Phoenix Blade Chapter 3

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After that mess with Saayuko and Mordecai, I decided to set up shop in the capitol. I had some skill with crafting jewelry that I wound up stuck with Sophie by bonding with her over. With her gone, I was free to enjoy it again. I had a shop in the Garden District that I had secured in exchange for a favor.

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The new regime faced a strong early resistance. The gods had abandoned everyone by that point and fled for their lives and some of the stronger believers were in denial.

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Then you don't say that. I can say whatever I like; they can't hear me anyway.

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At any rate, the minor lord with whom the Geosians entrusted that corner of the city was desperate to put down some riots and I was one of the people who signed on to help regain control of the area. That was a hard night, to be sure. The templars had fled across the sea, the spellwarriors were shut up in that tower of theirs, and the Royal Army was in tatters. Most of the former soldiers were among the rioters, no less. The whole city was a mess for weeks.

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To the best of my knowledge, I never had to kill anyone. You see, I went back to Mordecai's after the fire to try to find Saayuko's body. But despite the fact that the house was left alone in the city's lawless state, both of them were gone. What I did find was a trapdoor to secret basement where that bastard kept his supplies. Now, that man had some fantastic weapons, but he also had a store of sleep mist. He probably used it to knock out the people he needed to keep alive. I was able to save a few lives by using that instead of my blade, but I was the only one who could seem to be bothered sparing anyone.

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Believe me. If I had hurt any of the rioters, I wouldn't have any reason to lie about it since my actions at the time were legally sanctioned. But I didn't see the point. These people were scared because their entire way of life was being forcibly changed. They had grown up with the Doctrines and wouldn't allow the Geosians to challenge their beliefs just because Geos had won his little war with the other gods. I wasn't going to spill anyone's blood just for fighting to protect their traditions.

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Well, I would have saved a lot more if I could get any of the other mercs to use the sleep mist. No, they stepped out onto those streets looking for blood. That's what we were paid for, they would say. Technically true, but there's more than one way to quell a damn riot, right?

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Sorry. I'm still angry about the whole thing. As if I need to be told how to do my job by a bunch of incompetent thugs who only know how to hit things.

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Well, I did have the right of it in the end. Among the surviving contractors the lord hired, only three of us survived and I pulled a hell of a lot more weight than the other two.

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It's not as if I was fighting for my conscience. Killing the rioters would have just been a waste. The lord agreed with me, as it turned out. He thought that sparing so many of them was good for optics. My mercy reflected on him and he was able to bring the whole damned thing to a gentle conclusion all the sooner for it. He had run out of other people to pay for our work anyway, so getting my new business started wasn't a lot to ask of him, considering.

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It was all a front, anyway. When I opened my store, only a fraction of the space was devoted to selling jewelry. I continued to take odd jobs out of the back room. In a city as chaotic as Resta City was during the Geosian regime, there was always local work to be found. It was around that time that I ran into Bene.

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Well, you'd be surprised at what he was up to. He never lived what you would call an honest life, and being sai'mul didn't change that. I like to think you can only trust him now thanks to my influence.

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Benedicte Zeringue has always been something of a conman. In life, I ran into him a few times during my time with the Royal Inquisition. He had scraped out a living in the Apex District selling bunk potions and counterfeit charms. Losing his natural life didn't seem to change much for him, except he ironically began to deal in real magic.

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That is a good question. It should be impossible for a sai'mul to practice magic. You're supposed to invoke magic by calling on the gods, right? Well, it turns out that not every form of magic requires prayer. He managed to find a way around this handicap and he was doing even more dangerous business than before. I was hired by one of his jilted customers to get her money back. She had apparently been sold a skin cream that was supposed to make her look twenty years younger, but it ended up stretching all of the skin on her face.

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When I found him, he tried to explain that what had happened to my client was an honest mistake, of course. Given our history, I had a hard time buying what he was trying to sell me. I was about to run him out of town for good when I noticed his milky eyes and pale skin. When I realized that he had become sai'mul as well, I slowed down right away.

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It's hard to explain why. He was a criminal, and I was being paid to punish him for that. But you don't know what it's like being a sai'mul who refuses to move to Midania. It's not a popular decision to make, and only someone else who's made that decision can understand it. We weren't exactly ready to become friendly at the time, but it was nice to have someone to talk to. That encounter ended amicably, even though I still made him give back my client's money.

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From that point on, we mostly stayed out of each other's way. I knew I couldn't keep him from doing whatever he likes without bashing his head in and he couldn't stop anyone else from hiring me to do that. Whether the possibility of seeing me again caused him to rethink his business practices, I don't know. But I was never paid to deal with him again.

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You're going to ask him about this, I'm sure. You should listen to his side of the story before you judge him.

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At any rate, it was uplifting to find someone who understood why I liked telling the living to fuck off. And having a store to serve as a base of operations was a promising beginning to the fresh start I found in death.

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