As the light dimmed and the dust settled, the deep calm that followed lasted only a couple seconds before footsteps and Auro’s head appeared in the doorframe behind me.
“So you really mastered it then? In only a few days?”
I closed my eyes and prepared myself for the coming headache. My wildest wishes had been that my casting would be hidden in the chaos, but it seems that my light was a bit too bright to be smothered.
“Is Fredrick alright?” I didn’t turn around, instead picking up one of the chunks of the soulstone. The glyphs looked suspiciously dwarven to my eyes, when the books had said they’d be some dialect of something called ‘abyssal-script’.
“He’s okay.” She waved his well being away. “How did you do it? Was four days ago really the first time you’ve picked up a magic book?”
It really hadn’t taken long for the dangerous questions to start, had it? In fact, it looked to me like she was asking questions that were a little too dangerous.
Did she know I was lying already? The possibility of her being like me was getting likelier and likelier in my mind.
“I’m just a quick learner.”
“But apparently not a smart one.”
Frederick leaned around the corner, looked more angry than hurt. It was abundantly clear that he knew just from his posture.
“By the Star, Saphry!” He swore. “You just had to do it, didn’t you? Even after Andril warned you. And you too Auro! You’ll be executed before the week is done at this rate!”
Well, this wasn’t how I’d hoped it would start. I don’t think I’ve actually seen Fredrick angry before.
“Those thaumaturgies saved our lives, Frederick.” I said. “Shouldn’t you be thankful we had them?”
“In a fight best avoided. Or solved with greater planning.” He shook his head. “Damn it, you’re going to make everything so difficult…”
“A soulstone lies broken.” Auro noted. “Who cares how it was done?”
“A particularly strange soulstone at that.” I added.
“I don’t think you two quite understand. What you’ve done is illegal.” He said. “It’s treason, even.”
“Treason? For ridding Verol of a demon?” I scoffed. “What’s the point of magic existing if not to help our country?”
Gideon had naturally assumed while we had waited over the last few days that something like this would happen, and had spent much of the downtime preparing excuses for it. Knowing my luck I hadn’t argued, and together we’d crafted a few excuses we thought might work against Fredrick, and a few more for Andril in the throes of deep paranoia. Most of these relied on some kind of patriotic angle, which I now had to hope would redirect his anger towards something more productive.
“It does help our country.” Fredrick affixed me with a glare while Auro stepped away to watch. “Just not in the hands of the landed gentry. Thaumaturgy is a power of the Lmeri, not of power hungry nobles.”
“Am I just a power hungry noble to you?” I asked. “I literally just used it to banish a demon in the middle of the city. And neither Auro nor I even inherit!”
Well, not unless Saphry’s brother Corto died, but it wouldn’t help my case to point that out.
“She’s right, Minuan law doesn’t allow...” Auro retreated after a glare from Fredrick.
“It doesn’t matter what you use it for.” Fredrick said. “The fact remains that what you’ve done is treason.”
“But it does matter.” I continued. “Laws are not always just, and their spirit is the important part. And I’m of the opinion that the ‘spirit’ of this law could be quaintly shortened to ‘don’t obliterate the royal palace with a fireball’ or ‘don’t invade your neighbours with an army of golems’. Knowing that, are we really doing anything wrong? Wouldn’t letting demons and assassins run rampant be more treasonous?”
Instead of bowing to my unbreakable logic however, Fredrick’s brow furrowed even deeper.
“I would be careful, if I were you.” Fredrick said slowly. “You not only question the king’s law, but also his judgement. Who are you, to know his intent more than what he has written?”
Hmm, we might’ve forgotten about how important the whole ‘divine authority’ thing was. Gideon thought. Plan two?
And this right here was why I hated Britain. Other than the British, of course. Back in America we had a pretty solid human right called ‘free speech’, and monarchies tended towards pretty much the exact opposite of that.
Though, really, was something like ‘the spirit of the law’ really such a hair raising idea? There was an entire faction in the senate that apparently opposed the king, so why would something as tame as that provoke such a reaction?
