Fourth Adventure 05: Saboteurs

En route to the graveyard the bag of sloshing death poison Kolson is carrying rather suddenly starts to feel much lighter. A quick listen sounds like there is no more liquid in the pouch.

"Tabran, do you think you could wake them up?"

upon seeing the state the others are in tab takes one of the flair arrows and notchs it to his bow

"guy's im count in to 5 then im going to shot this arrow at the ground 10 meters in front of our sleepy friends"

5
4
3
2
1
0

tab shot the arrow

The three are startled awake by the loud and bright flare blazing in front of them.

Time: Enroute to the graveyard.

Feeling the lighter bag in his hand, Kolson opens it up to peer inside. Yup, empty. Shit.

"Um guys, we have a problem here. The flesh-eating compound seems to have broken down."

He shows anyone who is interested.

"Fascinating. A deadly compound with a high rate of decay. This is a most terrible weapon. If someone had enough of this you could dump it on a city, kill the inhabitants, and be left with everything else intact."

Zeiss listened to what Kolson said. Motionless, he was thinking. Then, it hit him. He took the piece of copper and started to talk with urgency.

"Executor, Templar of the 113th Adjunct. Please answer."

The response over the coin came immediately. "That was quick. What do you have?"

"The alchemy table and the poisoned food disappeared. Our colleagues that were guarding them were magically put asleep. The flask of poison that disintegrated the arm of Snarg disappeared too, while my colleague Kolson had it in his possession. It must have been yellow magic. All the proofs of the presence of the Sho in the region are vanishing. Only the Scalvi and the Burun are left. The Scalvi is a simple fighter that knows almost nothing, but his superior has something imbued in his soul that is not quite like a materia. I suspect he might be the next one to disappear under our eyes."

There's a pause. "I see... I'm suspectin' we're dealing with more than one player at the table here." You hear his tone change noticeably. "In your professional opinion, do you think the Sho are behind the sabotage attempts?"

Zeiss looked at the others. Z and Snarg shook their heads at the Executor's question. As for Zeiss, he wasn't sure. Maybe the Emperor, a mysterious figurehead, was making his return. He pondered a few seconds.

"No sir. I do not think so. Neither some of my knowledgeable colleagues."

He paused.

"This is not the first time we confronted mysterious yellow mages in the region. Like this Burun."

"Understood. I have new orders for you," he continued, tone remaining professional. "Get your group to open desert sands as quickly as possible and have your contact, Z, call in the Colonel. Get the prisoners to the Naverre ASAP, before our enemies can do anything about them, and warn them of the dangers and our belief that these are not Sho operatives, but the investigation is ongoing. Then I want you to follow up on this however you can, we're missing pieces here and I don't like it. Any questions?"

"Not at the moment sir. We will follow your orders as fast as possible. Adjunct 113, out."

Zeiss put the piece back in its usual pocket. He then asked Z :

"Where should we go?"

Z wordlessly pointed north, towards the edges of the red plains where the sands began encroaching again, and began walking northwards.

They had a direction. Zeiss went back to his horse and helped the ones that were just waking up.

"Let's go. We have an airship to take."

"I think first we should make sure we hide any evidence of anybody losing their temper," Rory said, gesturing at the Burun's crushed arm.

Zeiss looked back to Rory.

"...Good idea."

"We'd need a professional mender to fix that, and your friend's issue," Z points towards Snarg. "That'd mean hours of time spent, in the city, with lots and lots of opportunities to lose our captives. I don't think we can risk it."

"Well, he lost his arm in a fight, right? I think that will be enough as an explanation. Let's continue forward in this case."

"also casting heal on him may trigger whatever he has in him?"