The Knight Lydia would have gaped her mouth open in surprise two months ago if she saw someone of the Young Master’s peerage bowing his head to someone other than His Majesty the King Himself. Now, however, she just accepted that after his coma the Young Master humbled down to the point that he hosts innocent game days with his maids and sometimes makes his own sandwiches to eat in the kitchens. Bowing his head to Miss Quoro after he had actually wronged her seemed pretty standard given his personality, even if it should never have happened socially. The severe, moody boy from before had changed.

It had all started when he heard the Young Miss complain about a lack of danger in her life to prove herself. Lydia snorted to herself when she overheard that. Danger isn’t like one of the Young Master’s games. The Young Master disagreed, apparently, as the next thing she knew he was whispering directly next to her ear.

“I’ve made you invisible. Please go to the Hedge Maze and wait at the first intersection turn. Quietly, please.” Lydia didn’t need to be told twice. She immediately made her way past the young pair and entered the Maze. A minute later she heard the guttural cry of a goblin coming from close by. She pulled out her sword, but didn’t see the monster. Turning back towards the entrance of the Hedge Maze, Lydia decided to guard the Young Master once again when she noticed out of the corner of her eye two goblins seated no less than four feet from her eating what appeared to maybe be the haunch of a rabbit? In a flash, she passed by the two goblins and struck perfectly at their necks with her blade. The movement so swift and smooth it didn’t even feel as though she had hit anything.

Looking back at her work, she realized she hadn’t hit anything. The goblins had ignored her completely, and definitely weren’t beheaded like she expected. She poked at one again and her blade passed straight through.

Ah… that’s… well, hopefully she takes it well. Lydia thought with a twinge of worry. Pulling these sorts of tricks were precisely why people hated illusionists. The Young Master seems to mean well… but this kinda crosses a line. What if she locks up and has a trauma because of this?

“We’re nearly there. Do you mind critiquing Miss Quoro’s technique? She seems interested in becoming an Initiate, and this might help her immensely.” The Young Master’s voice appeared once again and whispered into Lydia’s ears.

When it was all said and done, Lydia didn’t disagree with what happened, which surprised her a bit. Miss Quoro took a few awkward moments to figure out the situation, even though the Young Master had all but completely outlined his crimes. He had used his illusions to trick her into thinking they were in a life-or-death scenario, and even used himself as the catalyst to see if she would protect him when he ‘fell apart’ in the emergency. She did really well, even if her knife-play was sloppy and would likely have resulted in her cutting her hand pretty seriously. The fact is, you can teach almost anyone how to use a blade… you can’t teach them to fight with their lives on the line. She took a look at the helpless Young Master, considered saving herself, then threw herself into the fray knowing that if she didn’t, he was a total goner.

Though, given how potent the Young Master’s illusions were becoming… she had a feeling monsters might not just shrug them off like they tended to do against illusionists. No one really understood why, but monsters just seemed to be able to see right through illusions unless they were performed by true masters of the craft. Lydia had never seen a master work before though, so maybe the Young Master was just a scrub and true illusionists were absolutely terrifying? Imagining an illusionist at the same level of power as The Lady sent a repulsed shiver of fear down her spine. The Young Master could already convincingly simulate the first strike of a monster attack… could a true master simulate a city under siege? Could they convince the Wardens that an army of monsters was coming from the woods?

“Well, Lydia, any comments?” The Young Master asked as he stood up and brushed off his pants. The Young Miss stared hard at Lydia like a puppy seeking approval.

“Her skills are crap, but her heart is where it needs to be. She’s got guts. Train her up to a decent level with that pig sticker of hers and she would make a serviceable Warden. If she has a combat aptitude, it gets even easier. Given her high standing and social background, becoming a Knight is also possible, but only if she has a good aptitude. Finally, she could definitely be a guard, but why would she when she could be a Warden? Becoming a guard would also likely bring shame to the Quoro family as it is often considered a ‘commoner’s occupation’, and would almost certainly result in the Young Miss being disowned.” Lydia didn’t directly ask for Beyeth’s aptitude because, unsurprisingly, doing so is a horribly intimate or rude act, depending on how close you are with one another.

“Nice! Well, good job Miss Quoro! You’ve passed your first emergency with flying colors!” The Young Master cheered.

“Alright, now that is settled, back on task. I’m off to the staff room now to check on how many copies they have managed to make so we can make a plan for distribution.” Syron said cheerfully as he basically bounced on his soles on his way out of the Hedge Maze. Lydia and Beyeth followed, both with a conflicted look on their face. Beyeth because she felt equal parts violated by Syron’s illusions, as well as encouraged and grateful for the sincere attempt at helping her with her issue. Lydia was conflicted because she knew how many copies were made, as well as about the distribution since she was assigned a ‘death march’ cart just yesterday.

“Young Master, the copies aren’t being prepared at the Staff Quarters, they are being prepared in one of the empty offices on the first floor. Have you perhaps not spoken with The Lady recently?”

“My mother? I mean, I have meals with her everyday… what does that have to do with anything?” Syron replied, confusion evident on his face.

Lydia groaned.

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“Ah, well, you’ll see shortly, Young Master. When the Lady heard about your plan to hand copy and distribute your rule book around, she made a few changes. For starters, she lent a rather valuable ‘copy stone’ from her personal office so that the pages could be magically copied quickly with a bit of power from the user. Second… well, she increased production a bit.”

The group arrived at the office Lydia pointed out, and Syron was stunned to see that he hadn’t already noticed the mayhem in the room from earlier in the day. It looked like a scene from a movie showing an old timey newspaper office with people running around like chickens with their heads cut off and papers flying every which way. If there was a constant ringing of telephones, Syron would have swore he was imposing one of his illusions on the room to depict a movie he had seen in his past life. Right outside the door was a familiar four wheeled wheel barrow stacked full of his rule books. Given their small size, there was easily a hundred booklets already printed.

