Mother, Taele, and Farva returned shortly after I started to tell Penelope our plans. They came in with a bang catching our attention and getting us back into the entertaining room. Farva was helping a beaten Taele onto the couch, it wasn’t just a black eye either. Isaac had done far more than I had even remotely imagined. My cursory examination saw blunt force wounds that appeared more consistent with clubs than fists, and her left arm was obviously broken. I paused as I felt rage building in me. Before I even had time to think I felt someone rush past me. “Mom!” Penelope went running toward her mother.

  I felt my blood boil as I looked at the injured woman. It was all trauma I had seen before, but just a more extreme version. My eyes almost instinctively went to my sword in its sheath near the door. I took one step toward it before I realized my mother had been talking to me. “Alea! Go into my stash, look for the largest vial.” The words brought me back to my senses.

  I nodded and rushed back into her room. I went straight for her secret stash by removing a single stone in the wall. It revealed a satchel full of various different types of potions. For a decade everytime mother made a potion for the Halcrofts she would always secretly make a few extra, this was the culmination of her efforts.

  I went through the satchel finding the vial mother had requested, it was the only one of its kind. The liquid within was a ruby color and it sparkled slightly when it moved. I quickly returned the stone being sure it didn’t look different from the ones next to it.

  I came out to see my mother tipping the contents of a tiny vial into Taele’s mouth. A moment later relief came over Taele’s obviously pained expression. That was clearly the painkiller mother kept with her in a small pouch almost always. I had been deeply thankful for it on a few occasions. From when I first got the command crest, to training accidents, to just covering up for dumb kid behavior. I desperately wished I could learn to create that potion, but it required an alchemy class. Only alchemists could infuse magic into potions.

  I walked up with the large vial of ruby potion. It was only now that I got a really good look at Taele’s injuries. Isaac had been utterly brutal, her face was covered in cuts and scrapes over swelling wounds. Her hand that had been holding her right side was now relaxed, but it was obvious she had been clutching the injury. That made me suspect one or more broken ribs. Finally her right arm had a compound fracture, with the bone having just barely broken the surface of her skin. Taele had not been in nearly enough pain for these injuries, mother must have already administered a dose of the painkiller before they got here. That meant it wore off pretty quickly.

  “Will this heal her?” I asked, offering the potion to my mother.

  “Yes… but I need to set the bones…” Mom had a worried look on her face. Did she not know how to set bones? I had never seen mother give treatment beyond her potions to another person. Additionally she did not have the healer tag. The few times I had had more than a scrape over the last several years she would summon a low-level healer that would occasionally travel to the castle from the nearby village. However I had never seen how this world dealt with bad fractures and entirely misaligned bones.

  “Can you do it?” I asked. Mom nodded gravely, clearly not entirely confident in herself.

  I briefly considered doing it for her, I certainly knew how. However that would absolutely out me as reincarnated, and I have not told anyone thus far. “Let’s get her to the bathroom first.” Mother said. Taele, now dazed but aware, began to stand before Farva ducked down to help brace her. The group made their way to the bathroom, closing Penelope and I out. A minute later there was a sickening pop.

  Several more minutes went by as we waited outside. Penelope sat beside me with her head in her hands. I pulled her in protectively with a hand over her shoulder. She wasn’t handling the whole thing particularly well, not that I could blame her. I had very seriously considered grabbing my sword and going to kill someone probably 100’s of levels higher than me when you consider that he likely has two or three more classes than me.

  I considered what Taele’s condition and what Halcroft had said to Isaac meant for our escape plan. With Penelope very clearly with us, we still had a chance. However there were several significant problems.

  Firstly, Halcroft was now even more on guard than he already had been. As my 12th birthday approached I knew he would be more and more wary of any escape attempt. With what has happened he will be watching all of us like a hawk.

  Secondly, Penelope could control our command crests so we could be freed of Halcroft’s ongoing orders, but Taele couldn’t. Her command crest was keyed only to Halcroft. The only way to change who a crest was keyed to was to apply a new grade A monster core, each of which were worth more than a small town. Suffice to say, we did not have three monster cores, let alone one. Even if we did want to go that route it would require someone that knew the ritual, which was a closely guarded secret of Hakan.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  All that meant Taele’s ongoing order to never escape would activate the moment we did that. She would be forced to make her way back to the manor or she would suffer the pain of disobeying an order. We could restrain her, if it was impossible to follow an order it didn’t activate, however that would mean we’d have to carry her as we escape. We had found some solutions to that problem, but they were imperfect, and each increased the risk that Halcroft’s trackers would find us.

