Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 28

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Breaking the sleeping enchantment on my father took about a minute and a half. Noctra had poured far more mana than was necessary into it, and that ended up working against me as it had been used almost like a layer of blubber wrapped round the enchantment’s artificial mana core. What a waste. I could have used the extra mana for myself if it hadn’t been so clumsily utilized.

Father’s eyes flickered open and he let out a soft groan. “Gravin?” he asked, his voice full of confusion when he noticed me.

“You were put under a spell,” I told him. “I just broke it, but give it a minute before you start moving around.”

“I… Yeah, okay,” he said as he tried to sit up. One hand went up to his head and he winced before relaxing back down. “Where are we?”

“About seven miles outside of the village in the wastelands,” I said.

Nermet was fighting his way out of the paralysis spell faster than I liked. It wasn’t unexpected, but I’d hoped not to have to waste more mana on keeping him restrained. I watched as he started to twitch his fingers with a pensive frown. Until he got to the point of moving his whole arm, he wasn’t going anywhere. I could refresh the paralyzing grasp spell I’d put on him early, but I was still hoping to avoid that.

“Listen,” I said, cutting off Father’s next question. “The short version, as near as I can tell, is that Noctra is using the village as a mana farm, and sending some portion to Derro in order to pay off some kind of debt. For whatever reason, he thinks that sending you over there will please his debtors, so he’s basically sold you into slavery.”

“What?” Father sputtered. “That’s… what? No, that’s ridiculous.”

“Are you or are you not in the back of a cart out in your ‘monster-infested’ lands outside your fake barrier?” I asked bluntly.

Nermet twitched again, this time several fingers at once. I scowled at him and said, “Nermet is under a mind control spell. His whole personality has been subjugated, and he’s lost his ability to have independent thoughts. I had a look in his head and things are… They’re bad. Really bad. In my current state, it would take a long, long time to fix the damage. I just don’t have the mana to spare.

“As soon as he gets free, he’s most likely going to try to kill me. Maybe you, too. I’m not sure what his standing orders are if someone discovers what’s been done to him.”

Father hoisted himself up to look over the edge of the cart at the huge Garrison man lying on the ground. “What did you do to him?”

“Muscle paralysis,” I said. “It won’t last much longer. We need to decide what to do. I have an idea, but it involves a lot of work on your part. You would need to agree to it.”

“What idea?” Father asked.

“We ignite your core. I will help transfer the control nodule of the spell to you, and your mana will feed it. You have to understand that this is a patch job designed to buy Nermet time until we’re in a position where we can do something to fix him. He will effectively become your enslaved puppet until I have enough spare mana to properly break the spell inside him or you run out of mana and the control nodule snaps back to Noctra. If that happens, it’s very likely he’ll try to kill all of us.”

Father’s eyes got wider and wider as I spoke. He looked back and forth between Nermet and myself, then said, “Lord Noctra did that to him? That’s… barbaric. Wait, what you do mean ‘all of us?’ Who else is here?”

“After he knocked you out, he sent three guys around to collect Mother, Senica, and me. We came out here after you and I left them at a safe spot I found a mile back.”

“What!” Father shot straight upright. “You brought your mother and Senica out into the wastelands? Are you insane?”

“I have yet to see a single monster,” I said. Near me, Nermet’s arm gave a limp flop. “Out of time. You need to decide. Are you willing to ignite your core and spend your mana to keep Nermet alive for the next month or two?”

“We’re nowhere near done talking about this, boy,” Father said. “I don’t care if you are a thousand-year-old mage or whatever, you had no right to bring your sister to such a dangerous place. And then to abandon her on top of it! Your mother won’t be able to protect her when something attacks.”

“Well, I guess we’d better get this figured out and get back to them as quick as possible,” I snapped, out of patience. “Now choose. He’s coming out of the paralysis spell. Either we kill him or we save him.”

“Save him, of course!” Father yelled. “What is the matter with you!”

I looked at him and sighed. “I think you are a better person than I am.”

I dove back into Nermet’s mind and wove my mana around the spiderweb of magic laid on him. The control nodule was buried under the crude subjugation spell, but not so deep that I had trouble activating it. It was a simple version, one designed to accept audible stimulus as a way to update desired behaviors. Basically, it was designed to force Nermet to carry out whatever orders Noctra gave him.

All I had to do was subvert the nodule into accept my orders instead. It wasn’t even that hard, but it was a constant drain on my mana. For now, it was manageable, but it would cripple my growth. And I didn’t have a whole village feeding me mana to compensate for it.

