Published at 24th of February 2024 10:32 am

Chapter 41

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We were about a mile from the village when Mother abruptly stopped in place. Father, who’d been walking next to her, glanced over and halted as well. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Dusk was upon us and our shadows stretched out before us, courtesy of the setting sun at our backs. My own shadow was engulfed by Nermet’s massive, steady presence behind me, leaving only four shadows darkening the scrub grass on the trail leading home.

“I thought… No, sorry. It’s nothing,” she said, her eyes locked on the hill to the north of us.

I hadn’t noticed anything myself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was there. There were four organizations in the village. The Collectors who worked with the draw stones were responsible for the nightly tithing. The Garrison were a small police force that responded to things like drunken—or not so drunken, in Father’s case—brawling or cases of theft. The Arborists were responsible for the arbor north of the village.

The final group was the Barrier Wardens, whose job it was to patrol the outskirts of town to help provide an early warning system during the day when the barrier was supposedly turned off. I hadn’t met one personally, and knowing that the barrier itself was a lie, I suspected they were deep in Noctra’s pockets.

If there was anyone wandering this far out into the wastes, it would be a Barrier Warden. So Mother had either seen one who was watching us, possibly as a sentry deliberately posted there by Noctra, she’d seen a monster or animal of some kind, or she’d seen nothing and it was her imagination playing tricks on her with the shadows.

Did I need to know the truth bad enough to spend mana to find out? On the one hand, I wanted the element of surprise when I got to Noctra’s home and a Barrier Warden running ahead could give him time to prepare some defenses. Certainly, a mage on his guard for an attack could be more difficult to kill. On the other hand, I had a decent supply of mana in reserve, enough that I could probably beat any Barrier Warden near us to the destination.

Even if I couldn’t, I had yet to see any magic from anyone since I’d awoken that I could classify as impressive. The only thing holding me back was the need to be stingy, but if I wanted to go all out, I could cast a personal barrier, walk into the manor, and smite Noctra with any number of spells he’d have no defense against.

It turned out to be a moot point. A few seconds later, a young man just approaching adulthood rushed out from around the base of the hill. He was wearing thick boots and a light cloak which only partially covered the sword hanging from his belt. “Sellis! Xilaya! You’re alive!”

“So it would appear,” Father said dryly.

“When your whole family disappeared a few nights back, we thought something had managed to sneak into the village and dragged you out of your beds,” the man said. I noticed a pin on his cloak, that of a blue circle with a wavy line pattern on it.

“Why did you think that?” I asked. It was out of character for Gravin, but I wanted to know if Noctra had planted evidence to suggest something like that or if people had just made some assumptions based on a total lack of evidence.

“Well, what else could it be?” the guy asked, blinking down at me. He only focused on me for a second before dismissing me and turning back to my parents. “Gave the whole village a scare, though. The Barrier Wardens have been working double shifts all week to make sure whatever it was didn’t get back into the village again. Lord Noctra’s been locked up in his manor for days going over the barrier stone trying to figure out what went wrong with it.”

Father opened his mouth to speak, but the man talked right over him. “So what was it? I can’t even imagine what kind of monster could carry off a whole family. And why’s Nermet with you? Did he chase after it and save you guys? I can’t believe no one’s even injured.”

“Lilo,” Father said, cutting the Barrier Warden off. “There was no monster. Noctra used his magic to kidnap me and was selling me to someone in Derro because he thought I could do magic too.”

Lilo’s jaw dropped. He looked back and forth between the adults in our group for a second before letting out a weak chuckle and saying, “Very funny, Sellis. Come on, what really happened?”

Father looked Lilo dead in the eye and said, “Noctra used his magic to kidnap me and sell me off. My family came after me to rescue me.”

“Hah. Hah. It’s not as funny the second time.”

“I didn’t think it was that funny, Lilo. Why are you laughing?”

“Well come on. It’s absurd! Lord Noctra wouldn’t do something like that, and even if he did, you’re telling me a housewife, two children, and the village simpleton ran off to rescue you? Excuse me if I don’t believe you. I don’t know what game you’re trying to play here, but trying to drag Lord Noctra’s name through the mud isn’t going to work out well for you. Come with me. I’ll take you to the Garrison and you can wait there while someone lets Lord Noctra know you’re back.”

For a moment, I considered doing just that. Really, the only thing keeping Noctra alive was that we weren’t face to face. But if I killed him in the middle of the village with witnesses everywhere, there was going to be a lot of fallout to deal with. It would be better to present all the evidence of his wrong doings before I got outed as his murderer.

Besides, giving up the element of surprise just to have Noctra come to me was pure laziness. It would be far better to let the rest of my family go to the Garrison while I ambushed him en route. That way, I’d find him away from whatever defenses he’d set up in his manor and I could still ambush him.

