Ike froze. He glanced toward the voice, revealing the absolute minimum of his face. No way. I couldn’t get caught this fast.

A man strode toward him, dressed in beautiful but not functional robes. He shook his finger. “I’ve been looking all over for you!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” a second voice replied. Gentle and mellifluous, Ike couldn’t immediately identify it as a male or female voice. He peeked in the opposite direction, toward the second voice.

A pale figure stood opposite the man. Her body was covered in delicate white feathers. Big, round eyes gazed off to infinity, not quite locked onto anything. Big white wings hung behind her. Huge claws curved from feather-coated fingers.

Wisp leaned in. He felt her weight against his shoulder as she climbed up to whisper in his ear. Dammit, not more weight.

“She failed her human transformation. She’s a flawed beast. She will never grow stronger than Rank 2.”

Ike raised his brows. He eyed the beautiful, pale figure. A flawed beast, but how gorgeous. She could be an art piece, or a model.

For a moment, an image of a half-transformed Wisp appeared in his mind. Limbs going everywhere. Thick black-and-white bristles all over her skin. Eight bulbous eyes and giant mandibles. He shivered, barely repressing a retch. Gods. Thank goodness Wisp succeeded.

The owl girl crossed to the man and knelt. “How can I serve you?”

“Ah, yes, yes. Well, you know Roderick, with his weird little…” the man grimaced, wrinkling his whole face. He wiggled his fingers. “Puppets.”

“Sir.” The owl girl ducked her head in acknowledgment.

“Yes, well. He lost a few of them. He thinks someone is going to smash all of them. That he’s made a … bad investment.” The man squinted at the owl girl, letting his lips draw up from the force of his squint.

“Sir.”

“Go out to the forest. Find those idiots. The one who smashed Roderick’s toys. And teach them a little lesson, no?”

“Sir.” The owl girl turned. She crossed to a nearby window and opened her wings, soaring out onto the sky.

Wisp peeked up at Ike. Ike peeked back. They waggled their brows at one another. Yeah. Good luck.

Hope she doesn’t find Clarina.

He paused, then shrugged. They won’t kill her. They didn’t kill her parents. They’ll probably just throw her in the dungeon, the same as her parents. And then we can rescue her, too! Two birds, one stone!

The man with the mobile face peered around, his eyes squinted. Ike turned away, letting the pelt hide his eyes. The man harrumphed, then stomped off. “This New Republic bullshit of Roderick’s… ah, it’s so much work, so much work. Where’s my easy life? I should never have gone along with him in the first place. And now these puppets, these strange puppets… I don’t like it at all.”

The man retreated, leaving Wisp and Ike alone in the hall. Ike angled his wolf pelt toward Wisp. He nodded at her and thumbed toward the route to the dungeon. Wisp nodded back. The two of them followed the route from the quartz piece.

They encountered few people on their way through the castle. The majority of the people they ran into were puppets. Not copies of Ricardo, but ordinary puppets. One or two other low-Rank mages wandered along, most of them in ordinary low-Rank robes. The rank and file of the New Republic, not high-status members like Ricardo or the man with the owl girl servant. No one so much as looked their way, not even when Ike missed a step up and thumped down hard on the stone, barely catching himself.

Well, they did look at me. But that was all. Ike leaned in toward Wisp. “Why hasn’t anyone noticed us? They can sense mana, right? Aether?”

Wisp nodded. “They can. But it takes conscious effort. It’s the same with you, right? If you aren’t exerting effort, you can’t sense mana either.”

Ike nodded slowly. “True.”

“In the wilds, it’s pretty normal to be sensing mana all the time. But here in their castle, where it’s safe, why expend effort you don’t have to? You’d be wasting mana if you spent all your time pushing it out of you to sense your surroundings.”

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“You could just get more.”

Wisp gave him a look, adjusting the wolf skin to give him enough of a glimpse of her face for maximum effect. “You can just get more. But you’re crazy good at finding and absorbing energy. I swear it’s a Skill of yours.”

“It isn’t,” Ike protested.

“For most people, they spend most of their lives in safety. Surrounded by other people. Being taught magic. Few people just head out into the woods and say ‘fuck it,’ and take life as it comes. So for the people that stay around other people who also need mana, mana is a limited and precious resource. Not unusably precious, but valuable enough that they won’t just leak it all the time unless they need to.”

“After all, you also need mana to level up,” Ike reasoned. He nodded. “I understand.”

Wisp hummed under her breath. “It changes once you’re powerful enough. At Rank 4, it’s such a low amount of mana to sense mana around you all the time, relative to your total mana, that many mages turn it on all the time. And at Rank 5, it’s instinctive for most mages. There’s exceptions, and naturally there’s ways to overcome these passive mana senses, but in general, you can only expect to sneak by mages up to Rank 3. Past Rank 3, you’ll have to evade their mana sense as well as their eyes and ears.”

