Cassana PoV [https://i.imgur.com/Uzx1lzT.jpeg]

The Tower Academy of Magic taught its students that the City of Soliton was the worst place for a wizard to find themselves in. Putting aside widespread crime and the rampant corruption of its government leaders, its citizens generally frowned upon the practice of magic. There were even past attempts to ban it outright, even changing the name of the city to distance them from the great wizard Soliton. Those proposals would have seen the light day if not for the persistent lobbying against it by the Small Tower’s office.

The Solitonians’ disdain for magic didn’t come from nowhere though. Throughout the city’s history, they had been at the mercy of mages. From its beginnings as a trade post of the Ledrith Empire, to becoming one its richest colonies.

After the Sorrowful March, the Ledrithans attempted to reform and reorganize their holdings across the continent, but the Solitonians refused to be annexed again. They instead chose to establish themselves as the Free-City of Soliton. It wasn’t a smooth transition, however, as several imperial loyalists attempted to seize power in order for the city to be brought under the heels of the newly created Mage Republic.

It took decades of chaos and infighting between the imperialists, who were mostly wizards, and the nationalists before the city finally achieved peace. All of that resulted in the regulation on magic use, which was soon ratified into the Six Precepts on Magic, a set of rules identifying what can and can’t be done using magic inside the city.

In a way, Cassana didn’t feel that bad for not finding a replacement for her Focusing Stone yet. At least she wouldn’t be tempted to use magic in this city, which would just lead to more troubles that she didn’t have the patience to handle.

She went back to the inn after their meeting with Professor Arcturus, together with Lira and Ashvell. Rei was still too weak to travel, so they left him in the Small Tower, with her former teacher promising her that he would be taken care of. The redhead didn’t doubt him a little bit, she was well aware of the ministrations that wizards provide, especially to those afflicted with unnatural afflictions.

The trio opted to get a smaller room, with Cassana and Lira sharing a bunk bed, while Ashvell slept on the floor. They didn’t have time to organize their stuff, but Lira made sure to check that Minos’ effects were still intact. She pulled out one of his sleeping bags and gave it to Ashvell. Finally, he freed Scout from his cage so he could move around the room.

Consequently, despite the long and harrowing day they all had, their collective exhaustion made it easy for the three to doze off into dreamland without a fuss. Cassana woke up the next day to Ashvell and Lira’s voices. She looked over below to find the two preparing their equipment.

“Looks like you got a good night’s sleep,” Lira commented, immediately realizing she was already awake.

“What time is it?” asked the redhead.

“Two bells after sunrise,” answered the huntress.

“We’re late…” remarked Cassana.

“Don’t worry, we got everything ready…” Ashvell maintained, “is there anything else you need?”

“My writing quill and parchments?” she asked her friend.

“It’s all in your bag.”

Cassana climbed down the bed and grabbed her knapsack. She glanced at her stone-less staff leaning on the wall and then turned her back. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I wanted to…” Lira gruffed.

“I just thought you needed more rest, you seemed pretty tired last night,” defended Ashvell.

“Every hour we rest is an hour wasted, “Cassana snarled. She did a quick inventory of her bag to check that had everything she needed. “Robb could be dead already. We don’t have time to sit around having humdrum conversations.” She stepped out of the room and slammed the door behind her.

Ashvell followed behind her, and so did Lira. The former was holding onto a piece of bread that he tried to hand over to Cassana, while the latter was carrying Scout across her arm and feeding him with a piece of hard-boiled egg.

“You can at least take a bite first,” the young man offered.

Cassana turned around to look at Ashvell. Be nice. She heard her mother’s voice again. The redhead snatched the food from her friend’s hand and took a bite. All the while looking over all the stuff hanging over his shoulders.

“Dude, you can’t walk around the streets with that on your back,” she pointed to the longbow her friend was strapping, measuring to more than six feet in length.

“But I...” Ashvell raised his hands in defense and looked back at Lira.

“Told you.” The huntress shrugged. She motioned for Scout to climb over her shoulders and tucked him underneath her cloak.

“You are carrying a crossbow right there,” Ashvell pointed to the large leather bag hanging behind Lira.

“Inside a bag,” Lira responded.

The young driver looked back at his friend feeling embarrassed, “I don’t have a bag that could fit the longbow…”

“Where did you get that one?” Dangling alongside the longbow on Ashvell’s back was his axe, with its blade wrapped in a leather cover. Cassana pointed at it.

“Minos bought this, back in Mugendale,” her friend answered. “But back then, I always carried my bow, and I didn’t have any problems.”