“Then how about this?” I crossed my arms under my chest. “We just saved your life, right? And all for the sake of finding out who was trying to assassinate the second prince, right?”
Auro blinked in confusion as I mentioned the reason Fredrick was here, but I kept my focus on the swordsman. She could be brought up to speed later, as I was pretty sure Fredrick was planning on recruiting her for our little party anyway.
“You came here to find some lost books.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“But once I heard that house was on your list, that became part of my goal too.” I waved dismissively. “So really we were all working to apprehend a much bigger threat to Verol than a couple noble girls learning a party trick or two. Wouldn’t it do more harm than good to punish us for this now?”
Of course, the books were a much larger reason for why I decided to do this little raid, but what was important right now was that I didn’t get arrested. Spending a few years in a feudal dungeon didn’t sound very fun at all. If I didn’t just get executed that is.
“I suppose it would be unchivalrous to turn you in now…” He closed his eyes, obviously torn. “...but you two still knowingly broke the law.”
“And yet you need me for that upcoming plan, right?” I nudged his shoulder. “And I’m willing to bet that Auro’d be pretty helpful as well.”
“That’s… true enough.” He rubbed his head. “Still.”
“And we’re friends, right?” I leaned against him, putting on my best smile. “I mean, we’ve been through so much already!”
Plan two: Pathos.
The basic idea was to abandon logical argument and try to distract him with blinding sentiment. Hopefully, by being reminded of all we went through, he’d be inclined to let this little thing slide. Perhaps it could all be solved by guilt tripping him with friendship and acting cute.
Exploitative? Just don’t think about it!
“This could cause so many problems.” He stepped away from me, looking to the side. “What if you got arrested?”
And just like that, it had turned from ‘you’ll be executed!’ to ‘what if?’.
“Come on, Fred!” I looked up at him, tilting my head a touch to the side. “It’s not like we’d be using it when it’s not necessary.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Auro nodding furiously behind me.
“The mere fact that you know it is the biggest one.”
How stubborn could you be? For God’s sake, even I had a limit before I embarrassed myself…
“And we’ll only use it in self-defence, of course.” I nudged him a little harder. “I mean, Andril is apparently allowed to use it after all, why not his friends?”
Finally, he threw his hands up.
“Fine. But only if you promise not to use it unless it is incredibly necessary.” He gave me a hard look. “And you two owe me one.”
“You’ll have to open a bank.” I said with a smile. “At the rate this is going.”
…
“So that’s why you were at the Maverick’s manor.” Auro nodded to herself, putting together all the pieces in her mind. “I almost thought you were involved in some weird cult.”
We each sifted through bins, crates, and shelves around the room, searching for the books and anything suspicious. Over the last few minutes, Fredrick and I had explained the search for the assassins who had attacked us that fateful day, though I left the recruiting to Fredrick.
“Indeed.” Fredrick said. “So will you join us? I hate to say it, but Saphry was right when she said you could help.”
How did you know that, anyway? Gideon sat on the floor beside me, pawing through piles on his own. I don’t remember him telling you anything about the upcoming mission.
“It was a wild guess.” I whispered. “Well, not wild. If Andril thinks he could use me, he probably just needs bodies, not any special skills.”
Auro faltered.
“What do you mean by help?” Her eyes bored into the ground. “I can’t exactly fight or sneak like Saphry can.”
“That’s actually a fairly low bar.” I snapped my head back at him at his insult, but he didn’t bother matching my glare. “But it’s nothing of the sort. It’s a social duty. If anything you’re more fit than Saphry.”
I turned back to my bookshelf, not wanting to respond to more bait. The more interesting part of that was him calling it a ‘social duty’. They didn’t want me talking to randos and trying to squeeze information out of them, did they? I mean, I figured I was as social a person as any other guy, but even doing the whole cute shtick with someone I knew was embarrassing enough, let alone with people I didn’t. I’d fished for information before of course (I would be a garbage hero otherwise!) but somehow the thought of doing it as the other gender brought butterflies to my stomach.
There were different cliches involved, after all, and not the ones I would be comfortable with.
