“Go to another world, it’ll be fun! You can spend all day doing cool magic stuff! I guess they forgot to mention that I’d be the one responsible for infiltrating castles that directly attack your soul in order to kidnap someone strong enough to actually live in said castle.” I grumbled as I made my way up the side of the mountain. Not that I was actually pissed off or anything, I just felt like venting a little bit. “Teach me why to read the fine print before signing a contract.”
“To be fair to you, you’ve never actually had the opportunity to read the contract in the first place. You were unconscious when I signed it for you, remember?” Sophia chimed in, giggling slightly at my antics.
“Oh yeah, I forgot that particular little fucked up detail. So you’re the one I have to blame for my current predicament?” I jokingly accused.
“And now to be fair to me, it’s not like either of us knew Ash at the time that we established our agreement. So even if I had placed any sort of fine print to make you obey every word I say, it wouldn’t have forced you to go along with one of her requests.” Sophia countered as I passed by the walls of one of the towns on the side of the mountain, below the castle. I had my stealth enchantments activated, so that the only way someone would be able to see me was if they happened to be able to perceive ultraviolet light, and I was maintaining a small vacuum bubble around me to prevent sound from leaking out, occasionally opening it to prevent accidentally asphyxiating myself.
“Fair point”, I acknowledged, “But her ears did that little twitch thing, and her tail was wagging, and she gave me the puppy eyes. How the hell was I supposed to say no to that!?” I said as I remembered Ash’s appearance when she asked me to look into what was going on behind the scenes of the kingdom.
When she and X had returned from the riot, X was silent as Ash went over each individual point that the late speaker had made, specifically emphasizing how despite such a massive increase in bandit attacks, there was no correlating food shortage. I had to admit, collusion between the Kingdom and the Bandits sounded a little far fetched. Sure, I had suspected that something suspicious was going on, but I assume that it’s something in the range of a couple corrupt officials, and not some huge conspiracy from the entire government. After all, what does the Kingdom as a whole stand to gain by killing its own citizens? The only thing that will lead to is a civil war, which won’t do any good for anybody.
Despite this point of mine, Ash still wanted me to check everything out, and make sure that what the speaker was hinting at was not in fact true. And as she gave me the aforementioned puppy dog eyes, I didn’t have the heart to deny her her request. Although, as I made my way towards the base of the mountain, I started to believe that maybe she had a point. The reason for this is that the streets, which by all accounts should be jam packed full of people, were completely empty, the Capital’s Guard having imposed a blanket curfew. I could only think of three reasons that the entire Capital would be on lockdown.
Option 1: The riot that Ash had gotten caught up in had spread like a tidal wave, gathering more and more people as time progressed, turning into a massive deal involving tens of thousands of citizens. In my mind, this was the least likely option, as I thought that any average person who wasn’t there for the initial speech, upon seeing the angry mob charging down the streets trampling anyone in their way, would immediately try to get safely indoors, rather than join the stampede.
Option 2: Similar speeches, leading to different riots, were given at roughly the same time as the one that we knew about. This option was more likely, but also far more suspicious. Suspicious because in order to induce multiple riots at almost exactly the same time, without any obvious reason as to why today of all days, some sort of premeditation would be required. It meant that this was a planned event, either by the Kingdom or by an outside terrorist force. Given the previous points that all that the Kingdom could potentially stand to gain from these riots is a civil war, and that civil war is a bad thing, I figure that outside terrorist forces are more likely.
Option 3: There was only the one relatively small riot that we already know about, but the Kingdom overreacted and shut everything down because the allegations are true, and they’re trying to silence this. Again, this seems like a very unlikely option, due to the fact that it only serves to give the late speaker legitimacy, and also, again: kingdom + bandits = civil war, and civil war = bad.
In my opinion, the most suspicious part of this whole ordeal was the executor. Not a member of the city guard, but a fully fledged member of the Royal Family just so happened to be in the vicinity, and nobody noticed him? I call bullshit. Maybe this world doesn’t see denim jackets as being as funny as I find them, but they are definitely still fairly noticeable, especially considering the fact that no one else around here wears blue clothing.
