“Of course,” Veronica replied. “My job is to thin down the number of monsters in these woods. I needed a way to attract them.”
“You mean, you attracted the monsters here with that storm?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s a taunting spell. That, and it gives me access to an increased source of lightning.” Veronica studied the blade of her sword as she spoke. She seemed to be a bit more relaxed now.
Summoning a storm to taunt monsters? Seemed like a pretty specific ability. I wondered who might have discovered such a thing and why.
“You said this is your job?” Amelia asked.
“The people of the nearby town of Brightwater have hired me to hunt monsters in these woods. They were starting to menace the town and were causing disruption to travel and trade on the roads.”
“We’re on our way to Brightwater now,” I said. “I was beginning to wonder why we hadn’t seen anybody on the road.”
“Perhaps we can go together then?” Veronica suggested. “I’m getting a bit low on supplies. I was going to head back there myself.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Amelia said. “We mustn’t forget to collect the Beast Cores first. We’ll take the ones from the Beasts we killed, and you can take the rest, if that sounds fair to you?”
Veronica hesitated a moment, looking at the Lightning Drake. She shrugged her shoulders. “Yes, that sounds fair. Lightning Beast Cores are worth a lot, due to their comparative rarity outside of the mines, but you did kill the Beast.”
I couldn’t use the Lightning Beast Core on myself. If Veronica decided to join us for longer, perhaps I could give her a Lightning tattoo at some point. I was sure that would compensate her for losing the Lightning Core to us.
“But what will you do with the Cores you collect?” I asked, curious about the Lightning Mage’s intent. “You only have the Lightning affinity, don’t you?”
“Uh, I’ll sell them?” Veronica narrowed her eyes and stared at me like there were horns growing out of my head. “What are you going to do with them? Eat them?”
“Oh right, no, we will be selling them too,” I responded hastily. “We haven’t had much experience with fighting magical monsters much yet, we only left Astros recently.”
“But why did you bring my affinity up? What’s that got to do with it?”
“Nothing, nothing at all. I was just mixing it up with something else. Don’t know what I was thinking. Let’s get to work and extract these Cores.”
Amelia was standing next to me, looking a bit pale. Veronica gave me a suspicious look, then shrugged. We all got to work and extracted the Cores from our respective monsters.
Veronica was obviously quite practiced. She had hers all out in the time it took for us to extract one Lightning Core, one Fire Core and three Cold Cores.
We collected the carry sack we’d left at the bottom of the hill before the fight began, with our food and Amelia’s book still in it. Then, we all got back on the road and continued heading toward Brightwater.
“Do you think we can trust her?” Amelia whispered to me as Veronica strode a few paces ahead of us.
“Somewhat,” I said. “We need to know if she’s in league with the Arcanists. If she’s not, then we can definitely trust her better. If she is an Arcanist herself, or in league with them, then I don’t think we can trust her.”
“Then we need to find out if she is an Arcanist before we can fully be sure?”
I nodded to that.
“If we can trust her,” Amelia continued, “maybe we can team up. She seems powerful.”
“Maybe,” I whispered back, “if that happens, I’ll have a chance to gain a Lightning affinity from her.”
“Ugh, William!” Amelia objected. “Really?”
“I thought you said you don’t have a problem with sharing?”
“No, it’s the fact that you’ve only just met her and you’re thinking about making love to her!”
I shrugged. “I’ve known you for a little over a day.”
Amelia laughed. “I suppose that’s true. But let’s avoid you thinking about having sex with her for at least as long as it takes to reach Brightwater.”
“I’ll do my best to avoid it,” I said, and we both laughed.
Looking at Veronica, however, I wondered how well I would be able to avoid that. She was incredibly attractive, as was the thought of gaining a Lightning affinity for myself.
As we finished speaking, Veronica dropped back a few steps to be nearer us.
“So,” Veronica asked, “what are two such freshly trained Mages as yourselves doing out here near Brightwater?”
“We’re not freshly trained,” Amelia retorted. Her voice sounded indignant. “We were chosen by the authorities in Astros to investigate reports of trouble near the mines in this area.”
“Yeah, right,” Veronica said, shaking her head in disbelief. “So, you were chosen by the Arcanists? Because, what? You’re their most trusted warriors? Don’t get me wrong, you fought well in that fight in the tower, but I would have said based on how you did that you’d been training for three months at most.”
“We were sent out as investigators,” Amelia said. “We weren’t sent out to fight the monsters.”
“And why would they send you out to investigate?” Veronica asked. “Couldn’t they just send a messenger to the mines to ask them directly?”
“We work for the Librarians in the Royal Library; they have very little contact with the Arcanists,” Amelia said.
Veronica smirked at this. “I didn’t think Arcanists and Librarians got along. The Librarians always focused a bit too much on theory for the liking of the Arcanists.”
“Alright, enough you too,” I half shouted. They both stopped walking and looked at me.
“Now look,” I said to Veronica. “You speak as if you’re not an Arcanist. We haven’t been totally upfront with you, because we didn’t know if we could trust you or not.”
Veronica chuckled. “That was obvious.”
“So, who do you work for?” I asked.
“I work as a mercenary for the town of Brightwater for now.”
“And are you in league with the Arcanists?”
