As Jack hurried to follow the woman, he heard some of the kitchen staff whispering to each other. With some surprised at his foolhardiness to try to keep up the sham in front of the manager, and others arguing that he was likely being honest because if not, she would quickly expose his lies.
As he made it through the door, he spotted the lady tapping her foot in impatience. She clearly wanted to not waste even a second and this over and done with. Jack didn’t have any umbrage with that feeling and pulled out the materials he would need. Setting to the side the cloth bundle of items from the Fawlers he used chalk to begin tracing diagrams on the floor. While most spellcasting simply used the caster’s own purified mana, there was no way for Jack to absorb and purify enough mana to power an undertaking such as this. Instead, he needed to utilize the power in the world around him. The diagram that he was creating was done in mana conductive chalk using the basics of enchanting to help draw energy in from the world. Considering that this was both a lower-level scrying spell, and that the mana would not be channeled through Jack directly he did not need to worry about the purity of the mana affecting his mind.
After about twenty minutes of careful tracing the sigils and geometric tracings needed for the spell were complete. With a slight blush on his face Jack unwrapped the bundle and set the materials out in the middle of the ritual area. Pointedly ignoring the judging look that the manager sent his way at the items that he pulled out he worked to center his mind and remove any distractions. Concentrating as hard as he could on the idea of the owner of the hair and items and what they were doing when last they were here Jack began to chant the words of the scrying spell.
As the spell started up, the mana being drawn into the ritual pulled the air and other loose materials with it almost making it seem as there was a ghost in the shop. Jack vaguely heard the manager say something to the effect of “So this is how you make it look like there is a ghost?” but paid her little mind.
After a little while the objects in the middle of the room flew up and a ghostly figure condensed around them. The figure was of a young woman who looked to be about 18-20 years old with black hair and cat ears on her head and a black and white furred tail. She looked exactly as Gregory and Vinistey had described their daughter. Jack continued to ignore the onlooking manager as she mumbled to herself about how at least it was a pretty looking ghost.
As the figure fully appeared Jack felt the spell settle into place and sensed the he could now watch a snippet of what had happened in the past. With a bit of concentration, he was able to have the image of Dilacy move forward in her relative time watching her laugh and converse with people that could not be seen. Jack listened to what she said in case there was any indication of what would happen to her in her speech but nothing in particular caught his attention.
He pushed the spell to speed up the image from the past so as not to overstay his welcome in the restaurant and kept a close eye and ear out for any drastic changes in emotion. After a short time the image stood and began to move out the front door. Jack followed the apparition out the door and watched as they talked for a short time saying goodbyes to the members of Wolven Freedom.
After the image waved goodbye, she started to walk off before suddenly stopping and looking at the alleyway behind the restaurant. It appeared as if someone had called out to her from the entrance of the alley. As she started moving toward the alleyway Jack noted that her gait was different then when she had been inside Dovers. Where before it was a springy upbeat walk, she now appeared to almost be dragging her feet not fully picking them up all the way. Concentrating on the spell Jack froze the image in place and moved to look at Dilacy from all angles to see if there was anything else out of place.
Jack rewound the scrying to right before she turned to the alley and studied every part of her as she shifted toward the alleyway. He had to do this multiple times before he finally noticed that when her attention shifted to the alley, Dilacy’s eyes became glazed over and unfocused.
That combined with the change in movement suggested that some kind of mental suggestion was used against her. Watching as she almost stumbled her way into the alley Jack felt a feeling of dread well up within him, wishing he could call out to her and snap her out of whatever had caught her in its grip.
The image continued a little way into the alley, far enough that they were no longer overly visible from the street where it stopped and stood still. Jack watched with a mounting sense of horror expecting to see a horrific outcome to this.
Suddenly Dilacy’s eyes cleared and she looked around in confusion before snapping to a certain point in surprise. “What? Why am I? Huh, why are you here?” Dilacy’s image asked.
Jack and the restaurant manager watched as her body language changed, almost shrinking away from whatever entity that she saw in the alley. The line of questioning from Dilacy did imply that she at least had some level of familiarity with whoever she had seen here, but whatever their response was it had frightened her.
“She’s yours? What? I’m not… I didn’t…” as Dilacy stumbled over responding to whatever had been said to her, she suddenly fell sideways from an impact to the side of her face. Jack rewound and froze the image at the moment of impact to see if it had been a fist. He shook his head, the point of impact was too dispersed. It had been some kind of wind spell instead of a physical impact. That fact did mean whoever she was talking with was not a body enhancer however.
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The hit across the face seemed to have snapped Dilacy out of whatever mental dissonance that the situation had put her in. Jack watched as her image jumped up her muscles suddenly bulging with mana and shot at whoever had just attacked her.
