The door swung open and the brute I had met at the door walked in. He somehow looked calm and menacing at the same time, like he was headed out to pick up some food at the market and then kill a few people afterward. Iris immediately vanished, but not before the man had caught a glimpse of her.

I was still sitting on the floor, rubbing my shoulders. There was no point in pretending I was still in my shackles, and he didn’t seem to be too bothered by that fact, other than slightly furrowing his brow when he saw me.

“Iris.”

He said the word like it was a command and she immediately reappeared and came within a few feet of him. He slapped her once, right across the face. Just enough to sting, but not enough to bruise. He was an experienced hitter of people. “I told you to bring water but said nothing about releasing him. We’ll discuss this later.”

I was not a fan of the way he said the word “discuss.” Not one bit. Iris simply stood there, emotionless and unmoving.  She was well versed in the art of being hit.  Fodyrn then gave the slightest of nods and she was gone. I had no mental energy to spare to try to track her location for I was now expending it all on the man before me.

He grabbed the chair near me like it was a dried twig and set it so the back faced me before straddling it, his eyes never leaving me. “Hello, Warren, you can call me Fodyrn, nice to meet you.” Fodyrn, grinned as he spoke.

Sigh.

As much as I loved to read about it, I wasn’t really cut out for subterfuge and trickery. It was a good thing my conversation with Iris had been as short as it was. Who knew what else I had been prepared to tell her, and apparently Fodyrn as well? Not that I had that much to hide, other than my origin. I wondered what he would do if he knew I was the son of Mathias Elusen.

A part of me wondered if my best bet was to come clean about my identity and hope for a ransom. I wasn’t sure if my father would even try to get me free, or if he would leave me to my own devices as some sort of object lesson. But I also doubted that this man had the means to prevent my rescue. He looked scary, but next to my father he was like a candle next to the sun. Regardless, I wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. My arms ached so much I could barely think straight.

“How can I help you?” I did my best to not sound like I was half his size, on the floor, and sore from hanging by my wrists.

“For starters you can tell me how you found this place. I know Iris didn’t tell you about it. She can’t. Who was it? Give me a name and maybe I’ll let you live.”

Can’t. Not wouldn’t. I filed that away for later. I also found it odd that a clearly secretive man would be so free with the girl’s—with Iris’s name. Which either meant that it was of no importance, or he didn’t intend to let me leave this room alive.

“I would tell you, but then I would have to kill you.” I chuckled at my feeble attempt at bravado.

He ignored my joke and began muttering to himself, “I’m missing something . . . I know of no one alive who would divulge this place to a rat such as yourself. They would have nothing to gain and everything to lose . . . and yet . . . the fact remains that you knew there was a girl who lived here. You haven’t begged for release, which tells me you aren’t as innocent as you look . . . unless, no. Impossible. Are you, by chance, a mage?” The last part was said with a sudden ferocity that it made me scoot back a few inches without realizing it.

* * *

“And that’s how you can tell if someone is a mage,” my father was explaining.

“But what if they knew you were looking for the signs? What if they were trying to hide the fact that they were a mage. How could you tell then?”

“Well, what do you think?” It was his favorite response to my questions, and it always drove me crazy. But I knew I wouldn’t get anything from him until I gave it my best attempt.

“Um, ah . . .” I thought about it for a minute. “Then it’s a matter of who controls their connection to the mana better?”

His eyes twinkled at my response. “Perhaps. What do you think of this?”

Suddenly he was gone . . . except he was still there. It was as if his connection to the world had been completely severed, like I was looking at a statue of my father, or perhaps a corpse.

“Okay, I see. Only a powerful mage could silence their connection to the mana so thoroughly. So I would say here you went too far. All people are connected to the mana of the world in some fashion, whether they are mages or not. You’ve got to reduce your connection, but only enough to make yourself look like a regular person.”

He nodded. “Precisely. It’s like holding something heavy in your hand but making it look to someone else that your hand is holding something light. Of course, if someone is a more experienced mage than you, they will likely be able to tell you are a mage regardless of how hard you try to hide it.”

* * *

Fodyrn was not a mage.

Or, if he was, he was playing mind games on me that made no sense. I had been doing my best to hide the fact that I was a mage the entire time I was in this room. I had no real reason to do so, except that it felt like too good of an ace card to reveal until I had to. The second he walked in the room I had been trying to ascertain if Fodyrn was a mage.

Either this man was a far better mage than I—someone who could totally mask his abilities from me—or he had no abilities whatsoever. The former seemed unlikely. And, besides, if he was far more powerful than me, than he would already know I was a mage. Which didn’t seem to be the case. Either way, it was time to show my hand.

“And if I was . . .”

A bit of fear flickered across his eyes. Or maybe confusion. It was both.

“Impossible. We’ve killed all the unbound mages. They’ve been dead for years.” His entire body was tense, ready to spring. “Even suggesting such a thing is a death sentence.”

