink in front of me. My time at the training field had been cut short not long after my fight with Arya. As it turned out most of the warriors there were biased against magic, so even though they were very impressed by the show the two of us put on, no one was jumping at the chance to fight us personally.

Eragon didn't seem to be excluded much since he didn't show off anything magical to the group, but both Arya and I had a pretty obvious ring around us where the warriors didn't want to get too close to us. Arya due to her Elfish-ness I supposed and me because of the spell-circle. Even if it didn't work, obviously magical glowing circles appearing in the air freaked out a lot of them.

Not that it mattered to him. Unlike the two of us, he was exhausted from his duel with Arya and left the field with Saphira shortly after Arya wandered off. I had tried to scrounge up another partner but had no luck.

So instead I retreated back to a remote corner and started testing every spell I could to see if I could figure out what went wrong with Air-Walk. Unfortunately even when I tore it down to its base components, I still couldn't figure out what was going on. Several other spells were weaker than they should be as well and a few of them were dependent on my FATE style of casting so it wasn't the style of magic, or at least whatever it was was affecting both styles.

That had been yesterday and even after working most of the night on the issue I wasn't any closer to an answer.

"I am not sulking." I declared and took a long pull from the mug. "I'm stuck on a problem I can't seem to figure out."

Sandra raised an eyebrow and waved a hand at one of the other tables. "And that's why you were glaring at poor Gorm when he was regaling everyone with the tale?"

"No, I was glaring at him because he was saying I cheated during the duel so he didn't need to pay out on a bet."

The tavern owner smirked and was about to respond when the door smashed open. A grim looking Fredric and a handful of fully armored warriors pushed their way through the door and for a second I thought the Varden had decided to be stupid and prepared myself for a fight. I relaxed a bit when I noticed that, beyond a quick glance, he ignored me in favor of making his way towards Sandra.

"By the gods, what has gotten into you Fredric?" She started to scold. "You can't just be bursting in-'' Fredric interrupted the woman by grabbing her shoulder and pulling her close enough to whisper, but not much that I wasn't able to hear him anyway.

"Go to the back and start getting a travel pack ready to go. There's trouble." His stern expression killed any questions Sandra might've had at the moment. She just nodded and disappeared into the back room while Fredric shouted to the rest of the tavern for attention. When all eyes were on him, he finally explained why he was acting weird.

"I have word directly from Ajihad." The large man projected his voice so everyone could hear him clearly. "An army of Urgals has been spotted marching for Tronjheim. All warriors are to report to their captains immediately. Anyone not willing to remain in the city, we will be organising refugee caravans shortly. Go to your homes and prepare whatever you can carry with you."

The tavern burst into a frenzy of activity as everyone inside suddenly tried to be somewhere else, but a few whacks from the warriors accompanying Fredric got them to calm down enough that they weren't crawling over each other trying to get out the door. The man himself silently motioned me to follow him into the back where Sandra had disappeared too.

I drained the rest of my mug and followed after him.

"You wanted to talk?" I asked, shutting the door to the backroom behind me.

The giant of a man nodded, eyes following Sandra while she was stuffing things into a reinforced backpack before focusing on me. "I have a personal request from Ajihad. With the Urgals marching on us we cannot be picky with trust. He wants to know if you will join the defence."

I let out a long, slow breath as I considered my answer. I was going to help, no doubt about that, but I thought I had more time than a couple days to set up a workshop. Now I was out of time and hadn't even started on getting something set up.

"Do we know how long before the Urgals get here?"

"Our best guess is a day, possibly two."

So no time at all. The best I could do that quickly is some wide area bounded fields, but they would be limited to weak effects. Even if I got started now I wasn't going to be thwarting an invasion on my own.

"Alright, what does he want and what are you offering?" I was frustrated that I let myself get caught off guard like this, but moaning about it was useless. Best just to move on and see what I had to work with.

Fredric shook his head though. "Your participation is all the Varden asks for, the specific manner of that is up to you. We will provide as much material aid as possible, within reason, or if you plan to leave then we ask you agree to safeguard the women and children."

"I'll help in the main battle, don't worry. Beyond that..." I furiously thought of all the things I could create quickly that would be useful.

