Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 32

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

The procedure to transfer control of Nermet to Father went surprisingly smoothly. I kept expecting something to go wrong, some flaw to reveal itself in Father’s mana core or some trap in the subjugation spell Noctra had cleverly hidden away, or some monster attacking right as I got to the most delicate part of the job.

Nothing like that happened, and after about an hour’s worth of work, I was successfully able to redirect the mana draw from myself to Father. He grimaced with discomfort as soon as it settled onto him, but otherwise said nothing.

“Yes, having a constant drain is annoying,” I told him even though he hadn’t asked. “Best get used to that feeling. It’s not going away any time soon. On the bright side, you have your very own slave to boss around now. He’ll do anything you ask, up to and including jumping right off this cliff to his death. I wouldn’t advise testing that claim.”

I spent a bit more time explaining what the new bond between my father and Nermet meant, what he could do, what he should avoid doing, and the logic behind how orders were interpreted to try to head off any miscommunications before they occurred. Throughout the lecture, both of my parents grew progressively paler.

“This is disgusting,” Mother said.

“That is a very common sentiment among those who don’t view other people as objects to be used and discarded once they run out of value. Your Lord Noctra does not appear to be one of those people.”

“I suppose he isn’t,” Father said after a moment’s hesitation. “All these years, and he’s just been using us. Everything we’ve worked for was a lie.”

“Not everything,” Mother said. “We’re still a family. We still have friends and neighbors back home who are good people. Senica still needs a home to grow up in.”

“Nuh-uh,” my sister said. “I’m going to be a mage now and use magic to live anywhere I want. Maybe I’ll make a new home on one of the moons and you can come visit me.”

“Interesting idea,” I said. “Which moon do you think would make the best home?”

“Yulitar,” she said without hesitation. “I don’t want all my stuff to be blue or red or any other color.”

Yulitar was the largest of the six moons, and the only one with a pale white coloring. Some necromantic texts referred to it as the Corpse Moon and tracked its cycles for use in clandestine activities. For that reason alone, Yulitar had become my least favorite of the moons. It wasn’t that what some busybody necromancers were doing was the moon’s fault, but somehow it always meant a lot of work for me whenever Yulitar was in its primacy over the other five moons.

I could just see my sister with her head shaved, in black robes and a matching skull cap, waving around a wand made of some kind of femur and chanting a string of nonsense syllables. She would no doubt think it was a fun game, pretending to be a mage.

I could only hope that when she became one for real, she learned better than that. The last thing I wanted was to have to kill more family members.

“I think we’re a long way away from building a house on any of the five moons,” Father said. “Maybe we should focus on getting back to the home we already have first.”

“Six,” I said absently, still half-lost in old memories.

“What?” he asked.

“There are six moons.”

“No there aren’t.”

I blinked. “Of course there are. Tuamar the purple, Felactious the green, Amodir the orange, Nalicin the blue, Lasrin the red, and Yulitar the white. Six moons.”

Mother and Father exchanged glances, but didn’t say anything.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, it’s just… I’ve never heard of a moon called Amodir. Nor have I ever seen an orange moon,” Father said.

“But… you’ve seen the other five,” I said. “I’ve seen the other five. How could one of the moons just disappear?”

Was it possible that Amodir’s orbital path kept it hidden from one hemisphere? It didn’t seem likely to me, but if the other possibility was that it had disappeared from the sky, I knew where I’d put my money. “Oh what I’d give to gain access to my vaults right now. I know right where I left an astrologer’s journal that includes lunar paths. It was chapter six, right next to that beautiful diagram. What did it say about Amodir?”

Try as I might, I couldn’t quite remember. Come to think of it, though, the night sky looked far different than it did in my previous life. And I’d spent a lot of nights looking up at the heavens. There was a reason my home was called the Night Vale, after all. I’d just been assuming the differences were due to being reborn on the other side of the world.

Could I have made a mistake somehow and allowed myself to be reincarnated on a different world altogether? No, that was impossible. The five other moons I was familiar with wouldn’t have hung in the night sky. Planets only shared stars, not moons. I had to still be on Manoch, just… Just on another continent. That was the only explanation that made sense. Amodir’s orbital path was just irregular somehow.

“Gravin? Are you alright?” Mother asked.

I glanced up and saw everyone looking at me. My parents both wore worried looks, but Senica was just looking at me like I’d sprouted a second head and started holding a conversation with myself. From her perspective, I supposed it did look like I was going crazy.

“Fine. I’m fine. Just trying to figure some things out that aren’t really a priority right now. Sorry.”

