Chapter Twenty-Seven, Reflection

"Captain Waveblade, are the men ready to move out?"
"Aye ma'am. We're packed and fueled. Just give the word."
"The word is given." Alicea hopped into the nearest truck, helping a few of the new recruits in after her.
"Aye ma'am." Orion jogged off to the nearest truck, yelling at the troops to follow suit.

She glanced around at her comapnions. The Gibbets insisted on riding with her, they took their job as her bodyguards very seriously. Ishylde and, Tania was it? also rode with them; Orion and his crew, along with Zack, would be at the rear.

Whatever Ishylde's new companion was called, she reeked of necromancy. It was hardly an unfamiliar taint. She'd dispatched of several necromantic creatures in the past decade, Ga-Vok shaman tended to practice a limited and supervised sort of necromancy; golems and wood imps and other such simple conjurations. This girl though, she was clearly nothing simple. Free will, life functions and needs, emotions, this was a person and yet not. Even a fully reanimated corpse would have been simple by comparison.
The magic was no shaman's work either. The blood was alive and the solidity of steel flowed in the faded spell; a Nielda had been responsible. As Alicea sat listening to the Gibbet's generally crude banter and suggestive remarks towards Ishylde, who took it in stride for the most part, she focused her mind against Tania's. She knew that with careful enough observation the more insignificant seeming elements of a spell could be used to trace its caster. She'd watched Aurou do it to determine witch of the clan's numerous lesser casters was responsible for what few magical crimes were commited.
With what little experience she'd had dealing with the local magicians she couldn't name the responsible party. But she recognized the feel, the magician had fought her and lost. Somehow Tania was nothing more than a Nielda now, Enelat must have been a better father than he'd looked to have cured her, or decursed her or however he'd done it. He'd made her powerful too from the way it seemed. More importantly, it may have been an evil magic, but it was nothing Shadithic. Enelat had acomplished his feats with mere arcanum; he was clearly far more powerful than she'd given him credit for. But that didn't answer the questions of why and how he'd done it. Maybe he'd repented of it since, perhaps he'd gone crazy since, the dead mage was a mystery that could never be answered; clearly Tania knew even less than she did. What Ishylde had told her was enough though, the necromancer had passed his creation on to Ishylde. She was her own person, but she would honor her father's last command just as Ishylde would. Her loyalty would not need to be proven, she had nothing to gain from their loss and nothing but loss from their defeat. Tania's fate would rest on their victory. Not, Alicea thought to herself, that the rest of our fates are any different.