“Different city, different rules. Just…” Cassana sighed as she finished chomping on the piece of bread, “leave it behind if you don’t have a bag to put it on.”

Ashvell removed the longbow from his back and marched back into the room.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Lira asked the young wizard.

“It’s not like I have any other choice… I can’t afford to wait to be ready…” answered Cassana, trying to rationalize.

“I was a mercenary before, I’ve done my fair share of investigations, I could do this. Ashvell can be my backup, you do not have to come.”

“What do I do then?”

“Just rest.”

Cassana glared at the huntress, looking offended by what she just said, “No! No way! This is all my fault, I shouldn’t have let Robb join us, so it’s only right that I find him and fix this…”

“What happened to Robb was not your fault. And he was the one who insisted on coming with us,” Lira explained. Cassana tried to respond but she cut her off before she could even open her mouth.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I’m not against having an extra pair of hands, but if you’re not mentally up to the task, you are just going to slow us down,” Lira summed up.

Cassana gave her a look like she couldn’t believe the drow said all that. She turned around with a snap and climbed down the stairs without even waiting for Ashvell.

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After explaining to Professor Arcturus what they wanted to do, he gave them notes on how and where to begin. He even gave them three emblems bearing the mark of the Small Tower, signifying that the trio were working on his behalf. He assured them that it would help them get through doors and conduct their affairs without being questioned or hindered by red tape.

Their first destination was the aptly named Office of Magical Detection, the agency assigned to oversee the operation and maintenance of the sensory pylons scattered across the city. At first, the person-in-charge asked them about what they were doing, but it took a simple display of the Small Tower emblem for them to be welcomed in.

The professor warned them against publicly announcing their full intention. According to him, the City Watch is not the kind of organization that takes lightly to civilians interfering with official military or investigatory matters, especially those that affect national security. Even he, or any of his subordinates, would need to secure extensive permission before they could participate in the City Watch’s proceedings.

“Captain Hrothgar frowns upon anyone who can micturate at heights greater than which he could point his pesel on,” as he succinctly put it yesterday, referring to the commander of the City Watch.

So, they came up with a real-sounding fake case as an excuse if ever they get asked about what they were doing.

“What’s this for again?” asked Viggo, the clerk managing the records.

“Uh, we had an intelligence report that a renegade sorcerer might have sneaked in when the lockdown started,” answered Lira, breezing through a well-rehearsed lie. “So, the Legate sent us here, you know, just to cover the bases.”

“Well, we always send a report to the Tower every end of the week,” said the clerk.

“This is urgent.”

“Does this have something to do with the…” the clerk gave them a look that meant he was trying to be discreet.

“The martial law? No,” said Lira.

“Cause if it does, I have to report this to my superiors…”

“Look, just give us a few minutes to check your files, and if it has any significance to what is going on, we will tell you and you can report it. For now, it could be nothing. We do not want the Watch to spend resources on something that could be nothing, right? Especially given what is going on out there, we should not distract them.”

Viggo nodded, seemingly convinced. He stood up and let the trio into a different room. “This is where we keep the records. I’ll give you two hours, any more than that, and there’ll be more people asking questions.”

Cassana, Lira and Ashvell stepped inside. It was a cramped room, lined with filing cabinets and shelves across its four walls, with a tiny window ten feet high on one side. In the center was a table and a couple of chairs.

The redhead checked out one cabinet labeled with the month of Markelus and found a drawer corresponding to yesterday’s date.

“So, what exactly are we looking for here?” asked Lira as she proceeded to check a different organizer.

“I thought you said you could do this without me?” Cassana mocked.

Lira conceded with a smile, “I guess I was wrong.”

Cassana tried hiding her cheeky grin as she pulled the drawer open, revealing dozens of papers bound in volumes. She picked one at random and brought it to the table.

“I have a question for you,” said Lira, walking towards Cassana’s side, “I have always wondered how those pylons work…”

“Well, inside the pylons, there are what we call Leading stones,” Cassana began explaining the same time she started skimming through the pages of the volume. “They’re the opposite of Focusing stones. Instead of holding magical energy, they are attracted to magical energy. So, the stones react and move in the presence of magic, sort of like a magnet on a compass.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“If you look at a cross-section of a pylon, you will see a maze-like design inside of it. That’s so when the Leading stones move, they’ll move and react in a way where the mechanism inside the pylons can record what kind of magic occurred in the vicinity, including its intensity and element, and even the time of day that it happened.”

