Chapter 1 — Mishap

The battle was nearly won- Mictlan, the strange dark-skinned swordsman, had proved his worth, keeping the four bandit swordsmen distracted and occupied single-handedly. Mira had hired him on in the last tavern she had passed through- he charged a steep cost, a full hundred gold, but she would not have been able to finish this job without him. It cut into her profit margin, but repaying the advance with interest after returning a failure would’ve ruined her, both financially and reputation-wise.

Mira spoke the final command phrase and four lances of fire shot from her fingertips, which was not supposed to happen. It was supposed to be three. She had only aimed three. She had slipped on pronouncing the last iamb of the incantation, and instead of the spell’s power focused into three beams, each perfectly aimed, it was split amongst four.

The three she meant to fire hit their target square in center of mass. The leader of this band of ruffians was an ugly half-orc that had stumbled into a strange power that let him bend the minds of anyone that came close to him with just a few words.

Mictlan was deaf- it made him strange and silent, and hard to negotiate with, but it also made him immune to the bandit’s power. Mira’s only option was to stay far enough away that his power just felt like a pressure against her mind, not enough to sway her to his side.

No, the first three shots hit their target true, and still had enough power to lance through the hardened leather armor he wore with a sizzling crack, and the smell of burning flesh. He collapsed to the ground, and the four other bandits clutched their heads in pained confusion as the leader’s power dissipated from his lifeless body.

No, the real mistake was the fourth lance of fire. Mira had curled her hand into the prescribed shape for three lances- a close triangle of her first three fingers, palm up, with her thumb pinning her pinkie finger back away from them. The fourth lance shot out back toward her, searing a line of burning pain across the side of her neck. An inch to her left and she’d be bleeding out along with the leader.

An inch to the right would have made this merely an embarrassing mishap; but instead, it caught her familiar, who had been perched on her shoulder a moment before, square in his furry little chest. He didn’t stand a chance.

The four lesser bandits turned out to be woodsmen and other adventurers that had been caught in the leader’s sway; they were grateful for what they saw as their rescue. Mira did not tell them she had intended for Mictlan to kill them; but she sent them on their way with the clothes on their back and nothing else, bidding them return home.

That left her, Mictlan, a dead half-orc, and a dead brown squirrel.

“Well, fuck.”

Mictlan watched her closely; he had the knack of reading lips, and responded in a kind of gestural language that he had been slowly teaching Mira, which worked well until night fell and she could barely see her own hands, much less someone else’s.

((Bring back?)) he inquired, gesturing toward the squirrel.

“I can’t.. It’s.. how do I explain? I would need magic to bring him back but I can’t do magic without him.”

((That’s stupid,)) Mictlan frowned at her.

“Look, when we get back to town, the magic shop will have a scroll I can use.”

((Road dangerous,)) Mictlan reminded her.

It was true. It had been a week of travel to get there, and had required a great deal of her magic and Mictlan’s sword to do so safely and even that quickly. It would take four times as long without her magic, moving slowly and carefully, only at dusk, avoiding the dangerous creatures that prowled at night and the scattered soldiers and highwaymen that patrolled during the day.

Mira chewed on her lower lip.

“Look, let’s see what kind of loot the bandits were hoarding. Maybe there’s something I can use.”

The source of the bandit leader’s strange power, an amulet of gold and rusty iron, was a casualty of Mira’s last blast of magic. The gold would still be worth something, but it was so damaged the magic had all drained out of it, along with the bandit’s heart-blood.

He had little else of value; a poorly-made cudgel— she supposed he used it more to threaten than for actual warfare, preferring to bend the minds of those he sought to rob or co-opt.

His coin purse contained a few dozen gold, which Mira pocketed. Splitting the loot was not part of the deal- Mictlan got his hundred gold, and once they returned to town, his contract would be complete. Whatever Mira could take off the bodies was hers to keep, and she hoped it would be enough to get a tidy profit. She desperately needed the attention of one of the bathhouse girls, to clean the grime of two weeks’ hard travel off of her on top of their usual services.

Forty-odd gold pieces were not a familiar, however, and she could not perform magic without a familiar. She kept digging, struggling to drag the half-orc’s backpack out from under his collapsed body.

The backpack yielded more useful items— A bound scroll, the sort of vellum used to entrap magical energy. This was promising- it would give her at least an ace in the hole she could use during their travels back.

She yelped, as she dug through the backpack, and found a shard of glass the hard way; some bottles or vials had shattered when the half-orc had landed on his backpack. Mira cursed quietly as she sucked on her bleeding finger. Those might have been valuable potions, and now they were just so much shrapnel. She couldn’t even flip the vials for a few copper pieces.

Sighing, Mira unfurled the scroll to find out what sort of magic it was. And she cursed again. A section of text about the size of her palm was an unreadable blob of ink, doubtless from one of the shattered vials.

((Looks wrong.)) Mictlan crouched down next to her while she was quietly swearing about the state of the scroll.

“Yeah, no shit.” She worked her way through deciphering the parts of the scroll she could, careful not to speak any of the iambs aloud; once the knot of words binding the magic into the scroll started to unravel, there was no stopping it.

“It’s.. some kind of planar magic, I think.” It was well beyond her abilities, but she didn’t want to acknowledge that to Mictlan. She may have over-stated her capabilities a bit during negotiations. She furled the scroll and stowed it into her pack.

They were screwed.