Chapter 20: Safe

Trip awoke in a place he had never been before. The room was fairly small. It had stone walls and it looked generally very cultured. The bed looked elegant, with a beautiful wooden design. There was an armchair in the corner of the room, which gave the room a very homely feel. Trip’s eyes scanned the rest of the room, and he saw a mirror. For one of the first times of his life Trip looked at himself. He never thought about how he looked, he knew that he was a very cute child, but what did he actually look like? He remembered his mother and saw how significance her appearance was in his mind, just thinking of her calmed his mind and made him feel safer. Thinking of this he could only think of whom his father was, what did he look like? When Trip looked in the mirror he saw a child. He saw that he was fairly tall; he had white hair, pale white skin, and blue eyes. Eyes just like his mother. Just looking into his own eyes he felt himself tearing up. He felt incredibly lonely, and yet he felt comfortable that his parents lived on within him. Because of his white hair he imagined that his father also had white hair. He had seen his mother and from that he could see what she passed onto him, looking at what didn’t look like his mother he could only assume came from his father. This made him feel much closer to his family than he had ever felt before.

As Trip was smiling and crying at the same time while looking in the mirror Alex walked in, along with two other people. Trip turned around to see them and immediately ran to hug Alex. He had been worried that Alex had not come away from the situation safely, but now that he saw him safe he felt much more comfortable.

Trip then turned his eyes to the other people. There was a woman and a man. Their faces were covered so he could not see what they looked like, but the man was lean and muscular and the woman was very curvaceous.

Trip assumed that these two were their saviours so he respectfully bowed towards them and said “Thank you very much for saving Alex and I.”

The two said nothing, but Alex whispered a slight explanation to Trip “They’re the actual last two spies in the area, they found us after you had your crazy awakening thing. I didn’t tell them anything so don’t worry.”

Before Trip could respond or even ask a question the woman spy grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the room. Even though he was quickly being dragged across the hall by the woman he still had time to appreciate the majestic building that they were in. Even though he could only see a small part of it from the inside he saw that it was definitely a very high class place. The floors had luxurious carpet and the walls were all decorated with paintings. The windows were very large and had beautiful red curtains.

After a couple of seconds of admiring the building Trip was dragged into a dark room. After a minute the woman had managed to light several candles to illuminate the room. The room was very plain. Simple stone floor and white walls. There was a single chair in the middle of the room, which Trip had to sit on.

Trip looked nervously towards the female spy and waited for her to do something. After a minute the woman took of her mask, revealing a beautiful and seductive face. Her dark red lips and black eyeliner made her look seductive and slightly terrifying at the same time. Luckily Trip was only a child; otherwise he would have been completely entranced by this lady.

She looked at Trip as she walked forward until she stood right in front of Trip. After another couple seconds her beautiful lips parted as a sweet and seductive voice spoke “Hello Trip. I was wondering if you were willing to tell me what exactly happened last night.”

Even though the words she said weren’t very threatening Trip felt a strange pressure emanating from her gaze. Her dark green eyes looked into Trip’s blue eyes made him feel as if he could break at any seconds. From the pressure that was coming from her Trip immediately knew that she was a mage, and that she was much more powerful than him.

Realising it would be bad to not answer Trip decided to lie to her instead. He said “I don’t really know what happened, I remember Alex was about to get his throat slit and then I blacked out. The next thing I knew I woke up here.”

The beautiful woman’s nose shrivelled as she was clearly dissatisfied by the answer. Under her breath she muttered “There might 

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have been a very powerful mage that came close to this area and helped the kids…”

Trip sighed in relief as the woman let him out of the room. He realised that as a child most people believed him, this was because not many children would be able to withstand the pressure of a professional questioning them, so they tended to not pry any further.

Trip was sent into the garden, where he lined up next to Alex, awaiting further instruction from the spies. Trip looked around at the garden and was surprised that there was a place so beautiful in East Hrior. There were a several fountains, a strange maze made out of bushes, and of course many beautiful plants and flowers everywhere one could look.

Eventually the man walked into the garden. He stood in front of them as he took off his mask. He looked fairly ordinary, with brown hair and brown eyes, however one of his eyes was closed and the eyelid was completely scratched with horrible scars. This made him look rather scary. Trip and Alex were not scared though; appearance did not scare them anymore, what truly scared them at this point was the pressure that powerful beings emanated, but this man had no such pressure so this man was not scary to them.

After the man sized up the two he began to speak. Trip and Alex winced as the man’s hoarse and low voice broke any peace that there initially was in the garden. The man said thus “Hello Trip and Alex, I hope you have been enjoying your stay here so far, but unfortunately you have not provided with the information that we had hoped you would provide for us, so it seems that we must request of you to leave this manor at once. We have no time for worthless freeloaders.”

There was a strong sense of anger in the man’s voice, which Trip did not really understand, it wasn’t as if they were given some sort of special service here for free, he had only had one night of sleep here and then was immediately questioned. However Trip knew that it would be stupid to speak of such things; they did save them after all.

The two of them were escorted out of the manor. However just before Trip left the woman had some final words for him.

“You are very interesting. If you ever have any trouble anywhere just mention just show this card.” She said as she handed a purple card to Trip

Trip respectfully thanked her, but he was confused about a couple things. The card was simply purple with a tiny emblem on the top right corner, which looked like a Y encased by an elegant circle. It was very strange, however what was even stranger was why the woman had given him a supposedly very powerful card. Not only had he not told her anything that could help her, she hadn’t expressed any interest in him before this moment. It was such a cryptic action that Trip didn’t know what to make of it.

Trip decided to not concern himself with such menial matters. Alex and he walked off into the forest, where they decided to talk about what they were going to do next.

When they sat down Trip immediately told Alex about everything that had happened. After Alex heard this then it seemed the action that they would take was simple. They would train until Trip had reached mastered the light magic that he was able to learn at the moment, mastered intermediate level water magic, and until Alex had mastered elementary level fire magic. This would probably take a while, but it was better that to be rash and immediately start searching for Trip’s uncle.

They were both very tired so they decided to go to sleep in the comfort of the forest. Right before Trip fell asleep he heard a voice inside his head. After a second he noticed it was Grelin who was shouting “Trip! Hello!?”

Trip immediately responded “Grelin! Where have you been the past few days?”

Grelin voice was clearly filled with terror as he said “For the last few days I felt that I was deeply supressed by an incredibly powerful magic, it was unlike anything I had ever felt before.”

Trip thought about it for a minute and imagined that the message from his mother must have suppressed Grelin, but then why would Grelin have been supressed for several days, when his mother had only appeared for a couple of minutes.

After explaining everything that happened to Grelin Trip went to sleep. It was time for a new chapter in his life, he would find his uncle, become powerful and find an answer for all the questions he had.