"I'll burn the entire town down." Marcus grumbled quietly, not really feeling the vitriol like he used to. "Giving me my magic back then resetting every time someone finds out? The fuck kind of sadistic asshole built this thing?"
The barmaid looked at him strangely, the woman not really seeming all that pleased by his presence. Fuck her. Marcus downed the drink, tapping for another one. He hadn't even noticed he was wearing different clothing when he'd arrived, which was weird enough, but at least he had some money.
Not a currency he was used to, but money nonetheless.
And language, both written and spoken, seemed consistent. He'd learned to speak a fair number of them thanks to Vess, but those were demonic in origin. And took time to learn. A lot of time.
Vess. Marcus grumbled again, watching his drink be filled. Nothing too strong, or all that pleasant to drink, but it had an honest tone to it. A stark contrast to the usual nobles sipping expensive wine while plotting how to best exploit their peasants.
Alright, that was a little unfair. There were those who genuinely wished to be good administrators, but that was beside the point. He'd treated Vess badly, though admittedly, she didn't impress during their initial meeting either.
Who calls someone a mutant freak just because they don't want to fuck everything that moves? A succubus, that's who. Damn woman.
He really was lonely, wasn't he? His squad had filled some part of that, even if they never remembered who he was, but now he had no one. Just a vaguely suspicious bartender and properly suspicious villagers.
There was probably something going on. Something he was going to need to deal with. Marcus took a deep drink, one hand falling to the knife on his hip. The four miners, dressed like that they could be nothing else, glared at him but did nothing.
It probably wasn't healthy, but he almost wished they had. Stabbing someone at least made sense. Made for a concrete goal to work towards. What was he even supposed to do here?
Well, for now he was drinking. Yeah, drinking. For however long his money lasted, that was his goal. Drink, grumble then drink some more.
If there was one nice thing about being a nobody, it was that no one really expected anything from you. Being just another face in the crowd held a power Marcus hadn't really experienced before, though being the stranger in a small isolated town wasn't giving him an honest experience.
"Outsider." Someone hissed. Marcus turned, finding yet another group had entered the small tavern. Five of them, some holding weapons. Great. "You're not welcome here."
Marcus grunted. "I've noticed that. Any particular reason, or are we just feeling especially xenophobic today?"
Confusion and fear, that was his answer. The confusion made sense, it wouldn't surprise him if most couldn't read let alone write, so they probably hadn't heard the word before. But fear? Ah, that was why they were angry.
When no one answered his question Marcus let his hand fall back on his knife.
"Leave him be, Yilmosh." Another person called. Marcus' eyes flickered to the man, returning to the angry group a moment later. "The killings started weeks before he got here."
"Could be him."
"It could be anyone." The stranger retorted. "Me, you, Jenny the barmaid. Is anyone going to attack Jenny with pickaxes and clubs?"
Yilmosh lingered for a moment, glaring. Then he turned, shooting one last look at Marcus. "Don't linger, stranger. It won't be good for your health."
Marcus didn't reply, watching them leave and letting go of his knife when they were gone. The savior of idiots took a seat next to him, nodding as Jenny passed him a drink.
"Sorry about them. Tensions are a little high right now." The man paused, offering a hand. "I'm Brian."
Shaking the hand, and scanning briefly Brian for weapons, he nodded. "Marcus. Why were those idiots looking to pick a fight?"
"You would have killed them." Brian said. It wasn't a question. "Well, I'm glad I intervened. You're clearly a trained fighter, but this town is closely knit. And while it's not my place to judge your skill, the guards take their training seriously."
Would he have killed them? Marcus didn't press for an answer to his question immediately, taking a moment to think it over. And the answer, disconcertingly, was yes. He'd been fighting in a war for six months. Holding back in a fight wasn't something he was used to, not when he was wielding sharp steel.
"You didn't answer my question."
