Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 21

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I wasn’t ready for this, not yet. I could maybe face Noctra next week if I caught him by surprise out in the open without any protections. But I needed to finish my mana crystal and start filling it up before I had enough available mana to cast anything powerful enough to strike a mage down from beyond seeing range.

If the problem was that I didn’t have enough mana, there was a solution. I’d written it off the first time I’d considered it because it would draw all sorts of attention and it wouldn’t have made a difference, but now I was a day’s time from completing my mana crystal. Then I could start filling it. It would still cause problems, but keeping Noctra from doing whatever he was going to do with my father took priority. I’d deal with the fallout later.

“We need the draw stones,” I said as I stood up. “I’ll take the mana from them to complete my mana crystal.”

“What good will that do?” Mother asked, her voice bordering on hysterical.

“The first thing I’ll do is shrink it to the size of a marble. Then I’ll tap every draw stone this village has to fill it to the limit and take it with me to Noctra’s manor. I think I ought to be able to take him with a full crystal to work with.”

“You can’t!” Mother protested. “What about the barrier?”

“There is no barrier,” I said bluntly. “Noctra has been lying to everyone for years. Maybe there used to be one, but it’s not there anymore. That mana’s being used for something else, something he’s keeping hidden from the village.”

Mother thought about it for a second, then gave a decisive nod. “We’ll need to wait an hour or two for it to get dark,” she said. “Do you have something for getting through the door?”

A phantasmal step spell would be the most straightforward solution. It would allow me to just walk through walls or doors, but it was also expensive enough that it would take my entire core’s mana to use. I could do it, once. Getting back out would be a different story.

It was riskier to go through the door directly, but far cheaper to use an unlock spell to get through. As long as no one saw me do it, I could be in and out easily enough. The concern there was that doorways were natural places to put wards or other defenses, and while I’d never noticed any on the Collectors’ office, I’d also never been within thirty feet of the door. Some spells were small enough or hidden well enough to require close inspection to find, and wards were a prime example.

I could break any ward that might exist in a place like this, but only if I had enough mana in my core. Right now, I was as dry as I could possibly get. If I waited three hours, I’d have about half of my maximum. I didn’t want to wait, but it wasn’t like I could just walk up to the door in the evening while people were still out and about and force my way in.

“Depends on the defenses, but I should be able to. The lock won’t be a problem. If they have magic, it’ll get complicated. I can do it as long as I have enough mana.”

The Collectors brought out four draw stones every evening. Presumably they had at least eight then, since we never missed a day but the ones they were using had to be sent to the manor to have their contents harvested. Noctra had said his assistant took care of that, and I’d never seen the woman before, so she probably didn’t come into town too often. Unless she snuck into the office in the middle of the night to collect the mana and then left as soon as she was done, there should be more than four stones.

If I was unlucky, they’d all be fresh stones with no mana to steal. There was nothing I could do about that except get in there and find out. I’d be out the mana I used on the unlock spell, but that wouldn’t set me back too much. If the plan failed, I’d switch from assault to rescue. It would be easy to scry on Father as long as he still had the button, but not impossible without it. One way or another, I could locate him.

There was no point in getting ahead of myself. I knew almost nothing about what kind of defenses Noctra would have set up. Wards were almost a certainty, but he might have mechanical traps as well. From the sounds of it, he’d worked some sort of subjugation magic on at least some of the Garrison people, though not all of them. That meant I could expect guards that would assist him if it came to open combat.

Beyond that, there could be anything there. I knew I was dealing with at least one mage, but if this other woman, Iskara or Perfidy or whatever her real name was, was an adept and had her own mana crystal, she might as well be a mage too. I’d be outnumbered and undersupplied for a fight against both of them at once.

But if I looted the draw stones, I needed to be prepared to take out Noctra in the same night. Once that got back to him, he’d tear the village apart looking for whoever had done it. My family was already high-profile to him now; we’d be the first people he’d look at. I could hide myself from him, but the cost was so great I might as well just leave the village completely.

And I was going to loot the draw stones. Short of walking around mana draining people in their homes in the middle of the night, I didn’t see another choice. Maybe if I went to the manor, I might find something I could drain in there, but that would leave me at Noctra’s mercy if he caught me. Plus I knew where the draw stones were; the same could not be said about a theoretical mana storage crystal located in the home of the most dangerous person in the village.