Now I just needed to get Father to agree to go with Lilo. Our original plan had called for them to either return home or wait on the outskirts of the village, depending on how things looked. Technically, this fell more into the ‘stay outside the village’ scenario, except I hadn’t accounted for the possibility of using my family as bait. I’d expected that at worst case, we’d be captured by loyalists who were in on Noctra’s scam and taken directly to his manor.

In all fairness, that could still happen. Our stay with the Garrison could be an incredibly brief one before we were marched right back out onto the streets. I doubted Lilo had any measure of authority at all, let alone enough power to counteract any order that didn’t come from Noctra himself. The Barrier Warden struck me as young and impressionable, a fresh recruit still learning how to do his job.

“No. I’m not going to be marched over to the Garrison building like a criminal caught raiding his neighbor’s garden. I’m certainly not going to do that to my family.” Father folded his arms across his chest and added, “And I’d like to see you try to make me.”

“Come on, Sellis. Don’t make this more difficult on yourself,” Lilo said, dropping one hand to the sword hidden beneath his cloak. I wasn’t sure if anyone else had noticed the weapon when the Barrier Warden was approaching us, but if he moved to draw it, I’d be expending some more of my mana to stop him.

Father glanced back at Mother, then down at us. I gave a twitch of my shoulders to let him know it was his decision. I wouldn’t kill Lilo; that would only earn me ill will with the village where I planned on spending the next several years consolidating my power, but I had no qualms about a bit of non-lethal magic. Really, Father knew the Barrier Warden better than me. If he decided to cooperate, I’d go along as long as it didn’t jeopardize my own plans.

Seeing that Father wasn’t backing down, Lilo threw back his cloak and started to draw his sword. A second later, he collapsed to the ground as my sleep spell hit him. Father was so surprised that he let the Barrier Warden fall without making any effort to catch him, and the loud thump elicited a wince.

“So I guess that explains why I woke up sore after Noctra did that to me,” Father said.

“You actually fell across a table,” I said absently as I approached Lilo to examine him. Rolling him over was out of the question, but I wasn’t particularly interested in making him comfortable. I just wanted to confirm he was alive and see how much mana he had in his core. The answers to those questions were ‘yes’ and, unfortunately, ‘not much.’

It would still take me a few hours to recover from that sleep spell unless I tapped into my mana crystal. I wanted to hold off on that as long as possible to avoid the conversion loss. I’d top my core off when I got close to the manor, but until then I would generate as much mana naturally as I could.

“You should probably stay out of the village if this is how people are going to react to us coming back,” I said.

“Agreed,” Mother added. “But for how long? We need to go home at some point, if only to assess how bad the garden’s got while I was away.”

“I think we have more important considerations,” Father started to say.

“Than our food?” Mother asked. “Really? You don’t think starving is an important consideration?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. Your garden will be fine. I’m more concerned about people like Lilo deciding it’s fine to draw a weapon on us. What lies has Noctra told people? How many of them think we’re criminals now?”

“Lilo’s always been an idiot. Getting that badge just made him worse.” Mother sighed and rolled him onto his back. “He’s going to be difficult to deal with once he wakes up.”

“It’ll all be over by then,” I said.

I noticed the pinched lip grimace Mother gave me, but Father backed me up. “It’s us or him. Even if we ignore all his lying and how he’s used the entire village, we personally aren’t safe as long as he’s in charge. And it’s not like we can lock a mage up.”

Technically, we could, but I’d never been in the habit of sparing my enemies and I wasn’t about to start now. Leaving Noctra alive would just mean more problems down the road, not to mention the ruinous mana costs. Even a locked cell full of draw stones wouldn’t be enough to ensure his captivity, not when it was just a matter of willpower to resist them. A few hours of meditation to hold onto his mana would be all he needed to fill his core and work some sort of magic to escape.

Truly locking him up would be time consuming. I’d need weeks to create the inscriptions and more mana than I could generate to power them. It just wasn’t worth the effort for a man who would no doubt prove an uncooperative prisoner. And while I had a lot of questions he might know the answer to, none of them were all that pressing. First priority was advancing my mana core to stage two. After that, I’d worry about whatever plans Noctra was scheming, assuming they outlived him.

“I’m going ahead now,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“I suppose it would be best to wait near enough to the village to not have to worry about monsters, but not so close that our neighbors try to arrest us,” Father said.

“It’s risky,” Mother added. “And your magic isn’t going to be enough to protect us right now.”

“I know, but… What else can we do?”

“Go to the manor with Gravin.”

“No,” I said. I shifted my eyes toward Senica for an instant. “It’s not a good idea.”

“Ah. Right. We’ll keep ourselves safe. You can find us when you’re done?” she asked.

I nodded. Father still had the scrying beacon button in his pocket and I’d renewed the enchantment on our way here.

“Then take care of yourself. Stay safe, and don’t do anything risky.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised.

Then I walked off alone into the deepening night.

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