As she was explaining, Cassana didn’t find what she was looking for, so she grabbed another volume and started scanning it next.

“I see,” Lira nodded. “And how accurate are these things?”

“Not very accurate, actually.” Cassana shook her head. “I remember we had one at the school, we studied it, and it’s very erratic. And it was also easy to manipulate, as long as you have the right tools, you could generate false positives and false negatives. Still, it’s useful enough, and from what I heard, Soliton has the most advanced pylons out there.

“And given the general attitude about magic in this city, I’m sure they pulled out all the stops in making these things very efficient.”

Cassana continued checking every volume of records for that week, with Lira assisting her. Ashvell tried his best to offer his help. Unfortunately, he couldn’t read as fast as the two, so he gave up and simply sat in a corner.

After almost an hour of rummaging through dozens of records, Cassana came to a conclusion: there was nothing here that they could use. She asked Ashvell to invite Viggo back inside.

“Are these all the records? Do you keep some of them somewhere else?” asked Cassana soon as the clerk stepped in.

“What do you mean?” Viggo replied, “these are everything, up to yesterday sundown. Today’s records won’t arrive until later.”

“How about the active monitors on the City Watchtowers?”

“They don’t record these. They just respond if a pylon pings a strong enough magical occurrence.”

“Well, something’s missing, look.” Cassana showed Viggo the paper representing yesterday’s reports. The pages contained sequential rows of symbols, each row representing a quarter of an hour. Most of the rows had one symbol on them, denoting a zero occurrence of magical activity. For the symbols that denoted otherwise, there were addendums enumerating the details of the incident.

Viggo took a closer look at the recordings. He refused to believe it at first, but after half an hour of checking and double checking, he was finally convinced. “This can’t be…” he whispered.

“Who else has access to this place?”

“Like, half-a-dozen people. But no one really comes here, except to deliver the reports at the end of the day. And of course, to make copies that get sent out to you guys at the Tower, and to the Office of Immigration.”

“Do you know who collects them?”

“For the Tower of the Legate? That’s your people, I don’t know them.”

“As for the other offices?” Cassana followed up.

“Someone from theirs. I know one of them though, Frederick, he was here last night, I remember that cause it was almost curfew and we had to close.”

“And what was he doing here?”

“Same as you guys, doing his job.”

Cassana’s eyebrows curled visibly, an idea started forming in her head.

“He’s here regularly, alright?” Viggo said, defensively, “I mean, you guys are sketchier than him, I’ve never seen you all before today.”

“Who’s this guy again?”

“Frederick, that’s all I know. You can ask about him at his place of work, I don’t know anything else.”

Cassana looked away and studied the cramped room once again. She was surprised to find Lira engrossed in her own little corner, looking at various records by herself.

“Look, I don’t wanna lose my job over this,” Viggo started explaining, “so can we all keep this among us for now? I’m just gonna ask around, maybe somebody just misplaced the file or something. There’s probably a simple explanation, but until then, just...”

Cassana gestured in agreement. She glanced to her side to find Lira looking at her, motioning for her to get rid of Viggo. “Alright, so we’ll just clean up here and we’ll be out of your hair.” She stepped closer to Lira the moment the clerk stepped out.

“I had a hunch,” said the huntress, “and I wanted to test it, so I looked into the records for the days corresponding to the dates when the other children went missing...” Lira pulled out a specific volume and flipped it to a single page. “This is that day, with the location around the general vicinity of where the burgrave's child was last seen…”

She had Cassana look into it closer and started reading the symbols. “No magical activity,” the redhead concluded.

“Check the page before it,” ordered Lira.

The redhead complied and checked the previous page, “I see one minor magical activity…” she continued reading in her head and jumped to the coda, “investigated and dealt with…” She looked up at Lira who was staring at her in anticipation. “Yeah, that makes sense. Cause, you know, these events happen a lot. Sometimes, a random person with magical abilities would just walk by and get a burst of emotion and then some magic manifests and it gets detected. As long as it’s not some powerful magic, they usually just ignore these things...”

Lira impatiently flipped two leaves forward and pointed at the page.

“No magical activity,” Cassana read.

Lira flipped two pages backwards, carefully this time. She then waited for Cassana and flipped forwards again. She watched over the redhead’s facial expression.

It took a minute before the wizard gave a different reaction, “wait...” She continued flipping the three pages back and forth. “This page is different. The paper... It’s a different paper...?

Cassana took a much closer look and compared the texture of the middle page over the preceding and succeeding pages. “...or it’s an older paper…” Cassana’s eyes grew wide as she felt the placid air of the cramped room hang heavy over her shoulders. She gasped for breath and pursed her dry lips. “It’s an older paper!” She surmised; Lira agreed.

