Chapter 24.

PART 1.

“M—my lord?” Says a servant girl. She cursed at her studder. She is sent to relay the bad news, in the hope that Yograj would be merciful to a female.

“Yes?” She could not detect his mood.

“The child has run away.” The silence descends into the room, which is broken by Yograj’s shriek of rage.

His magic lashed out, and the girl lost her head. He called Tandan to his study, while leaving his servants to clean up the blood and take care of the body.

“My lord.” Ravi announces his presence.

“What are you doing to solve this issue?” asked Yograj.

“Your son is tracking the boy. I was about to leave to help him, which is when you called me.” said Ravi.

“Very well,” Yograj decides to forget the implications of him interrupting Ravi for now. “You may leave. Bring the boy to me.”

Ravi nodded, and left. Yograj contains his urge to pace in his study. There has been no news from the court ever since the child was brought to him. He expected Porus to do some posturing, but this is unexpected. All just because of a child? Granted, an important child, but still. A king should not interfere in such matters in the first place.

PART 2.

After escaping from that basement, Hatori finds himself in the middle of this massive house. He does not know how he was brought into this house, but he does know how he was brought into the basement. As long as he can avoid that crazy man, he should be able to get out of here.

His plans get interrupted, as several men swarm the hall, where he is pretending to be the part of the wall. They can’t see him, probably due to the light thing he is doing. He does not have any time to experiment with it right now.

“Cast revealing spells. We should find him.” They begin casting, and a clamour arises in the hall due to the verbal casting of their spells.

Hatori manages to get lucky, and walks outside of the door, closing it behind him. He locks it behind him. When the men learned that they were locked, they began to pound the door. He avoided the path to Yograj’s study. And runs into a group, which apparently, judging from the voices, contains women. This time, his luck does not hold. He is hit by a spell, feeling the magic touching him like a cold splash of water.

“We found him!” exclaims one of the women.

“Where is he though?” asked the rest of the group.

“In that direction.” He feels her hand pointing at him. “Let’s cast the canceling spells. It should make him visible.”

A game of dodging ensues, where these mages fail to hit him accurately because they couldn’t see him. Hatori sneaks off to the outside, where he couldn’t conceal the sound of his footsteps, as the gravel crunches under his naked feet.

He gets surrounded quickly. “Surrender boy, or get ready to feel the pain.” Threatens one of them.

They began casting. Some spells hit him, making him grunt. But again, they couldn’t see him, so they could not hit him accurately. Though some spells ended up hitting other mages. Taking advantage of the argument breaking out, he sneaks away. However, the two men who were in that room with that crazy guy began to chase him with their own group.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

“Stop!” they ordered.

But Hatori did not stop. Dhanraj shakes his head. Instead, he began to cast disabling spells, designed to stop a resisting person through pain and some carefully directed damage. He kept track of Hatori with revealing spells.

At the end of his endurance, and getting bruised by the spells earlier, coupled with his hunger, Hatori lost his focus, and became visible. “Get him!” comes the order from his back.

Abandoning the sneaky approach, he breaks for it. “Dammit, how is he able to run even after this? That Zeko must be a monster.”

“And we can’t allow him to go outside of the wards!” said Ravi urgently.

“Why?” asked Dhanraj. “The land outside does belong to us, after all.”

“Because we then have to face—” Hatori goes outside of the wards in that moment, and at that moment, Zeko appears in a swirl of fire. “We have to face that monster.” Finished Ravi grimly.

PART 3.

Zeko walks up to Hatori, keeping his student behind himself once he reaches the boy. Dhanraj tries to move to scoop up Hatori, who is now gasping on the ground, but Zeko stops him on his track with a glair.

“You can’t interfere Zeko. This is a private matter, outside of royal authority.” Said Dhanraj. He is ready to bolt, mission be damned.

“Royal authority encompasses everything.” He replied coldly. “But this isn’t about authority and laws. You dare to kidnap my student. I cannot allow you to do that.”

“And what will you do?” Comes a voice from inside the massive house. “I have the key to the future. You can’t take him away from me.” said Yograj from inside his manner.

“I don’t need my seat of power to tangle with you.” replied Zeko. “There is a rule of magic. Strong rule, weak obey. And I order you to obey me, and let me and my student out of here.”

“Surround him!” Yograj thinks this is a bluff. Zeko might be strong, but he won’t be able to fight and take his student away at the same time. In the resulting chaos, he will make moves to snatch the boy once more.

“You should have listened to me.” replied Zeko in a low tone. He charges a spell on his finger, which quickly grows into a large gun above his head. Flames swirl around him, going to that gun above Zeko’s head. The shear pressure of his magic brings Ravi and Dhanraj to their knees, while their soldiers fall face-first to the ground.

“Fucking hell…” muttered Dhanraj. Even in his wildest rages, his father never inflicted that kind of pressure on his surroundings.

Yograj prepares a shield from his study; the shield takes physical form in the shape of a sphere of bubbling water, encasing the house. He is expecting to stop the fire element spell easily with this shield.

Zeko pulls his finger as if firing a gun. With the sound of a massive laser, the spell is fired. The shield starts to twist and bend inward from that spell. Yograj puts more effort into stopping the spell on its track. However, the effort proves to be too much for his body. After blood started to come out of his nose and mouth, he passes out in the pool of his own blood, while the spell devastates the House of Joshi, barely stopping before touching the study of Yograj.

In the chaos, Zeko takes Hatori away, leaving the Joshis to pick up the pieces of their destroyed seat of power.

(End.)