Chapter 33: Collecting the Collector

Watery blood filled Durandrus' mouth as he floated between us. "Do we bring him to shore?" I asked Brutus.

Brutus considered and searched him. He found the mage's pouch with essences he had accumulated and a small coin pouch. He considered for a long moment before saying, "Shit. Damn, Truthseekers would talk the theft out of us if we took anything. Let's bring him to shore and see what Flavius wants to do."

We floated the body to shore, and men came and helped us drag him up to the center of the small island. They had already buried their companion's two bodies in the island's soft soil. Flavius was the archer-trained scout who was taking command of the remaining men. He looked at the body and just rasped angrily, "Greedy bastard. It finally bit him in the ass." He looked up and addressed everyone, "Ok, we are going to haul the body back to the road." He picked up the mage's pouches. The essences will be divided among us, and the coin will be sent to his estate. Did you find the collector?" He asked Brutus and I.

Brutus answered, "No, could have gone anywhere. Eryk was holding the glowstone aloft the entire time we searched, and we didn't see anything." I kept a straight face, and Flavius grunted.

"Ok, we will search for the collector in the morning. If we don't find it by mid-day we will head to the road," Flavius announced. He pulled the string on the essence sack. "Since essences collected on campaigns are administered at the discretion of the commanding officer in the Legion, I will be handing these out!" There was a chorus of affirmations as the seven of us circled around him.

Flavius took his cloak and placed it on the ground. He slowly dumped the marble-like essences onto the cloak. There were thirty-seven smaller marble-sized essences, three golf ball-sized essences, and seven more in between those sizes. "For those of you who have never consumed an essence before, the small ones are minor essences, the middle-sized ones are major essences, and the three large balls are apex essences. Each one is ten times more valuable than the prior. Now these," he took the three apex essences, "are required to be turned into the Empire." He moved them back into the pouch.

Someone asked why, and Flavius replied, "First Citizen privilege. They buy them all to use amongst themselves. You don't want a Truthseeker asking you if you consumed one. Although working for Durandus these last few months, the laws are pretty loose." There were murmurs of agreement among everyone. He had taken the apex essence of the storm giant and consumed it right away, and that must have been his pattern in the past.

"Now the question is most of these minor essences are from our comrades. Do we want to consume them or return them to their families?" Flavius asked us. An argument ensued. Two men really wanted to consume them, and two wanted to return them to their families, not that we could tell which essence belonged to whom. In the end, we added one minor essence to each of bag of personal possessions—leaving nine small essences and seven medium.

Flavius continued, "The color of the essence determines which aspect of self it is related to. The darker colors are all physical traits. The lighter colors are the mental aspects."

Flavius slowly went through the colors from memory:

Strength

Dark Purple

Intellect

Light Purple

Power

Dark Orange

Reasoning

Light Orange

Quickness

Dark Green

Perception

Light Green

Dexterity

Dark Yellow

Insight

Light Yellow

Endurance

Dark Blue

Resilience

Light Blue

Constitution

Dark Red

Empathy

Light Pink

Coordination

Dark Pink

Fortitude

Light Red

(note to readers I will go back and make sure earlier chapters are consistent with this)

Of the nine small essences, four were dark purple strength, two dark red constitution, and three dark orange power. The seven larger, major essences were five dark purple strength, one pink empathy, and one dark pink coordination.

Curious, "I asked what about magic-related statistics?"

Flavius thought for a moment. He slowly spoke, "I think aether essences are a milky pearl-like. Channeling I have seen before. They are glossy black. The others," he focused and shook his head. "I read it too long ago to remember. I just remember one was clear like glass."

"What was the one Durandus consumed from the storm giant?" Another legionnaire asked.

"Probably the common lightning affinity. I did not see it. All the magic affinities have some glow and animation to them. These physical and mental," he indicated the ones on the cloak, "Only glow softly in the dark."

Everyone looked anxious. Flavius said, "We will pull chips for the order of selection. Once for the lesser and once for the major. The two extra lesser extra will be determined by the lowest two chips on the third pull."

The chips ended up being a deck of cards with the Roman numerals on them from a pack. One through seven was pulled. I pulled six for the lesser essence. On my turn, I took the dark orange essence for power. The next draw was for the lowest number. I got one, but it did not matter; only strength essence remained, so I took one. The final draw was for the major essence, and this was the big one. I wanted the pink coordination essence, but I drew the number five.

Brutus got a two on the draw, and when his turn came, I offered, "Brutus, I will trade my two minor essences and my fifth selection for your turn?"

Everyone listened as Brutus asked, "Which one are you planning to select?"

With all eyes on me, I said, "The pink coordination." Flavius' eyes betrayed him, and he had also planned to select that. I did not get a read on the others. Brutus nodded slowly and handed me his card, and I gave him my card and the two essences. I selected the pink essence and put it into my mouth immediately. As it dissolved, it had a salty taste to it, but it may have just been the dried sweat from the hands of the people handling it. The familiar cold, tingly lighting washed through my body.

Others started putting their own essence into their mouth, and I almost warned them about taking multiple ones. I think some people planned to sell them, or maybe they worried about consuming the essence of a fallen comrade. When the selection ended, Flavious announced, "It is a half-day trip to the road. It is going to be much more difficult without Durandus to guide us. Get six hours of rest, and then we will pack quickly and search for the collector in the light. Eryk and Brutus, you are on watch for the first two hours."

