Lord Blackwood cautiously entered the once familiar office. He had been here many times, but that was when Mage-adept Cranston had been the court mage. Fondly, Blackwood recalled his interactions with the former court mage. That man may have been an idiot, but he had known how to play the game. He had always been available for a favor, and his requests were always simple. Lord Blackwood looked around the room, noticing the changes. Everything was different now, even the rugs have been replaced. While he surveyed the room, he locked eyes with the man currently behind the desk. Lord Blackwood felt a chill as he remembered that it was this man who had killed Cranston in a mage-duel.

Offering a shallow bow, he said, “Arch-mage Jennings, I’ve been told that I may be able to offer some service to you?” Lord Blackwood stood up straight, and plastered a polite and endearing smile on his face. He had spent countless hours crafting the persona of a helpful gentleman, and he was very good at it.

The arch-mage’s cold eyes held Lord Blackwood in place, and the man snorted in response to the greeting. Jennings raised his hand, and offered him a chair while saying, “Take a seat, Lord Blackwood. We have a great deal to talk about.”

With a polite nod, Blackwood took the offered chair, and replied, “I’m eager to be of service, arch-mage.”

Jennings face was stoic as he said, “I’m sure you are. Now I’d first like to caution you from doing anything drastic. Sometimes people don’t think things through, and I’d hate to have to do something drastic in response.”

At this point, Lord Blackwood was almost positive that the arch-mage knew of his plot to kill Lord Walker, yet he knew better than admit to anything, so he cocked his head to the side and looked at the arch-mage as if he had no idea what the man was getting at. “I’m sure I’ll be able to handle whatever issue you are dealing with. How about you start by telling me about your problem. I promise to do everything in my power to help you,” he said with the utmost sincerity.

Arch-mage Jennings huffed in annoyance, and replied, “Look here Blackwood, I don’t have time for these stupid games. But you’re right about one thing, I should start at the beginning. I want to know when you started sleeping with Deidre Cosgrave.” The arch-mage’s voice was full of repressed rage, while his face betrayed nothing.

Out of all the questions that Lord Blackwood was mentally preparing to answer, ‘when did he first sleep with Deidre Cosgrave’ wasn’t even on the list. Lord Blackwood stuttered in shock, “Uh…. What? How did you…? I didn’t…. We haven’t…”

Arch-mage Jennings waved his hand in dismissal of the man’s evasions, and said, “I know for a fact that you have been sleeping with her. What I want to know is WHEN the affair started, and the circumstances which led to the affair. I’m trying to understand how I missed it.”

Lord Blackwood closed his mouth and stared at the ancient mage. Even though Jennings was probably over 700, the man still looked youthful. As he stared into those cold eyes, he realized that the man already knew enough to have him executed. It was now just a matter of the details.

With a sigh, Blackwood slumped in his chair. Offering the arch-mage a slight smirk, he said, “I thought I had been so careful. It was a mistake. Almost a week ago, after her brother was banished, I saw her crying. All of her plans were failing, and her caretaker had just withdrawn her support. The poor girl was worried about her brother, and she didn’t know what to do. She looked just like her mother did all those years ago, surrounded by enemies while trying to keep it together. I wanted to help, so I took her somewhere private where we wouldn’t be seen by the staff.” His eyes glossed over at the memory, and he continued, “We talked for hours. It had been a while since we had some time to catch up. She has grown into a remarkable young woman. We shared a few glasses of dwarven whiskey, and one thing led to another and we -”

Arch-mage Jennings’ eyebrows shot up as he interrupted, “Where in the hells did you get dwarven whiskey in Dorchester?”

Confused, Lord Blackwood came out of his memory and refocused on the arch-mage. He replied, “Lord Bevin gave me a few bottles when he was trying to garner support for the early evacuation of the city. He has always been a good friend, and I offered what support I could for his plot. Why does it matter?”

Jennings frowned in thought, and said, “So you two got drunk and had sex. I’m assuming you both wanted to keep it secret, as I can’t imagine either of you wanted her mother to find out. Consorts are usually executed for things like this.”

Nodding, Lord Blackwood replied, “Yes. We both knew that it was a mistake. It only happened the one time. We were behind a privacy ward, and I made sure there was no chance of conception. Both of us agreed to put it behind us, and move on. How did you find out anyway?”

Arch-mage Jennings waved away the question, and instead asked, “So after that, you agreed to be part of her plan to kill Lord Walker?”

Surprised at the change of subject, Lord Blackwood asked, “Why does that matter?”

Some anger leaked into his voice, as Arch-mage Jennings said, “I want to know your thought process. When exactly did you decide to aid her in the plot to kill Lord Walker? Answer the question.”

