“Be careful,” Merry said, double-checking the satchel and belt bag she gave Cyg. She was about to put an engraving pen inside when she found he had already prepared one.
“Thanks, I’ll be fine,” he replied.
“Do you know everything on the list?”
“Yup, I’ve seen it all before.”
“Great. I understand if you want to do some visiting while you’re there, but please don’t return too late. I wouldn’t want you to get lost in the forest.”
He nodded as he went out the door. “I’m not a fan of walking through the wilderness in the dark either,” he said, even though he almost arrived in such a manner. With a quick goodbye, Cyg left.
It felt bizarre, being able to walk out without being stopped. Even though he had her approval, he was full of anxiousness when crossing the barrier. Very easily, he could picture her flying after him, but it never happened, of course.
He went to town first—Murkwell was encircled by old stone walls, and the only two entrances were the north and southwest gates. The guards didn’t bat an eye at Cyg as he went inside, no one recognizing him. Inside, the cobblestone roads, buildings of wood and stone, and carriages mingling with the flow of people welcomed him back.
It was almost the afternoon, and merchants were dropping and picking up goods. The market was as busy as ever with vibrant fabrics, exotic spices, and inscrutable curios all on sale, goods from overseas lands that many had never even heard of.
Cyg had no intention of seeing his loved ones. This loop was a dead end, and though he wanted to meet them again, it seemed appropriate to delay it all until this witch business was over. A thousand excuses came to mind, but he knew he was just scared. He didn’t want to do it alone. So, he purchased everything and left town, almost as if hurrying to get away. A small stop had to come first—to retrieve the crude hook he used to scale a mansion wall, miraculously still there in the bushes, uncovered after half an hour’s search. Cyg then turned south, toward his true destination.
The open plains were soon filled with sparse trees, a far more open space than the forest Merry resided in. A well-maintained road connected Murkwell to a port town, and a short walk on it would reveal a much smaller dirt path pointing eastward. This one, everyone knew, led to the “tower”.
There was no fence, no wall, nothing of that sort. Instead, there was a clearing where the ground was flattened and a little garden surrounded a five-storey house. It was certainly more vertical than horizontal, but it wasn’t so tall that it was like some structure out of a fable. It was of flat stone and timber, cleanly constructed with a few simple windows, adorned with a little balcony up at the very top, leading from what appeared to be an observatory.
Cyg walked past the mailbox, stopped before the steps, and lowered the fruits of his shopping trip.
Front door?
Locked, and probably booby-trapped. In his childhood house, the family lined all entrances, including the windows, with runes that served as alarms. The baron used to have his mansion secured, but it was too expensive to maintain given the mana usage. Heaven knows what an archmage would have set.
With his Aspect, Cyg tried to sense what was around. Under the house, in the foundations, was a single large emanating source, acting to power every rune if needed. He was familiar with this sort of work—cheap, maintainable mechanical triggers that activated the magical parts, constructed in a modular, centralized system.
He looked up at the balcony, shielding his eyes from the sun with a hand. There was a door up there, and perhaps that would be less guarded. That is why one should always bring a hook to such activities.
Cyg swung the mangled piece of iron in circles a few times, and when he was comfortable enough, he threw it. He missed the first, second, and third time, but on the fourth it snagged on the wooden railing. The thief then used a stone to test if there were any traps built into the walls, found it safe, and made a silent prayer that this would work out. He planted one foot and sighed in relief when nothing happened.
Bit by bit, he scaled the structure, finding the wooden beams and cuts of stone to be excellent footholds. When his head reached the edge of the balcony, he squinted his eyes to check for anything off. There was no handle on the outside but there was a metal contact where the door touched the floor—an old-fashioned dead man’s switch. One half of the runes blocked out the other when aligned, the interior-side handle disabled it until the system reset.
If that was there, then there’s no telling what Cyg couldn’t see. Instead, he rappelled down next to the third-floor window. Usually he had his toolkit, but the engraving pen was much better. He didn’t need a bunch of parchment and adhesives when he could create his own hijacking circuit on the wall, encircling the frame. Then, he increased the heat and pushed the pen against the glass.
It began melting the surface, and the entire frame powered up, but all the mana was vacuumed into the new runes, buying him time. He drew circles until he felt it was thin enough, and with his foot, he used his weight to kick a hole. Examining the flow of mana, he drilled into the lines that carried the power, cutting the circle off entirely. Unlocking it from the inside and entering after that was trivial.
Inside was the archmage’s bedroom. It spanned the entire floor, furnished with a bed, a bath, a few shelves, a wardrobe, and a little desk with a lamp over it. A cloak hung over a rack, the sigil of a moon sitting inside of a sun glinting with the light.
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“A court mage...? Seriously?” Cyg mumbled. Probably retired, he reasoned, because no one in town had ever caught wind of it.
Uneven surfaces, seams and gaps, discoloration, smells, tripwires... there was nothing immediate. He made his way across the room to the stairs that led up and down, encountering not a single trap as he passed by a workshop, a library, and the living room with a kitchen in the nook. There wasn’t much of immediate use there, but there was one place left.
On the highest floor was an observatory with a tiled roof and a slanted window, designed for the large telescope under it. The rest of the room was a complete mess; across two desks and four shelves, papers and books were strewn everywhere. Without even needing to take a step past the stairs, he picked up some scribbled notes. Instantly, he knew what it was—part of the circle’s maddening obfuscation that Alicia brought up before.