That implies that he was hidden, listening to the words of the speaker, yet allowing him to continue his speech anyway. Why? Was he a political enemy of a corrupt official that Was in fact colluding with bandits, and wanted to set the stage for a justified takedown? Was he a mole for an outside group that was trying to destabilize the Kingdom for a hostile takeover? Did he know the contents of the speech beforehand? These questions, along with the curfew, cast doubt over my previous assumptions, and sparked my own personal curiosity in what was going on, and Ash’s request just gave me the excuse that I needed to start investigating. Not to mention, ever since I touched upon my own Aspect and started being able to see the subconscious mind of whomever I observe, every time I look at Ash, I see massive clouds of Fear, of Loss, of Pain, and of Self-doubt. Every time I see it, I can’t help but think about the girl chained up in the basement, the girl who couldn’t watch her sister die, and it made it almost impossible to say no.
“If you can’t say no to Ash’s admittedly adorable face, then own up to your own weakness, rather than attempting to cast blame on those around you.” Sophia mocked as I flew past yet another small town on the side of the mountain. Goddamnit, why is this thing so tall?!
“Nah, I prefer to blame y’all, more fun that way. Oh shit, there’s a member of the Royal Family right there, gotta go dark, I’ll let you know what I find out later.” I hurriedly stopped talking, then stopped casting my vacuum bubble so that he wouldn’t notice any sort of mana fluctuations. I then activated the mute button enchantment on my sleeve and pant leg, stopping my clothing from making any sort of rustle as I walked barefoot behind him, the quality of my Dreamsilk that prevents mana leakage making it so that he won’t potentially notice any sort of odd mana fluctuations next to him.
The man was alone, but we were currently out in the open, in plain view of every single one of the surrounding towns on the mountain’s side, not to mention the castle itself. And yes, while I’m currently both invisible and silent, if I were to kidnap him here, someone would most likely see a member of the Royal Family getting yanked by a ghost. Even if I brought him to the subspace, I’d still then have to exit it at some point, only when I left, I’d pop out right in the middle of an army of people all potentially stronger than I am as they inspected the spot where he’d vanished. No, I need to wait for him to be alone, in a space with at least some semblance of privacy.
Minutes passed as I stalked behind the man making his way towards the castle. With every step, I thought up different plans, different ideas on how to perform the abduction as safely as I could but…One part of the plan always seemed to fall apart. I have to assume that almost everyone on this mountain can use some kind of spatial magic, so if I was to bring him to the subspace, wouldn’t someone notice? And wouldn’t there be a risk of having the subspace be invaded by an army of people stronger than me? Sure, Sophia could probably smoke all of them, but how lame would I be to have to rely on my wife to fight my battles for me?
This meant that I would need to get the information here on Earth, while somehow not being noticed. As I walked, a certain idea came to me. A spell I’d never tested before, and only recently even became remotely possible. I’d only have one shot at this, and to get the best chance to succeed, I’d have to end up casting it inside of his bedroom in the castle, meaning that there’s a much higher chance of either failing, or being noticed by someone around me. I still wanted to try it though, as this spell could be the beginning of developing my own whole style of using magic, so I started working on escape strategies and various countermeasures for if I failed.
Eventually, we made it towards the wall outside of the castle, and I have to say, it looked even grander up close than it did artistically positioned on the mountain side. Rather than being stuck at only two stories like the rest of the buildings in the Capital, due to the fact that the castle was built into the side of a mountain, they were able to create a truly gigantic structure, with intricately carved walls and columns, and gracefully slanting domed towers all created out of Spectral Quartz. Looking at this truly monstrous building, I couldn’t help but remember Duke’s interest in architecture, and considered how much he’d give just to be able to learn from whomever built this masterpiece.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Given that I had no idea what kind of enchantments were in the walls, I had to wait for the gate to be opened by a nearby Royal Guard, who, interestingly enough, was wearing blue denim pants, but not the jacket. I assumed that this meant that he was considered to be halfway a member of the Royal Family, but God was it funny to see basically the Secret Service decked out in a pair of Levi’s. As the member of the Royal Family that I was tailing passed through the gate, I got closer to him than I was necessarily comfortable with, and slipped through behind him, seemingly setting off no alarms of any kind.
The person I was tailing at this point seemed to notice that something was off, and looked around him in confusion, trying to find the source of his bad premonition, but eventually gave up, probably assuming that he’d just imagined it. I let out a silent sigh of relief that he hadn’t noticed me, and re-adjusted my pace so that I was a comfortable few yards behind him again, close enough to clearly see where he was going, but not close enough to give off any sort of clues that I was there.