"I can work on some illusion fields that will disorient anyone inside them, they won't be much on their own but it will prevent any ranged fighters from accurately targeting anyone outside the field. And if you can get me a few gems I can try getting a healing mystic code, an enchanted object that helps with spellcasting," I clarified seeing his confusion. "That will slow bleeding and prevent infection for the wounded. It won't do much on it's own and I can't make a stronger one without more time, but it might help out whatever healers you have."

"I'm sure someone will be grateful for that." Fredric still looked uncomfortable at the mention of magic, but wasn't going to dismiss the utility of it. "So you will be in the healer's tents?"

I shook my head. "No, I'll join the battle itself. Probably with the archers. A benefit of my style of magic is I never run out of arrows."

"Useful." Fredric grunted. I agreed.

Not much more was said. We helped Sandra gather up some things but then we needed to head out into the city and check in with the people organising the defense. Thanks to the current situation my request for materials was passed through with zero complaint and I was introduced to the group in charge of the healers.

There was no polite way to say it. They sucked.

The field surgeons were little better than butchers in disguise and only a handful treated sterilising bandages and tools as an essential step rather than just a waste of time. The magicians weren't much better. Most of them belonged to a group called the Du Vrangr Gata, theoretically a magician's association working together to share knowledge, but so many of the ones I talked to had only a passing understanding of their magic that it was clear they really had no idea what they were doing and more of them had even less of an idea on how to actually heal someone.

I very quickly determined that they would be better off learning how to use the mystic codes I was creating rather than continuing their own efforts. Thankfully transforming vital energy into mana (or prana if you were technical) was something I was already familiar with due to a few rituals within the Archive so it wasn't hard to add that as an automatic feature.

By the time the day was done I had made almost two dozen of the MCs and singlehandedly advanced medical theory about a hundred years in the future. I also might have accidentally taken over as group leader after I threatened to castrate a particularly arrogant bastard going on about 'balancing humors' if he didn't shut up and do as I said. The hour-long rant about how he was wrong and the reasons for it, according to my limited knowledge, probably helped their decision. That would probably come back to bite me later, but I would deal with that after the battle.

I finally left the medical area late in the day and made my way over to one of the three tunnels the Varden were planning on confronting the Urgal Army.

It was actually pretty impressive for only a bit more than a day's work with the hundreds of lanterns, torches, and fires all illuminating the mouth of the tunnel ensured that nothing would be sneaking out unseen. Added to that was the forest of sharpened spikes all pointing at the opening. And topping everything off were massive cauldrons of bubbling pitch waiting to be poured on the heads of anything that made it out.

Not exactly clean ways to kill something but very good at delaying an approaching army for a time. What I was going to add to the defenses would only make getting out of the choke point even harder for the Urgals.

If I had a few months I could set a Bounded Field up that could potentially hold off the entire army until someone destroyed it or it ran out of power. Illusions making the Urgals fight among themselves, curses that automatically targeted any magic users, straight up just locking them inside for the Varden's archers to target at will… All possible but not in the time I had remaining, so I was going for something simple, weak, and hopefully effective. I was going to set up a large scale Field that would just slightly throw off the equilibrium of anything inside. Archers would find themselves aiming just a little bit off their target, warriors would find themselves misstepping even on flat ground, and hopefully mages would find their concentration messed up for long enough that the defenders could take advantage.

Two fields went up without issue but I found myself getting delayed working on the third. One of the Twins was trying to stalk me and I was forced to be stealthy to avoid giving him any hints on what I was doing. I doubted he was going to be able to figure out anything just by looking but I wanted as little as possible making it back to the king about other systems of magic. I would've even been looking for a subtle way to assassinate one or both of the Twins during the battle but according to some of the other magicians I had talked to, one of them was hiding out in the Dragonholds above the city and the other was going to be next to Ajihad the whole time.

I might be able to kill the latter unnoticed, but the chances of Ajihad getting caught in some last screw-you attempt was too high to risk.

Speaking of, I finally managed to shake the Twin following me when I spotted Ajihad in a gathering with Orik, Arya, Eragon, Murtagh, and Saphira. Considering someone had taken the time to fit the dragon with a pretty impressive suit of armor, making her stand out even more than she normally did, it was actually surprising I hadn't spotted them earlier. As soon as it was clear where I was going the annoying bald magician stopped following me and disappeared to thankfully somewhere else.

I exchanged greetings with the group and then just fell back into generally observing the surroundings.

Now all that was left to do was wait for the Urgals to get here…

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