Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 24

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I had less than twenty minutes to get some more mana into this crystal before the enchantment broke and it became unmovable. Under better circumstances, that wouldn’t have been an issue. I would have adequately filled the mana crystal’s reserves before casting the spell, or I would have finished the mana lattice my own core needed to increase my regeneration rate.

Tonight, it was just one more time-sensitive issue on top of all the others. I needed to get back to the Collectors’ headquarters and steal the rest of the mana from the draw stones. I needed to get over to Noctra’s manor and rescue Father before they did whatever it was they were planning on doing. I wasn’t even clear on what that might be.

I’d been resisting the temptation to spend a bit of mana to scry on the beacon I’d given Father for the last few hours. It was a cost I simply couldn’t afford, not when I might very well need every spell I could cast to defeat a mage and an adept who might just be the more competent of the pair. What little evidence I’d gleaned so far certainly pointed in that direction.

I made my way back across the village for my final trip, slipped inside the Collectors’ office on the north side of the square, and paused to listen. As many times as I’d gone in and out, no one had caught me so far, but it only took one incident for this whole thing to fall apart. I did not have the mana left to cast any sort of spells, nor did I have the time to wait for my core to refill.

Luck was not on my side tonight, it seemed.

The two Collectors I’d sent into an enchanted slumber were still out, but I hadn’t taken the time to extinguish the candle in the room. My best guess was that someone else had woken up and seen it, then realized they couldn’t wake their two colleagues. Several more candles had been lit in the hallway and I could hear the voices of two people in the room, not the original two occupants.

I hid in the shadows of the front room and silently watched the hallway. It didn’t seem likely that anyone had bothered to check the storage room, since the door was still closed like I’d left it. Then again, I was making that assumption because I didn’t think the Collectors could tell if the trap on the door had been triggered or if anyone had tampered with the draw stones, at least not with a casual inspection.

Still, if they did know someone had done something, it felt like there would have been a bigger scene. Instead of everyone being up and all the candles being lit, it was just a pair of voices in a room discussing the two unconscious Collectors. I couldn’t hear the whole conversation, but it sounded like they’d decided the two had eaten some bad food.

Ridiculous, but I supposed a magical attack wasn’t the first thing that came to anyone’s mind here in this village. There was only one mage, and there was no reason Noctra would show up in the middle of the night and place two of his own employees under an enchanted sleep.

The best way to deal with this situation was going to be risky. Even if I was willing to sap what little mana I had left in my crystal, it wouldn’t be enough to throw a sleep spell. I needed more mana in order to have options, and that mana was at the end of the hall behind that door. I didn’t have the time to wait for people to leave, and there was every possibility these two might decide to wake up the other four, making my own situation even more precarious in the process.

I started creeping across the floor. It had been a lot of years since my days surviving by stealing things, but I still remembered all the things I’d learned as a boy the first time around. Maybe I was a bit out of practice, but it wasn’t like I was trying to slip past trained guards armed with magical equipment. I didn’t even have to worry about creaking floorboards here, where every home’s floor was just hard-packed earth.

Besides, I weighed less than forty pounds and was barely three feet tall. I wasn’t going to be easy to spot in the dark unless I went out of my way to draw attention. Hopefully, the two Collectors would be too focused on their friends to watch the hallway behind them. Unfortunately for me, they had tied the curtain open and let the candlelight spill out into the hall, so there was a spot a few feet wide where all they had to do was look up to catch me. I’d just have to make sure no one was looking when I crossed it.

“What kind of food poisoning does this?” a male voice said, heavy laden with scorn.

“I don’t know what else it could be,” a second man said. I recognized that voice. It was Dracken, the Collector who manned the table my family was assigned to.

“Damned if I know either, but let’s not go attributing it to something stupid like food poisoning.”

I made my way down the hallway, pausing at each door to make sure I didn’t hear anyone moving inside. There were two with the curtains pulled aside, both empty. Of the remaining six, five were closed and the final belonged to the now-crowded room with four different Collectors in it.

“Do you think we should go tell someone?” Dracken asked.

“Probably, but who?”

“Iskara?”

There was a pause in the conversation there, followed by an emphatic, “No! She creeps me out.”

