Chapter 36: Amulet II

Leo jerked back, his hand flying to the dagger at his waist and muscles tensing. Irving continued to sit there, calmly taking another sip of his tea.

“…You heard?”

“I check the pot every morning,” the man said simply. “It was the most obvious conclusion.” He frowned, those blue eyes scrutinizing the former [Thief]. “I assume you have questions about the amulet.”

Leo eyed the man warily. He didn’t look worried or defensive at all. “Are you offering to answer them?”

Irving smiled a little at that. “I am.”

Leo met eyes with Allan and Spade. Allan’s dark eyes were narrowed, staring intently at the fisherman, while Spade did the same with considerably less suspicion. Her hand hadn’t even gone to her sword, Leo noted.

“Why would you tell us?” he asked the first thing that came to his mind. A bit of frustration entered his voice. “Why now?” Why not say something to someone earlier, before people got hurt?

A hint of remorse entered Irving’s gaze as he stared down into his tea cup.

“Yesterday was a wake up call I desperately needed.” He exhaled. “I’ve been stubbornly putting things off, but now I realize this whole charade was pointless. I would never have been able to keep the information from Sonia for long.”

The man shuddered, likely recalling the events of the previous day and how easy it had been for the Hounds Leader to kill Fergus.

He looked up, blue meeting hazel, and his lips thinned.

“Your first instinct was to help Tom. I may not know you well, but that’s enough for me to trust you more than Sonia.”

“So the pendant does have to do with the tides. Does it show the routes?”

“More than that.” Irving’s voice lowered. “There were never true routes to begin with. That amount of knowledge would be far too much for a human mind to handle.” He shook his head.

“When someone enters the range of the lake with that amulet on, it temporarily halts all lingering fae spatial magic. There will be nothing for you to need to navigate.”

Leo’s eyes widened, and his fingers tightened around the stone. That…certainly hadn’t been what he’d expected. That confirmed at least that the gem must have some of its own fae magic inside it.

His mind churned. On one hand, this would make it easier to get places quickly if it eliminated the warping entirely. On the other hand, if it stopped the magic everywhere, it also meant the Hounds could follow right behind them.

“Hey,” Spade suddenly said. Leo turned, and the [Executioner] was studying Irving with those uncanny grey eyes. She cocked her head. “Was keeping Sonia from the fragment really the only reason you didn’t give that up earlier?”

Leo frowned. He couldn’t tell what the woman’s angle was, and Irving furrowed his brow.

“Is there a reason you want to know?”

She shrugged. “I like knowing these things,” she said simply. Her tone of voice, Leo realized, was very similar to the one she’d taken when she’d questioned him on his own motives back in that prison cell.

Nothing came up with [Judgement], so either she wasn’t using [Empathy] and this had nothing to do with her personal skill, or this was a passive effect that [Judgement] couldn’t pick up on.

Irving opened his mouth, then closed it again. He seemed to be battling with himself, but finally, he released a long breath. His gaze remained fixed on the tea cup, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

“The last time I used that amulet was twelve years ago,” he began slowly. His eyes grew cloudy with distant memories.

“I…my grandson had just walked into the lake.” He released a shaky breath. “I knew nothing could survive that, but you must understand. I lost my daughter and son-in-law to illness; that boy was the only family I had left.”

His fingers tightened around the tea cup. “I took the amulet and went to the lake. I must have searched for days trying to find a trace of him. No one ever remains on the lake for so long, and I knew that, but I didn’t care.” His voice quieted. “Of course, I didn’t find anything in the end.”

He paused, silent for a few moments. Finally, he looked up again, lips thin.

“The next day, a tide formed suddenly. I’ve never seen anything like it; those waters moved like they were alive. There used to be another village close to Clearside. Now there isn’t.” His voice grew even quieter at the end.

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“You think it was your fault.”

“I can’t be certain of anything, but I suspect I angered the fae by remaining on the lake for so long. Since then, I’ve never taken the amulet anywhere near it.”

“So it was fear,” Allan said. The man was frowning. “You thought if you gave the amulet away, something like that might happen again.”

Irving didn’t respond verbally, but his silence was answer enough.

Leo squeezed the amulet in his palm. The stone remained cool to the touch, like flowing water, despite it. It was possible the situation had been a coincidence, or maybe there really were living fae angered at the trespass. Would something like that happen again when they searched for the fragment, or would it be fine?