Ike nodded. He grinned, excited. One day I’ll have mana sense. How awesome would that be?

They turned a corner. Two doors greeted them. Immediately, the path in Ike’s head led him toward the right. He stepped toward it unconsciously. Three steps in, he forcibly stopped his feet. In his head, an alarm blared. Every piece of him wanted to go right. A sense of deep dread emanated from the left.

“Wisp, do you feel that?” Ike asked.

“Feel what?” Wisp turned around. She stepped toward him, then grimaced. “Oh. Oh. I do.”

“That quartz Clarina gave us. Is it possible to embed a compulsion into it? Some kind of mind-effecting spell?” Ike asked.

“It sure is.” Wisp grinned, but it looked more like she was gritting her teeth. She laughed darkly. “Oh-ho-ho. I sure do love when I’m manipulated by humans. Big fan of that.”

Ike nodded. “So we’re going left, right?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely. Let’s see what cute little Clarina is trying to hide, hmmm?” Wisp’s eyes narrowed in anger.

In agreement, Ike stepped toward the source of his dread. A cold sensation flowed in his stomach. What’s she trying to hide, huh? Our innocent lady isn’t so innocent after all.

I should have expected it. Her family did something noxious enough that the New Republic decided to topple them. Let’s go find out what it is.

Ike set off down the left path. Wisp followed close behind. The sense of dread peaked as they walked through the opening, then faded as they left it behind. For a time, they walked straight, but before long, they found themselves winding down a long, narrow staircase.

Footsteps sounded from below. Ike pressed himself up against the wall. A series of quiet scuttlings told him Wisp had elected to take to the roof instead.

Clang. Clang. A man in armor ascended the stairs. He moved woodenly, pausing between planting his foot on the next stair and hauling himself up it. His broad shoulders filled the entire staircase, scraping the wall on either side. Ike stared. Shit!

The armored man climbed toward him. The stairs counted down. Ike retreated upstairs, buying himself a few precious moments. On the other side of the man, Wisp scuttled down from the wall. She lowered the wolf fur for just a moment to stick her tongue out at him, then hid away again.

Two can play that game. Ike backed up two more stairs. He huffed once, eyeing the space above the man’s head. The man lifted his foot. It clanged onto the next stair, and he paused.

Ike threw himself into the air. He leaped headfirst, throwing his body through the gap between the man’s shoulder and the ceiling. His body skimmed through. The wolf fur brushed against the armored shoulder on one side, and the ceiling on the other.

And then he was through, and hurtling head-first at the stairs.

Ike threw out his arms. He caught himself on either wall and skidded down, his palms burning as he forcibly stopped himself. He came to a halt and immediately dropped to the stairs. Lifting the pelt, he covered his eyes, rendering himself blind but perfectly hiding himself.

Above him, the armored man paused. He turned, slowly, surveying the space behind him. Confused, he tilted his head. He swung his arm behind him. The metal gauntlet clipped through the very tips of the wolf’s fur, barely missing Ike.

The armored man hesitated one more moment. He turned his head left and right, his eyes invisible in the depths of his helm. When he saw nothing, he turned back around and went back to climbing, one slow step at a time.

Ike frowned. He didn’t scan us with his mana? But he had reason to be suspicious. Maybe he couldn’t? He lowered the wolf fur and glanced at Wisp, who shrugged.

There wasn’t the time to talk. Another armored man could come at any minute, and Ike had no desire to repeat his death-defying stunts. He sprinted down the stairs. Wisp followed close behind him, slightly less panicked about encountering another man.

They made it to the bottom of the staircase without running into any more armored men. A long hallway stretched ahead of them, about twice as wide as the stairs. Doors opened to either side of them. Dead ahead, the hallway opened up into a huge open space. There was no ceremony to it. No doorframe, door, or grate. The hallway ended, and a massive room began.

Ike pushed the nearest door to the left. It was locked tight. He looked around. “So… the doors or the big room?”

Wisp gave him a look like he was stupid. “Why wouldn’t you choose the big room? It’s obviously the important place. Unless it’s a compulsion…?”

Ike’s eyes widened. As soon as she said it, he felt something pressing against his mind, pushing him away from that big room. He chuckled under his breath. “I do not like this bullshit. Not one bit.”

“Yeah, me either. I’m gonna thrash that bitch when I get out,” Wisp muttered.

The both of them beelined toward the large room. Strange sounds echoed down the hallway. Flame roared, and water splashed. Heavy clanking and furious wind mixed in with the rest. Ike drew up to the hallway’s end and stared.

Fuck.