Due to the fact that the whole point of the castle is to cause soul damage to anyone who gets near, the Royal Family actually seemed to be pretty lax about security. Other than at the gate, I didn’t see a single member of the Royal Guard, and instead, happened to catch a glimpse of a few fully fledged Royal Family Members as they strolled about. Also in the vein of lax security, the castle didn’t even have a main set of doors. Instead, the front of the castle completely opened up to a hall, which then led to several adjacent halls that each had their own door.
This was the part I was most concerned about. What if he was the kind of guy who shut doors behind him the moment that he passed through? I wouldn’t have a single opportunity to tail behind, and would instead need to switch up my entire plan, finding some random bedroom to hide in and hope that someone would show up there. However, my anxiety was relieved due to one simple fact: People are inherently lazy. And the more powerful you are, the lazier you tend to try to be. Not in the sense of work ethic, but in the small day to day things.
Things like taking an elevator to go one floor above you rather than the much more convenient stairs right next to you. Things like installing automatic faucets in your house so that you don’t have to personally turn the handle. Fortunately, it seemed that even here in this fantasy world, this innate nature of man held true, and the doors were apparently enchanted to be automatic doors. I couldn’t help but laugh internally at the thought that the reason I’m about to gain access to all of the Kingdom’s secrets is the fact that they didn’t want to put in the bare minimum amount of effort to open and shut doors on their own.
Every time the man I was following passed through a doorway, it would stay open for a couple seconds before gently swinging itself shut. It was during this time that I would sneak through after him, as I tailed him through long winding hallways. Eventually, we reached one specific door that didn’t swing open for him automatically. I assumed that this was his room. When he opened the door, I used the smallest amount of mana that I could physically muster to keep the latch down, preventing the door from securing itself shut behind him as he closed the door.
Fortunately, he hadn’t noticed my use of magic, and carried on as though nothing was wrong. I waited for a few seconds, then lightly pulled the door open, letting go of the latch as I did so, so that the resounding thunk and creaking of the hinges would give off the illusion that he simply hadn’t shut the door correctly, rather than that someone else was opening the door. I quickly slipped inside the moment that the door opened, while he was still confused as to what had happened. As he got back up and closed the door, making sure that it properly latched this time, I settled myself in one of the far corners of the room, going over the details of the spell that I wanted to try, and waiting for the perfect opportunity to cast it.
Hours passed as I lied in wait. Several times a certain feeling of impatience tried to nudge me to just kidnap the man already and try the spell in the safety of the subspace, but I didn’t know if the man in front of me could use spatial magic. If anyone else noticed the resulting disturbance in the concept of Space in a room where the occupant couldn’t cast spatial magic, it would be a glaringly obvious sign that someone was here who wasn’t supposed to be. I also had no clue as to the prowess of the man in front of me, and had no confidence in being able to forcibly subdue him without drawing anyone else’s attention, so I remained hidden, waiting.
At some point, he invited a maid into his room for…well…non work related service. I kept silent as I listened to Sophia’s voice in my head, constantly switching from approval of the man’s tastes, to teasing me for voyeurism. Eventually though, the man seemed to finally finish for the day and relax, drifting off to sleep, and the maid blushingly put her uniform back on and left the room. I gave it another hour or so to make sure the man was completely out, before walking up to the side of his bed and carrying out what I’d spent all of this time planning.
After I touched upon the depths of my own soul, and realized my own Aspect, my blindfold had extended my vision and hearing, to include the subconscious workings and dreams of whomever I observe. This new development had led to the idea that I was currently about to attempt. Could I influence that subconscious? Could I mold that formless pressure to my whims? Could I use this new ability of mine to exert complete control over someone?
Obviously there were several inherent risks to this. One such risk is that the subconscious mind is responsible for all of the body’s automatic base survival functions. Heartbeat, breathing, digestion, these are all directly controlled by the brain, despite the lack of need for conscious control. If I interfere with subconscious thought, there’s a chance that I could completely break the connection between the mind and the body, and he would simply just lay there and die.
Another risk is that subconscious thought is a big part of what gives us our own personalities. If I haphazardly tinker with someone else’s, I could very likely completely change the base nature of who that person is. Would such a change be permanent? Or would it fade after a while like any other magical construct? I had no way of knowing without testing this, and due to the nature of the potential risks involved, I couldn’t exactly go around just experimenting on anyone I happened to come across. Well, that’s a lie, I most certainly Could, but Ash probably wouldn’t approve.
