Despite the woman I remembered meeting while Timmy was guiding me - and I was damn sure she was her - being not much older than me, the mind bitch turned out to be a woman in her forties, or close to that age - at least according to her looks. But in this weird world full of beasts and magic? There was no way to tell how much her sigils and weaves had shaved off her real age?

[Master Mind Mage: ₪₪ sigils]

The Lattice didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know; she had over two hundred sigils carved into her sinister array. Tall, slender, and graceful as she was - and yeah, beautiful too, if you only looked once - the twisted nature of her array reflected in her eyes - eyes whose gaze pierced me like the blade of a dagger.

I was shaking hard, couldn’t hide it, expecting her to start messing with my head any second. She didn't, though. Instead, her grin quickly twisted into disgust.

"Tsk. What's that stench?"

"Piss, madam," the young workhand piped up when everyone else kept quiet. "Been on the road for hours, no stops. Even I had to relieve myself while driving."

"Did you?" she asked, glancing around with a smirk, her eyes lingering a moment on Rutledge - my so-called master. The short, round man looked like he had seen a ghost, sweating bullets, probably cursing the workhand for flapping his mouth. "Well, then, young man, care to tell me what those two guardswomen are doing in that cage? Not that I mind. I can think of a few uses for them."

"They were protecting your runaway slave when we nabbed her, so we took ’em too."

"Oh my, it’s not every day you meet someone with such a pure mind. Thank you, young man," the bitch said, her arrogance practically oozing and testing everyone’s patience. Especially Ward's, who suddenly wasn't the one in charge. Right now, though, none of them mattered to her. She wasn't here for them. Her dark green eyes locked onto mine.

"Nostalgic don't you think, mutt?" she said, stepping closer. "Darkness, stench, and you on the other side of the bars locked in with other freaks."

While the urge to bark at her not to dare mention the other slaves from the cellar simmered in my chest, I stayed silent, fully focused on [Indomitable Will].

"That too. Back then you didn't talk much either. But don't worry, we'll have plenty of time to catch up. I honestly can't wait. We have so much to talk about - don't you think?"

"Um..." Ward cleared his throat, breaking the oppressive tension and allowing me to take a breath as the bitch's focus slipped away from me. “Can I presume it's her?”

'Please say no!' A vain wish for sure, but one never knew. Maybe - just maybe - the mind-bitch won't see me as the one she was looking for.

"Oh, she is. Good work, Bastian. Though I have to say if you’d messed this up after I basically pointed her out to you, I wouldn’t think much of you.”

"To them. You point her out to them, not to me," Ward corrected her, gesturing to Rutledge and his thugs. "Why did you choose to work with them, anyway? The Shadowbreakers could have done the job just as well, if not better."

"Isn't it more fun this way?"

“I wouldn’t say so.”

"Oh, come on, Bastian. Don’t you see? You’re curious why it’s them and not you. They’re stressing over the big job that landed in their laps, while other crews in the city are itching for a piece of it, and the city guards are just trying to keep things under control, clueless about whom to trust. You can’t tell me you are not having fun with this."

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From the look on Ward's face, one that the bitch seemed to find fun, he didn't think so. Actually, except for her, no one did. Instead, they were, most likely like me, reminded of what some likely wanted to forget and others had only heard about; mind mages and their atrocities during the Mind Wars. Captain Rayden and Lieutenant Marcus themselves had filled me in on how those bastards thrived on spreading doubt and mistrust among the people.

Ward sighed, keeping his temper in check. "I have to say that our view of today's events is not exactly aligned," he said, holding back any words he might regret. "Anyway, if it's her, she's yours, just like we agreed. Now it's your turn to hold up your end of the deal."

Treated as nothing more than a thing. Again. Despite my irritation with it and the dread coursing through my body sapping my strength, I had to hold back from speaking and drawing attention back to myself.

"Oh, don't worry, Bastian. We will hold up to it. A nice mansion and the Lord title are waiting for you in Arid. The King doesn't care if you turn your Shadowbreakers into a knight order either - well, the ones you have left."

Of course, money was still involved. Nevertheless, it was just a ruse to hide the real reason for my kidnapping. Not just an assumption, as it turns out.

"And the thing?" Ward asked, jaw tight, definitely meaning the core.

"When it’s ready. Told you that already, didn’t I? We need to get a look at the woman first. Speaking of…" She shifted her gaze to Rutledge. "Mind getting her out of the cage? I got a little present for her."

'A present for me?' That sounded bad - real bad. No matter what I came up with, it always ended up a nightmare for me.

"You - stay put!" ordered my so-called master as hauled himself onto and approached the cage. "And you two. Don’t even think about it; it's pointless."

He may have been trying to sound confident, but the stench of fear was all over him. His hands were shaking so much that he almost dropped the key trying to get the cage open.

"I'm ordering you, wench. Get out of the wagon!" he spat, hiding his own incompetence behind all that anger. Back on Earth, I would have laughed in his face. But that damn collar around my neck was forcing me to obey. Of course, getting up, I couldn't help but glance at Elira and Vara, hoping for any sign of what to do.

'Should I resist? What about Harcon?! Why isn't he doing anything?!'

They just stared back, clueless and helpless, looking as lost for what to do as I was.

"Did you make friends?" the mind-bitch sneered, watching me hop down from the wagon. "Guess those two might end up being more fun than I thought."

“Move it!” The fat bastard shoved me the second I hit the ground and stopped. If he actually thought I would go beyond his orders like an obedient slave and walked up to that mind bitch without him telling me to, he had to be an idiot. I wasn’t some masochist begging to have my brain - or my guts - torn apart.

"You know, it's strangely fortuitous how this one reminds me of your former master, don't you think?" The bitch asked playfully, watching me stop a couple of paces in front of her, after half a dozen nudges and commands from the bastard. Her remark about Rutledge, though? It threw me off just as much as the bastard himself. 'She chose him for the job because he reminded her of Dungreen? How?' Rutledge was shorter than the deranged asshole and also much fatter. The only things they had in common were no morals and the stupidity to work for mind mages.

"I see you noticed the resemblance. Do you appreciate it? Well, I'll find out later. Not the gift I was talking about, though." She smirked, waving the three shackles in front of me, her grin spreading wide. "Color me surprised when I found these on the wall over there. Remember?"

They were the same shackles she had put on me herself in Dungreen's workshop, the three that Mr. Scoresby had taken off me.

With the memory of them on my hand and feet gnawing at me, I followed her finger through the familiar inn ruins to one of the worn, mossy walls nearby. Sure enough, there it was, the wall where I had actually thoughtlessly put them away - thinking I would never see these accursed things again.

'She did find them. These were really the ones!'

The beast roared, urging me to pounce - this was the moment! Every instinct screamed for blood, yet a whisper of doubt slipped past my defenses. ‘Had she found the collar too?' No, impossible. Even I had no clue where I had tossed the damn thing.