There's thirteen of them. It takes me a second before I recognize the arms and armor of those in the lead of the formation, It's the Lords and Ladies, our Liberators. Eight of them are, at least. The other five joined their group later. I wonder if that makes them Lords as well, the king awarded the land to the group. I would think not, but I don't know the laws and politics of the realm in that regard. Regardless, I salute. The rest of the men follow my lead. Most of them salute back, some of the newer members seem unused to such attention.
At the front of the group are Lords Hawklight and Hawkins, Lady Hefthammer, and one of the new members of their group. In the middle is Lord Carlmon, Lady Maple, Rose the druid (who I've heard of simply because of that large lizard beast she tends to ride around), a priestess of The Sun, and a rather shady looking fellow. Quite literally shady, his cloak or leather armor must be magically generating a very small aura of darkness, a classic thief's trick for those that can afford it. In the rear are Lords Gray and McGee, an unarmored woman, and a rather heavily armored man with no weapons.
They are equipped much the same as when they freed us from Iztram, though some of their gear seems to have more of a glow of magic to it. There isn't a standard among them, most of their armor varies wildly, from the heavy adamant plate armor of Lord Hawklight to the unarmed and unarmored Lady Maple. Their weapons are less visibly varied, mostly swords and longbows, Lady Hefthammer's massive maul being a notable exception. Lady Maple also stands out from the rest, being one of those body-as-a-weapon types, unarmed and unarmored. Normally, I would think that's crazy, but I've heard multiple times about her punching through someone's breastplate, I guess if you have at it hard enough it really works.
They dismount, Lady Maple takes the opportunity to show off by dismounting with a flip and a cartwheel. They ask us about the creatures and the strange effect on this delta. They would like to see the body of the creature I slew. First, they'll want to check on the sword at the middle of the crystallization, though. Lady Averdine starts walking, I guess floating would be more accurate, towards the area we avoided during our sweep. We figured that the nearer to the epicenter, the less likely we wanted to be there in the dark. Our Liberators approach the crystal landscape, and when they are with a few feet it starts to recede before them. The crystal flakes up and disintegrates leaving behind the original terrain. I'd like an explanation for that, seeing it makes me feel like we did absolutely nothing for the last few hours by clearing away those amalgam plants.
While the rest of them go off to see the sword that's caused this mess, the shadowy fellow sticks behind and comes over to us. “So, how are the fine watchmen of Midrange doing this evening?”
Sam responds, “Feeling like we might just as well have stayed home and just told you guys to go talk to Lady Averdine.”
“How are they doing that?”
“I don't exactly know, myself. From what I've gathered, they found some fountain of energy that runs counter to this strange crystal infection. Since they had this power they decided to go around and do stuff about it. I've heard that the stuff infects through a wound if you leave a shard inside, or just spreads like mold if the source is large enough. Only the original eight of them have that ability though, so I figured I'd just wait and see how you all are doing.”
“So what do you do for them?” The rookie actually just asked that. From the way he moves and the outfit, he is clearly a scout or something similar.
“I'm Zilo, master scout, infiltrator, and trapman. Entry facilitation, as well as spotting and disabling traps, those are my specialty. If the opportunity presents itself, I also like to counter ambush. According to them, the last guy they had in charge of the role got himself killed. Wasn't even a trap that got him, he just didn't know his place on the battlefield.”
We talk and introduce ourselves. He fills me in on the names of the rest of the group that I don't know, Gimaim the dwarf, the priestess is Celano, the unarmored woman is Isabella the sorceress, and the armored yet unarmed man is Alejandro. It doesn't take too long before Lady Hefthammer comes back to speak with me.
“Milady.”
“Looks like the sword that was causing this is already missing. Since our mere presence seems to remove the infection, they've decided to jog around the area.”
She questions me about the details of the encounter, how we were injured, and who healed us. She looks relieved when I tell her we went to Ziegfried.
“Are you certain that no shrapnel from the thing was embedded inside any living thing nearby?”
The only piece I even remember breaking off was that horn that...
Crap.
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