The Caverns, Near the Town of Eldor. Troug, 9th.

Andrea Avery

Today was not the best day to be Andrea Avery.

First, there was the issue of that sun elf across the river in Eldor. Andrea had hired people, skilled people, to snatch her in the night; it had not worked. They had failed miserably, each of them dead in a back alley, covered in burns with cuts across their bodies. It was a mess.

And now, she had another sick elf in her hands. Andrea thought that having the girl would be a boon to her upcoming negotiations with a certain minister serving under the king in Tamirtel, this region’s castle-city. She had gotten the elf easily, given the circumstances.

Then again had not the elf been sick when they brought her in. Some curse or something, Andrea did not know for sure, maybe she should have kept that insignificant priest around as a plaything, she could have used a little more information.

“Such is fate, I suppose.”

Reginald was the only one to respond to her comments, and that was only with a small nod. It was as if he were acknowledging some profound wisdom, spoken from the heavens to reach his ears through his Mistress. Avery rather cherished the quiet man; he was both simple and efficient.

A few moments had passed since Andrea received news that yet another of the elves had fainted in their cells. At first, she was annoyed that they were bothering her with such business, elves got sick all the time when they were stripped from their forest. They simply had no ability to withstand hardship it seemed; they were truly pathetic. It was a good thing they proved to be dramatically more valuable for similar reasons. That was when they had told her it was the raven-haired elf, the moonchild, Andrea had begun yelling at the for their lack of speed in informing her afterward, never mind the fact that she had just been telling them to go away; there were privileges to being the one in charge.

She made her way down into the depths below, Reginald following a few steps behind. Her destination was not the large cavern holding varied merchandise. No, Andrea had the foresight to set up several waystations along the way down into the deeper caverns. The small sections that had been carved out both naturally, and through the use of varied magics served as a means to stage, resupply, and in this case serve as a small hospital to keep the property in serviceable condition.

Gone were the days when she would lose half her work due to small contagions and larger outbreaks of various diseases. She had procured for herself a collection of healers, some even of their own volition. They would serve her in these warrens for various rewards and bonuses, though the less voluntary of the healers, another elf as luck would have it, were drawing breath as a favor from their mistress. Yes, even Elven healers of the Veteran rank could be shackled if one possessed the proper means of containment. The trick to the entire thing was of course, capturing them when they were too new to their skills, or as the current stock evidenced, just too young to have amassed much power.

“Ah, there she is.” Came a voice from the room she had been approaching.

It was no surprise that her most senior healer, one Stefan, was the first to notice her arrival. The man possessed the highest Rank of detection magic for anyone on her staff now. Quite the find; his proclivities for younger partners was also a factor of his employment. A worthwhile trade from Andrea’s perspective.

“What news do you have of the elf?” Andrea asked, though all those present knew that it was more command than query. Mistress Avery did not ask. She was not kind, and any thought to the contrary would normally result in harsh lessons.

Reginald stopped inside the room, stepping to the side of the small room entrance as he surveyed the few people who were assembled.

The room was more of an open and enlarged cave, eroded over time by a stream of water that flowed under the river to the west from a large mountain to the east. Black mountain was quite a distance but the water flowing through these caverns was still frigid with winter thaw.

There were several beasts who frequented the waters, ranging from levels five and twenty. Most of the guards present were here to manage these beasts, they were not necessarily essential to the managing of the prisoners.

The room here contained several small beds haphazardly arrayed against the two walls to either side as the tunnel ran directly through this small chamber. The flowing water ran through an opening in the side of the wall, providing a convenient method for both cleaning and disposing of failed property management.

“If you will, Matilda.” Said Stefan to the elven healer whose job it had been to care for the elves, Andrea also thought that she had been put in charge because the victim was a girl, but she would not voice the observation aloud. They all knew Stefan, but it would not do to call his curiosities into the light, happy workers, and all that.

The elf woman stepped forward running her hands against one another as she addressed Mistress Avery. “The child was brought up for the normal sickness of our race. Being too far from the surface has an ill effect on any of us who are without view of the sky for extended periods, even the elves of the moon such as the girl.”

Andrea’s thoughts moved about at the mentioned of the race of the girl, not quite the specific race she had thought but exotic, nonetheless. She would be fetching quite the sum from the Minister.

