Rescue the girl

Those stupid oafs burned down a house and risked setting the forest ablaze for loot that doesn't even fill a small bag and some time with a girl that clearly doesn't enjoy their advances. By snatching the purse of a traveler they could have spent a night up to their eyes in booze and whores with less risks and less troubles.

I can understand part of their motivation, the girl is beautiful, slender but with shapes where needed and long flowing hair the color of copper. It doesn't excuse their stupidity and overkill aspect of the operation. The smell of burnt flesh is proof that someone was left inside the blazing inferno that recently was a wooden hut, why kill for so little?

I put my hand in a pocket of my coat to take out a deck of cards. The practice of making parchments with spell on them is an old one but I improved on it. If you don't have to include energy to be stored in it you can use them more than once without having them vanish once read. I spent weeks in my years of study crafting a deck of high quality cards, each holding a spell ready to cast and only waiting for some power.

I pick a card with stylized lightning bolts on it and begin to atune myself with the runes under the drawing. A true hero would taunt the bandits and challenge them to a fight, a luck that no such person is there right now.

With enough power to make my eyes glow I simply point my free hand towards the men and unleash a purple lighting bolt that bounce from the first man to the second, it singes the axes they carry and the wooden shafts let the metal heads fall to the ground. Both men are on the ground, shaking and sporting rock hard erections.

"Look out! " screams the girl. Turn back only to see an arrow lodging itself in my left leg just above the knee. I drop the card when it hits me and nearly bite my tongue from the pain.

I spot a boy, a little younger than the two men and still wearing his pants, standing near the house with a bow and almost ready to let go of another arrow.

"Fluctum Ignis" I declare after dipping my fingers in the flow of blood covering my pants. A wave of greenish balefire erupts from my blood stained fingers and envelop him totally. He falls to the ground, screaming in agony as his skin and flesh is melting off his still living body.

When the girl slides down the tree (showing how little her torn up dress conceals of her body) the two men have stopped shaking.... and breathing.

The girl comes next to me and without hesitation rips away even more fabric from her dress to put it on my wound after removing the arrow.

The way she is squatting in front of me with her knees apart reveals her pussy to me, hidden under a kept bush the same color as her hair. It almost makes me forget the pain. Almost..

"Hi! I'm Silas Dunmore. " I introduce myself, groaning from the pain.

Rather than to respond she kisses me while holding in her hand the amber medallion that rested on a string between her breasts. She then starts singing, the tune is an Elvish one, dedicated to Gaia the Mother Earth their goddess. The girl isn't an elf but something in her eyes and ears let me think that she might have a few drops of elven blood in her. The pain fades and the wound is closing, a chance given that curative magic is clearly not my specialty.

"Lord mage, you avenged my family, saved my life and my honor. I'm duty bound to serve you to repay this debt. My name is Viviane Arcos and I will be your servant. " she declares.

Who am I to turn away a willing servant, especially a healer, furthermore one with such a body.

" I accept your oath, welcome to my service. You can't serve me in those rags, remove her and I will give you something more suitable. " I order her.

I watch her strip, the tattered dress was the only thing she had on and once gone she is naked. I look in my luggage and find a sleeveless shirt I used for exercise that would make a very short tunic on someone of her size and hand it to her.

She now wears only it and her medallion. (priceless in principle if truly blessed by the goddess, but useless to me. Gaia cursed her son Malak and none of his line can use her powers directly.)

My knee is sore and there is a rip in my pants but no trace of my wound apart from the blood. I get another card from my deck after putting back the one I dropped. It shows a naked girl washing herself with a jug of water. (a stylized representation of Castia, goddess of purity. Even if the card is not blessed by her I found it a good picture for a cleansing spell.) I use what little magic I have left to cast a spell that cleans both of use of the mud, dirt, sweat and blood we are covered in.

"What do we do now my master? " asks Viviane, dedicated in her service to me.

I look at the charred remains of the house, nothing to hope for here. Searching the bandits and their bag of loot only provides me with a small amount of bad food, a flash of filthy vinegar that they probably bought as wine and 3 shillings in change. There was a small healing potion but the glass vial broke when they put the bag down on a rock and it spilled all over the bags content, no items of interest can be recovered.

"Nothing more to do here, it will be hours or days until we can enter the house. I am sorry for your family. According to my map there is a town nearby, we'll go there and then continue my trip to the Skywall mountains. " I tell her.

" Thank you for your kindness, master. Junestown isn't far, we should reach it before the night. " she replies.

With the long walk the soreness in my knees is quickly masked by the one in the rest of my body. Sure enough a little before sundown we arrive at a large clearing filled with buildings and come across a large board.

WELCOME TO JUNESTOWN