A Bored Lich

Tut seemed to sense Doevm's frustration as his brow knitted together. "We can't change this rule for you."

"Is it only because of your suppliers," Doevm asked. "Or is it because something was accidentally set off?"

"Set what off?" Tut asked. "Do you mean to imply that we mishandled something? My men aren't sloppy."

Doevm glanced at Frey: "Have you sensed anything strange at all?"

"Besides the earthquake, no," Tut explained. "You speak as though you know what caused all of this to happen."

"I-" Frey went to interject, but Doevm shot him a glance that said he had spoken enough. While Tut was the sort to tiptoe around legality, in public at least, he seemed to be telling the truth. Although Doevm wanted to push further, he had a sinking suspicion that he would find the truth of the matter if he made it past the market. It was time to use force.

"Frey, cover your ears," Doevm said, and Frey did so without question.

Tut went to yell out too late as Doevm's soul mana suppressed his will: "Let us through and forget what we said."

Tut stiffened, expression knotting together. He resisted the urge, but without experience with soulmagic, he couldn't fend it off. His expression snapped back to normal. "Yes sir," Tut said. Rising to his feet, he began to escort them to the other side of the market. Although there were some double takes from the members of Dragon Hoard, Doevm couldn't see any other way through.

There would definitely be some questions later, but hopefully Doevm would be gone by then.

"What happened down there?" Frey whispered.

"I'd like to ask what happened here," Doevm hissed. "What other fights have you picked?"

Frey shrugged: "I haven't had the time to. I just came up from the fifth floor."

Doevm stepped away from him. "Smells like it."

Frey lifted his torn, blood-stained shirt and sniffed his pits, quickly mirroring Doevm's disgust. "I'll take a bath before Olpi gets on my case about it."

Doevm nodded and they walked onwards.

The further they walked, the more dense the ambient, expended mana became, as if he were being continuously blasted with smoke. The minutes ticked by and both Tut and Frey walked forwards in blissful ignorance. 'How is this even possible,' Doevm thought. 'It's as if a bomb went off that could level an entire city, yet the market doesn't even look affected.'

"Doevm?" Frey suddenly asked.

"Can it wait?" Doevm asked.

"Why is it that he can command like that?" Frey asked.

Doevm turned to rebuke him, but paused as a rare, open curiosity sat on Frey's brow. Doevm realized that Frey had been quiet, even for him. "As a former squad leader, how can you not know?" Doevm asked. "You saw it as well as I did."

"I know that we can, but how can he do it too?" Frey elaborated. "How can such a shady group act like soldiers?"

Doevm chuckled. "Do you mean to question how their purpose can give rise to such loyalty?"

Frey nodded. "They aren't even real soldiers."

"We aren't pretending, boy," Tut huffed. "I picked these men myself and trained them up. You wouldn't understand." Although Tut was "willfully" escorting them and would soon forget their words, that didn't mean he couldn't talk.

"You're right, I don't understand," Frey muttered.

'Or you don't want to,' Doevm thought. 'That's just how humans are. Leaders and words bend and mold them into shape. You already understand that. You just hoped that a good purpose would matter a little bit more, didn't you?'

Tut waved them off as they reached the edge of the market, then wandered back to his men.

"Good riddance," Frey said.

"You really hate Dwarves, don't you?" Doevm asked.

"It's not my fault they all act like Kilot," Frey sneered. "If you didn't show up, I was going to punt him out of my way."

"I don't doubt that," Doevm sighed. "In the future, refrain from picking fights."

Frey shook his head. "Hopefully we don't see them again."

They walked on in silence.

Doevm's steps slowed. Whatever this thing was, the source of this invisible calamity, they were close.

The ambient mana was suffocating. Doevm could taste an electric tickle across his tongue. Frey seemed to pick up on his paranoia, because his head was on a swivel. Their sloshing steps sent ripples that traveled over the empty streets, bouncing off hunched walls, then finally returning after hitting lumps of rubble at the end of the pathway.

Although neither Doevm nor Frey made any indication to each other, they both hurried the last hundred meters to the end of the tunnel.

A crowd stood gawking at a smoldering pile of a fallen building.

The surrounding buildings seemed almost untouched in comparison, like witnesses to a murder.

It was the last building, in the entirety of the Polyglint Mines, that Doevm would have expected to fall; it was Kilot's forge.

Unlike Kilot's shack in the Bloodwood forest, his forge in the Polyglint Mines wasn't slapped together with mere sticks and lumbar. The forge was, or rather it had been, a fortress of stone and metals and supports. Kilot had sunk a portion of his youth into building that forge, and he had nearly gone mad spending so much time within it. It was the birthplace of legends. It was decades of his life. It was all he had left.

'The mana leads in there, and the forge contained it,' Doevm thought, narrowing his eyes. Lying a dozen feet away from the destruction was a man. Doevm couldn't make out who it was since, whoever it was, he was surrounded by people.

"Give me some space, damn it!" Elero's voice echoed from the middle of the crowd. "He needs space."

Doevm caught the sight of Elero's back. She was hunched down next to Kilot, her two hands gently squeezing one of his. Her eyes watered as she held back tears. She seemed to sense Doevm's gaze as she looked back at him, blood coming down from the lip she was biting.