"Ah, that." Brian took a drink, seeming reluctant. "There's a shapeshifter in town. A few people went missing, four days ago we found Tomas—the man breeds birds for the miners—dead in his home. It wasn't a good death, to say the least."
Marcus hummed, considering."Natural or demonic?"
"What?"
"The shapeshifter. Is it demonic or natural?"
"What's the difference?"
Marcus shrugged. "If it's natural, and by that I mean created or born on this plane of existence, you'll be fine. Make a silver knife, cut everyone, the person that burns is the culprit. Easy."
"Oh, that's what that was for." Brian mumbled. He shook his head. "The guards tried that. Didn't work, clearly. Does a demonic shapeshifter mean it's a demon?"
Taking another long drink, and forcefully setting his irritation aside, Marcus shifted on his stool. "A devil, technically. And all devils can shapeshift, to a degree, but demonic shapeshifters can take the memory of those they've assimilated. Nasty stuff."
"You seem to know a lot about it." Brian noted. "You're a monster hunter?"
Marcus grunted, letting go of his drink with some hesitation. "I suppose I am now. So, and please don't call the guards, is there a certain ban against magic and or mages in the town? Asking for a friend."
"That depends." The man replied, growing tenser if not quite losing that relaxed air. "The guards aren't supposed to arrest mages, but a few years ago a witch tricked several dozen young men and women into giving her the souls of their unborn children under the guise of a fertility ritual. To cut a long and ugly story short, we hanged the witch and the town elder decreed magic outlawed."
Marcus frowned. "And why would the witch be that stupid? No, don't answer that. So magic is feared and thus hated, got it. That's going to make this significantly more difficult."
"What would you have done if it wasn't?"
At first? Probably nothing. But frankly, he wasn't going to spend another six months here. Fire, as much as he'd grown to hate the smell of burnt corpses, would cut the whole demon hunt short. He wasn't quite a siege mage, he had never seen the appeal, but he was far from incapable of setting a town on fire.
Marcus doubted it would be that easy. "There are ways to detect demonic influences, especially when it comes to those who feel strongly about violence. But, and I can not stress this enough, I'm limited if the guards swarm me at the slightest sign of magic."
"I'm sure they'll be considerate if it is in the pursuit of the shapeshifter. It has everyone on edge."
Yeah, probably. Even fearful, uneducated peasants could be practical. The School of Life, on the other hand, wasn't. "No magic, or at least none that is easily visible. Has anything happened since I arrived?"
"When did you arrive? You weren't here yesterday, but that's all I know."
"A few hours ago."
"Then no. The Franks insisted one of their children was behaving weirdly, but the little thing just had a stomach ache. I'm not sure how much longer we can put off summoning the governor if things continue like this. The kid could have been hurt."
"Why put it off at all? I'm sure they have their own specialists."
Brian grimaced. "The governor would do more damage than the beast has so far, to say nothing of the man being a suspected necromancer."
Which, Marcus supposed by that tone, Brian frowned upon. What Marcus knew of necromancy suggested it was mostly used to commune with spirits, raise the occasional tireless mount and turn the dungeon's monsters against itself.
Hardly the most vile thing to be worried about.
"So no governor. Fair enough." Marcus replied. "So how do you propose that we'd go about finding the shapeshifter without triggering a full on witch-hunt aga-"
A stone, fairly small but thrown at speed, impacted Marcus' head. It pinged off his magical shield, Marcus turning to find a group of guards had entered the tavern. He really needed to start keeping an eye on the entrance.
"You have been accused of wielding magic and found guilty." The closest guard barked, drawing his weapon. "Surrender or be cut down."
Marcus blinked, finding himself at the entrance to a small mountain town.
Gods dammit.
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
"This way." Brian said, waving him on. Marcus followed, finding Brian as friendly as the first time around. "Don't let the old man see you."
The house rose in the not so far distance, dark but with smoke coming from the chimney. The old man, as Brian said, and who had apparently moved in after the brutal death of his son. Someone who bred birds? Marcus hadn't been listening that closely last time.
