Loosely Lawful | 9

The inns and lodgings of Brick Grove did not serve breakfast, which was a sore disappointment for Kyle, who had missed greasy breakfast meats for three days in a row now and seemed to be suffering withdrawls. His lip wobbled as their crew stood in line at a stall selling pine needle tea and little baggies of nuts and dried fruit and pretzels. The breakfast of champions, clearly.

“How?” he wailed, as Kaliko and Sera pooled a few coins so they could order all at once. “Bro, I thought this was a logging town. It’s full of lumberjacks. Lumberjacks need meat!”

“Um, well,” Benvolius said, tentatively putting a comforting hand on Kyle’s left pec, “nuts have a lot of protein?” He gulped, and Sera noticed him give Kyle’s pec the tiniest of squeezes.

Kyle forced out a watery laugh. “Haha. Nuts.”

It was too early for dick jokes. Or ball jokes. Or whatever kind of pitiful reference to private bits Kyle had just made. Rubbing her temples, Sera shot the stand owner an apologetic grimace and handed over a handful of copper coins. She received a sad tray of cups and baggies a few moments later, and still bleary, gestured for the party to take their breakfasts off her hands. They did so, with a few grumbles and whines and puppy-dog faces. This whole morning was pathetic.

“So,” Sera said, walking next to Kaliko. Avon had declared they were going to head straight back to the spot where they’d encountered the monster yesterday, and no one had the energy to debate them. “Learn anything about Benvolius’s contract last night?”

Kali sipped at her pine needle tea, then frowned into the pale, amberish liquid. “This tea is unpotable. And yes, I was able to ascertain a few things.”

Not encouraged by Kali’s pronouncement, Sera also sipped the tea. It tasted like hot water, mostly, with maybe a hint of tree smell that might have actually just come from the trees all around them. “So, what did you learn?”

“Now, I could be proven wrong,” Kali said, “but my initial analysis of the characters, word length, and graphic style leads me to believe the contract was written in a branch of Deep Oceanic B, which of course is the ancient language associated with the long-gone Eastern Uncertain Sea peoples, said to have been early ancestors of the Jade Coast and Delta civilizations once located near”-

“You don’t have to give the whole lecture,” Sera cut in. She tried the tea again and decided it tasted worse than before.

Kali only harrumphed, her ear fins fluttering in prim contempt. “As I was saying, the contract is written in a descendant language, or at least a descendant writing system, of Deep Oceanic B, whose child systems all died out in the Consumption when this continent was, ah… consumed.” With a delicate motion, she placed a single walnut in her mouth and crunched down. “I would need to visit a few different libraries to confirm my hypothesis, but I am of the opinion that this specific language is one not yet discovered by the researchers of the Jade Coast and Delta ruins.”

Sera gawked. She had thought this would be straightforward. Go investigate some law-adjacent magic in the woods. Go home. Tell the other clerics about it and maybe act as key witness in a lawsuit and call it a day. Open and shut case. But as Kali continued on into a summary of the decoding efforts made by Mr. Important McSo-and-So, leading linguistics professor at the University of Jadeport, Sera’s stomach sank.

She hadn’t been expecting ancient and unknown languages related to the Consumption when Librata called upon her. Also, why on earth would Benvolius and his maybe-family or their company have anything to do with this stuff? She doubted Kali was wrong about this ancient language bullshit, but… ugh. Shaking her head, Sera pushed the thoughts out of her mind. If she pretended this wasn’t big and scary, then it wouldn’t be big and scary. Everything was fine.

“So does your translation spell still work at all?” Sera asked, when Kali paused to take a breath. The trail switchbacked up a particularly steep stretch of hill, and it was hard to talk so much while climbing.

Kali sniffed. “Translation spells are only as complete as the caster’s understanding of the language in question. I did cast one on Benvolius, but the output right now is a loose summary at best, constructed from my knowledge of the surviving descendants of Deep Oceanic A, and from”-

“You’re rambling,” Avon called from the front.

Kaliko sighed, her face pinching as though the idea of skipping to the point without laying out all the facts and supporting information physically pained her. “Benvolius was a member of the Wilde family, which owns and operates the North Wilds Company. They’ve banished him and sunk him into what I can only assume is a massive amount of debt for “upbringing costs” owed due to his supposed failure to pursue a life that will contribute to the family business.” At this, she rolled her eyes, and all of her vestigial fins flapped in annoyance, even the ones on her legs. “Business majors, honestly. Forestry is more than appropriate”-

“The spell?” Sera prompted, as she crested the top of the hill, and the switchbacks finally ended. Several paces ahead, Avon led the group into a grove of yet-untouched redwoods with trunks as wide as houses. Their hair matched the bark perfectly.

“Obviously, Benvolius is under some non-disclosure related to his removal from the family,” Kali explained. “But there is a significant portion of the non-disclosure section that applies to all members of the Wilde family, even before excommunication. And unfortunately, that section had the most terms I couldn’t parse.”