Sean had given me a few helpful tips about observations that he’d made regarding how the Nightmare Titled had used magic. These helpful tips included his own style of Demonic Magic. Demonic Magic by nature is all about using your own Existence as a means of influencing the world and other people around you, and the way that the Nightmare Titled used it, was by forging connections directly into people’s minds and directly stimulating their fear center. This would cause them to create their own worst nightmares, which the Titled would then manipulate as he pleased.
Learning from this, I did something similar, where I used magic to create an extremely fragile connection between my mind and the man sleeping in front of me. I don’t know whether he has any sort of experience in using mental magic, so I intentionally made the connection as delicate as possible, so that if he counterattacked I wouldn’t be harmed too badly. I then whispered as softly as I could, using mana to guide my words along the connection, feeding directly into the formless, swirling pressure that showed a deeply rooted subconscious sense of pride, loyalty, and respect.
“Be honest”
I watched as my words, guided by mana through the connection, gently pushed against the swirling subconscious that I was looking at, clearing room for a new deeply ingrained subconscious trait that was under my control. Honesty. I pulled out a certain engraved stick, an enchantment that I had made during one of my study sessions with Duke. A simple set of squares, and inside the squares, were consecutively: A set of two sideways triangles going backwards, a sideways triangle, a pair of parallel lines, a set of two sideways triangles going forwards, and finally, in the last square, a small circle, that I had used the dye that Richard had given me to color red. On the end of the stick, outside of the groups of squares, were an eye and an ear enchantment. A freaking magical video recorder. I started recording, as I gradually increased the level of ‘honesty’ that was fighting for dominance in his subconscious.
Now that the tricky part was over, I took my time collecting answers to all of the questions bubbling inside of me.
“Why did the Kingdom enforce a Capital wide curfew?”
“How many riots were there?”
“Why hasn’t the Kingdom sent out a force to eliminate the bandits?”
“Is the Kingdom colluding with the bandits, and if so, why?”
“What happened to the food that the bandits took from the farmers?”
“Why was there a member of the Royal Family just watching as someone started a riot?”
As I asked each question, the sheer weight of the conspiracy behind the Kingdom’s actions hit me, causing an odd dissonant ringing in my head, despite the low and gentle mumbling of the man’s speech as he slept. By this point, the ‘honesty’ part of his subconscious had started growing larger of its own volition, spiraling out of control, and seeming to devour his other innate attributes. I watched as it pressured him to start spilling everything that he’s ever known, every secret that he’s ever hidden, whether it was a murder that he knew about or even just a toy that he stole from his brother as a child.
At some point, ‘honesty’ became the defining characteristic of this man, and as I watched, it ate away at every other one of his subconscious dreams and notions, effectively turning him into a robot that only existed to spout the truth. Once the previous ‘pride’, ‘loyalty’, and ‘respect’ were completely annihilated, ‘honesty’ had nowhere left to spread, and seemed to instead root down deeper, taking away more from him, in an attempt to turn him into a complete and total Beacon of Truth.
His words, which were originally coming out in the standard mumbling of a sleeping person, were now coming out in great gasps as the ‘honesty’ caused him to forget how to breathe. His face flushed, turning crimson as the ‘honesty’ caused him to forget how to beat his heart. And as he lay there, dying, his body jolted awake, and he stared up in terror at the apparently empty room, trying to shout for someone to help him, but unable to say anything but every truth that he had ever known. And even if he had been able to call out, it would have been useless, as I had already set up a vacuum barrier around the pair of us, preventing anyone outside from being able to hear whatever transpired in this room.
I watched as the ‘honesty’, now with truly nowhere else to go, started to turn on itself, devouring itself like the great serpent Ouroboros, as it seemed to fade into oblivion. As the seconds passed, his mind grew weaker, and his struggle to force air into his lungs, his struggle to force his heart to circulate his blood, grew more and more unnoticeable. As I watched, the man lying before me simply…died. There were no wounds, there was no gore. There was no evidence of a struggle of any kind. Just a still warm corpse, and the still fading glimpse of subconscious ‘honesty’, as the man’s entire world faded to black.