“I treated her with some light purification magics and a tea of moon-bathed lichen and mushroom extract, both of which are plentiful nearer to the cemetery, so there was little cost involved.” The woman looked away as she spoke, making no attempt to hide her inability to keep eye contact with the person who held her in servitude, her will had broken years ago.

“Very well. Could someone please explain to me why I was called for when you had already treated the girl in question?” Madame Avery was uncertain as to the fuss that had been brought upstairs to her, though she would not admit to any lack of knowledge, and no one would treat her words as an admission of such.

“Yes, well…” It was Stefan that spoke this time. “Most of the prisoners are low level rank twos, we were curious to know if you were aware that the girl was not yet beyond the first rank, her constitution and strength are both abysmally low, you had said she was a recent transmigration from a Mana-storm?”

“I did, it has been maybe a month or two since her arrival in the area.” Adrean supplied, though Doogan had not given her the information, it was no large feat to gather intelligence from the loose lipped youths that had frequented the hall these days.

“Per chance then, were you aware of her nature as a healer? We had tests ran and made use of the Cube of Paths you had left with us; it revealed some remarkably interesting things.” Said Stefan.

“What kinds of things do you think would be of interest to me?” The meaning behind her words was clear, she was not one to patiently wait while Stefan built the suspense, he was so fond of.

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

“Why, the most curious of things. Did you know she has achieved Mastery over the Piety skill? Aside from the she tested for having a high rank Create Water and a lower rank Create Food.”

“Explain.” Was the one word from Madame Avery.

The doctor went on to explain the principles of the cube, all things Andrea knew. The cube directed mana from the user into the target’s Mana Channel and from their trip through the body would ascertain the strongest pathways possessed by the person under scrutiny. Upon forming pathways, most were insignificant things; very weak.

The foreign mana would sluggishly work its way through the channels with the least resistance, these channels that were used most frequently or had the higher levels of mana use present. Higher mana costs would be more prevalent in the test if the person had made use of the spell a handful of times or more, much faster than the lower mana cost spells as the channels even when used frequently did not have the capacity for larger flows of mana.

He also went on to explain that the girl had several channels carved through her body that were not used. This caught the attention of several other people in the room as it could not be so. The very nature of learning a spell would require the teacher to force mana through these channels to structure them in their students’ bodies to begin with; this was the foundation of all spells gifted through any means but birth. Even Mana-storm transmigration victims had to have their channels redrawn by a teacher, granted no teachers would really need to put in much effort in that case as the body did remember the basics of its past makeup.

All of this to say that the doctor saw this girl as a mystery, and a possible threat. Without knowing what the other spells in her arsenal were, they could not ascertain what danger she could pose if kept confined below with such minimal precautions taken.

No one noticed the elven healer hiding her expression as she studiously worked to reorganize a set of files on the desk for the third time.

“It sounds simple enough, see to it that someone oversees the draining of her mana twice daily, a rank one anything could not possibly be able to use spells if we bottom out her mana. Maybe have her alleviate the drain on my food supplies by giving hand outs to the other children.” It would be nice to have to spend less money feeding these wretched children, much nicer if it also ensured that another of her possessions was doing so at no costs to her.

Matilda Moon-Leaf

Matilda was grateful for the lack of information that her captors had on the biology of her kind. To think that her mental bindings had been so strictly confining to her at first; she had learned a lot over the years.

When Matilda was captured by the organization, all those many years ago, she had been bound by the orders given to her by the men in charge. A geas had been used to bind her actions and words to the orders given to her by her betters, in this case Andrea Avery, and to a lesser degree Stefan.

They were fools.

To think that they had never bothered to read to the specific wording of the rules enforced upon her when taken into Avery’s service as a slave. The shackles on her ankles may prohibit the violation of the terms laid out, but there was no intent binding. In other words, so long as Matilda could rationalize her actions as fitting in some way, she could then perform the action.

In this case, Matilda has woven a story of Elven afflictions, an entirely made-up sickness of her kind, no elf was even ill due to a lack of sunlight, at least not any more than a farmer may feel the sickness of being away from his home farm. It was absurd to think that her lie was so easily believed.