“Then I’ll do it..” A fire burned in Auro’s eyes, sending a chill down my spine. “If it’s to avenge Feanin, I’ll do it.”
Fredrick nodded solemnly.
“Perfect.”
I suddenly remembered something as I watched the little exchange, and swiped the shattered soulstone off the floor where it had lain.
“Speaking of our plot.” I threw one of the chunks over to Fredrick, who caught it on reflex. “What do you think of that? Those don’t look anything like the pictures in the banishment textbook.”
Fredrick had only glanced over it before his eyebrows rose in surprise.
“These are Dwer runes.” He said as he squinted at the rough text. “Enchantments at that.”
Enchantments? That reminded me a whole lot of a certain golem army back on Earth, and I felt a lump form in the back of my throat.
“Enchantments?” Auro asked. “What kind?”
Fredrick turned it over in his hand.
“Augmentations mostly, as well as…” He nodded. “Yes. There’s a binding one here too.”
“So that means…?” Auro asked.
“The demon was bound here artificially.” I said grimly. “Wasn’t it?”
In the textbook, the passages on demonic origins had mentioned that demons normally manifested in abandoned places, supposedly placed by some deific satan-like figure known only as Cealus, a mythical gryphon. It hadn’t even bothered to mention something like this.
Auro almost laughed, only faltering when she glanced at Fredrick’s face, which only served to confirm my theory.
“But.” Auro looked between us in horror. “It can’t be, can it? Who would willingly bind a demon?”
“I can’t say for sure.” Fredrick admitted. “But I’ve never heard of the Gryphon conjuring his ilk in the Dwer script.”
“Do you think the Temoif placed it here?” I asked. “Why in hell would they do that?”
What possible use could they find out of booby-trapping a random house? It wasn’t like there was anything important here, unless these library books counted. Even then, if these books were really that important wouldn’t they just take them to somewhere actually guarded? Why would they just leave them in a decaying house inhabited by a floating thought crime?
“I’m not sure, but it’s definitely suspicious.” He looked around at the piles of books. “Nothing here really looks valuable enough for something like this.”
“Are you two crazy?” Auro cried. “You’re talking about somebody summoning an actual demon! There must be some other explanation!”
“Could it be the transmu-”
“That’s a useless art.” Fredrick cut me off. “I doubt they even realised they had those tomes.”
Maybe if you didn’t need any lemons. For me and Gideon it was top priority!
“Demon summoning.” Auro repeated, staring at us in disbelief. “Maybe I made a mistake saying I’d help…”
“No backsies.” I said. “And say we assume this is the Temoif. What kind of political strategy includes assassination, demon summoning, and war? They’re not trying to destroy the country, are they?”
There were a few other things about Verol that I didn’t mention either, like the King’s raid on the library, something which had been surprisingly well covered up by ‘The White Witch Heist’ as the newspapers had taken to calling it. Something suspicious was definitely happening here, but all the pieces seemed to have so little relevance to each other it kind of hurt to think about.
“It sure seems like it.” Fredrick continued to inspect the stone. “We should probably take this to the paladins. I’m sure they’d, or rather Hans would, be happy to hear about it.”
“You should probably do that.” I met Auro’s eyes and found agreement there. “Hans wouldn’t be too happy to hear that we did this. It’d be a bad idea even if I wasn’t supposed to be locked in my room.”
“Marcolo really is too restrictive.” Auro agreed.
“Did you two already talk to him?” Fredrick shook his head. “And I’m betting he said something like ‘I wouldn’t even fight that thing without help!’?”
“[Bingo].”
“Exactly!”
How’d he guess…?
“Why is every girl I meet a lunatic…” Fredrick murmured. “Not one lady among them.”
A little harsh. I’m sure Saphry would’ve been a perfect lady, or something like that at least, if I hadn’t come around. The memory-dreams certainly seemed to imply it. Who knows? Maybe she would’ve hit it off…
I clapped my palms over my cheeks to clear my thoughts and went back to my search, only to stop a few seconds later when I read the titles in front of me.
“I found them!” I thrust the first book into the air in triumph. “Thank God, they’re actually here!”