Mullam was in Roska's office around nighttime when Lord Daron called him, frantically pleading with him to go to Saymor as soon as possible to "protect" Binko and her friends. He thought that was absolutely ridiculous. They were highly trained, Elite War Mages under a spell dampener, they would be fine, He declined, dampened the wave spell and looked at the group in front of him, half buried in paper and hands stained with ink.
"Let's continue." He said.
The group consisted of Roska, and two other academic mages, Shiro, and Korad, who were researchers. The four of them had been working hard on the wave problem for weeks now. They had initially wanted to replicate a 12 way wave link, but that was a hard problem, so they'd decided to find out how one of Ganz's men had figured out how to intercept a wave link, and he thought they were close.
"Who waved to you?" Roska asked.
"Lord Daron, It's nothing important." Mullam said. "Let's continue guys, We could actually solve this thing tonight."
"That's what you said last night." Korad said, chuckling. "You war mages are always too optimistic."
Mullam shrugged. "Let's try that third runic sequence here." He said, shuffling some papers around. Korad didn't think that would work, a small debate ensued, they argued for about thirty more minutes before they finally arrived at a spell they thought would work. It didn't.
They tried three more combinations, and went back to Mullam's original suggestion, but then that didn't work either.
After three more hours of failure after failure, they all fell asleep out of fatigue.
The following morning, Mullam was woken by a wave from Altey.
"Mullam, I've made a breakthrough." Altey said. The sleep fled Mullam's groggy eyes. He sat up quickly, rousing Roska who had fallen asleep on her arm. She groaned as the pain of her numb arm entered her consciousness.
"Tell me more." he said, walking out to the porch.
"It's been days of hard work, But my team finally figured out how to counter those Arcanite spells." Altey said.
Mullam's excitement faded a bit, The arcanite spell wasn't something he was interested in personally, but any progress was good enough.
"We can cure Segi." Altey said. "And anyone else that gets into this kind of trouble in the future."
"That's great news." Mullam said.
"Any progress on your end?" Altey asked, Mullam's heart sunk in embarrassment.
"We're... er, close to a solution that explains how Ganz intercepted a wave link." Mullam said.
"I thought you guys were working on the spell dampener reinforcements?" Altey asked. Mullam's heart sunk further.
"We had to drop that... we couldn't find a solution... and there were more pressing problems." He said.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
"Okay..." Altey said. "Good luck. Bye."
The wave faded and Mullam rubbed his nose bridge in frustration. This wasn't necessarily a race, but the fact that his team had failed abysmally in countering any of Ganz's work before Altey did grinded his nerves."
He went back inside and saw the others packing.
"Where are you going?" He asked.
"We've got to go home and freshen up." Shiro said. "We'll be back later."
"But guys we're this close!" He complained.
"Mullam, relax." Roska said, placing her hand on his chest. "I know how much this means to all of us, but all work and no rest sucks the magic out of life."
"Seriously..." Mullam said helplessly as they all packed up and left. He sighed and plopped on the chair, wondering if he should have just gone to Saymor instead. "How are you able to do any of this stuff, Ganz?" He asked into thin air.
---
General Rubric Makon, After sending in his work for the day, had a cup of tea that Roe had prepared for him, he decided not to use substance analysis, he would have to trust her for now.
Navon was a well lit city, which Makon disliked, it was as if the city never stopped, never rested. He had the same problem with Aku'anda. He preferred Odan and Saymor's night time darkness, where everyone went to sleep when the darkness came, except of course, criminals, agents of darkness... the people he was trained to fight.
He donned a black long sleeved cotton shirt with a loose fitting trouser and cotton shoes, which were more like socks with padded soles for quiet movements. He wore his black spell bag, a bag with tight straps that contained neatly folded spellbound papers, as well as a small hole to release the smoke from invoked paper as it burned.
He stepped out of the window of the inn and latched on to the roof, then he began to patrol the night city. by jumping from roof to roof and watching, with a careful eye, Kamado. the capital of Navon.
An hour later he found his target... a small group of vagabonds, between thirteen and sixteen years old, that roamed aimlessly around on the streets. Some offering to help people carry heavy loads for a small fee, or some other small task.
He studied them at length, until he could individually identify them by characteristics and temperament. He found the "alpha" of the group, the contenders, the stragglers... After four hours of following little boys around, he finally decided he'd learned enough, He decided to reveal himself.
He chose a dark alley and lured one of the boys... a thirteen year old, into it with a weird noise and candy. The boy fell for the trap and Makon sprung on him. Snatching up to the roof, muffling the boy with a palm to prevent him from screaming.
"Listen here boy." He said in a gruff tone. "You will not scream once I release you. Do you understand?"
The boy nodded. Then he released the boy, but noticed the boy was in tears.
"What?!" he exclaimed in surprise. "You're almost a man, lad. Crying like a baby? What is this?"
The boy wiped his tears quickly and sniffed. He was about thirteen.
"What do you want mister?" He asked fearfully, in-between sniffs.
"Information." Makon said, sitting down on the roof. "Take a seat."
The boy sat down slowly. "Can I eat the candy, Mister?" he asked.
"Sure." Makon said. "First of all, Do you know Pirun?"
The boy nodded as he took a bite. That was a good sign. Some of these kids, especially in Odan, were often so poor and isolated that they didn't even know any adjacent kingdoms.
"A very bad man attacked Pirun." He said to the boy. "I'm going to get that man, and I need your help, kid."
"Are you a fighting mage sir?" The boy asked.
"Close. But don't worry about me." Makon said. "I'll give you free food every night at this exact location if you can run some errands for me." The boy's face lit up.
"Real meat, and real bread. I'll even add milk and eggs." Makon promised. The boy was in immediately.
He asked the boy's name, gave him a set of instructions, told the boy to return to the alley the next day, and lowered him to the ground, then he repeated the same process for three other boys, using different locations that he marked on his maps.
It was almost morning when he got back home, entering through the window, He noticed Roe sleeping on her bed, he got in and looked at her sleeping for a few seconds. Her small and peaceful face relaxed him and he caught himself smiling. He shook it off and headed off to bed.