“Are you really okay with giving us the amulet?” Leo found himself voicing his own doubts. “Risking that again?”

“Well, I don’t imagine you’d return it even if I asked nicely,” Irving remarked. He took another sip of his tea, draining the rest of the cup and setting it down with a clinking sound. “Regardless, it’s unavoidable now. And perhaps it was meant to be,” he added, a hint of bitterness entering his voice. “The death of the Administrator followed by the resurrection of the ancients. It’s almost poetic.”

Leo frowned. The ancients had once ruled the continent while humans were seen as a lesser species, but the sudden appearance of the System had been the push humanity needed to take control. After the Fall of the Ancients, they’d driven the surviving ancients into hiding in the edges of the continent, and human society had flourished.

There’d always been a segment of people who believed the ancients would rise again in vengeance towards humanity, and he supposed that to them, the death of the Administrator would feel like a reckoning.

That wasn’t quite true though, Leo thought. The System was still running, and it wasn’t as though the Administrator was permanently gone. A new one was going to take the old one’s place. His eyes narrowed at the thought, determined.

Irving shook his head. “What you decide to do now is your own business,” he murmured. He rose from the table, grabbing his cane firmly in hand. That distant, cloudy look had never fully left his gaze.

“I’m tired.”

With those final words, the [Fisherman] hobbled away, disappearing down the hall.

Left in the living room, Leo finally allowed himself to stare down at the pendant again. The sun had reached its apex outside, and it was beginning its steady arc down until evening inevitably came and the blue sky shifted to red. He could see the silhouettes of boats by the shore and the Hounds guarding them.

His mind still reeled from the sudden influx of information, but growing among the flurry was undeniable excitement. This was the piece they’d been missing, and now they were closer than ever to finding the fragment.

“Let’s go back to the room,” Leo said. “We need to plan.”

—

The curtains remained shut, only a thin line of light managing to get through the edges of the window. On the bed, their bags sat fully packed beside their weapons. They likely wouldn’t have time to return after they found the fragment, so they’d need to take all their things with them.

“—how likely is it,” Leo was saying, “for an Echo to show up on the water?”

“It’s rare, but it happens,” Spade said. Leo frowned at that. They were going to set out that day, but whether they should leave in the evening or at night was the question.

The latter provided much better cover, but the risk of the Silence appearing during their search was very real. He wasn’t sure they’d be able to handle fighting an Echo on a boat.

“Irving said the amulet affected the entire lake, right? So no matter what the Hounds will probably follow us,” Allan pointed out.

“And fighting off Hounds and a random Echo wouldn’t go well,” Leo finished. His brows furrowed. “Okay, so evening plus distraction it is.”

“You remember the most likely islands, correct?”

Leo nodded. “I know their rough locations, but there’s still a lot of them. the Hounds’ll most likely catch up while we’re searching. We’ll have to be ready for a fight and keep our eyes out. If one of them finds it first, we’re pursuing them.”

The [Fragmentholder] leaned back. They’d been planning for at least an hour at this point, but it still didn’t feel like enough. They had to leave soon, though.

He closed his eyes and pulled up his stat sheet to finish the final task—distributing the points from that morning’s level up.

Leo put 100 into raising [Visual Illusion] to level 2; the initial encounter with Sonia had shown him how important it was.

As for the remaining 200, the points required for raising stats was more now that they’d reached Tier 1 and he’d only be able to raise two stats. He remembered the feeling of being pulled forward, Fergus’s body jerking ahead and being speared on Sonia’s hand, and suppressed a shudder. Decent resistance stat, she’d said.

As a general rule, magic spells targeted resistance, but certain skills (especially personal skills) could as well depending on how the System internally classified them. Sonia’s [Lifeline] seemed to be one of them.

Leo raised his resistance up by two points. He couldn’t risk getting pulled by [Lifeline] if they ran into the Hounds leader, and he had a distinct feeling that, no matter how hard they tried to avoid her, they probably would.

“Done?”

Leo and Allan both nodded. Spade hadn’t leveled up yet since she’d started out higher leveled and needed more experience, so it was just the two of them who’d needed to distribute points.

Leo grabbed his pack and slipped it on, tying his pouch to his waist with a tight knot right beside his dagger. He wasn’t going to risk losing the crests during the search.

He exhaled and nodded at Allan and Spade, who were making similar preparations. Leo waited for them to nod back, and he set his jaw.

“Let’s go.”