Now I was confused. I knew my father, a mage. If mages were being slaughtered so close to our home, how was my father not aware of this? Or, if he was aware, why had he not done something about it? I shook my head—there would be time to figure this out later—for now I needed to focus on making sure there was a later.

Fodyrn appeared to come to a decision of his own, because I saw him start to move out of the chair and begin to lunge toward me, a knife suddenly in his hand. There was killing intent in his eyes.

I should note here that it is much, much harder to manipulate or otherwise affect a person’s body against their will—say light them on fire or push them back—compared to something like a chair. Depending on the person it can be done, but you should never assume you’ll be able to do it. On the other hand . . . if there’s a chair between you and a person you want to push back, well, my father would call it a difference without a distinction.

The look of shock on Fodyrn’s face as he flew back, unable to resist the pressure of the chair that was pushing him, told me he was not used to doing battle with a mage. And I wasn’t going to let him get comfortable. As soon as he hit the opposing wall, I was ready, a ball of fire larger than his head floating above my hand, illuminating the previously dimly lit room as if the sun had just risen. While people were hard to manipulate, the air was eager to burn.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“In the chair.” I nodded at the apparently very sturdy chair that was on its side, next to the brute who was now sprawled ungracefully on the floor. He rose slowly, first righting the chair, placing it next to the small wooden table, and then sitting in it, never letting his eyes leave me. I used Object Manipulation on the chains that had bound me just a few minutes ago, ripping them from the wall and directing them to wrap themselves around his arms and chest. Fordyrn’s fear had been replaced with a look of hate.

“Is it really true that there are no more mages?”

“How do you not know about the end of mages? Where do you come from?”

“Well, for starters, I’m not from Dorbish.”

“I suppose it doesn’t matter where you’re from, now that you are here, The Midnight Company will come for you.”

This was a new one. “Tell me more about The Midnight Company.”

“I can’t.”

“Oh, I think you can.” I moved the fireball closer to his face. He started to sweat, which was more likely from the heat of the flame rather than nervousness, as Fodyrn seemed utterly calm now. I guess the shock of discovering that I was mage had worn off. Well, he was the professional here.

“No, I really can’t,” Fodyrn insisted. “Not that I would. I must really be getting sloppy to have said the name aloud, but I guess I viewed you as a dead man and the restriction didn’t activate.”

“Wait—spell—you said there were no mages.”

“There aren’t any.”

“How could there be a spell then.”

“I can’t tell you that.” He tone was not apologetic, just matter of fact.

“Because of the spell,” I finished for him. I tapped my feet. We weren’t getting anywhere. “What can you tell me?” I put the flame away. I wasn’t really cut out for threatening people with flames. At this point I figured Fodyrn would either tell me what I wanted to know, or he wouldn’t. There were other ways to find out what was going on, I hoped. And it was getting hot. And, you know, there was only so much air to burn in this room.

He looked at my now empty hand for a second or two before answering. “Truthfully, and I don’t mean this in a threatening way, all I can tell you is the moment you walked up to this house you became a dead man. Maybe not by my hands. But death awaits you. If anyone else has seen you cast a spell, you won’t make it through the end of tomorrow. I don’t know where you’re from or where you’ve been hiding, but if you have any hope at all, it’s that no one other than myself knows about you yet and you have a spell that can take you back to your hiding place. Right now. Even killing me will only delay the inevitable. They will send someone when I fail to appear and when they arrive, they will know a spell has been cast here. And then they will track you down.”

Teleportation. Such a thing was possible, but it was beyond me. From what my father had taught me, only the most advanced mages could handle the instantaneous movement of objects between two places, and the Teleportation of living things was harder still. My father could do it, of course—he had Teleported us both a few times before—but I couldn’t begin to imagine casting such a spell on myself, not to mention Iris, whom I had already decdied I needed to convince to join me. When you messed up Object Reconstruction, you ended up with a mangled object. When you failed to properly Teleport a person. . . yeah, that wasn’t something I wanted to try at this exact moment.

“First, Fodyrn, thanks for calling me a man, even if it followed the word ‘dead.’ That means a lot. Truly it does. Second, I never properly thanked you for your housewarming gift.”

I used Object Manipulation to pull the chains and slam Fodyrn’s head into the table, knocking him out. Looking back on it now, I would have saved Iris and myself some trouble had I just killed him then and there. He was right that it would have only delayed things, but loose ends are loose ends.

As I said, I wasn’t a killer. I was a 16-year-old boy with a splitting headache. And I knew if I were to kill this cruel brute then he wouldn’t be able to enjoy waking up with the same splitting headache he had given me. One thing that hasn’t changed about me, when it comes to enjoying life, it’s the little things.

“Let’s go,” I urged, motioning toward the door. Iris was standing in shock next to Fodyrn, looking at his unconscious body in disbelief.

Iris’s face was filled with what looked like wonder, as if she had just witnessed a cow perform a handstand and was not sure if it had happened or how she felt about it. She looked up at me with awe.

