Merric tied down the last line, cinching the tarp tightly with his right hand. This had taken longer than it otherwise would have, but what could be done when working with only one arm? The winds had been furious the last few days he had been on the road, constantly disturbing and loosening the line securing his "stock", and frightening Holly, his ever-loyal donkey.
He had fled the Central Kingdoms, Whiteton specifically. He had ran a small arcane supply store, but after several bad seasons, his debts were called in, which he could not pay. So, he liquidated everything as fast as he could, loaded all he owned into a small two-wheeled rickshaw, and promptly left without a word.
Merric had set off to the east, where he heard a war was brewing, and war meant soldiers, and soldiers needed to buy things. His grand plan was to peddle enough items, at wildly inflated prices, to hopefully start again. Another shop, somewhere. He had zero stakes in whatever nonsense was going on with the Dunbari or Anlari, and would gladly sell to either, or both, if he could get away with it.
He was now approaching the marches that divide the two warring kingdoms. He had seen a few smaller banners march by him; the Swaying Serpents, The Order of the Rose Blades, the Ragged Hounds, and maybe one or two others. The ones he saw were all heading to the Dunbari camp, which he had begun to think was his best bet to set up shop.
Merric figured he must be somewhat close, when he was stopped. Their tabards were Dunbari colors, red and green. Getting ready to hopefully begin his venture, he put on his act.
"Hail, good sirs!" He said with vim, wearing his best "trust me" smile. The Dunbari soldier who Merric assumed was in charge, approached him with a carefully neutral face, spear in hand. Silently, he went up to Merric's cart, and peered beneath the tarp. The other soldiers formed a loose perimeter around the scene, greaves slorping in the muddy road.
Realizing that these soldiers were presenting themselves as less than cordial, Merric tried to maintain the act until he thought of something. "Ah", he started, "Perhaps you're looking for something in particular?"
Still looking into the cart, the soldier finally spoke: " What's your business here, peddler?" Merric cleared his throat, and began: "You see, sir, I have heard of the coming conflict, and have come to avail mys--"
"You've come to donate!" The soldier exclaimed in as much a declaration as anything else. "No, no" Merric interjected, "I've come to sel--" Merric was suddenly cutoff when the soldier swiftly struck him with the ferrule of his spear, sending him to the mud. As he landed, forgetting himself, he caught his fall with his left arm. which was larger, and covered in strange scales, and tipped with claws.
Merric growled, and raised his left arm in anger. "The hell is this?!" The inciting soldier exclaimed. Merric's first than truck the ground, and in the same instant, a thin pillar of muddy earth erupted as a pillar beneath the soldier who had struck him, slamming into his chin, and launching him skyward, and began a short hail of teeth.
"Mage!" one of the other soldier screamed, and weapons presented in earnest. Spears pointed, they approached their still-prone victim.
Merric, trying to scramble to his feet, instead slipped, landing on his back, and from his right hand flew a sickly-green light, hitting the face of an aggressor, whose terrified, panicked screams were muffled by the skin melting from his skull. One soldier then charged the prone Merric, spear levelled to skewer. The mage grabbed the weapon with his mutated arm, and snapped it reflexively when the overgrown muscle flexed, and the splinters flew with the force of it. Shock and confusion disrupted the soldier's face as he unexpectedly fell forward, and awkwardly stood above Merric. Merric then grasped the leg of them with his right hand, and cast a baneful arcana, causing the soldier to collapse next to him. The beleaguered merchant-mage then flung himself atop his attacker, and used his taloned left to slash his foe's throat to the bone in a savage fashion.
Merric then, finally, stammered to his feet to face the next, only to see the remaining Dunbari fleeing to where he thought their camp lay. Breathing heavily, he then shakily went over to his cart and Holly, verifying that both could still travel. Things looked serviceable enough, and not wanting to explain three dead soldiers, the now mud-covered and bloodied merchant led his donkey around the pillar of transmuted earth, and back the way he came.
In a tired, dejected admission, he only said "Come on, Holly".
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