Published at 30th of October 2026 4:52 pm

Chapter 184: Fly in the web

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

I do what any non-mage whos looking for information does and go to the nearest inn The Catty Coral. Its neither empty nor full a precisely normal amount of customers. Nothing to remark upon. I go up to the entirely normal innkeeper a mildly fat, balding middle-aged man and order the salted fish over kelp with a weak ale. I do a quick divination with my pendulum for toxins, which comes back normal (neither present nor an invalid subject like with Terry), then peck at it gingerly.

I brought a few loaves of hard bread since I didnt know where Id be ending up. Perhaps I should avoid the local fare as long as possible, or at least until I can rule out it being a vector for whatevers going on. But, well, despite the weirdness of everything, I do have some faith in my divining ability. If it says the food is safe, then Ill trust it for the time being. Besides, this is clearly the food brought in by those wagons, likely being in the city for no more than a few days. If anything here is safe, itll be the food.

The drink is a little bit more suspect, though, and I only order it for forms sake pretending to sip it and spilling it over my self-cleaning clothes. Ill use a gather water spell later. Even if water is a vector, taking it straight from the air should be fine.

So, I ask the innkeeper as theres a break in his keeping, whats new around here?

Theres no sign of mistrust or hesitation as he lets out a stream of inane answers with a smile plastered on his face. Oh, theres talk about some new ale tax. Damn shame, Id say. Seasons been good though, so maybe itll come out a wash... Dont know what else youd like to know, cept maybe that the local baker and miller are finally getting married. About time, Id say.

Right You said the season was good? You mean for the farms on the island outside the walls?

Course. Where else? We make all our ale with island grown grains. Give it that unique flavour Im sure youve noticed.

Im sure I have anyways, has there been no other news about the rest of the island? Perhaps about the farms or thereabouts? Im hesitant to ask about the blockade directly, though I dont know why. Just an instinct.

Hmm, no? Not that I can think of? Everythings pretty normal. Ha, as it always is, right. Almost a pity; things could use a bit of excitement around here.

Have you been to the farms then? You said they had a good season.

Ha! No, why would I go out of the city? Got everything we need right here.

Oh, I dont know. Maybe just a change of scenery.

Scenerys just fine here. Trust me; you cant beat it.

I suppose Ill have to.

Yeah, well, I suppose I have some other customers to serve. Nice talking to ya. His plastered smile never faltered through the conversation. At no point did he seem to want to throttle me and yell, What are you talking about? Of course I havent been to the farms. The city has been under blockade for the past six months! He truly seemed unaware of it. Maybe its just become the social norm here to pretend theyre not trapped. But he didnt seem like he was pretending, or in any way uncomfortable about the subject. He truly seemed like he just didnt know.

As unsettling as that is, it is a clue. What other clues do I have? First, the lack of animals. Besides the null result from divinations, I havent seen any since coming here either. Then theres the inversion of my mental spells spotting me through concealment, even being alerted by it Or no, not inverted. Well, maybe inverted, but its not a necessary condition of what I witnessed for all mental magic to be inverted. All that I really know is that the reaction is somehow altered.

The concealment spell works by sending an ignore me message to everyone around. But, like with language, that message is dependent on the recipient understanding it, though in this case subconsciously. Perhaps the people here have been altered to no longer recognize the message, so the now meaningless noise draws attention to itself. The fact that the goal of the effect was inverted was just coincidence. At least, I cant assume that all mental effects will be inverted so neatly.

To test this, I target random patrons with my other non-disruptive mental spell (whisper) at various power levels. No matter what I try, or whatever message I send, each target immediately stops what theyre doing, sometimes mid sentence or drink, and looks directly at me, then resumes their activity once the spell ends. Its rather unnerving, so I only try it on three people. For the last one, I try to disguise the effect by flagging down the innkeeper again and saying the same thing out loud. He stares blankly at me while the spell is up, but responds normally when I repeat the same words with the spell down, as if he didnt hear what I said the first time.

I havent seen many guards about. Are they having recruitment troubles?

Oh, um yes? You thinking of joining? They could use a fine stout lad like you, no doubt.

I narrow my eyes, examining him for some irony about my height, but sense none. Er no, just a passing thought.

Right, well, gotta go he doesnt, and merely turns to start wiping a glass. He seems troubled suddenly. I keep watching him from the corner of my eye, but he doesnt do anything, so I keep on thinking.