I could only shrug in response. I had only known Fodyrn a short time and despite his physicality and cruelty he didn’t seem all that impressive. He wasn’t equipped to handle a mage, that’s for sure. But to a young girl who had known nothing else, I guess Fodyrn was a force to be reckoned with. Or maybe I got lucky. I shook my head. It was time to get out of here. I had no idea how much time we had until Fodyrn woke up or the Midnight Company showed up. And I needed to spend a few minutes exploring the house before we left. Something interesting had to be here.

“Iris, we need to go,” I repeated. “I understand that Fodyrn was your boss, but your time with him has come to an end. I can’t promise you endless luxuries, but I can promise you that I won’t slap you when I’m frustrated and that’s gotta be a good start. First, we need to scour this place for anything we can find about your former boss or The Midnight Company that might help us evade them in the coming days. Also, grab whatever stuff you don’t want to leave behind. With any luck, neither of us will ever see this dump ever again.”

I did my best to sound calm. The truth was, I was freaking out. Thanks perhaps to the element of surprise, Fodyrn was easily dealt with, but I had somehow drawn the attention of some nefarious organization that had the power to track mages and wanted them dead. I was drawing blanks on what that all meant. Admittedly, it can be hard to think clearly when you're trying to run for your life. For all I knew, whoever placed the speech restriction on Fodyrn might also have some way of detecting that he’d been knocked out just now. Someone might be on their way right now to investigate.

Iris stared at me for several seconds and then back at Fodyrn. Then she vanished.

I took another look at the brute sprawled on the floor, face up. It occurred to me he might have something on his person that I could use. I checked his pockets, but they were empty. The only thing of interest on his whole person was a metal necklace. If this was all he had on him, I figured it had to be important. As I removed the necklace, I discovered a small medallion attached to the chain. There was a fist embossed on the face of it surrounded by a cicrle. I had never seen the image before.

I grabbed my bag, which Fodyrn had kindly left in the room where he had taken me, quickly checked to make sure my stuff was still all present and accounted for, and then headed out the door. I found myself in a dark stairwell and I hurriedly climbed a few dozen steps. It seemed that Fodyrn didn’t want any screams to be heard outside the house while interrogating people. That tiny room had to be a good 30 feet below ground. A little out of breath—reading all day doesn’t exactly condition one’s body into a finely tuned instrument—I opened a door at the top of the stairwell and walked inside what I assumed was the shack that I had been standing outside of not that long ago.

“Iris, are there any documents or money or anything else we can grab?” I had no idea if she could hear me, but I presumed that she could. For a few heartbeats I thought maybe she had just left me for good or was running to go inform The Midnight Company of my whereabouts, but as suddenly as she had vanished, she appeared before me, grinning, holding a satchel on her back that seemed too large for such a small person. Either it wasn’t that heavy, or she could carry more than her appearance would suggest. Given her profession as a “mover of goods,” I thought there was a good chance it was the latter.

She gave me a firm nod that said she was ready to go.

“Wait, shouldn’t we search the place first?” I was a little surprised at how fast she had gotten ready. In the short time she had been gone I would still have been in front of my dresser, debating which of my favorite socks to bring. As everyone knows, not all socks are created equal.

She looked at me a bit confused and then shrugged.

Hmmm. I wanted to get the heck out of there—every creak of the house made me nervous, filling my head with thoughts that Fodyrn was awake and had somehow freed himself from the chains. While the urge to leave was strong, I had another strong feeling that I needed to double check the house for anything of interest. This was likely our one and only chance. If we ever did come back here, I was sure Fodyrn and anything of value would be long gone. This shack didn’t exactly shout “permanent residence.”

“Where’s his room?”

She took off down a hallway, turning right at the first door she came to. I was close behind. Inside was a small and tidy room with a desk, a one-person bed, and a dresser. I guess professional fixer or whatever he did for The Midnight Company didn’t pay that well. Or Fodyrn spent his money something other than household furnishings.

I stood still and closed my eyes.

Iris started to tap her feet audibly.

“I’m doing mage things, now let me think.” I wasn’t used to having a companion.

My mind wandered. I could feel the mana flowing around the room. I could also hear it. Everything had a place, an identity. It all seemed normal, perhaps there was nothing, except maybe—

The tapping resumed, more urgently now.

I spoke again, taking a deep breath first, “I’m trying to listen to the mana in the room—it’s not easy. Just give me a minute. I think I sense something. Whatever it is, someone didn’t want me to find it.”

I calmed my mind again, taking in my surroundings, letting the feelings of being present flow through me, I could sense the bed, the dresser, the floor, the wall—there!—got you. Along one wall there was an alcove. It looked like a solid wall to the eye, but I could see that there was a square cutout in the wall, about 2 feet across. I walked over and reached my hand inside. I found a bundle, wrapped in fabric, which I placed in my bag. There would be time for examining what was inside later. Maybe there were more such hidden places in the house, but I decided it was time to get the heck out of town. It was time to see my father. I had a few questions I needed to ask him.