When I awoke it was to find myself gently swaying side to side in the hammock of my two wisps. Around us was a small camp over almost twenty worn and dirty and battered people of all ages. Night had fully set in so the only lights in the area were either two large fires illuminating our ridge camp or the stars. From my elevated position I could see the actual camp only a few hundred feet away in the direction of town.
Now, though, we were right beside the road leading toward the small town I had tried to circumvent. It must have still been the same day because many of the people here were actually sleeping. For a moment, I actually expected to see Sili curled up somewhere warm nearby but I had left her days ago. However, in linen hammocks nearby I did find the two kids from earlier.
A brief check of the surroundings told me nobody knew that I was awake so I started softly and quietly punching my hammock while hoarsely whispering, "What the fuck, guys? I let you guys try to find your speed limit and you throw me at an army of outlaws? What about waking me up on a nearby hill? You can detect life bet-ter-than-I-can," I growl softly, emphasizing my last words with pointless punches.
These wisps could not feel pain until after evolution, but after that they were certainly in for a sound beating.
Dealing with my wisps only took a few short minutes and after that I briefly maintained my position in the air and consumed the wisp hammock into my body. Nobody noticed me a few seconds later so I briefly took a headcount once again and carved out five gold blanks strung on a silver chain for every person here. Then I simply flew over to land by the closest fire where sentries were sitting.
The people who were once tied up and wearing ruined clothes were now dressed in crude fur garments and pieces of armor similar to the bandits. Of course they were also carrying scrap metal bandit weapons. I could not help but pity these people more than I already did.
Once they became aware of my presence around the fire the closest people at first jumped up with alarm until being silenced by my magic and made to sit down one again. To the fireside sentries at the opposite side of the camp I merely smiled and waved. "All of you need you rest more than I do," I say to the refugees while trying to portray gentle care and honest worry.
"My familiars and I can keep watch, just do your best to get some sleep. In the morning I will have food and medicine prepared for everybody," I went on to reassure them when one of them tried to argue.
The fact that the wisps and I had saved them at all meant they could rely on us for large-scale combat so it was hard to put up resistance in front of my insistence for a variety of reasons. The people from this fire visited the other sentries and soon everybody returned to their various piles of looted furs for sleeping. Food was naturally hard to argue with as well.
While there were various means I could use to explore and investigate what had taken place, I decided to wait for in the morning and sent Grimm to loot the bandit camp. Shade was specifically given the order to find a deer and return to the neighboring hilltop with it. He was only gone for eight minutes before coming back with a young four-point buck whose pale body looked like it had aged ten hours from being drained of all energy and life.
This changed my previous thoughts about my familiars, they spent every moment screwing off AND THEN did their jobs at the last minute.
I hoped.
Flicking my wrist to release a shallow slash that opened the deer's chest and belly, I simply rip all of its insides out with a clench of my fist and twist before tossing it to the side. Shade immediately ate it and broke it down into particles to be condensed and processed. After removing the cheap hide from the deer, all I did to treat it was let Shade consume all of the fat proteins.
After simply separating the meat from the bones with magic, I let Shade soak himself under the muscle tissue to start grinding away and eating the bones, brain, and spinal fluid from where the body lay atop its skin. Then I simply separated the meats based on leg and such before sending Shade out for wood. Grimm returned with everything made of metal inside his expanded body while coating himself in clean furs
Grimm dropped a load of ruined weapons and armor as well as the personal affects and loot of the bandits the prisoners missed. Most of it was cheap magic trinkets and some personal trophies such as a small box of wedding rings some nut job collected or an array of blood rusted knives. If I was right, this guy had taken out as many as seventeen people in duels while robbing people and the like.
Hopefully it was at least something nobler than the wedding rings.
I immediately melted half of the gold and silver rings into blanks for future purposes while converting the rest into small blocks of metal for future purposes. The natural stones any wedding rings were set with were now in a completely different void. For future purposes.
The box was then blessed with a short pray and burned with white fire to remove any lasting grudges or karma from the afterlife. The knives were blessed and reforged with a few broken swords in the same fire to arm the prisoners with. A strange but unquestioned jewel studded leather bustier was simply blessed and burned after removing the stones.
Considering the situation taken care of, I send both familiars back out to eat the bandit bodies while I prepare a large quartz cauldron. After cutting up all of the back and neck meat into large chunks that would dominate the average bowl and dumping them into the cauldron, I pour in enough blessed mountain water to be level with the meat. Then I hastily boiled the meat to remove the blood and then boiled the bloody water away before adding more.
From my recently renewed stocks of wild vegetables I chopped up a few dozen of several different tubers like wild carrots and potatoes as well as wild beans and a few nuts. Once the water was leveled out once again, I coated the surface of the water with a simple combination of seasonings and dried iramana petals.
While I spent several minutes simply stirring the cauldron without any fire my familiars returned from cleaning the bandit camp. Since they were there I used them to carry the cauldron back to the burned out sentry fire where I stoked the coals. Once the fire was going and the once pretty quartz cauldron was being covered with soot, I sent my familiars out to practice transmutation converting all of the broken weapons and armor into large blocks of material.
Little more than two hours later, the surrounding hillsides were filled with the smell of roasting ribs and simmering stew. Not long after the sun started entering the sky some of the refugees started waking up and I immediately served them some ribs with a side of bitter candies. From the first few people to wake up I learned that everyone here was part of small trading caravans or simple travelers that the bandits had overpowered while grouping together.
Their plan was to hold the people hostages and make the town and its chapter of the Guild pay ransom. Simple but effective when done correctly. These bandits, though, were impatient and at the first sign of resistance when the town asked for time they started in on the women.
The children were one of a few people who were actually from this town, their parents had decided to go visit family in a neighboring city about a week away. They simply left at the worst time possible and both parents were killed resisting capture. Supposedly, the children who were of higher value to the townspeople and already paid for were only made to watch what was done to everybody else and smacked around to speed up the other ransoms.
No matter how I looked at it, I still could not stomach any part of it.
Kids with no parents would need to go to their next of kin which was apparently where they were going to begin with. Since I was already going in that direction, I offered transport to anyone who was traveling in the same direction. Grass golems could easily carry two people with no luggage for a day at top speeds.
Everybody was awake by the time the sun had risen fully into the morning so I started serving stew with the ribs and medicine. While feeding the kids I tried to talk to them about their names and their destination but neither of them seemed to be coherent. I actually had to make them hold the bowls of food
In attempt to make sure the kids ate I brought out Shade and Grimm to oversee feeding them. However, as soon as the wisps came out the children seemed to come to as if only suddenly finding themselves in the here and now. With the wisps in sight, they became visibly relaxed and seemed to notice food was even a concept.
Considering the immediate future for the children I decided to do what I can to make things easier on the kids by giving them a distraction.
Leaving the refugee camp to return to the outlaw camp, I take out a bunch of natural agates from my purse and throw them out in points around the area. Once the natural mana crystals were in place I transmuting connecting lines to a position in the camp where the wisps had gathered up 'trash'. Everything I would not want was piled up in the middle of the area.
After activating the large-scale mana concentration array, I feed concentrated raw mana into the array from more minerals in my purse until severs wisps suddenly spawn. Only one was a pure wisp so the others were immediately scrapped into stardust. Ten minutes later, the wisps began darkening in the next spawning but there was still one pure mana wisp.
The other were likewise scrapped.
*