So they crept up, finding the old man asleep with half a bottle of something brown next to him. Brian nodded, Marcus following the man into the house. Up the stairs and to the right—apparently in a small town like this everyone knew what everyone else's house looked like—and there it was.
Or wasn't, as it turned out. Marcus turned to his friendly acquaintance. "You said they'd left the blood."
"They had." Brian insisted, groaning. "The old man must have cleaned it. You only need a drop, right?"
"From the devil, yes, not the man. Not hard to tell apart, not as long as you can feel magic, but if there isn't any of either this won't work. Maybe the old man didn't get everything. Start near the window, I'll start at the door."
Marcus turned and squatted, running his hand over the floor. His senses weren't so fine he could single it out, nor did he wish for them to be, and he hadn't really needed to track blood before. Several minor spells came to mind, though they all needed to be modified to work here. Altering one here and now was a bit much.
That sort of work was reserved for properly reinforced dungeons, not flammable houses.
"Found something." Brian called after some minutes. Marcus looked, seeing the man had gently pushed aside a small table. Under its leg was a dark stain of blood. "Is it his or the devils?"
Marcus moved closer, focusing. The smell came slowly, which made sense considering its age and quantity, but it was there. Brimstone and sulphur. He nodded. "The bird breeder fought back."
"Thomas was a mean drunk and rarely paid his debts, but he wasn't a coward."
Pulling a knife, and starting to carefully scrape up some of the blood, Marcus hummed. "Good for us. Demonic shapeshifters can fold their injuries away, which counts as a form of regeneration, but they're not any harder to wound than the average person."
"So they rely on anonymity for protection?"
"I'm not sure." Marcus admitted. "The book I read suggests they can store some of their body-mass back in the Hells, which would suggest they can alter size quite drastically, but it wasn't exactly the best source of information."
Brian paused. "You've never fought one before?"
"Where would I have done that? I take stuff out of the Hells, I don't enter them. Outside of it they're not all that common."
"Why not?"
Marcus looked at him. Brian sure asked a lot of questions, though it was something Marcus found encouraging. If he was going to work with the man, and so far he seemed to be the only one who wouldn't call the guards and cause a reset at the slightest use of magic, Marcus grunted.
"Because the Empire hunts them down like the plague that they are. Devils and demons can't just enter our plane, thankfully, though they can summon more of their ilk if you give them time to plan. And shapeshifters are more intelligent than most, so them finding a mage to force them to summon its friends isn't exactly unheard of."
"Oh."
"Yes. Luckily for you, I'm probably the only mage capable of that within fifty miles, and I don't feel like starting a demonic invasion. Hold this."
Marcus sent over the knife, revelling in the brief use of telekinesis. It had definitely made him lazy in the past, but nothing beat having a few dozen extra—if weak—hands. Brian took it, seeming more fascinated than afraid.
Letting the telekinesis drop and turning his focus inward, Marcus built the array for a modified tracking spell. One that he'd already completed years ago, though it'd been designed to track a stray hellhound.
Looking back, he really did act and expected everyone to be fine with it, didn't he? He had been only thirteen, yes, but summoning a hellhound and then losing it? No wonder the guards back home didn't like him much.
Still, it helped him now. The spell snapped into place and the knife started floating, the feedback he'd build into the array returning several threshold-errors. Marcus sighed. "It's a mixture of human and demonic blood."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that this is going to take a while. Or, I suppose, if I just filter out the human echo and distribute the lesser demonic presence over a smaller area…"
Marcus fell silent as he worked, rationalizing that this wasn't really modifying a spell matrix. It wouldn't blow up if he just tweaked the filter to burn away any blood that wasn't demonic, really, and even though he couldn't widen the input channel it didn't matter overmuch if the spell had a limited range and single-direction tracking.