The girl was the third elf that had been brought before her this very same week, they had all had actual illnesses as Matilda did not believe the guards would show enough compassion to make them believe they would receive proper treatment for some feigned fatigue. No, the two to arrive first were suffering from dehydration, malnourishment, and a rather mild case of some local flu variant.

The third girl they had brought, that child, gave Matilda a pause. Matilda had been raised in a fully Elven village; she knew the signs. The girl was not fully Elven. She had the thin delicate chin, and the sharp mana-infused eyes, and then it ended, her ears were tapered and not quite the proper length even for a moon variant and her nose was far too small. Upon closer inspection she also found some other odd characteristics, sharper and wider teeth, stronger musculature in various parts of the body, and she had also spotted a very ominous scar at the small of her back.

While the scar signified nothing currently wrong with the child, Matilda knew that it had some link to a strong curse. How she knew? The feeling of malignant energies left a distinct taste in anyone of a race tied so intrinsically with nature.

Matilda had known right away that the girl was by no means ill in the usual sense. No, this girl had overdrawn and overdrawn hard. Not even a gnome could have forced mana through the channels in such a way as to ignite them in such a manner, and if they had, this would surely not have been the result. Somehow, she had drawn mana into a fully formed, but never used channel of her body and cast a spell.

While doing so was the basis of learning new spells when guided properly, she had been left clueless as to how the girl had managed it while not having any evidence as to ever using the prerequisite spells for the same spell. She could clearly see the pathways thanks to her own Detect Magic having reached the fourth rank, the outlines for other spells were plain to see when the target was unconscious, and their mana was in such a state of flux.

None of these observations would have been possible if the child were awake and well, as her natural aura would have obscured even a master mages vision to a degree. That was another surprise for Matilda, she had known the path that was used, and the spell it pertained to. She had also noticed the number of runic channels that had branched through and away from the conduits.

Somehow the girl had hit the fourth rank in Conjure Elemental Spirit, as well as Wind Walk and those were only the spells most obvious to Matilda, an untrained observer of such pathways. How could a child, an admitted transmigrated mana-storm victim been able to learn these spells at the first rank in her progression. The spells themselves would normally take a person solely dedicated to the pursuit of only one of those spells up to the elevated levels of Capable.

Never mind the fact that this girl possessed all that, Matilda had a distinct impression that the girl had had recent brushes with divinity. The scent of change in the air was extraordinarily strong whenever she drew near to the child, and now Matilda had a chance to increase her own ability to help affect that change.

She had boggled her mind for moments only before Andrea had given her the perfect excuse to communicate with the girl, she would need to first learn this girl’s name, as calling her girl and child was starting to become a bother even in her own mind. She felt as if she were transgressing on divinity somehow, surely a notion of fancy.

Matilda would take on the onerous task of aiding this girl in the draining of her mana. The use of the child’s mana to supplement the budget for food in this pit of despair was laughable, no one would enjoy consuming the mana-made food of someone who despised them. Nutritious, yes. Tasty, gods no. Matilda had tasted food created in such a way by someone who was simply in an ill mood, it was horrid. To sample the creation of someone who hated you and what you stood for at their core, they would be lucky if some of the guards did not die or wish for death later while flushing their systems.

A nearby guard jumped in place, startling Matilda as she was pondering her actions moving forward. Apparently, the man was not yet accustomed to the spirited nature of some of the local beasts that lived in the walls and swam in the current of the expose waterway. It was always a wonder how Avery had continued this operation while hiring men like them.

No matter, that very same weakness could be exploited if Matilda could find a way to aid these prisoners in an escape, it may even result in her being freed, as one benefit of the spells possessed by the girl in question was that she could cast Dispel Magic, a spell that would quite truly set her free.

Someone might ask themselves why a healer of a middling level would not just use this spell themselves to rid themselves of cursed enslavement. That was a simple thing, her Geas prevented her from casting spells that would aid her in escape.

“Slaves shall not tamper with or allow to be tampered with, any device meant to hold, imprison, bind, or ensnare the property of one’s owner without permission of the owner of a charge granted adequate permission by said owner.”

But who was to say that a charge and property were meant to be two separate entities? Also had Stefan himself not told Matilda to aid the girl in her recovery, how difficult could it be to circumvent such a soft commandment to aid one child and instruct the child in aiding Matilda to better serve that purpose after having the girl dispel the magic of her shackles, only temporarily.