Queen Rescued

Kies made it to the inn, taking a shortcut by hopping on the roofs of the buildings to get there. Upon arrival, Kies barged through the window of the room on the second floor, kicking opening the windows and landing next to the bed, scaring the ever-living life out of Sirks and Wompa who were standing over Iris and watching her.

"An enemy!?" Sirks scrambled to get his weapon which was on the desk next to the bed. He picked it up and swung it without a second thought at Kies. "Die, you scum!"

Kies caught the blade, using a thin layer of wind to protect his hand from the sharp edge, and pushed it downward. "It's me!" Kies told him.

"Who!?" It took Sirks a moment to recognize Kies who was in his adult form and not his child-like one.

It was their first time talking to each other after a few days now and Sirks didn't know what to say. Kies looked nothing like he did before. "Did you have a growth spurt or something...?" It was a rude question, but he didn't know what else to ask or say first.

He was only a brat a few days ago when they last saw him. Now he was as tall as him and looked a lot older too. What in the world happened?

"Something like that."

"Oh! For God's sake... Couldn't you have used the door!?" Sirks pointed at the door behind them.

"Ah, whatever," Sirks pulled his sword out of the wooden floor and put it back against the wall. "So, where the h*ll have you been?" he questioned Kies about his absence for all this time. There were a lot of other things he wanted to ask, but this took priority first.

"This." Instead of explaining, it was faster to just show them. Kies brought the queen through the window and laid her on the bed beside Iris. The two's faces turned ghostly white when they saw who it was.

"Holy lord... You carried her all the way here!?" Through a city riddled by monsters? This was a hard feat to do. Pulling off a stunt like this, just how did Kies manage it?

Kies saw Sirks' question look and said, "Magic."

"Magic? Not one of your many artifacts?" It was a sarcastic question and Kies didn't bother answering it. By now, both he and Wompa knew that Kies was a mage and that he had lied to them the entire time. And as for how he rescued the queen from the castle? It was self-explanatory with his one-word answer.

Sirks did a quick checkup of the queen's condition, noting how thin she had become. She looked so fragile that a breeze might break her bones, and it would be quite literal if it were Kies' magic that created it.

"Did you by any chance get your hands on the medicine and administer the cure to her highness?" Sirks asked hopefully.

"Do you think the tournament gave me the money to pay her?"

"I'll take that as a no."

"We can try forcing her to do it, can't we?"

Sirks shook his head, rejecting the thought of that almost instantly. "That won't work on that old hat. She'd rather die than be forced to do something she didn't consent to."

"How troublesome..." Kies' plan of barging into her run-down shack was out of the question. If he knew this from the beginning then he would've stolen something inside of the castle as he was escaping to pay her with. But it was too late now.

"How's 'her' condition?" Kies asked, looking at Iris. Appearance-wise, she looked no better than her older sister, the queen. Dried blood all over her face and head. Sweat, dirt, and cuts everywhere on her clothes, making it look like an old rag despite being relatively new. "Couldn't you have at least wiped the blood off?"

"Do you think we can just casually go downstairs to fetch water with all those 'things' out there? What if one comes up here while I'm downstairs?"

"The hybrids? they're gone, actually," Kies told him as a matter of fact. He even took care of the majority of them. There were no threats left in the city other than the Black Fang, Messa, and the other people that were their allies. At least, not that he knew of.

"They were taken care of?" Sirks was impressed at their speed.

"Yes".

"That's good. Then I guess it's safe for us to go down now."

Wompa raised her hand and volunteered to go down to get some water. She grabbed a pail and went to the kitchen to get some water for her sister while Kies and Sirks discussed their next course of action.

"We need to find someone who can cure the queen," Sirks said, pointing out what their top priority is.

There were two ways to do this. The first was to find the person who poisoned her and have them fork over the cure, which is very unlikely to happen. The second? The herbalist... And since Kies had the money to pay her... "Why does everything have to be so hard..." Kies mumbled, pinching his eyebrows like he had a headache.

"The herbalist is still in that old house, right?" Kies asked Sirks. He wanted to find her, but with the current state of the city, she may not be in her home. And it wasn't like he had a tracking device that told him her location as he did with Iris.

"Yes. I know that old bat. She never leaves that place. If something had happened, she just holes herself up in there. Believe it or not, but she has enough supplies to last her years down here," Sirks answered.

"So the short answer is yes."

"Yes."

"Good." Kies pushed himself off the wall that he was leaning in and turned towards the window.

"I told you, that won't work!" Sirks repeated what he said before. "Threatening her won't work!"

"Who said I'm going to threaten her?"

"You're not? Do you have the money?"

"No."

"Then what-"

"I have a plan." Surely, there was something other than money that she wanted. He will just have to offer her something else that he had, something that he had no use for anymore, like his moonstone for example. It wasn't much use to him anymore, and as valuable as it is, Kies had no more use for it.

"If you say so..." Sirks sounded a bit doubtful of what Kies was going to do, but he didn't ask about it. Wishing him the best of luck, he watched Kies leave through the window. With a howl of the winds, he disappeared.

"Sh*t!" Sirks ran over to the window and poked his head out, not seeing Kies anywhere. "He really is a mage..." If making the queen magically float in through the window wasn't enough, Sirks was a hundred percent sure now that he was a mage, a wind user. "Aren't they supposed to be weak?" Sirks couldn't help but scratch his head. From what he heard, wind magic was one of the weakest forms of magic, not being useful for anything other than creating a breeze to cool people down, but wasn't that extremely exaggerated?