“What can I do to help?” Mother said.

I hesitated to answer that. There were plenty of things she could do in theory. Breaking in and getting the draw stones to bring to me would help, for example. I just wasn’t sure if she could actually do that. There was one useful thing she could do that posed no risk, if she was willing.

“Focus on generating as much mana as you can,” I said. “I’ll do the same. As soon as it’s fully dark, I’ll mana drain you and then go for the draw stones.”

“What are you going to do about the Collectors?” she asked.

“Hopefully, not run into them.”

“What if they’re still awake?”

I paused. “Why would that matter? Wait, do they live in that building?”

Mother nodded slowly and I groaned. That was going to make things more difficult if they were awake. If it was just one or two, I could put them to sleep using my own version of the spell Noctra had used on Father. It was far more efficient, but I didn’t have enough mana to cast it on too many targets. Besides, the whole point of going there was to get more mana, not waste what I already had.

I could probably pull off a shadow cloak spell, depending on my mana levels. It wasn’t as good as true invisibility, but it might as well be in the dark. As long as they didn’t shine a lantern on me, it was a last resort hiding spell.

The Collector’s headquarters was the same problem as Noctra’s manor. I just didn’t know enough and didn’t have the mana to fix that problem. I would be taking risks either way, but I lacked the ability to mitigate those risks right now. If only I’d had another month or two to finish my work, this would have been much easier.

But that wasn’t the world I was living in. This was the best path to saving my father, perhaps the only path with any real chance of succeeding. My body was three years old. Magic was my only advantage, and without mana, I had no magic. I just hoped I could get enough mana from the draw stones to overcome my handicaps.

“Will you check on your father again before you go?” Mother asked.

I hesitated to say yes. I wanted to, of course, but I would need to scry him again later to confirm his location. Checking on him now wouldn’t change anything except to leave me with one less spell I could cast later.

Slowly, I shook my head. “I can’t waste the mana, and I should concentrate on generating as much as I can now.”

Mother sat silently next to me, her hand still on mine, and we both did our best to prepare for the night to come.

***

It was close to midnight now. My core was just under half full, enough for three or four small spells. I studied Mother’s core, then sighed and shook my head. Even if I took every last bit of mana, it wouldn’t cover the cost of the spell. I’d been hoping, and it was close, but just not quite enough.

“I’ll be fine with what I have,” I said.

“Do you want me to walk with you?” she asked.

I shook my head. It would be more suspicious if anyone saw me walking alone, but once I was there, it would cost me extra mana if I had to hide both of us. Since there was nothing she could do but physically carry the draw stones away, and I wasn’t planning on actually moving them anyway, it was best if I went alone.

“Stay here with Senica,” I said. “Our family is already in enough trouble without risking you getting caught trespassing too. I’m a precocious child. If anyone spots me, I was just wandering around and it’s not my fault they left the doors unlocked. If you get caught there…”

“You’re not that precocious,” Mother said dryly. “And I don’t think Lord Noctra is going to believe it anyway, not with this obsession he’s developed with your father.”

“No, probably not, but it’s not likely to be him that catches me tonight. If I do get caught, I’ll just have to move onto the next step with a little bit less mana than I’d hoped to have.” Mother had no response to that. After a moment’s pause, I stood up and said, “I’ll be back in twenty minutes, as long as nothing goes wrong. Maybe thirty if I have to dodge some Collector who’s up late.”

“Be careful, Gravin.”

“I will,” I promised.

“There are eight Collectors,” Mother said. “Ayaka is the only one who might help you. If you get into trouble, try to talk to her. Explain what happened to your father. She’s an old friend from when we were kids. If we’re lucky, she’ll choose us over Lord Noctra.”

“You don’t think she would?” I asked, surprised.

“I don’t know,” Mother said. “I hope so, but you never truly know how strong a friendship is until you put it to the test. It wouldn’t be the first time that bond failed.”

“More of your mysterious past,” I murmured. “You really do need to tell me the full story when this is all over.”

“Maybe once your father gets back. It’s more his story than anyone else’s.”

I wondered if Mother realized that I’d be killing Noctra in the process, possibly Iskara as well. She wasn’t stupid; she had to have known. But if so, she’d never mentioned it once.

“Be careful,” she said again.

With a nod, I set off into the night.

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