“Oh my… I expected like four to be done. What exactly did my mother say we do with all these? I only planned on giving out like ten or so, and then keeping the rest in reserve for when I get invited to noble gatherings… assuming I do get invited of course.” Syron picked up one and rifled through its pages quickly. He cringed a little seeing his horrid handwriting copied perfectly, along with some of his silly notes in the margins that he didn’t expect to make it to the final copy. Lines like “Do this if you’s a noob” and an arrow pointing at a stick figure standing in a rather poor representation of a fire. He handed off the copy to Beyeth without a word. He was still a little stunned at the scope of the endeavor.

“Young Master, this cart is the fourth one today. We’ve been handing them out in Vanguard by the cart load ever since the Lady heard you wanted it done. She’s actually invested quite a bit of manpower into this.” Lydia said carefully. She was worried about saying something that could be construed as insulting and having the Lady overhear it.

“Wow… that’s… wow. Wait, what’s Vanguard? Some kind of book store?”

Lydia balked at the question.

“Young Master, Vanguard is the name of the adjacent town. When you leave the estate and pass the Warden’s Fort, Vanguard is on that same road. It’s only about fifteen minutes away by carriage.”

“Ohhh… I was wondering what the city was called. Everyone just referred to it as ‘going into town’ or ‘the nearby town’. I had considered naming my game Vanguard but I felt like it was already taken. Good thing I didn’t huh? It’d be pretty confusing.” Syron said, his smile back in full force. Lydia felt he was perhaps a little too simple to be the proper heir, but kept her opinion to herself. It wasn’t really her place to even think of such things anyway.

“Only fifteen minutes eh? So it’d be around a half an hour walk? That’s not too terrible. Maybe I’ll go into town in a few days and see how people are taking it. Has there been any feedback yet?”

Lydia frowned. “Truthfully, even if there was feedback, the people assigned to the carts have been working almost nonstop for days, myself included, and we’re far too tired to even process it.”

Syron frowned too, and Lydia felt like maybe she would get in trouble for speaking out against a noble’s House. The punishments for those sorts of slights could be pretty severe depending on the Lord, but the Young Master had seemed so polite and forgiving the past few months she hoped it wouldn’t be a situation to be concerned about. He didn’t disappoint. Standing in the doorway, he loudly cleared his throat. No one noticed him. He cleared his throat again and said “Excuse me!” quite loudly. Again, no one noticed him.

“BOOM!” Syron set off the sound of a small explosion in the middle of the room. It was loud enough to scare the pee out of someone, but not enough to leave a ringing noise. Immediately, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked over at him.

“Knight Lydia here has brought to my attention that you all aren’t really sleeping while completing this task… that’s insane. All of you can be done. You’ve worked enough, so go take a rest.” Syron said to the stunned group of maids and knights that were moments before frantically trying to make more books.

Honestly, that mother of mine can be… something. Is this considered normal treatment for paid servants or something? Is she such a son-con that she drove the whole House to the brink to fulfil one of my requests?

“We apologize Young Master, but as this was an order from the Lady, we can’t stop until our quoto has been met. We do hope you’ll forgive our disobedience in this matter.” A maid stepped forward and kneeled on the ground in front of Syron with her head bowed, awaiting punishment. Syron just sighed regretfully.

“I understand. I’ll hopefully be back soon.” The Young Master stormed off toward the Lady’s room, a fearful Lydia and Beyeth no longer following. When he arrived at her office door he knocked politely. She didn’t answer, so he knocked again a little harder, calling out “Mother, its Syron. I’d like to have a word with you!” She still didn’t answer.

“BOOM!” Syron set the sound to come from the door itself. He felt a momentary twinge of fear when he got a blast of negativity from the other side of the door. It opened on its own and he saw a furious looking woman with book lines creased onto her head and dried drool on her cheek. The Lady Forrester blinked her eyes a few times before she realized whom was standing at her door shaking slightly from her power. She immediately swapped to positivity and hit herself with a blast to remove her fatigue. She looked down at the paperwork she was working on, frowning that she had fallen asleep before completing it.

How long have I been out? Patricia thought to herself, still out of it enough to ignore her son’s presence.

“Mother. Have you got a minute?” He asked, shaking his head to remove that lingering feeling of existential dread. He cautiously stepped into the office at her beckoning.

“Of course my sweet boy. How can Mommy help you?” She asked, her eyes bright and her smile charming.

Mommy…? Seriously? I’m twelve…

“Oh, I just wanted to ask you to rescind the order you made to the staff working downstairs. You see, they seem to be under the impression that you wanted them to work until they died, and then continued working after that until the job was done. They look like they haven’t slept in three days.” Syron said, seriously. His mother may be terrifying when she is… well… terrifying, but Syron didn’t want his game to be tainted with such horrible working conditions. He had to go to bat for the staff.

Lady Forrester looked down once again at the paperwork she was filling out to purchase land in the center of Vanguard to build her son a game hall, and smiled.

“Sorry sweety. We’ve got a deadline to reach so your request is denied. I’ve already set up a contest in Vanguard for the top players to receive a decent sum of money for playing your game with you. Perhaps I should have given it two months… but what is done is done. The game will be held in four weeks from now. I don’t know what you need to prepare… but if you do have something to do, you better do it soon. The staff will be fine.” She smiled brightly again as a pulse of positive magic burst forth from her with enough force to stagger Syron to a kneeling position. Any fatigue he had accumulated that day he could feel wash away like it was never there.