I had more immediate problems I needed to handle before I started digging into the mystery of the missing moon. My mana reserves were as depleted as they’d ever been and I was relying on Father to help me recover them in a hurry. It wouldn’t be an efficient transfer, but every little bit would help. I gave us maybe three more days before food ran out, less than I’d originally planned since I hadn’t accounted for Nermet. Fortunately, we could make it back to the village with a single day’s walk, as long as nothing attacked us.

“I’m sorry,” I told Mother. “I know this is boring for you and Senica and you have nothing to do right now. I need time to get ready, to generate more mana. It will probably be two days before we go back home, and then it’ll be a long walk.”

“Why can’t we fly again?” Senica asked.

“Too much mana. We only did it the first time because we had to catch up to Father before he got too far away.”

I needed to teach Father and Mother elemental manipulation and weight reduction as soon as possible. If something happened to me, I didn’t want them to get stranded up here. Fortunately, both spells were perfect for beginning mages and were frequently used to introduce apprentices to structured invocations and conjurations.

Unfortunately, it was going to be harder for them to get Senica and Nermet down. They might be able to fall slow enough with Senica held between them so they could split her weight if she held onto the curtain and they used elemental manipulation to give it a strong up-draft. That had its own set of problems since it meant one of them would need to channel two spells at once, but it was theoretically possible.

Nermet was not getting down without someone able to cast a basic tier spell, also called tier two. Novice, basic, intermediate, advanced, and master tier were the five classifications of spell difficulty, determined both by how complex a spell was and how much mana it demanded. Very few spells that fell under the umbrella of the enchantment discipline were suitable for new apprentices due to the nature of how enchantments worked. Creating and implanting artificial mana cores to power a spell inside something else was not an easy task.

As long as nothing happened to me, it wouldn’t be an issue, but I’d still feel better if Mother and Father could get down themselves. “I think I should get you started on your first spells, Father,” I said. I turned to Mother and added, “Even though your core isn’t ignited, I’d like you to participate as well. It will be more difficult for you to gather the mana to practice with, but the spells I’m going to teach you are the ones you’ll need to get down from here on your own.”

“But I won’t be able to cast the spells,” Mother protested.

I shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to slow Iskara down. Get some mana from somewhere else. Besides, it’s not like we’re not going to ignite your core as soon as we can.”

“I don’t want to be a mage,” Mother said.

“Xilaya,” Father said. “You really should-”

“Don’t you start with me,” Mother told him. “Other people have different goals than you. I’m happy for you that your childhood dream fell into your lap through the weirdest and most unlikely twist of fate ever, but don’t you dare drag me into this.”

“That’s not- I mean, it’s not like I…” Father trailed off, whatever excuse or rebuttal he’d been trying to make left unfinished.

“We’ll see how things go once we’re back home,” I said. “But I’m going to be honest here. I’m killing Noctra. Probably Iskara too. Father is almost certainly going to have to take on at least the protection duties of your current governor.”

“Me?” Father asked. “Why can’t you do it?”

“Because I’m three,” I said. “I have legitimate concerns like how I’ll reach the door knobs when I get to Noctra’s manor house.”

“He’s got a point,” Mother said. “It’s hard to think of him as an adult even when he talks like this, even though I’ve seen him do incredible magic. Every time I look at him, I just see my baby boy.”

A hot skewer of guilt stabbed into my gut. I’d taken that from my parents. They wouldn’t ever have a chance to watch Gravin grow up now. More than that, all of their current problems were my fault too. The mana sniffer that entered the village was because of me. Noctra’s interest in Father was because I’d cheated on our Testing. Without my interference, they could have kept living in ignorance like every other family.

To hell with that. Noctra was a pathetic excuse for a human being and I wasn’t going to let him take advantage of over a hundred people any longer. We’d figure out the governmental aspects later, but considering the small size of the village, it didn’t really seem like that oversight was even needed. People solved their own problems for the most part.

The Garrison should probably stay in place after Noctra died, but the Collectors wouldn’t be needed anymore. The Barrier Wardens could be disbanded as well. Once the lie of the barrier itself was revealed, there’d be no need for them. Or maybe they’d be folded into the Garrison. Someone probably should keep watching for monsters, after all.

Then there were the Arborists. I didn’t actually know much about them, but presumably they were somehow keeping the little stand of trees north of the village alive. That would require more investigation to figure out whether they were actually needed or if they were just a part of Noctra’s scheming.

That was a problem for next week. For now, I needed to convince my parents to both learn new magic. Before I could get back into that argument, Nermet spoke for the first time. “Someone is coming,” he said in a thick voice.

It was so hard to understand him that it took me a second to register what he was saying. Then I raced across the ledge to look out into the wasteland. Sure enough, there was a person down there dressed in loose white clothes and wearing a wide-brimmed hat that hid their face.

“Who do you think that is?” Mother asked as my parents joined me.

“Trouble,” I said grimly. It couldn’t really be anything else.

Share