By the time I was done, Nermet was able to move again. He regarded me with a bland, vacant expression. “Stand up,” I told him. He did so silently.

“That’s creepy,” Father said.

“It’s sadistic,” I replied. “The real Nermet is in there somewhere. He knows what’s happening to him, but he can’t do anything to stop it. His body moves around without his permission, directed by the magic in his brain. Can you even imagine what that would be like?”

Father shuddered and went quiet. After a moment, I said, “We’re going to try to help you, Nermet. It… It won’t be an easy process, and it won’t be quick. It’s a lot harder to put something back together after it’s been broken, and you… I think you were already broken even before this. As long as my father doesn’t give up on you, I promise I’ll keep trying too. I hope that someday you’ll forgive us both.”

“Forgive?” Father echoed quietly.

“Go sit in the cart,” I ordered Nermet. After he’d settled into place next to Father, I started leading the donkey north toward the spot I’d picked out to hide our family.

***

I was sitting on the edge of the plateau our little hide-away nook was on with my legs dangling over the edge when Mother walked up behind me. She sat down near me, though a foot or two away from the open air, and said, “You know, I knew in my head. You told us the truth, but it didn’t feel real until you started throwing around magic so casually.”

“Sorry,” I said, not really sure what I was apologizing for.

Mother shook her head and said, “It’s not your fault. I’m just stubborn, I guess. This is all so big. How could my little boy know so much? Blessed by the spirits, and always with a spell ready to handle every problem. And then the claims about Lord Noctra.” Mother paused and her mouth twisted into a grimace. “Just Noctra. He’s no lord of mine. Who knows what other things he’s been using us for over the years?”

I glanced back at Nermet, who was resting near the entrance to our nook. While Mother and Father had had their reunion and Senica demanded answers, I’d taken the time to look over our new slave. One of the problems with this kind of mind control was that the people who would subject others to it generally didn’t care for the health of their victims. The slaves wouldn’t report injuries, couldn’t, in fact, report them.

Nermet was not in good shape. He was big and he had lots of muscles and he would keep going until his heart gave out and he died. But he had so many injuries made worse by not being treated, by being ignored and allowed to grow worse. Pain existed for a reason, and when a person wasn’t allowed to react to pain, they made their injuries worse.

Both of Nermet’s knees were shot. His back wasn’t much better. He had a broken hand and torn ligaments. By all rights, he should be on the ground, immobilized. Every second had to be torture to him. At least, it would have been, but Noctra didn’t want a slave crippled by his own injuries, so he’d turned off that part of Nermet’s brain. It was a small relief that he didn’t feel anything whatsoever.

It would cost a relative fortune in mana to heal those injuries, more than I could generate in a month, even if I had no other demands on my precious reserves. That would be one more burden for Father once we ignited his core. If things got much worse, I would need to convince Mother to let me help her ignite hers as well.

“It feels weird asking this, but what do we do now?” Mother asked.

I shrugged. “It’s not safe to go back as long as Noctra’s still alive.”

Mother blinked at that and gave me a sickly look. “You want to kill him? That’s a little bloodthirsty, isn’t it? Why can’t we just expose what he did and run him out of town?”

“Can we prove it?” I asked. “Even if we can, does it matter? You think a mage is going to be intimidated by a bunch of farmers wielding hoes and pitchforks?”

“Then what? You’ll just walk up to him and kill him?”

“I’ll probably attack him in his sleep,” I said, already planning out how best to do it. “No sense in giving him a chance to fight back. I’m not looking for a duel. I just need to kill him and his assistant. And the sooner, the better. I don’t think we’re in any real danger out here, but there are at least a few real monsters roaming the wastes. Plus we’ve only got a few days’ worth of food.”

“Are you going to do it today?” Mother asked.

I shook my head and gestured to Nermet. “I need to show Father how to ignite his core so he can feed mana to Nermet. After that, probably, yes. If I don’t kill Noctra soon, we’ll need to ignite your core too so there’s enough mana to grow new food.”

I didn’t mention it, but there was an issue of water too. We’d have to relocate soon to deal with that. It was kind of a shame, because this location was remarkably defensible, but we had no containers to haul water back even if I was willing to go find it, and wasting mana transmuting it was far too costly to be effective long-term.

Mother was silent for a while. The sun started to come up, and we sat there watching it together. At some point, she stood up and said, “Come on, let’s get some rest. It’s been a busy night for all of us.”

I rejoined the rest of my family and we laid down in a jumbled pile with the curtain that used to serve as our front door spread out over us. We all needed to recover our strength, but when we woke back up, it would be time to get to work.

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