I paused at the open curtain and carefully peered in. I did catch a bit of luck there in that the curtain was tied back on my side, which allowed me to make a sliver of space to peer through by adjusting it slightly. If either Collector had been looking at it directly, they might have noticed the motion, but their attention was on each other and my previous two victims.

One had his back to the doorway, which was just perfect, but Dracken was facing to the side. If I tried to cross by now, he’d definitely see me. The candlelight wasn’t much to see by, but it was strong enough to stretch all the way across the hall. There was no way I was going to casually walk past without something in the situation changing.

I had a few options, though none were particularly good. I could extinguish the candle with a bit of elemental manipulation, for example. But if I did that, there was a very good chance the Collectors would start looking around to try to figure out why a candle had just gone out on its own hours before it should have burnt out. Since there were no breezes inside the building, at least not this far away from the windows, that seemed like a temporary solution that would cause more trouble down the line.

Sleep was too expensive, even if I just wanted to get one of them. Shadow Cloak might work if I hugged the far wall, but it would be risky and I’d need to spend time generating some more mana. Maybe I could do it before my mana crystal’s gravity twist enchantment broke, but I didn’t want to bet on it.

I really just needed a distraction, something that would pull their eyes away from the doorway for a second or two. This was my last trip. As long as I could get into the storage room undetected, I could work in silence to drain away the rest of the mana trapped in the draw stones. If someone interfered part way through, I would have plenty of options to take care of them.

The room was as bare as anything else in the village, just a pallet, a small side table, and a few trinkets sitting on it. The candle was there, next to a quill and ink pot. The pot was ceramic, its top sealed closed with a chunk of wood cut down to size and held in place with wax.

It wasn’t that close to the edge of the table, certainly not enough to fall on its own. Minor telekinesis was about the cheapest spell in existence, though, and I could certainly nudge it an inch or two to get it into position. With any luck, the thump would be the distraction I needed.

If either of these Collectors could sense mana like Father could, this plan wasn’t going to work. Shielding my own core was possible now that I had the mana generation to accomplish it. Shielding an active working of magic was a whole different skill, one that was considerably more expensive. If I’d had the mana to spare, I would have done it anyway, just to be safe.

With the dregs I’d generated over the last fifteen minutes, I reached out to the ink pot and slid it sideways ever so slowly. Neither Collector noticed, and it was an effort of will to keep myself from breathing out in relief. The pot was halfway over the edge of the side table now, and I readied myself to make my move.

It fell to the ground with a nice thunk. Both men looked over at it, with Dracken saying “What was that?” He took a step over and looked down at the floor.

Perfect.

I took three long steps past the hallway, long for me at least. Any adult who’d witnessed it would probably have laughed at my little legs pumping, but the important part was that I did it quickly and silently. Neither Collector noticed, and I passed through the light back into the darkness. I paused just for a moment at the last set of curtains, then reached up to twist the handle on the storage room door.

I made my way into the draw stone storage room, carefully closed the door behind me to keep it from making any noise, and got to work. With two conscious Collectors less than twenty feet away, I wanted a full mana core immediately. As long as I got that taken care of, it wouldn’t matter if they found me. I could handle interference at that point.

With my ears open and trained for the sound of either Collector leaving the room, I got to work. It wasn’t a hard job, just time-consuming, and it left me plenty of time to think about my next move. More specifically, I needed to consider what I was going to do with Noctra and Iskara, and what the long-term consequences would be. If I removed them both from power, someone would have to run the village. Someone would have to take care of whatever magical tasks they tended to.

Then again, the barrier didn’t work anyway. What exactly Noctra did besides roast the occasional monster that got too close to the village was a mystery to me. If I deposed him, I’d be the one stuck doing his chores until I could train someone else up to take over. On the other hand, he was obviously bilking the village in some sort of mana harvesting scheme. It might be a lot nicer place to live if I got rid of him.

There was one serious concern I hadn’t put much thought into yet. Noctra and Iskara were part of some cabal, and killing them might bring even more mages looking. Whatever was happening with the mana harvested from the villagers, disrupting that supply was bound to bring more attention down on us. That might not be a fight I could win, so I needed to carefully consider my options before committing myself to it.

Of course, if the choice was between keeping my father alive or keeping the peace with some far off collection of predatory mages, well, that wasn’t much of a choice at all, was it?

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