68 – Conspiracy

Sitting on opposite sides of a fireplace, two figures were staring at a man sitting cross legged on a large stone. Behind the two, people were chattering and arguing, but what could be mistaken for lighthearted banter at a first glance was actually a fractured team arguing among themselves about who should be blamed for their failures. The two girls did not interfere in the discussion, their role was to simply escort the team of four and not babysit them like children.

Moreover, they had other things they were thinking about. Even as both of them kept their senses sharp, and made light conversation to pass the time, their eyes were glued to the meditating man they could see in the other room of the cave system.

Melina was staring at Ishrin with longing in her eyes, an emotion softened and made tender by her desire to see him happy and to ease his suffering. Half her mind was on Lisette, though, and she tried to make conversation with her but found her eyes wandering back to Ishrin, the thread of talk disrupted by a long pause. Lisette did not seem to mind, but Melina felt torn. She wanted to stomp her feet, and throw a tantrum. Why did she have to choose? Why couldn’t her mind just settle? She wanted the cake, and to eat it too, and it was unfair that the world did not work like that.

Beside her, answering in even shorter sentences than usual, Lisette was also staring at Ishrin. She was carefully studying the flows of energy that ebbed and flowed within him in fascination, carefully committing them to memory like she was admiring a work of art she struggled to replicate. In her own way, she was also smitten by him, but the emotion manifested differently than it would in a normal person. Her way of processing her infatuation was through an obsessive interest in everything that concerned him.

It helped that she had always been interested in the fascinating world of magic, and that she was very talented in all things arcane. The logical processes of magic spoke to her, so much so that they were not arcane to her mind but more like—and she would not hear of it for a long while yet—a computer program.

Lisette was also aware of Melina sitting close to her. Closer than Lisette had ever allowed anyone to be—with the sole exception of Ishrin. And yet, it did not feel bad at all. For a moment, she wondered whether this was a similar situation to when she had ‘saved’ Melina from the water wisp that could have never hurt her. Lisette had acted on instinct, like the wisp had done a great offence just by daring attack someone she held dear, and she had never been able to understand why she had felt such an urge to come to Melina’s recue.

Now, watching Ishrin meditate and thinking about how close Melina was to her, that she could feel her body heat and see the slowly swaying fox tail in her peripheral vision, she wondered if perhaps the things she was feeling for the two people were somewhat similar in scope and purpose.

But it was beyond her to divine such mysteries, and like she always did when she did not know how to act, she resorted to known methods of coping. Which consisted, in this case, in the study of the arcane energies coming from Ishrin in waves, fascinating and—most of all—useful to learn. Two things she really cared about. Her interests, however narrow someone else might call them, and learning useful stuff so that she could be more of use.

But whom would she want to be of use to?

Two names came to her mind, and she felt herself blush for the first time in forever.

***

After an hour, Melina went to wake up the meditating Ishrin and told him that the other team was getting restless.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“How are you? Did it work?” She asked.

“A bit better. It seems to be working but… It’s not like I can expect big changes after only one hour. In fact, I’m surprised I even went this far.”

The changes were subtle at first but as he managed to squeeze more meditation sessions between fights, Ishrin noticed that he was beginning to direct his focus better, and he was more vigilant and more aware of what happened in and to his own mind. This didn’t solve the issue of the feeling, but he felt that soon he was surely going to be able to at least pinpoint where it was coming from and why, as opposed to just feeling it everywhere around him.

It was especially hard for him to admit just how much benefits he was seeing from just a few sessions of meditation, given how much of an expert on the topic he had always thought himself. But it was true that no matter how good one was at the theory, it was with practice that meditation really showed its benefits, and Ishrin had really neglected it ever since coming to Prima Luce. It was too much like his old life for his tastes, or so had been the justification he gave to himself every time the thought to meditate came and was immediately discarded. Now, he was discovering that it was very much unlike his old life, just that the practice was the same, but the context in which he did it was completely different.

The team arrived at a section of the tunnels that was different from the rest, with the walls polished and straight, leading into rooms that were barred with thick doors as opposed to the natural-looking open spaces of before. Traps littered the walls, floor, and ceiling, clearly visible to Ishrin’s sharp magic vision. However, he was too busy with his meditation, too intent on figuring out what was going on and clinging to the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, his pixie was still alive, and he didn’t really feel like dropping the task to deal with the traps.

“I’ll cast a ritual to protect us from the traps. Come here.” He said.

“I will not let you use your obscure sorcery on me and my team!” Sir Westys protested.

Ishrin paused. “Come on. It’s full of traps and I can’t be bothered—”

“Then we will deal with them! My team is more than capable.” The boy said, glaring not at him but at Melina. Evidently the boy had yet to realize the real power dynamics of Ishrin’s team, as the girls had also clearly not bothered to explain them to him.

Ishrin paused. “I will regret this, but fine. You do you. Lisette, Melina, come here.”

The ritual, named Oblatus’ reactive shielding for Dungeons and Explorations, snapped into place around the trio, reducing several Tier 5 monster cores to dust in the process. Had they had higher tier ones, they would have used them, but so far the stronger monster they had fought outside the single Tier 6 one in the mountain realm had been weaker than they were. And it was better that way, as fighting monsters or even worse a pack of monsters of the same Tier as an adventurer was more akin to gambling than it was to fighting. True enough, one could not really hone their skills against weaker opponents, but Ishrin disliked the process of honing skills by risking one’s life—if it was his own or that of his friends, at least. The much safer way was a bit slower, but it promised much the same results: simply fight a weaker monster but handicap yourself. For instance, there was a spell he could cast that would simulate wounds and incapacitate limbs when the monster managed to score hits, even though the hits coming from a weaker monster would do no damage otherwise.

***

“This isn’t fair!” Sir Westys yelled.

He was at the far end of the corridor, painstakingly disarming and weaving through the traps with his team.

Meanwhile, the ritual Ishrin had cast allowed the escorting trio to stroll through the caves like they were taking a panoramic stroll outside. The boy had watched with wide eyes as acid, darts, spears, pitfalls were all ignored. All of them, except…

“I don’t like these crystals,” Ishrin muttered. “They can cut through armor, and magic, and magic armor.”

He was visibly distressed, a fact that did not escape Sir Westys’ perception. “What is it?” The boy asked.

Ishrin shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, “if I did, it wouldn’t be so much of a pain in the ass.”

Sir Westys knew, at that moment, that he had power over Ishrin, because he knew something that Ishrin did not. He possessed a secret, compared to Ishrin at least: he was privy to information that he knew about, but that Ishrin did not know. A lack of knowledge that made him different, and of which only Sir Westys knew, in turn giving the power to ultimately decide Ishrin’s fate to him.

He said nothing, but the gears were spinning in his mind, calculating and making plans according to wishes of people much stronger than him, and to whose word he had to obey. A plan was in the making, even as the buy struggled to wade the maze of traps and dangers that befell him and his team.