Taking a minute to think about it, Sirks realized that there aren't many wind mages in Otane. No, there were none, actually. The majority of mages were fire mages. The second most common was light. And the third was earth. Water and wind were nowhere to be found. Funnily enough, the most common magics were considered the most useful, and the latter two, far rarer than the first three, were considered useless. Useless? It was probably more along the lines of underdeveloped, lacking the mages of their elements to make progress in it.

But mage or not, he still had to convince that cranky old hag to help them. Sirks didn't know what Kies had in mind, but he really did hope that it would work. The future of Otane depended on him.

***

Kies sped through the city until he made it to the run-down shack in the middle of the city. The door was broken and there were claw marks on the wall. "Ahh! Help!" a high-pitched voice shrieked followed by the hiss of a creature.

"Looks like I missed one." Or maybe a few. It may not even be his fault. It could be Rui or one of the other two who were in charge of this part of the city.

"Eek! Someone, help me!" the voice cried again, this time louder than before. Kies could hear the crackle in her voice. It sounded like she had been calling for help for quite some time now and she was losing her voice.

Kies entered the room and saw that the entire place had been ripped to pieces. It was even more of a mess than when he last been in it, and he was surprised that the room could look any worse. Kies saw movement ahead, but since it was so dark, it took him a second to identify what he was looking at.

"What in the world is that...?" Kies couldn't describe it in words. The creature slowly turned its head around, to reveal fangs sticking out on one side of the face, but tears streaming down the other half. The floor next to her was open, a stairway leading down to darkness. The trapdoor was broken in half. Looks like something broke it open and she ended up getting infected.

"Help me!" the cry came out in the form of both a growl and plead. Kies closed his eyes and opened them again. No, this was real. The 'thing' in front of him was still partially human but also mutated at the same time. It was the old herbalist. She reached forward with her mutated hand, claws outstretched at Kies.

Kies took a step back and held out his hand, letting the wind flow across his palm and sending out a small shockwave to push the herbalist back. "Watch it."

"How can you treat me like this!? Don't you need me for a cure!?" Although the herbalist said that, the mutated half of her face was grinning, its fangs drooling with saliva. Kies wasn't sure who was in control, the hybrid part, or the human part. Until he was certain, he wasn't going to trust a thing she says.

How things would have been a lot simpler if it were just a hybrid attacking her. Kies would've just killed it and solved the problem. Now, this? What was he to do? "How did you end up like this?" Kies asked the herbalist, hoping that her sanity was still enacted enough that she could explain everything to him.

"Please help me..." the herbalist repeated, clawing her face with her nails. The mutated hand tore into her flesh, leaving a nasty red streak down her face.

"I can't help you unless you tell me what happened."

"No! You can help me!"

"...How so!?"

"By letting me kill you!"

The herbalist, or rather, the hybrid, pounced on Kies. He ducked, letting her claws fly past him followed by the rest of her body. "Don't resist! This will be quick! I'll plunge my claws in your neck and it'll all be over!"

"You're out of your mind!"

The herbalist pounced on Kies again, but this time she aimed lower so that Kies couldn't duck it again. But Kies didn't need to dodge. As the herbalist got near him, Kies twisted his body, letting her fly past him a bit before he grabbed her by the collar and redirected her into the wall.

*Crash!*

The old rotting wood wall could not withstand the force and splinters flew everywhere. Shelves of herbs and bottles of medicine were destroyed.

"Gaah! This is all your fault!" the herbalist screeched as it jumped back onto its two feet. She ran at Kies, arms outstretched. Kies had the choice to end the fight here and now by cutting off her arms, well, he could've ended it from the beginning by splitting her in half with the winds, but he wasn't sure if he should.

Kies pushed the herbalist back into the wall again, widening the hole in it. "Get a hold of yourself!" Kies yelled at her, hoping that her human part was still there and listening. The herbalist didn't seem to care and got up to attack him again. Kies slammed her into the wall another four more times before growing tired and giving her a final warning. "If you don't snap out of it, I will have to kill you."

Kies really didn't want to do it, but if the herbalist really lost her mind then no amount of words could bring her back. "Last chance... Show me that you're still human."

"Die!"

*Fwoosh!*

"Huh? Why is the world upside-"

*Splat!*

Another gale of wind pierced the herbalist's severed head, finishing her off. "I hope you find peace." Kies turned and walked out of the old battered building. He felt nothing when he killed the old woman. It was a little regretful, but there wasn't anything else he could do. Putting her out of her misery was the only thing he could think of. He was no doctor and didn't know how to that if it could even be cured.

How did she end up that way in the first place? Partially human and partially mutated. Did her body have some sort of natural immunity to it?

The light shined in Kies' eyes blinding him when he exited the dark building. He heard something flying at him and jumped back into the building without thinking.

*Shuck!*

An arrow dug into the sand in front of him. "Winds!" A strong current enveloped the area and picked up on several targets. One, two, three, four. There were four of them. "Get them!" Kies ordered the winds. The winds roared and went after the two unknown assailants.

The winds, sadly, were not able to hit any of the four. The assailants all either moved away or found cover from them, sensing that something was coming. Kies rushed out the door while they were preoccupied with his attack and jumped on top of the rooftop.

They were all wearing baggy cloaks and had face coverings. The Black Fang... They followed him all the way here, and they were going to follow him continuously until he dealt with them.

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