Shrugging, Lord Blackwood replied, “Well, at first I was just going to put her in touch with a fixer I know who works out of gate 15, while doing my best to discourage her. But considering our… situation… I decided to help her out. Her plan wasn’t terrible, and I happened to know a few hunter teams who would be capable of doing the job. It all just kinda happened. A very capable team was available, and I already had several contacts involved in the training program. I even had a mage approach me looking for some side-work. It didn’t take much effort at all. It was as if, the plan came together on its own. One of my sons even reached out to me, asking me for a favor. It just so happened that he was on the command team for the training facility where Lord Walker was stationed. He was hesitant to help, but I persuaded him. It all just worked out.”

Arch-mage Jennings was nodding along with a thoughtful look on his face. Quietly, he muttered, “Almost as if it were fate, huh?”

Suddenly, the door to Jennings’ office burst open, and Mage-adept Newbanks walked in unannounced. For once, her face showed some emotion. She looked worried.

“Why aren’t you responding to your pings and connection requests?” she said quickly.

Surprised to see her so flustered, Jennings responded, “I didn’t want to be bothered for the moment. Why? What’s happened?”

“The mage council lost their connection to Lord Walker. And now no one can find him,” she said, while frowning.

Jennings’ opened up his senses, and immediately had to start swatting away connection requests. Reaching out, he quickly located Nero’s essence trail and hurled his mind through the ether. But when he reached the end of the trail, he only saw an empty clearing that nature was in the process of reclaiming. There had been a fight, and he could see some monster remains that hadn’t fully dispersed. Yet, there were no signs of Nero, his trail ended there.

Spreading out his field, he tried to locate the essence tag he had put on the young man. He could tell it still existed, but he could only get a directional heading. It would take some effort to find him, as he could no longer surf the young man’s essence trail.

Looking at the two curious people in the room, he said, “Well. That’s an interesting development.”

Jennings now had a decision to make. He could reach out and probably find the young man, but the entire city would notice his psychic presence. The feeling of pressure would probably cause mass panic, and most likely clog the emergency response teams with pings questioning what was happening. On the other hand, he could keep his touch feather-light, but it could take hours to isolate the young man’s signature.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Rubbing his chin, Jennings considered his options as Lord Blackwood and Mage-adept Newbanks stared at him with confusion.

-----

Nero was on watch for what would be, hopefully, his last night in the wilds. If Nick’s calculations were correct, sometime tomorrow they should reach the road. Nero was skeptical when it came to Nick’s navigational skills, but he didn’t really have much choice but to trust him. The entire plan hinged on whether or not they could reach a gate his enemies weren’t currently watching.

If Nick were to be believed, they had been hidden since they had found Rose. At Nero’s request, Nick had been diffusing their signature without letting the rest of the team know. It wasn’t easy for him, and Nero had been forced to find reasons to slow their pace because of the stress it had been putting on the poor man. But Nero had finally gotten the hang of it, and had taken over for the old mage.

Nero glanced over at his sleeping friend. He couldn’t help but feel lucky to have met the man. It was a rare thing to find someone who was completely trustworthy. It was even harder to find a trustworthy person who was willing to lie for you.

Chuckling quietly, he returned to scanning his side of the forest. Even though they had their misdirection ward up, Sergeant Wesker had made it clear that only idiots didn’t take their watch seriously. So, Nero buckled down and did his duty. Though, with his psychic field stretched out over the camp, he could tell there were no enemies around.

Part of his attention was being held by the technique for essence diffusion. Nero smiled at the memory of that Populator who had told him it would be years before he would be able to hide his presence. He really enjoyed proving people wrong. Especially people who were in positions of authority. It will be unfortunate when people stop underestimating him.

Nero had learned how to diffuse his essence trail from watching Nick. The concept turned out to be more complicated than the technique. The idea was to ‘shake’ the ethereal plane in a wide area, so that their essence trails were broken up. Over their private connection, Nick had tried to explain to Nero how exactly that happened, but Nero didn’t understand what the man was talking about. However, vibrating his psychic field turned out to be pretty simple. It was like humming, but with his mind instead of his mouth. The best part about it was how much room for error there was. Even if he took a second or two, in order to readjust his grip on the ambient essence, it wouldn’t be a problem. According to Nick, it took around 5 minutes before an essence trail started to solidify enough to be followed.

There was a caveat though. Nick had warned him that if the mage who had been tracking them had gotten close enough, they could have placed an ‘essence-tag’ on them. If that had happened, then there wasn’t much they could do about it. Nick had said he was reasonably sure they were clean, but it wasn’t his specialty. And even if they were tagged, depending on the distance, it was difficult to find more than a directional heading.

Nero could only hope that their efforts proved sufficient. The last thing they needed was another assassin team being told their position. ‘Just 12 hours. We just need to hold out for 12 hours,’ he thought with some worry.

