Rebirth of the Phoenix God

"If that man is so dangerous, why did you leave him in peace just like that? What if his words were all aimed at earning our trust so that he could betray us as soon as his king will appear?"

In the end, Orsha was the one to protest about the way in which solved the situation. And quite frankly, the young man had absolutely nothing to say against her words. Not because he didn't want to make her mad or anything even closely resembling this kind of patronising behaviour, but because he simply had nothing to say against her accurate points. 

"I do believe he won't bother to reveal our scheme. But didn't you notice that just in case of his willingness to do it, the two of us kept ambiguous about the real scope of our plans?"

Pointing with his chin at Victor, Fen attempted to pull him into this debacle. Sadly for the young arcanist, his older friend already mastered the art of pretending to be asleep, currently dozing off in the saddle of his horse.

"You claimed that he was intelligent enough to actually make defeating him challenging even for you. Where does your confidence come to believe that he isn't actually playing with you right now?

Another point to the girl. With her fighting ability dulling due to her injury, it seemed that her tongue picked up the burden of being the sharpest part of her entire self. Yet, as much as Fen wanted to rebuke her and order her to calm down, her words were striking exactly in what Fen was worried about himself, making it extremely hard to actually come up with something that would calm Orsha's doubts down.

"It's just a simple calculation."

After a long while, the young arcanist finally came up with the answer. Instead of figuring out some witty way to defeat Orsha in a battle of words, he had no choice but to return to the sure-fire argument.

But did it matter in reality? No matter who would reign victorious in the battle of words that was ongoing right now, the only important thing that was in this entire situation was deciding whether they could trust Haskar, and even if they could, then to what degree. 

"What can he gain by reporting us to his former king? What could he lose by doing so? Once you recalculate those values for the scenario where he loyalty sticks with us, then you have a simple answer. He stands to gain a little by siding with Kinzar, while he could potentially lose everything. On the other hand, he can still lose everything by siding with us, but the potential benefits are way greater than anything that the king might be able or even willing to offer in reward for his services."

The only way why this conversation was still going without anyone interrupting them with dire news… Was because the current step of Fen's grand plan forced them to travel all the way across their own lands to the Kinar Republic. With all the threats left behind the border, there was literally no threat that could pose danger for them. The only force that had any military power in the entire area of two days worth of march in any direction was the united front of the nobles of the new mercenary kingdom… Or rather, would be if that arguing and prideful bunch ever bothered to even consider the option that someone would oppose their authority.

"Deim, it's boring!"

Suddenly shaking his fake sleep out, Victor raised in his stirrups only to look around and fall down on his saddle the very next moment. 

"Nothingness no matter how far one looks… Is that land really worth all that effort and blood?"

Most likely tired from how calm and uneventful this part of their journey was, Victor was clearly in a bad mood. initially being the happiest out of everyone with the perspective of advancing from simple mercenaries to the proper noble class, just a single day without a fight was already getting on his nerves.

"It depends on how we value it. Going by the market price of a single area? We could get far richer just by robbing everything of value that was left after several raids of the former neighbours of this province. But once that wealth would run out… Where would we get the money from? What could we do in order to earn money after years of living in comfort and pleasure?"

This was the ultimate truth about mercenaries. While it wasn't an official rule, if one were to claim that leaving the group even for once meant the absolute dead-end of one's fighting career, then it would be hard to prove him a liar. 

There was a matter of one's lust for blood. Those who survived countless fights and battles would find it troublesome to live peacefully. Victor right there was the perfect example of this, unable to hold himself back after just two damned days. 

But that bloodlust wasn't everything. People who lived long enough to reach the state where it could change their mind about resigning from the mercenary career, wouldn't be naive enough to believe that after months of not years of wasting away under the influence of one's earned gold they would be still capable of facing the younger generation on the battlefield.

Once someone lost his touch with the messy reality of the battle and war, he or she could still live a happy ever after type of life, but their path towards becoming mercenaries once again would be forever sealed. Not because of some imagined and made-up rules. Because one would lose the ability to compete on the minimal level required not to become yet another piece of meat in the front guard of the entire group.

"When you put it like that… Fine, you might be right on this point."

Shaking her head in disappointment, Orsha quickly betrayed her inner plans for the comeback in the still ongoing battle of words between her and Fen.

"But?"

Sensing what the girl wanted, the young arcanist left out a deep sigh before asking.

"But what if his set of values doesn't put all that much priority on the gold? If he's even remotely as good at playing the shadow games as you implied he was before, then it wouldn't be a problem for him to obtain any amount of money he would ever require."

Taking a breath to figure out what she wanted to say herself, Orsha wanted to stroke her chin with the fighters of her right hand. Raising her stub towards her face, she only realised what she did when no pleasant sensation of having her chin scratched came to her mind.

"What I want to ask is, what are you going to do if your projections will fail, and we will end up losing everything that we gained back to the Kinzarian crown?"

At first, Orsha was the most dejected by the proposition of taking over the land instead of demanding some insane amount of gold for their services. With how little she cared about recreating a Kingdom that was already gone, she was only drawn to the idea thanks to Fen's relentless efforts to convince her. But now, when they could possibly be about to openly give up all the spoils they managed to gather over the last few, very exhausting weeks, her mentality didn't allow Orsha to accept such idea. 

"Then we will write a damned novel about our deeds and live off its earnings. You do know how to write after all, don't you?"

Over the course of their adventures, Fen learned quite a lot about the other arcana academies all over the Kinar Republic. While Gauna one, the one both he and Victor hailed from, was mostly focused on the militaristic aspect of the training with the main designated job after the initial course being either soldier, mercenary or a private guard slash adventurer, it was only to be expected that other sanctuaries of knowledge would specialise in different things.

"Come on, calm down. I didn't want to irk you like that…"

Both surprised and actually even scared about Fen's uncommon explosion, Orsha leaned away from the young man in her saddle, before pulling slightly on the reins, making her mount walk parallel to the horse of her partner instead of just travelling hand by hand with him.

"I'm… I'm sorry. It seems that this calm atmosphere is getting into my head just like it does to Victor."

As reluctant as Fen was to admit that it might actually be the case, one had to be blind not to notice it on their own. With his former commander starting the blood melancholy - or how mercenaries commonly called this state of mind - and more than ample time for the three of them to run out of other things that they could be doing, Fen could feel his own sense of self slowly descending into the hole of bloodlust.

"It's okay boys… Like, come on! If I understood your words correctly, all that's left is to dress as the nobles, destroy the road that we do not want to exist while ignoring the questions of what the heck the nobles from our land would be doing in Kinar and then just wait for everyone else to kill each other before whoever will win, will end up leaving the area for us to retake. Is that right?"

Sighing deeply, Orsha spread out her arms as she stretched in the saddle. Once her body was tense enough, she relaxed her entire self before shaking her arms and muttering.

"Seems legit."