“So, you think somebody replaced the page with a different page from an older volume? To cover whatever was actually in that report,” Cassana continued.

The huntress placed another stack of papers over her arms. “This is from the day the third child disappeared. She turned the page to the approximate time the victim was last seen, and there, a single page was noticeably standing out from the rest.

They continued for the rest of the victims, and as they already knew what they were looking for, they could plainly see now that more and more pages of reports were replaced.

“What’s the name of the guy that was here yesterday?” asked Lira.

“Frederick,” answered Cassana.

“What if… he went here to remove the page and replace it with an old report…”

“...but didn’t have enough time to find something to swap it with because of the curfew…” the redhead finished Lira’s sentence.

They both shared a smug look. Ashvell watched them from his corner in total oblivion.

Lira swept the reports on the table to the side and pressed her palms against the wood. “We should head out to the Immigration office and find this Frederick,” she told Cassana.

“Yes! But...” the redhead tossed a strand of hair behind her ear and placed one hand on her waist, “what if he returns here? To finish the job?”

“You’re right. You wanna stay here and wait for him?”

“Actually, I think I prefer going out there to find this guy. Ashvell can join me…”

Lira paused before nodding, “sure.” She pulled up her leather bag containing her crossbow and motioned for the young driver to hold it, “you know how to use this?”

“Yeah, my Pops had one.” He stood up and picked up the bag.

“You’ll probably need it more than me,” said Lira.

“Okay...?” Ashvell scratched his head as he hung the weapon across his shoulder. “Wait, what are we doing again?”

Cassana cracked a smile and gave her dear friend a tap on the back while addressing Lira. “You should still carry a weapon though.”

“I got my dagger hidden here somewhere,” she bragged, tapping across her layers of clothing. “Plus, I got Scout with me.” She jerked her shoulder up and the little ferret lifted his head up. “I got all the weapons I need.”

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The Office of the Immigration was empty, aside from a skeleton crew of office workers idly sitting by their desks. Its atmosphere from before the lockdown was like night and day. Since nobody was allowed to pass through the gates, most of their employees were not called in to work.

Those who came in, however, all clammed up when Cassana asked them about somebody named Frederick. Eventually, she displayed the emblem of the Small Tower, and they promptly gave her what she asked for, even including his address on record.

Cassana and Ashvell took another hackney ride to the place where Frederick lives. It was a three-story apartment in the East District, a place known for its affordable housing and middle-income residents. Ashvell’s eyes widened as he studied the seemingly endless rows of identical buildings, with their front stoops and red-brown brick facades.

“Wow, these houses look all the same…” commented the young man.

Cassana smiled. She sometimes forgets that Ashvell had never been outside of their village and its surrounding forest, aside from his routine trips to Mugendale to deliver charcoal. “How old were you again when you left the Capital?” she asked him. She was sure he had told her this already, but she honestly couldn’t remember.

“Six, I think?” Ashvell answered.

“And you have no memory of it all?”

“Just bits and pieces. I remember Pops coming home from work. I remember his military uniform. I remember the view from the window in our old house, and that’s it. I don’t think I even went outside.”

“You ever thought about going back there?”

“For what? There’s nothing for me there, Pops have no other family except for me.”

“How about your real family?”

Ashvell shrugged. “Why?”

“I don’t know, you never got curious? Where you came from, who your parents are, any siblings?”

“Never really entered my mind. I’m just glad Pops took care of me, and I can’t imagine any other life aside from what I have.”

“Yeah…” Cassana nodded. She did remember asking Ashvell that question before, but part of her was hoping that he would have a different answer now.

They entered the apartment and climbed two flights of stairs. On their way to the third floor, they came across a man going down and Cassana immediately recognized his face. It was from when they entered the gates, it was the guy who inspected her Wizard Mark.

The man stopped for a second, and upon seeing Cassana, turned around and bolted back up the stairs.

“Stop!” Cassana yelled, “are you Frederick?” She chased after him, and Ashvell followed. They got to the door to his unit, and the man quickly locked himself in. They banged at his door and joggled its handle. “Hey, we just wanna ask some questions!”

“Please leave!” she heard his voice from inside.

“Just let us in and tell us what we need to know.

“Go away, leave me alone!”

Their banging grew louder and louder, until they eventually stopped hearing his protestations. Cassana quickly ran out of patience, so she gestured to Ashvell to forcefully open the door.