Opening his identity, he checked to see how he was doing.

Name

Nero Walker

Level

12

Race

Human

Growth

31%

Tier

1

Condition

100%

Age

14

Center

72%

Body

3

Mind

5

Soul

2

Confluence

10

Stars

0

Pillars

1 / 1

His growth had really slowed down, but it was his center which had him worried. Typically, sitting around doing nothing caused his center levels to raise, not lower. But keeping the essence diffusion field active was stressful.

Nick had warned him, but Nero had been sure he could handle it. Remembering the old man’s advice, he tried to firm his resolve. Nick had said it was a matter of concentration and will. The more you kept yourself together, the more center you could hold on to.

Clenching his hands into a fist, he scowled at the forest. ‘I got this. Eventually this will be just like breathing. I won’t even notice I’m doing it,’ he told himself.

Through his psychic field, he sensed Rose silently approaching him from around the fire. Turning to look at her over his shoulder, he saw her freeze in surprise. Smiling, he said quietly, “What can I do for you, Rose?”

Shocked that she had been caught, she shook her head in amusement. ‘The little bastard is full of tricks. I need to keep in mind who it is I’m dealing with. Don’t trust what you see,’ she reminded herself.

Joining Nero on his makeshift bench, she asked, “I wanted to touch base with you while everyone is sleeping.”

Nero nodded then said, “You know Mike is just over there on watch with us.” He gestured toward the other side of the camp.

Rose smiled and replied, “Yeah, but he won’t say anything. He’s terrified of you. Whenever you pay attention to him, he starts shaking.”

Nero shrugged, and said, “OK. So what do you want to talk about?”

Pursing her lips in order to look serious, she locked eyes with Nero and said, “I want to know why you and Nick are pretending to fight.” Holding up her hands in surrender preemptively, she continued, “I won’t say anything. I just want to know what the plan is. I’ll help however you want. Tell me what I need to know so I don’t screw up whatever plot you have going.”

Grinning, Nero said, “I figured you weren’t buying it.” He checked on the team through his psychic field, making sure that the only person awake was Mike.

Keeping his voice down, he said, “We’re not heading toward Gate 15. We’re going to 14. Nick and I have been blinding the mage who has been tracking us. As far as everyone knows, we’re in the wind. Hopefully, we can make it to Dorchester without anyone noticing.”

Rose’s eyes were wide with surprise. She asked, “But why pretend at all? And who’s in on it?”

Nero turned to look out into the forest, scanning for threats. While keeping his voice low, he said, “Only Nick and I know the plan. We don’t know who we can trust. Wesker is an unknown, Mike could have a fail-safe, and Cathleen wouldn’t care anyways. The argument was meant to be a distraction, along with some misinformation. If they are currently in contact with anyone, Wesker and Mike will report that we were at each other’s throats the whole time. And even better, while they are paying attention to the fight, they aren’t paying attention to where we’re going. That’s why Nick is carrying the direction-finder and not Wesker. He’s acting as the navigator, but only he and I know where we are going.”

Rose leaned in and asked, “But what about me? I could just report the ruse, and all of this would be for nothing.”

Shaking his head, Nero said, “You’ll wait to say anything until after we’re in Dorchester. By that point, it won’t matter. The only one who’d believe you is the general, and I’d welcome him getting conflicting reports. Feel free to tell him about this conversation. I’m sure he’ll believe you.”

Rose looked confused, and a little worried. “Why wouldn’t he believe me?” she asked.

Grinning from ear to ear, Nero replied, “Everyone other than me wanted to leave you in the wilds. Think how that will look on the report. Did you get emotionally compromised by your target? Should the general remove you from the team? Or maybe he should keep you here, but put someone into position to watch you. Are you using me? Or am I using you? Or neither? Layers upon layers, my dear Rose. Like I said, misinformation.”

Rose paled as she looked at the shadowed face of the little lord. In a hushed whisper she said, “I just wanted to be a hunter.”

Nero patted her knee consolingly, and stood up. Even though he wasn’t very tall, he still managed to look down on her as he said, “Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure you don’t have a secret ‘control fetish’. Anyway, you watch this side, I’ll take your old post. Get some rest tonight, tomorrow is going to be interesting.”

Nero sauntered off to take Rose’s place for the rest of the night. She watched him leave with a pit in her stomach. ‘He’s got it all figured out. Did he know that I would come talk to him? What’s his goal? Was that even the real plan?’ she wondered.

Shaking her head, she did her best to put the little lord out of her mind. She stared off into the forest and resumed her watch. But she couldn’t stop thinking about what Lord Walker had meant when he said she had a ‘control fetish’. She had never heard the term, but she didn’t think she was sexually excited by the idea of being in control. Frowning, all she could do was mull over what might have given him that idea.