As Dilacy lunged forward she seemed to slam into a solid wall of force in the middle of the alleyway. In response one of her hands came clawing upwards slash marks slicing through the air trailing her fingertips. Her other arm swinging up and to the side to deflect something coming toward her head. Her eyes glanced toward the entrance to the alley to judge the distance as she launched forward in a spinning kick. As she slammed into her unseen opponent, she angled herself toward the entrance using the rebound obviously figuring that if she could make it out onto the street that her adversary would have to give up.
Something grabbed her by the ankle during her flight out of the area and flung her backwards further into the alleyway. Dilacy rolled backwards into a hand flip back onto her feet recovering quickly from the flight. Claws of mana slashing out from her flip as she worked on reorienting herself toward her enemy once more. At this point Jack paused the spell again to consider what a this had revealed so far.
While it was clear to Jack that Dilacy wasn’t the most experienced fighter in the world she certainly wasn’t a complete greenhorn. She would have likely been able to completely overpower him if they ever had a fight. This meant that whoever she had fought here was a decently powerful combat mage. Sadly, between only hearing Dilacy and not whoever she was speaking to along with how little talking done in the alleyway before the fight broke out, it didn’t really narrow down who her adversary was.
With those thoughts spinning through his head Jack resumed the scrying spell to see what happened next and if there would be any more clues. After Dilacy was thrown back into the alley preventing her escape the fight took on a much harsher edge.
Dilacy began to do combinations stacking mana effects up to burst forth with the end of the attack chain. At the same time her skin and clothes began to get littered with small cuts. After a bit Jack realized that whoever she was facing was fighting in an almost completely defensive manner. As one of the combos that Dilacy unleashed slammed into a wall in a large explosion of mana. Pausing the scrying for a brief moment Jack checked the wall where the attack hit, he was surprised to note that there was almost no damage done. Small marks there did show that the wall had not been repaired at all. This meant that whoever she fought was not just defending themselves but the surroundings as well. Jack wondered if they were waiting for someone else to show up and just were there to keep Dilacy from leaving, or what other reason they could have for fighting in such a manner.
Resuming the spell time ticked by as Dilacy fought back and forth across a good portion of the alley. Throughout she did try to escape again twice but was stopped both times.
It was then that Jack noticed something odd, he paused the spell again to look closer at Dilacy’s. Still ignoring the manager behind him who began to mutter something about perverts wanting to look at mostly naked ghosts. Shifting around he saw that the strange discrepancy that he spotted looked almost like a hole in her flesh. There was no blood or indication of damage surrounding it unlike the numerous contusions all over her body. This instead appeared almost as if a part of her simply didn’t exist anymore.
He crouched down to get a better look at her leg where the effect was and spotted that the vanished flesh was a much larger area then he had thought. Most of the area was covered by her clothing and only a relatively small portion was shown. Jack stood back up and thought for a minute as what he was seeing seemed to make little sense. If the flesh itself was truly missing then Dilacy would not be able to continue fighting as the bottom half of her leg would be lying on the ground and not able to be used.
Jack moved the scrying forward in time keeping a close eye on that area. As the battle stretched on the affected area oh her body got larger and larger. After a while almost her entire body had vanished. Jack noticed that Dilacy stopped her assault on her opponent once it reached that point.
The movements of her head showed her looking down at where her body had been or still was in reality. After a brief moment she looked up and spoke to whoever she had been fighting. “I see, I understand now. Thank you for the chance.”
Jack watched as not long after Dilacy spoke the disappearing flesh continued up over her head and she was completely gone even her clothes had vanished with just the brush and underwear floating in the air. As the last bit of her vanished into the air he stood there feeling dumbfounded. Whatever had happened caused such a change in her that she was no longer herself. That was the only possible explanation that he could come up with.
Jack started to go through all the possibilities in his head. Those of who else could have been in the alley, what spells might have been used during the fight, what possible things could change someone’s mana or sense of self to the point that the were no longer themselves. Half formed ideas swirled through his mind as he tried to get them organized. He felt that there was something there that was just out of his reach that he could almost taste. He just needed to put it all together.
As he stood there blankly staring into space Jack felt a huge pain in his chest as the spell finished running though the ambient mana that it had absorbed and now started to pull from him to fuel itself. Clutching himself in pain he let it drop the few seconds that he was powering it sucking him bone dry of energy. His vision swimming Jack forced his body to try to stumble over to the wall to help him stay upright. Behind him the manager who had watched everything unfold said something to him but Jack could not understand her at all. His head pounding at the mana deprivation he tried to take a step forward and fell to his knees retching.
As Jack’s vision began to blur all he could think of was how stupid he was to not pay attention to how much energy the spell had left, he was lucky that the energy drain didn’t kill him outright before he managed to cut it off. With that last thought going through his head his body gave up and slumped forwards. Unseeing Jack felt something grab him and he knew no more.