  Thirdly, we needed to actually get out of the manor without running into the guard. That was effectively impossible through the normal means. The guards knew we were prisoners and were there to keep us in just as much as keeping monsters and people out. We knew there were secret passageways, but not where they were exactly. I was hoping Penelope might know, but haven’t had a chance to ask. Taele knew where one was, but had been ordered to never tell anyone so we can’t use it.

  Finally, we were at a massive level disadvantage. Penelope had leveled fairly quickly in the last year since she unlocked, but she was only level 21 in her species, 87 in her warrior class, and 35 in her fairly new noble class. Combat and professional classes apparently leveled way faster than species classes. I was the most useless of the group being stuck at level 20 until I unlocked.

  Mom had three classes, her combat class was a ranger that complimented her alchemy class, but was only level 112. She had two profession classes; 214 alchemist, and 152 princess. The princess class was entirely worthless to us, but mom had done absolutely everything in her power to make her alchemist class work for us. Preparing a simply staggering number of potions that we could use.

  Taele had three classes as well. Her noble class, 156, is equally useless as mom’s princess class. When she came to the manor her combat class at the time was in the high 90’s and a warrior, when she hit 100 she took a rogue class, which was apparently a fusion between a warrior and ranger. Her class [Shadow Stalker, Air, 167], gave her a ton of incredibly useful skills for escape and surveillance, but she was ordered never to escape, so the abilities were effectively sealed to us. Her second class was a similar water based combat class. She was hoping that when her shadow stalker class hit 200 she would be able to merge her air and water rogue classes into a mist one. However, that was years off.

  Lastly we had Farva, she was our strongest fighter. She had been both Taele’s maid and bodyguard before coming to the Halcroft manor. She had trained as a warrior before raising her maid class, which allowed her to accomplish both jobs. Her main combat class was a level 168 Lightning warrior. She has also kept most of her combat prowess a secret from the Halcrofts. Her maid class was higher level at 202, so she identified as a laborer. She also had a third much lower level combat class, a water ranger level 92, she wants to evolve eventually but hasn’t been able to train much in the last decade.

  All that meant we might be able to kill one or two guards. If we got the drop on them. Far more likely the guard would raise an alarm and we would be caught. We needed to escape before anyone noticed.

  Our largest obstacle was Taele’s current guard Riza. She was a knight sworn to Halcroft. Although she had served Taele for more than two decades there was no doubt where her allegiance lay. A knight breaking their oath to a lord was simply unheard of. Despite her being sworn to a manipulative asshole I didn’t think she would allow what happened to Taele to occur. Her loyalty was to Halcroft not Isaac. I decided I would need to follow up on finding out what happened to her today.

  I was broken out of my scheming by the bathroom door opening. Farva slipped out with bloodied clothes. She stopped and bowed when she saw us. “Ladies, I am just getting a change of clothes for them. Lady Taele and Princess Shalia are currently bathing. Lady Taele is not entirely healed, but she is much recovered and will be just fine.”

  Penelope let out a gasp of relief. I gave her a gentle squeeze. If that ruby potion had been like the one I saw mother use when I was a baby, Taele would still be healing for a month or so. A compound fracture like what I saw would take 2 or so months with modern medicine. The last time I had seen a potion used on a major injury it accelerated the healing process by a couple weeks.

  If Taele could already put a bit of strain on the arm it would mean she would have to spend far less time getting the arm back into working shape. Accelerating healing with magic was already amazing just for the wound itself, but much more importantly it meant you didn’t stop using the wounded part of your body. Which meant there was no reason for physical therapy afterwards. Magic truly blew medical science out of the water.

  Farva went into my mother’s room then came back out a minute later with clean clothes. She dropped them off then returned to us. She had some small droplets of blood on her white and gray maid uniform. I assumed someone in the manor had a clothes cleaning skill, but clearly Farva didn’t. “I will return shortly.” Farva said with a slight tilt of her head.

  I gave her a warm smile. “Thank you.”

  The door to the bath opened and a slightly injured but much better looking Taele walked out. Penelope shot out of my grasp at her mother. “I’m alri-” She began, but as the teenager hugged the woman she groaned. “Pen! That hurts!” Taele yelped out.

  I got up but just as I was going to try to stop Penelope, mom walked out and began to pry her off. “We should allow your mother to rest…” Mother said affectionately.

  Penelope seemed to realize we were all trying to protect her mother from her and blushed. “Sorry, I just…”

  Taele down just a bit, very carefully not bending her body. She put her hand on Penelope’s cheek. “I love you too.” She said warmly.