“How?” he asked her.

“Use your axe.”

Ashvell quickly brandished his newly repaired weapon and started hacking the wooden door. Behind him, Cassana was hurriedly removing Lira’s crossbow from its bag. He succeeded in making an opening big enough for an arm to fit and the redhead passed her weapon to Ashvell.

“Load a bolt,” she ordered him while she reached through the hole and twisted the doorknob open from the inside. She then pushed the door open and Ashvell returned the crossbow to her, spanned and loaded.

“Frederick!” Cassana yelled as she stepped in. Ashvell followed behind her, holding his battleaxe up, ready for a swing. The immediate room was empty, so the redhead pointed to the next door they could see, and Ashvell pushed it open.

There they saw Frederick trying to climb through an open window.

“Hold it!” Cassana warned. She pointed her weapon at the man, while Ashvell stepped inside to get him. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Please don’t kill me,” said the man, raising his arms up.

“We won’t if you answer all my questions.”

Ashvell held down his weapon and outstretched his right hand to Frederick. The man hesitated for a spell before reaching for it. He carefully helped him climb back inside.

Cassana breathed out, “good choice.” She dropped her left arm, letting the weight of the crossbow rest on the floor. “Aitur’s belly, that was heavy,” she complained while stretching her shoulder.

Ashvell grinned.

“And I think the trigger is jammed, I couldn’t pull it,” she added,

“What?” Ashvell reached for her weapon to inspect it, “no it’s not. You just gotta pull it hard.” Ashvell did and a twenty-inch bolt zipped across the room hitting the wall behind Frederick. The man let out a high-pitched scream.

“Sorry,” said Ashvell.

“Dude!” Cassana smiled at his friend and looked back at Frederick, “and now you know how good of a shot this guy is. So don’t try running away again.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” swore the man.

“But why, though? Why run away?”

“Cause I know you…? From the gates,” Frederick answered.

“Yeah, and I recognize you too, but there was no reason for you to run, right? Unless…”

“Because of the boy...”

A twinkle shone at the corner of Cassana’s eye. “Robb, right. So, you do have something to do with what happened to him.”

“I just told them about the boy. I detected that he could do magic, so I alerted them, like they paid me to.”

“Yes, ‘cause they’re targeting kids with magic…” Cassana gave Ashvell a glance. She couldn’t believe how easy it was to get the answers she wanted.

“I guess, yeah.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t know much, okay? I was just... Paid to do some stuff. Illegal stuff.”

“Like covering up the report of the Pylons?”

“For when the other kids disappeared, yes.”

“Why?” Cassana yelled.

“I told you; I don’t know!”

“Tell us what you know then.”

“I can’t, please, he’s gonna kill me.”

“Who’s he?”

The man trembled as he sat against the wall.

“Tell us who!” Cassana yelled again.

Ashvell pulled the trigger on his crossbow, launching another bolt, this time hitting the floor underneath Frederick, just below his groin. After a second, a yellow stain started forming on the carpet underneath his trousers.

“Oh, that’s just gross,” Cassana complained.

“Sorry,” Ashvell apologized with an amused grin. He helped the guy stand up and escorted him to a chair by the window.

“Just tell us who’s behind it. We won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Look, I didn’t…” the man hesitated. He took a deep breath and slowly gave Cassana the answers she wanted. "I didn't know it would lead to this; I didn't even know about the missing kids. At first.

"When they approached me, they just wanted me to erase some records. They paid me, and then they gave me a list of dates and I removed the pages and replaced them with older records.

"Then the other day, they told me to watch over any child with magical ability entering the city. I told him that even though we have tools to determine if a person can do magic, it wasn't part of the immigration process.

"But I'm already in too deep. And I was scared of what he could do to me. So, I told him I would do it.

"That’s when you and that kid arrived. I passed them a message, and I put a small charm in your bags so they could track you. Nothing big that would trigger the pylons, just enough energy to detect where you would be."

"Do you know what they’re gonna do with him?" Cassana asked.

"I didn't. I knew they’d get their hands on him, but I don't know what for. Please, believe me."

"Tell us who he is."

"He was always wearing a hood when we would meet, and he would hide his face from me. But then, one night, I decided to follow him. I saw him remove his hood when he got into his carriage..."

“Who is it? Who's behind it all?”

"The Commander of the City Watch, Captain Hrothgar."

Suddenly, a spear crashed through the window hitting Frederick at the back of his chest, piercing through to the front. Blood and viscera splattered across the room, as Ashvell and Cassana stood in total shock.