Theodore closed his eyes in resignation; if this was to be his death, then let it be one in service of his oath.

Except, the pain never came, instead it was a spurt of hot liquid all over his face.

After a moment, he reluctantly opened his eyes, coinciding with the soft thud of Urith’s upper body against the floor.

He had been cut in half, faster than he could have reacted and sharper than his aura shield could, well, shield.

“I lied.” He heard a voice from his right; he turned, agape at the sight of Vedas cheekily grinning face. “That wasn’t the only freebie.” He finished.

He then lightly kicked his shin. “Get up, Erling has already killed his way through the rabble, the traitors were already conveniently gathered in the main hall.” Vedas’ smile froze at the memory of those treacherous people, his eyes lighting up in pure hatred. “They’ll make horror stories of what I’ll do with them."

The walk to their destination was naturally completely silent after that comment.

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Vedas took one step forward, and felt his eyebrows rise at the sight before him.

The Great Hall, where the Agis’ held court and the last defensive barrier against invaders was a mess, chairs were scattered all over the place, tables were broken, and tapestries were destroyed. But what truly gathered his attention was the frankly humongous slash all over the walls, it was like someone found the wall so offensive that they decided to cut it in clean half.

Through the horizontal hole, Vedas could faintly see that one of the outer walls was even cut to size.

He also noticed the lower part of a man’s body lying on the ground straight on the path of the slash, the upper side nowhere to be found.

Vedas just turned to Erling, an eyebrow raised in apprehension.

Erling just sheepishly pointed at the trembling, kneeling middle-aged man at his side. “He hired an aura master as a hidden card, he was pretty good, plus he said some ah… some unsavory things so I may have overreacted a little, just a bit.” He commented.

“Ah…” Vedas’ was too used to dealing with muscleheads with more brawns than brains, so he just ignored it and looked at the trembling man. “So this fucker is the one responsible for all of this?”

“Yes, my Lord. Chrismund Madras.” He answered.

“Hmm...” The captives gasp in fright and cower away as the middle aged man seemingly floats out of nowhere, slowly levitating in front of Vedas. “You killed my family.” The Archwizard’s voice is cold as ice, the inflection hidden by the implication of violence.

“Do you know, Chrismund, what the worst punishment in the slave pits of Alkatraz was?” He asked. “You clearly don’t know, so let me explain it to you.” A crystal collar materializes at the man’s neck.

You could clearly hear the sound of flowing water as his pants slowly turned damp, dripping with piss. “In Alkatraz, the archons would punish the most belligerent of their slaves with five seconds of what they called the Reckoning, five seconds of a series of electrical shocks sent straight into your nerves, causing the greatest amount of pain a man could endure.”

Vedas’ face stared deeply into the other man’s eyes, his glare promising nothing but pain and suffering.

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“They would subject their victims with a specialized haste spell; meant to slow down a man’s perception of time to such a level that five seconds might seem like an eternity. It was the perfect punishment, fast for all onlookers, but for the victim? Their poor victims would experience an eternity of never ending pain, I had never seen a man who experiences it, because any who do so find death, a much, much better experience than life.”

The wind was blown out of Chrismund’s sails, the fear killing any words of protest or pleading in their infancy. He knew that he was going to die, and his tears flowed readily at the realization.

“I swore to never use this punishment on another living being.” He lets out a dark chuckle. “Would you look at that? You not only murdered my family, but you pushed me into breaking a promise.”

As Vedas finished his conversation, the collar at the man’s neck lights up, swiftly followed by haunting, agonizing screams filled with so much more pain than anyone could believe.

Even to the onlookers, allies or otherwise, those five seconds felt like an eternity, let alone the man tortured himself.

But time waits for no one, and after five, slow seconds, the pain abated and Vedas let go of his levitation spell.

The man was in a catatonic state; he couldn’t form thoughts let alone speak words, and lay there on the floor, twitching.

A look of disgust and an ever so slight expression of guilt appeared on Vedas’ face, and with a swipe of his hand, a ray of light surged from the halo that evaporated the man instantly, adding another giant circular hole on the main hall’s wall.

“I guess I overreacted too, just a little bit.” He said to Erling.

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Castles come in different shapes and forms; admittedly, they all are basically what can be called Fortresses that you could live in, but each castle can be quite different from another. But still, they all also have similarities: outer walls, towers, gatehouses, maybe a moat? But a feature that’s less mentioned is the dungeon.

Every castle has a dungeon, where would you store the criminals, the traitors, the nay-sayers? And the Agis Castle is no exception.

It is where Vedas and Theodore have found themselves, Erling has to organize the defenses and chase anyone who may have escaped their rampage, so he put Theodore as his Lord’s bodyguard, or as Vedas calls it, a “human meat shield”.

So Vedas’ first action is obviously to visit the castle and free any allies of his that are left alive, starting with a middle aged woman that was very much intact, aside from the anti-magic manacles, and the damp, dark room.

“So you’re the new Court Mage, I guess Iveus found greener pastures.” Vedas commented.

The woman simply raised an eyebrow and put her shackled hands forward. “Six years ago, actually.” She answers.

The woman is the current court mage, raising a magic user is a very expensive endeavor, but also a very risky investment. You could spend a fortune on a man or woman and never receive your worth. Most magic users get stuck at the Journeyman stage, and they only tend to reach that at their twenties if they are somewhat fast.

It requires money, intelligence, and a shit ton of luck to become a competent mage, let alone a wizard.

It is why the Magic Guild is so influential, aside from organizing standardized tests to rank magic user’s Rank; they act as the middleman between competent magic users that need money for research, and Lords that require magic users to shield them from enemies that have them that are willing to pay for their service.

Generally, Court mages act as advisors, educators and defenders in once, but competent magic users don’t grow out of trees (the expression doesn’t work that well, because many ACTUALLY grow out of trees.), so the Mage’s Guild declared a set of rules, if any were to be broken then there will be repercussions, and if you didn’t have either a set of big brass balls, or incredible power and influence, you REALLY don’t want to have the Mage’s Guild knocking on your door.

Long story short, the rules are thus, don’t treat your Court Mage badly, don’t try to coerce, blackmail, or threaten them into doing things that are not within their contract, and finally, if a Court Mage dies in combat that they themselves were relevant in, then fine, but if they surrender, you can shackle and imprison them, but you gotta do your best to keep them unharmed.

With a wave of his hand, the manacles opened up with a click and fell to the ground.

The woman’s eyebrows rose in surprise, it requires a significant amount of skill to affect mana dampening tools with magic, and she never felt any trace of mana.

“Impressive display of freeform magic.” She held her hand out for a handshake. “I’m Ovia Sable, Master rank Mage.”

Vedas reciprocated her handshake. “Greetings, Ovia. I’m Vedas Agis, Archwizard of Stars.”

Anyone would think her eyes would pop out of her eyes if they saw her expression right now.