With a push of intent, Dan sent his mana bouncing away from the Barracks and into Allusia proper. His body may currently be under lock and key but there was little Shade could do to stop his mana. Dan had made sure to keep his cards close to his chest, not revealing anything that he couldn’t have heard from Shade himself or through the door of his cell. Keeping his scouting ability a secret was just good sense as far as Dan was concerned.

Still, he had to marvel at himself a little. Just a year ago the level of control he could now employ over his mana would have seemed astronomical, like trying to ask the stars to move around in the night sky.

Now, he was that night sky.

Allusia was sleeping and Dan was watching. Well, the city never truly slept, but the night had passed into the sleepy hours of dawn. The sun had not yet crept over the lip of the chasm cliffs far above Allusia, but the stone of the floor - of the labyrinth - was beginning to grow lighter.

It had been a long while now since Dan felt that his mana was holding him back. The shiver of his soul stone agreed. He was not the powerless child everyone, himself included, thought he would be. Now, he was capable enough that a man like Shade could see reason to keep him imprisoned. That was enough to cause a small burgeoning lump of pride to form in Dan’s chest but it was not enough to cause Dan to stay still.

Dan took in a stale breath from the stagnant cell around him and focused on the mana outside. This would work, it already had in the past. It would just require focus. A bundle of mana started to form as Dan willed it. Leaving the mana alone was Dan’s normal way but that wouldn’t work here. If he left the mana to do as it willed, it would fill out an area in and around the Barracks but go no further.

By consciously plucking the scattered pieces of energy together, Dan formed what he was calling a sentry. For now, it was a ball of mana that Dan could see and speak through but Dan was sure he could do more with it if he tried. He looked down at his wrist, pensive for a moment, and wondered at the small, clear crystal on his forearm. He had been left with his soul badge once he explained its cultural importance to himself, as well as showing it had no magical capacity.

It was Dan’s focus point now. He existed inside the bundle of mana floating through the Allusian streets as much as inside his own body and the crystal on his wrist was his conduit of choice. When he first tried this, he lost himself slightly for about fifteen minutes. The feeling of drifting away was almost too frightening to return to but by keeping himself grounded, fingers fiddling with the bumpy leather on his wrist, he was not drifting away.

He was simply unbound.

“Boo.” Dan said through his mana once it reached his destination. Even though they had agreed to meet, Hyun Soon had no way of seeing Dan’s mana approach. His disembodied voice appeared from seemingly nowhere and the result was exactly as funny as Dan had hoped it would be. A sentiment shared by the two girls also waiting expectantly as the sounds of laughter filtered through to Dan.

“If I knew where you were, I’d smash you right now.” Hyun took a few moments to calm himself before scowling in a random direction and aiming his ire towards where he felt Dan was. He was pretty close to correct. He eventually regained his traditional smile, however, and for a moment Dan felt as though they were all relaxing together in the peace of the Jiaoduo. Before it burned.

“Wouldn’t help us much though, so I’d say'' mitts to yourself Hyunnie.” The new voice helped snap Dan out of his wishful thinking. Peace was a far away hope right now and Dan didn’t have time for daydreaming. Though, talking to Yurie was almost as surreal as dreaming sometimes. “Quiet in there is it, our Dan?” The way she made a pun of his name to fit her accent made her feel like a much older friend than she was.

“It’s loud everywhere for me,” Dan answered, being needlessly obtuse, “but there must be something happening. I haven’t seen Shade in a while. I don’t think he left but he never spends this long from his office so I’m not sure.” Dan had spent most of the past three days spying on the marshall of Allusia. He was fairly certain that was a crime, one that would likely mean his head if he were unlucky. However, Shade was easily the most powerful person within a fair distance and he certainly seemed to have no idea.

“So, what do we do?” Hyun asked, his voice still sullen but at least part of the conversation. The three were sitting in a local park, a quiet place disturbed only by others starting their day amongst the greenery. In his stuffy cell, Dan bit his lip. It was a little too quick to act now, wasn’t it?

“Probably follow her.” Dan moved his magic eye to follow the already moving Yurie. Hyun stumbled to his feet, trailing after the two girls and the invisible eye now ambling towards the thoroughfare and by extension, Barracks. Once he caught up, able to move his mana back towards himself quicker than away, he asked Yurie what the plan was. She snorted, looking directly at Dan’s mana in a way that Hyun Soon had not. Dan was certain she could see the eye in that moment.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“If you wait for the perfect moment, you won’t be ready when it comes.” Without another word of explanation, Yurie moved forward. From there on, it was her show and the rest of them were just witnesses. They would talk later about the way things had lined up and decide that Yurie could not only see the future, but that she was a terrifyingly powerful monster who could manipulate fate.

That, or she was the luckiest person on the planet.

It seemed incongruous with her scars but Dan supposed that luck had a limit for everyone. The inquisitive nature within was begging him to ask the source but that was not something Dan would ask through the vessel of his mana. Instead, he simply awed at the chaos and how well Yurie manipulated it.