Minutes passed, though Brian never interrupted. A good companion, Brian was. Calm, polite, open minded and patient. Nothing like his old squad, who he was surprised to find he missed, but pleasant to be around. Well, not surprised. Resented?
His emotions were all over the place, even if he'd long learned not to let them influence his work. Marcus was well aware that the sentient mind bonded in strange ways, from parasocial relationships to adopting inanimate objects into the tribe. He supposed there was no reason he wouldn't get attached to those who couldn't remember him.
The mind was a strange thing.
"South." Marcus said finally. Brian perked up. "I had to tweak the spell to offer only direction based guidance, but it's accurate. And better yet, it's invisible."
Brian led them out of the house, Marcus never really having to sneak before entering the loop but finding it easy enough, and they followed the spell. South, then east, west then south again. Their target was moving. Not a good sign, that.
It was late and everyone should be asleep. 'Should' being the operative word, since there were actually quite a few people around by the time they'd found the shapeshifter.
Which, because nothing could ever be easy, was surrounded by people. And the object of their attention, no less. The woman laughed, the sound pleasant and friendly, and the group of men laughed with her.
Marcus sighed. Accusing the popular, pretty woman as the outsider wasn't going to end well. "Come on, we'll try again in the morn-"
Brian moved towards the group, Marcus staring from a distance. He'd pointed the woman out, of course, but he hadn't thought Brian would actually do something. What was that going to accomplish?
His friendly acquaintance joined the group, leaning to whisper something in one of the men's ears. A friend, perhaps, or family? Marcus didn't know, though the effect was immediate.
The man, a miner still holding his pickaxe and covered in stone-dust, paused. Looked at Brian, who nodded seriously, then turned towards the woman in question. Whatever Marcus thought was going to happen, from someone calling the guards to the group turning on Brian and himself both, it wasn't the man raising his mining tool.
It wasn't the man bringing it down on her head in a smooth, practised motion. It wasn't the group jumping back, alarmed and shouting, only to fall silent as the man with the bloody pickaxe barked at them to shut up.
A foreman, maybe. Someone with authority. The guards arrived quickly, Brian answered some questions, hands were shaken. Marcus watched it all in stupefied silence.
No independent verification? No outrage or mob or even a crippling strike? Straight to braining people to death with pickaxes? Really?
Brian moved over after some minutes, nodding even as Marcus kept looking at the corpse blankly. "Thank you, stranger. Brack's cousin went missing, so forgive the man for the decisive action. But this is over now, so thank you. I'll start asking around, maybe collect donations. You deserve something for your trouble."
"I need a fucking drink."
Brian tilted his head. "Pardon?"
"That wasn't the shapeshifter." Marcus replied, still staring at the corpse. "Natural shapeshifters remain in their last shape because they lock in their disguise. Demonic shapeshifters are more fluid, so once killed, they return to the Hells and their vessel drains away."
His friendly acquaintance looked at the corpse of the pretty woman. "She's not draining away. Your spell was wrong?"
Marcus forced it to become visible, showing an illusionary arrow pointing straight at the corpse. Someone else might see, but he didn't really care about causing a reset at this point. "The spell is fine. It tricked us. Me. It tricked me."
"You might have mentioned that as a possibility before now." Brian answered, tone not quite as judgemental as Marcus' had anticipated. "You know, as a general rule."
"Well I didn't think you were going straight to pickaxe to the brain."
Brian hummed, face shifting as if it had only just hit him that they'd killed an innocent woman. "I need a drink."
"Magic!" Someone shouted, pointing at the arrow. The old lady's voice carried far, guards turning to look. "Magic! Guards!"
Marcus blinked, finding himself at the entrance to a small mountain town.
He really needed that damned drink.
Afterword
The release schedule from now on is every Tuesday and Friday, with chapters ranging between 3-4k words in length.
Discord [Check author profile or pinned comment on the chapter.] (two chapters ahead)