Excited, he dug through the papers, scanning and discarding them sheet after sheet. Nothing was in order, and there was hardly any reason for where everything was. Documentation, notes, sketches—they were all mixed together as if a storm passed through.
“I should get a new canary...”
“The court asked what would happen if I left the destination blank. Genius? Test later.”
“Moved half of the mythril underground. DO NOT MISPLACE.”
“Beacon exists prior to date of establishing test circle. Travel is practically impossible, but theoretically...?”
There were plenty of scrolls too. They were overwhelmingly filled with measurements for various experiments, ranging from mana consumption to circle stability. One of the results, in particular, stopped Cyg.
“ONE YEAR- SIX MONTHS: Vessel unsustainable.”
“SIX MONTHS-ONE MONTH: Beacon still unstable, requires constant high expenditure, vessel damage severe.”
“ONE MONTH: Stable, visible, I can cycle this amount safely, OK.”
“ONE WEEK: No improvements, no reason to shorten time further.”
“ONE SECOND: Same strain on soul as one month, pointless.”
“NULL: Assistant disappeared, did not return—swift anchor disconnection and presumably unable to navigate back to the beacon. Likely my fault.”
And on the bottom of that log was a simple conclusion: “Can be used to strand someone at Sea?”
Fix the circle. Target the witch.
His heart raced. He tossed the log to the side and rummaged through the rest as fast as he could. Somewhere in this room, the archmage must have put down the actual schematics of the inner workings of the circle. Often he would find something that seemed to be it, but it would just be some drafts of parts he wasn’t concerned with.
The sun spilling through the windows told him he was taking too long, and he’d gone through everything that was in the open. That only left what was locked up in the desks and cabinets. Gritting his teeth, he toppled over one of them, seeing no runes on the floor. To be extra safe, he ran downstairs and returned with a broom, attaching to the handle the engraving pen. At what should be a safe distance, he carved a hole from the bottom up.
Inside were thick stacks of papers bound by twine documenting the process of marking and anchoring space through the Outer Sea—fascinating read, but he needed to know the main points, not parse an entire textbook. He flipped to the end and worked his way back, scanning the awful handwriting.
“Location matters only to a certain extent. Past that, the efficacy is as good as none.”
“I wish I could properly judge the mental state of my little chirping friend, but I can’t subject anyone else to this. He appears to be the same, but I cannot prove it.”
“For readability’s sake, I moved all details regarding ‘destination’ to a single spot near the edge. When removed, it will default to initial records of when someone’s soul is sampled.”
What about time? Was it just as simple as setting it to zero? Did they have to erase it altogether?
Cyg toppled over a drawer and repeated the process. Things were going smoothly, so much so that in his hurry he barely saw what happened. As soon as the pen made a hole through, the gas inside mixed with the air, and the space in front of him surged with mana. He leapt back in that fraction of a second, but it triggered too quickly. Everything near the drawer was carved out of the room—including his arm.
Blood splattered out from the stump attached to his left elbow, and as his chest pounded more shot out. He could sense his missing limb was sent underground before all traces of his mana were extinguished.
“S-shit...!” he hissed, scrambling back up. It was a miracle he survived, but didn’t have Alicia nearby for aid. “Shit, shit! What am I supposed to do...?”
He ran downstairs to the bedroom and grabbed a shirt from the wardrobe, wrapping it around his upper arm and tying it with his teeth. It wasn’t tight enough, so he did it again. This time, it slowed to a trickle, but it just wouldn’t stop. The adrenaline wasn’t enough, and the pain started creeping in.
Cyg had to go. Now.
He went to the window and climbed half out, only to linger because he only had a single hand to descend with. Having never prepared for such a situation, the best Cyg could come up with was wrapping the rope around his good arm. His body weight immediately dug into him but his grip kept him stable, allowing him to try and wrap it around his foot next. He swung down to the third story, and the haphazard setup sent him tumbling down against the wall. Blindly, Cyg reached out and managed to reset his momentum before hitting the ground.
The thief, groaning, picked himself and his belongings up. All he had to do was make it back now. Over and over, he reassured himself as he jogged up the road. A trail of red marked his footfalls, and he used the strap of the satchel to try and cut off the flow even further. He hurried and hurried and hurried, but Merry’s domain was so, so far away.
He was already tired when he passed the town, and by the time he made it to the edges of the forest, he couldn’t run at all, more exhausted than when he was poisoned. The sun was starting to set without a single lantern in sight. All he could do was worry. He was scared of seeing Merry’s reaction, of failing Alicia and leaving her alone, of dying out here in such a pathetic manner.
Worst of all, he couldn’t help but find some comfort in succumbing. It could all end here, and he would never again have to experience dying to Merry or Bassy ever again. Or worry about what would happen after. No need to sneak around, steal scraps, or huddle for warmth during the winter. Briefly, he imagined what would life be like if he were any other person in this world, like a merchant’s son or a sailor.
Cyg realized this was what Alicia must have felt back then, and what his words truly meant. It wasn’t some logical argument that convinced her: he had offered her an unrelinquishable reason to survive—for their fates to be intertwined. If they could not live for themselves, then maybe they can for someone else, a mere excuse.
And thanks to that, Cyg was able to force his cold, weary limbs one after the other through the threshold, where he collapsed on the spot.
— ! —
Only to be awoken in bed by Merry hoisting him upright by his collar. She scowled while Alicia stood behind her, fretting.
The witch asked, “What have you done?”