“Stay here, be ready to run when I come out.” Yurie left a confused Xiaomei and Hyun Soon in an alley close by and made her way to the Barracks. The plan had been for Yurie to take two outfits at some point and the three of them would look for a chance to bluff their way in front of the door. From there, Yurie was confident that Xiaomei could slice through the lock of the door with her mana infused threads. The walls of the Barracks were made from the same material as the labyrinth but the doors were more recent.

The plan has seemed sensible enough. Using Dan’s perception and the guard outfits, the group would then have been able to slip out with relative ease.

That is not what happened.

“Morning Remy!” Yurie waved to a curly haired guard as she entered the Barracks. “Or I suppose it’s still an evening for you? Did you save the world tonight?”

“Ha, yep. That’s that one.” The guard named Remy kept his head down as he answered Yurie. It seemed she had known he wouldn’t look, but Dan managed to catch the pained look on her face before Yurie plastered a smile over the top of it and carried on inwards. Dan felt he understood a little of Yurie’s confidence towards her own actions. People avoided looking at her at the best of times. Making herself known was a lot more effective than trying to sneak.

This pattern continued as she made her way up the flights of stairs towards the fourth floor which Dan was being kept on. People’s natural reaction aside, Yurie seemed to have a preternatural ability to be in the right place at the right time. It was uncanny, but people would stumble, sneeze or simply look away and completely miss her presence when she wanted them to.

In that strange fringe existence Yurie travelled through the Barracks. Along the way, Dan had expected to tell her which halls to walk down, whether to wait or to move. Instead, like the others, he could do nothing useful but watch as Yurie did her work. From the main entrance, there was an entire large mansion worth of space until she could reach Dan’s door. Dan watched her progress, a mixture of confusion and building anxiety, knowing all he could do at this point was be a warning if Shade were to appear.

After leaving the entry foyer, Yurie seemed to forget what she was doing entirely. Instead of making a simple line for the first floor stairs, she ambled down the long main hallway holding the room Dan had been taken to alongside Guan Po Daiyu. Shade had asked for Dan’s help but Dan was not willing to become a pawn for someone else again, so Shade had shut him away.

After walking the entire length of the Barracks, Yurie finally did start taking the stairs. Dan was still manipulating his magic eye, following the eccentric girl, but his ambient mana was enough within the Barracks. “Lots of guards on the next floor.”

Dan’s words were nothing but a breath of wind to anyone but Yurie flinched. “Almost forgot you were there.” She whispered her back, not stopping her two at a time stride up the stairs. “Good, that will make this next part much easier.” Before Dan could ask how on Jaia she thought that could be true, she had moved on and made straight for the large group.

The congregation in this area was due to the lounge area which made up most of the first floor. Instead of avoiding it completely, Yurie wandered in as though she didn’t have a care in the world. Again, all she received in response to her presence was quickly rescinded glances, passive acknowledgement and even outright derision. From his invisible spot, Dan wondered if only he could see the hateful looks that Yurie’s scars received from some of the seated guards.

Dan was again surprised as Yurie chose not to leave the room immediately. She plopped herself in between two dozing men on a couch too small for the three of them. Her landing jostled them enough to make the pair get frustrated, suddenly deciding that being anywhere else was more important than reclaiming their resting spot for Yurie. After she had been sitting alone for a while, one of the men who had been staring at her since she entered got up and began walking towards her in the large room.

Giving no sign she had seen him, Yurie also stood from her seat and decided it was time to move. The man followed as she left the room, an anger on his face that Dan did not understand. If Dan hadn’t been watching he might not have seen that the tall, bearded guard’s eyes never left Yurie’s back, crowded as the room was. “Someone’s following you, do you have a plan?”

“They follow me, I follow the gold then the red, then the gold then the red.” Yurie hummed her reply like a child’s song and continued on her path. She had explained how her magic worked, and it sounded similar to Dan’s own, but he still could not conceptualise the confidence Yurie needed to have to step into the unknown as she did.

Her trail took her up to the fourth floor without any other complaint or worry. Her path was stalked by the tall, bearded man but she did not even look over her shoulder to confirm his existence. However, on the fourth floor, the man began to pick up his pace. Before Dan could even warn Yurie, the situation changed entirely. To Dan’s immense surprise, the mana around the man disintegrated as he swelled power in himself and a shell formed.

With no time to be surprised at this new development - Dan thought that a shell was a constant, an upper echelon of power - he tried to warn Yurie of the incoming danger, unknown as it still was. Without needing his warning, Yurie had already changed her skipping jaunt into a sprint out of nowhere. Reacting to her change of pace, the man was unsettled and increased his own speed to catch up. He had just enough time to spit out the words “filthy sinner” before he caught up with her, turning the corner she did at the perfect moment.

The forward momentum of his face combined with the opposite force of Yuri’s boot. A move she practised and enjoyed, according to her retelling of events leading to her meeting Xiaomei and Hyun Soon. The shell faded along with the man’s consciousness. Dan again wondered at how they worked, clearly not increasing the man’s durability. While Dan was lost in thought on the use and design of the shell which still seemed so confusing to himself, Yurie picked the man’s jacket pocket. His tongue lolled and the medallions on his lapel jingled as she jostled him, removing keys from a breast pocket.

Less than a minute later, Dan’s door swung open.

“Well, going to sit there all day?”