Of course, that only went so far. Since word had spread of her resurrection and her work on Tsalbrin, the number of female applicants to the academy had more than tripled. Many of them didn’t make it through boot camp; they were inspired by Kari’s story and wanted to follow in her footsteps, but they lacked the fortitude or the inner fire that made demonhunters special people. Still, while many failed to graduate from the boot camps, dozens not only graduated but did so with honors, and in many of them Kari could see shades of herself and her old friend Annabelle Sol’ridachi. Strong, determined female demonhunters were once again becoming common, and Kari took pride in knowing she’d set the example for many of them.
Kari rubbed her thumb across the leather surface of the journal she held, but she tossed it aside as unimportant. Based on its title and what little she had read of it, it seemed to be filled mostly with Bosimar’s personal life. She was focused on finding the journals and records of what he had been investigating or hunting during his tenure as Avatar, and what plans and schemes of an underworld nature he might have uncovered. So far, she hadn’t come across all that much; it seemed the world had been fairly quiet on the demon-hunting front in the years leading up to the Apocalypse. It left Kari to wonder if Bosimar ever had the sort of grand adventures Turik Jalar was renowned for: Whether he’d been the kind of leader who walked right into the lair of the enemy and threw down the glove of challenge.
In the years since her return from Tsalbrin, Kari had studied Turik Jalar’s career in detail. He was her contemporary during her past life, and the two had brought an enormous amount of pride and prestige to the Order with their separate accomplishments. Jalar rose to the position of Avatar of Vengeance shortly before Kari’s untimely death, and it came as little surprise to the terra-dracon woman that his career only became more impressive once he laid claim to the title and the power that came with it. By all accounts, he had once even entered the underworld and laid a list of demands at the feet of the Overking. How he had walked away from such an encounter was more than anyone could fathom, but Kari understood his passion and drive. When the headmasters of the Order compared her to him, she knew that it was no small thing.
Kari fished through one of the smaller boxes on her desk and her fingers traced across something metallic within. She pulled a set of manacles from the box, and her eyes widened in recognition as she held them up before her. She had seen a similar device during her mission on Tsalbrin: A young kirelas-rir war wizard named Triela had been magically subdued by such a device, which had kept both her psionic abilities and arcane power in check. Kari’s mind flashed through the memories of that mission and its fateful outcome. She rose quickly to her feet and began to comb through the box’s contents. Along with several field manuals and instruction guides, she found a monetary ledger, a small pendant on a woven chain, and a journal that had the words ‘Year of the Snake’ etched prominently into its cover.
This might be what I’ve been looking for, she thought.
Kari sat back down in her chair and held the pendant up before her. She had never seen anything like it. It depicted some sort of mask that combined elements of a bird, a hyena, and a snake, all superimposed over a symbol unlike any Kari had encountered. It had elements of tribalism in it, not unlike the markings and glyphs of the lizard-folk and their language, but it was clearly not of czarikk origin. The pendant further lacked any latent auras like the one that marked the authenticity Kari’s dog tags, and it hung from a simple band made of tightly twined plant fibers. Whether it was the holy symbol of a god or the crest of a demon king, Kari wasn’t sure; it didn’t match any she was familiar with. She studied the pendant for several minutes and then called for her assistant.
“Yes, ma’am?” Joaquim asked as he appeared in the doorway. The young human had aspired to become a demonhunter but didn’t have the proper physical gifts to complete their rigorous training. He had stayed on with the Order, helping it in various ways around the sprawling campus in DarkWind, and with the amount of paperwork and research Kari had been doing in the past two months, she was glad for the young man’s help.
Kari held the pendant out to him. “Take this over to the temple and see if they can make anything of it,” she said, and the young man took the necklace from her with a bow of his head.
Once he left, Kari regarded the two books before her on the desk. While she was tempted to start with the strangely titled journal, Kari decided the monetary ledger might tell her more. She took up the ledger and untied the string around it, and she began to flip casually through its pages. As expected, it was a record of mercenaries employed by the Order to either undertake scouting missions, or else to take care of problems the Order was concerned with but couldn’t spare the men to investigate.
Curiously, the ledger also kept track of the races of the various mercenaries Bosimar had employed, and Kari could hardly suppress a chuckle when she saw there was a gnoll mentioned numerous times. Gnolls were a hyena-like humanoid people, but they were generally savage and uncivilized; for Bosimar to have employed one must’ve meant the gnoll was unusual, to say the least. She wondered briefly if the gnoll had something to do with the hyena-like elements of the pendant, but she pushed the thoughts aside and continued with the ledger.
Kari’s eyes widened as she continued reading, and she flipped a few more pages to confirm that she wasn’t imagining the name she was seeing: Jori-an Stormrider. She was shocked that the ledger also noted that Jori-an was a seterra-rir, and even more so when she saw the notations that Jori-an had worked with the gnoll, Tormaar. The demonhunter considered the enigmatic first mate of Karmi’s Sword and wondered what would have drawn her into the service of the Avatar of Vengeance.
She tapped her claws on the desk as she thought of her brother-in-law, Aeligos, and what he would do with such information. Aeligos was already helping Kari go through the many journals and logs when he had the time, but even he had yet to come up with any solid leads. With a crooked smile, Kari took note of all the names included with Jori-an: Tormaar the gnoll, Elias Sorivar the half-corlyps, Rhiannon al’Morihn the kwarrasti, and Danilynn Stahlorr the fures-rir. The last of them was familiar, though Kari couldn’t quite place it.
With a narrower list of names to deal with, Kari concentrated on the other information the ledger gave: tasks and the associated payments. She found it interesting—in an annoying sense –that Bosimar had kept track of his mercenaries’ tasks with one- or two-word phrases rather than cross-referencing the ledger to logs. Her instincts said that Bosimar was hiding something, but at the same time, she could hardly believe the Avatar of Vengeance would have anything to hide. The Avatar was supposed to be Zalkar’s right hand, so why would he hide the things he was doing?
Her aggravation gave way to a wry smile when she noted that one of the first tasks assigned to Jori-an’s party was simply labeled with “Delivery—Beast.” Kari laid the ledger in her lap, sat back in her chair, and gazed inattentively out the window once more. She wondered what connection Bosimar could have had with the Beast, the minotaur-like deity of shapeshifters and lycanthropes, who lived on Citaria rather than in the celestial realm. She wondered what would have prompted him to send a young adventuring group out to see the dour and grumpy deity. Based on the size of the monetary payment the group received, Kari guessed it wasn’t anything important, but when she turned to the next page, she saw that nearly all of the other missions Jori-an’s group undertook for the Avatar were simply labeled with the word “Snakes”—and much larger monetary rewards.