Theres definitely an alteration of some sort going on here. But beyond their reaction to mental magic, I dont see anything out of the normal. Is that the alteration then? To behave normally when the whole city is under quarantine? Maybe normal would be to act like the self-mutilating thugs?

Or maybe not. Again, the relief efforts seem well organized. The people seem well fed. Maybe it would be reasonable to not view this place as under any significant threat. Supplies havent been disrupted, so no need to learn that your city is under quarantine unless you try to leave. It could make sense. Maybe this is all a lot to do about nothing Except that wouldnt explain the mental reactions.

If I understood them correctly, the thugs were afraid of the normal seeming people. The Fargazers? They said, we need to burn. Did they mean another building or themselves? Some of their scars did seem to be from flame. Perhaps pain can block out the alteration somehow Except not; the thugs had that same mental sensitivity.

Im almost tempted to rebreak my leg, but no. If pain does somehow mitigate whatevers going on, its clear that it doesnt stop it completely. Better to just do this quickly before it has time to work on me, and for that I need all my limbs intact. Besides, I do have the mental addition to my shield spell. Keeping that up will hopefully be enough if the vector is mental, like it so obviously seems. If its not, well, then I dont know what to do.

Hey the innkeeper who has been growing increasingly spasmatic as he continuously wipes the same glass over and over again shifts back to talk much more hesitantly than before. Why um...? Why were you asking about outside the city before?

I tense at his tone. I have an instinct that answering wrongly could be dangerous, though he is by no means threatening. Oh no reason. I was just wondering what you thought of things. The good harvest and all. But you havent been right?

His eyes narrow, fixed on a blemish on the bar and I realize I made a mistake ending that with a question. No of course I havent I havent Havent I? I have It was nice I want to go I cant I cant? Why cant I? We have to Why cant we get out His gaze darts around, eyes wide with erratic breathing. He throws the glass down, shattering it, and repeatedly shouts, We have to get out!

None of the other patrons move an inch at this outburst except for two burly men who silently go up behind him and drag him by the upper arms towards the back door the innkeeper yelling with increasing fervour as he goes, though doesnt struggle to escape. I move to follow, but another man, much younger and thinner takes his spot at the bar and addresses me with an expression utterly oblivious to the disturbance behind him.

Hey friend, what can I get for you? There is no menace in his voice, save for its absence.

I um I need a room.

He blinks in surprise, shaking his head subtly as if chasing a thought quickly abandoned, then returns to his placid smile. A room? Yes, we have those Might be a bit I dont know. If youll wait here, Ill have someone prepare you one, straight away.

I nod, and take the opportunity to leave the bar and sit in a corner, back to the walls. Its not really safer here, I know, but its at least a little comforting knowing Ill see any physical threat coming presuming its not invisible.

What happened with the innkeeper? Did my spell shake him from his stupor, or just my questions? Likely a combination. I could try freeing others from whatever is going on, but theres no reason to draw attention. Im continually tempted to rush after the original innkeeper to at least see whats being done to him, but I got the distinct impression from the way the replacement moved in that wouldnt be appreciated. I would be fine if I merely provoked the room to violence, but I would have to assume that any sparked hostility towards me would entail the whole city. Not something I can reasonably handle.

Some sort of mass mental effect is the most obvious answer to whats going on, but that would be absurd. Besides the enormous power required to do such a thing, behavioural altering magic always causes lasting damage. Concealment can work en masse without disruption because its effects are limited and only interacts with the most surface of functions. All it does is suggest a sense of unimportance, which is, after all, the norm.

Huh I guess that would explain why their odd behaviour is to act normal. Its not changing anything, just preventing change, so its less innately damaging. Still, even if the damage is minute in each instance, protracting it over the course of half a year should still have reduced the entire population to gibbering idiots. Something here is breaking the rules, and that means divine intervention.

Except, that raises its own problems. A deity taking hold of a whole city, especially for so long, would be an act of war against every other god even ones who lacked interests in the place. It would cause rippling effects, disrupting their machinations across the whole planet by introducing out of context variables. So, who could possibly get away with something like this?

One of the staff comes and takes me to the room. On the way up, I use the metal melting cantrip to stick a sensory token under the handrails on the stairs, giving me a view of most of the common room.