So the Wilde family had a secret, one so important that they’d sealed it off with the densest, most unreadable magic Sera had ever seen. It was a wonder no one else had encountered the spell on some other unsuspecting Wilde, though Sera could admit she’d only learned about this business because of Librata’s vision. As she picked her way across a tangled mass of roots, Sera tried to remember if she had ever really heard about the Wildes before.

She made it all the way through the redwood grove and partway down a long, shallow descent into a valley of sparse, spindly deciduous trees of some kind before giving up. Sera could not, for the life of her, remember the Wildes ever coming up in the news in Gaville. She wasn’t an avid newspaper reader, but the acolytes at Librata’s temple had reading assignments every week, so she at least skimmed the headlines every day at breakfast.

And, well, the very lack of information was unusual. Where Sera had grown up, in the ore-rich Calcitran Mountains, the local oligarchs had never shut up about themselves. The Kavarn family had slapped their names on every building, school, and town they could, and they were constantly in the news. She’d had a unit about their founder, Maray Kavarn, in every history course she took at her Kavarn-family-funded school from the age of five to seventeen.

Kyle, unfortunately, was the only person other than Benvolius who was remotely local. Sighing, she twisted around and looked at him, strolling jauntily with his hands in his pockets, his glaive strapped across his back right where it should be. She opened her mouth, about to ask if he’d ever learned about the Wildes in school, when her eyes caught on the strange, shiny, white armor across his chest and shoulders. She blinked, very confused, and then tripped over a rock in the path.

“Oh shit brah!”

Kaliko sidestepped out of Sera’s way, sending her right into Benvolius, who tried his best to crouch and catch her. Unfortunately, Sera in her armor was too heavy. She barrelled into him, knocking him off his feet and sending both of them careening over the edge of the logging trail.

Sera’s stomach lifted into her lungs. She groaned, already calculating the amount of magic she’d have to use to patch them both up after this, and tried not to think about the spiny bushes that were probably waiting for them. Benvolius let out a yelp in a strange, sing-song language, and a thick cluster of vines roped around their stomachs and legs. Sera felt a sickening jolt, and then suddenly she was swinging up into the canopy instead of down to her death.

She wanted to throw up again. Wriggling in the vines, she looked at Benvolius. “Thanks,” she grunted, before the swinging vines hit their zenith, and she decided she didn’t have the stomach to speak anymore.

In an embarrassing display of acrobatics and falling ass-over-teakettle from a vine harness, Sera and Bevolius eventually tumbled back onto the logging path. Avon stood with their arms crossed, one coppery eyebrow arched in an impressively angular look of I-am-not-impressed.

“What the hell, Sera?” they asked. “Can’t you pay attention? This is your stupid sidequest we’re all rearranging our schedule for.”

“I was distracted by Kyle’s armor,” Sera grumbled.

Kali cast her sweepy spell, muttering the enchantment in her clicky, bubbly, native language, and magicked the dirt off Benvolius’s silken shirt. “Did no one else notice Benvolius’s invocation language?”

“Kyle’s armor?” Avon squawked. “Kyle’s armor? What are you even- Kyle doesn’t”- Avon stopped, mouth still open, and gulped. “Holy Cerene. Kyle, what is that armor?”

“Exactly!” Sera was so vindicated. She was right, Avon was wrong, and all was right with the world. Except for Kyle’s armor. “It’s perfectly reasonable to be surprised when someone who has never worn armor in his life suddenly has it on. I can’t even tell what it’s made of!”

“Excuse me?” Kali said. “Benvolius”-

Kyle thumped a fist against his armor, and it made a light, hollow wood-block sound. Then he peeled the front plate away from his chest and sniffed. “Oh, grody. These pads are rank.”

“Where did they come from?” Sera asked.

“Weren’t you in just your trousers and tunic when we left town?” Avon continued.

“Pardon”-

“Bro,” Kyle said, thumping his armor again with a quizzical frown on his face, “I don’t even know.”

“Oh, Librata. It’s another glaive situation.”

Avon sneered. “Is that supposed to be a pun? A grave”-

“Honestly!”

Sera flinched. Avon whipped around to stare at Kaliko, eyes wide in surprise.

“I’m sure there are fascinating revelations to be had regarding Kyle’s spontaneously appearing armor,” Kaliko said, gills fluttering from having to speak so loudly. “Unfortunately, I do not think they are immediately relevant to the situation. Benvolius, on the other hand, just invoked magic in a language I do not recognize, which may mean it is the same one used in all these contract spells we’re investigating.”

Avon slapped a palm to their face and groaned. “Can’t we just focus on the monster?”

“Absolutely not,” Kaliko said. “In fact, we should completely pivot to search for the contract in Sera’s vision. I think whatever we can glean from summarizing it will be key in this entire affair.”

Sera beamed. It was so nice to have Kali on her side.