I was about to say something but then remembered while everyone had been fighting, we had been back peddling and drawing the third shambling mound toward the others. We did the least amount of fighting of everyone here. As I stood in the morning's light, standing back to back with Brutus, I asked, "Are essences important? Are they the soul of the being you take them from?"

Brutus answered slowly, "Some people think so. The orcs in the west in the Boutan Caliphate, for one. They consider it a great honor to consume the essence of their conquered enemy. The teachings of the Telhian Empire are that a person's essence is sacred before they die. Once they die, the essence is for their family to do with what they will. Usually, it is used to strengthen the children if it is collected."

A few men started snoring, and we could see the larger insects going to feast on the corpses of the monsters. I asked, "Why was everyone so upset when Durandus harvested the bodies of the men?"

"Because he would have sold it and not given them to the families," Brutus said steelily. "In the Empire, it is also not common practice to harvest your own men, even in times of war. Outside of Legion Mages and Mages of the College, only the Temple of Minerva has priests with collectors within the Empire."

"How do Legion Mages get away with harvesting people and consuming apex essences?" I asked, trying to understand, and listening keenly.

"The mages of the Legion and the Mage College are the true power of the Empire. Anyone that can learn true spell casting is revered," Brutus said, surprised. "How is it in your home country?"

I panicked because I didn't know how they treated mages in the Duchy of Tsingia. I could only find the country on a map and knew they exported lumber. I had not told anyone in this company where I was from, so maybe I could just make something up. "The same. The mages are a class above the common folk in Tsingia."

"Tsingia? You are a long way from home. What brought you up here? There are a lot of foreign men in the army, but they are uncommon in the Legion ranks," Brutus said, and I could hear the curiosity in his voice.

"Bad luck. How about you? Why are you in the Legion?" I tried to focus the conversation on him.

"Me?" He laughed, "I am the bastard son of a bastard son of a Baron who owns nothing but barley and hops fields. I was taught to fight, and rather than join the Baron's guard, I joined the Legion. It pays better, and I will get my pension after twenty years."

"Pension?" I asked, turning to face him.

"Yes. You continue to draw your weekly salary bi-annually. Did you not know? Are you a conscript, then? I think you are still eligible. When I retire, I will find a wife and raise Tegairosian goats." He smacked his lips, "Their milk makes the most divine cheese."

I told him the truth, "I was railroaded into a guilty verdict and forced to join or work as a laborer."

"Railroaded?" Brutus asked, unfamiliar with the term.

I huffed, "It means I was given no other viable choice."

"Eryk, my friend, that describes most of the army and half the Legion," he laughed. "So you must have trained at western Legion camp then if you were conscripted?"

"I guess. No one told me what the camp was, and I was too focused on not getting sent to the army. How many camps are there to train legionnaires?" I inquired of my new friend.

"Just two. The western camps and the camp in the capital for the volunteers," Brutus informed me. We were silent till we were relieved.

When we were called off watch, and two men took our place. I packed up my things rather than get four hours of sleep in the hot, sticky weather. The sun was out today, and it was going to be a miserable walk through the swamp to the road.

The others who had not been on watch wrapped the mage tightly with his personal possessions. They made small floats from empty canteens to tie to the body. I retrieved some glow stones that were abandoned due to their weight to bring the total in my dimension space to eleven. Flavius asked if I could take some of the dead men's personal possessions into my space since they were small but heavy bags, and I agreed.

Flaviud declared the sun was high enough to search for the essence collector, and we walked a grid pattern with everyone in the area where the body was found. I asked Flavius, "Why is this so important? Doesn't the Empire have dozens of these things?"

Flavius clucked irritated, "That was not a normal collecter. It was a dungeon-created one. Smaller, lighter, and supposedly more efficient than most. Like all dungeon artifacts, its value is hard to measure. It was Durandus' most prized possession as well. His brother is going to want it back as well."

I looked questioningly at him, and he clarified the misunderstanding, "Durandus' brother is a mage in charge of another company. I only met him once, and he has the most foul temper. While Durandus was self-serving, he was not cruel. His brother is."

We searched till mid-day like Flavius promised. Then we marked the island, and the direction the body was found in case someone wanted to try their luck in the future. Flavius thought the Legion might send a mage to search or even Durandus' brother would come himself.

We moved in a diamond formation through the swamp. Floating the body in the center with three men ready to respond in any direction. It was a painfully slow process as we were weighed down with too much gear to swim, so we had to find paths no deeper than the chest. Even with the man in the lead having a spear to check the depth, he sometimes stumbled and fell into deep water. It was a rush to save him from drowning every time. After the first incident, we tied a ten-foot rope to the lead man to help with the rescue. I was lucky, as I was never asked to be the lead man in the diamond formation with a spear checking the depth.

We got lucky and only encountered one giant frog and that was when we were resting on an island. A man was grabbed but resisted being pulled inside the maw of the frog. We swarmed the frog and slew it. I twitched slightly since I had an essence collector now and could have used it on the frog. From the collector's noted value, I decided to keep my possession of it secret.

The sun was already setting when we reached the road, and our wet and sore bodies collapsed into the rocky dirt. It had taken much longer than we thought it would, and we all had twice as much gear as when we started. Flavius said we had arrived but had come out on the road too far south. We didn't rest long before Flavius had us moving again north toward a comfortable bed.

A half mile later, we approached an area of charred bodies in the dark. They were all frogs, and this was where we had left the men to guard the discarded gear. The gear and the men that Durandus left behind were not there. "They must have returned to Macha," Flavius announced. "A bath and bed are close men. Just a few more hours." Our spirits rose even though we knew we still had miles to go.