My room is dusty, despite evidence of recent cleaning. A few spots have been wiped, but various hard to reach places have a thick layer of neglect. No matter, Im not staying here anyways. I just needed a reason to go upstairs and place the token. I place another in a good spot on the off chance that the innkeeper would give the most recently cleaned room to any other newcomers then climb out the window to the alley below and leave the inn far behind.

I go to a handful of more inns, each while under a different illusionary disguise, get a room at each one (each as dusty as the first) and leave another pair of sensory tokens (plus a few more at various vantage points throughout the city as I go). I dont spot anyone, but Ive only gone through about half the inns in the city before it starts getting dark. I could keep going, but the remaining spots are all spread out, and itd be well into the night before I got them all.

Sigh, this would have been so much easier if Huxley had behaved. Instead, Im several hours behind with no idea where Terry arrived. No matter, Ill find them eventually. As for the remaining inns, theres no reason to think that Terry would go to one instead of what Im about to do.

The city is roughly decimated. At least five percent of the original population is accounted for in the intermural dead. Judging from traffic density, Id guess at least another five percent have vanished to intramural violence. I saw several buildings in ashes on the way down, but less than five percent of the citys surface area. So roughly five percent of the citys original domestic spaces should be abandoned and available.

Of course, thats assuming an even distribution of destroyed structures, but at the very least there should be a couple of places to squat in. A divination for dust covered domiciles quickly finds a few. I place sense tokens in each, but wait until after dark to enter the one selected for myself.

As I wait to break in, I get movement from several of the inns I visited as I rapidly switch through the tokens I left throughout the city. In one of my rooms I see several figures, completely ordinary save for the drawn knives, looking about the place. I go through the rest, finding nothing odd, but then, suddenly and with no preamble, groups in two different common areas simultaneously rise as one and, with the innkeeper bringing a key, enter my rooms and silently search them with increasing violence turning over beds and cutting up random furniture for unknown reasons. Maybe they thought I stashed something? What, I dont know. They dont even bother picking up my sensory coins when they find them.

Despite the eerie hostility, this is rather reassuring. Its clear that some communication occurred between the groups, or that, like me with my sense tokens and animals: the people here are somehow feeding information to a central entity that is compelling them somehow. Again, mental domination over so many shouldnt be possible, but it seems clear that its happening.

Regardless, its good to know its not omniscient within its domain. It didnt know I wasnt in any of the rooms until after its puppets searched them. Likewise, it couldnt detect the active magic of the sense tokens, so presumably it cant invert the eye remotely.

Once all my rooms have been searched, the figures just wait around for a bit, giving the impression of seething. After a while, the groups, as one, silently march out of the inns and head someplace. I dont have enough coverage of the city to track them, but from their directions Id say theyre headed to the same place. Possibly a gate, though maybe something else. Ill have to investigate the area tomorrow. Something tells me I dont want to linger here after dark, even if sneaking will be easier. I should at least see if nocturnal movement is normal here before trying it myself.

Lets assume a gate, though. Are they going to attempt an attack on the blockade? That does seem wasteful unless Unless puppeting them directly does incur the normal mental damage and makes them useless. Perhaps the hypothetical entity lacks the ability to reconstruct a mind to functional use, so the ones it controlled would simply starve once they stop directing them.

Itd be reassuring, if true. Perhaps the entity is sending its puppets out to die out of spite or punishment. Since itd likely assume that Im an imperial agent trying to infiltrate their domain. So its showing the forces outside the cost of interference.

Still, as nice as it is to think the responsible party has some limitations, its just a theory. No use jumping to conclusions. Its been a long day and I need to rest.

The apartment I chose has a third story window facing a dark alley, letting me easily slip in without notice. The beds are old straw that I wont be using, and it is very dusty, but a cleaning spell will sort that quickly. Sleeping on the ground wont be bad, especially with my enchanted clothes.

Accommodations to your liking, my lord?" A sneering voice says from behind from a corner tha I specifically checked, with no sound of movement leading to it.

I snap around and target the shadowy figure with guidance and make to throw a knife, but theyre already moving. They cover the distance in a blur and punch me in the gut. My shield shatters, my enchanted armour goes rigid to absorb the blow but is overcomed, and my ribs snap as I fly into the wall. I probably have a few ruptured organs, but time enough for that later.

I try to throw again, but they move in a flash again, pinning my hands to the wall with one hand and grabbing my chin to force me to look in her eyes with her other.

Now, now, Malz, she says with a sardonic grin, dont be like that. After all, Ive travelled quite a ways to talk to you.

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