After taking a few minutes to wash off the worst of the blood, Jayen strode up to the duke with a hard look in his eyes. Vir locked eyes with Helianna, who was still reeling from both the torrent of information from the knight and now the sight of the team.
“Get outta here. We’ll meet up with you later.”
She briefly nodded before exiting the room. In only a few moments she heard the voice of Jayen booming out over the city with the aid of his magic. She heard him address the people before it quickly became too muffled by the castle walls for her to understand. By the time she exited the castle, the announcement was nearly done, but she still listened in.
“-and let this be a reminder to all who hear it. For his heinous crimes, not only will this man be executed before you now, but he shall not have his death rites performed, dooming him to an eternity of nothingness!”
Sensing the end of the speech, Helianna looked back towards the tower just in time to see Vir step up alongside Jayen, dragging the duke with him. Zane floated the duke higher in the air, making him clearly visible for everybody below. Vir stood behind him and reached his arms up, where an enormous sword of ice coalesced. In the blink of an eye, he brought it down in a diagonal slash, cutting the man in two. Zane twisted, dramatically launched the two halves in opposite directions all the way down the castle. Without another word, the team turned and disappeared into the castle.
The city was in shock, first from the chaos of the battle and then the following execution. Many people had not seen it, but within minutes, it seemed the entire city knew and chaos reigned. Much of the city guard had died and with the duke dead, panic kept slowly rising. Helianna knew that any advisors of the noble would likely get a handle over the city, but it would take time.
None of that mattered to Helianna, who only needed to get out of the city. The ensuing chaos only made it easier to escape and coupled with the weakened security, she simply walked out the gate. About an hour later, she met up with the team in the same location they had dropped her off and noticed Zoe was missing now as well.
“Is Zoe off brooding somewhere?” she asked Vir.
“No, we killed her.” Helianna choked on her own spit in surprise, sending her into a coughing fit. By the time she recovered, she could see them smiling.
“Clarification please.”
“Better to be dead for a week than missing an arm forever.”
“Right…” Helianna responded apprehensively. “How does that work by the way?”
“You don’t know?” She shook her head sheepishly. “Alright, so we’re not certain how exactly the magic works, but I can tell you how we use it. Every now and then, we need to meditate together as a team and sync up our mana. When that happens, it syncs up our memories as well as our body state. The last time we did that was right before we left for the mission.
This meditation session is very important, because we rely on it when we respawn. The person who comes back is restored to the exact same state they were when we synced up, both their body and their mind. We can use this to heal them, like in this cause, but Zoe won’t have any memories of the mission. The next time we sync up, we can fill in her memories partially, but they’ll be from our perspective.
As soon as one of us dies, like Reina for example, one of us that’s alive needs to start converting the mana attuned to our affinity into unattuned mana. Respawning someone can only use unattuned mana and converting it is very difficult and takes a minimum of a week, but typically longer.”
“What happens if you never unattune your mana? Will they never respawn?” she interrupted.
“No they will, eventually. But by that time, any missing attuned mana will be instantly converted. This is unimaginably painful so we try to avoid that. The magic that recreates us is completely foreign, but we believe it to be from the gods. It recreates us from the last time we synced up and then the unattuned mana is used to essentially recreate the affinity. Like I said, they’ll lose all the memories since the last sync and they’ll never properly get them back. Unless we’re forced to respawn off our null, that’s all we lose.”
“What happens if you respawn off a null?”
Vir winced before responding. “A lot. First of all, your bodies reject all magic, even the gods. Because of that, our bodies can’t just be created out of the magic that’s supposed to course through you. Instead, it steals from your body, taking one of your limbs to do so. Said limb is used to create our bodies. Then there’s the problem of mana. Because you have none and it needs to come from somewhere, it tries to pull magic from the person it's respawning, which of course doesn’t work well. It’s not efficient and it's more than our bodies can handle, so our attuned mana is forever crippled.
“Afterwards, the null is of course missing a limb and the only way to fix it is to kill them. They then have to respawn as well. We have no clue how respawning works for nulls since they can’t meditate with the group or anything like that, but they can still respawn. Of course, because their bodies absorb magic and all that, it kills the person they respawn off of. So, to prevent an endless loop, someone else has to respawn off the other ithrax first before the null can be respawned.
So in total, we lose some attuned mana forever and we have to die an extra time if we respawn off a null.”
“Wow. That was… a little confusing.”
“They really don’t teach this stuff to you guys?”
“No. We’re told we’re a last resort respawn point for you guys, but we’re not told why.”
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
“Weird. Anyways, we’re all tired from the fight, so we’ll probably take a nap. Would you mind handling the carriage?”
“Sure.” She opened the door that led to the driver’s seat and saw Zane there. “Vir asked me to take over so you guys could get some sleep.” He grunted and handed her the reins.
“Stop and let us know when we pass by the river. We all need to wash up since we’re missing Reina.” He stepped into the carriage without clarifying and it took a minute for her to understand. Vir and Reina must normally work together to make water they can use to clean up.
It took several hours for the carriage to reach the river, where she stopped the carriage. Waking them up was an ordeal, during which Jayen took a sleepy swing at her when she woke him up. They spent some time cleaning up and relaxing in the stream before they got back in the carriage in much higher spirits. When they stopped for the night, the others decided to take watch and let her sleep the night since she hadn’t taken a nap. When morning came, she wasn’t the first one awake, which was unusual.
Zane was sitting down outside and leaning against the carriage, reading a letter in his hand. Jayen was laying down and had his eyes closed, with his feet propped up against Zane’s arm, but she didn’t think he was asleep. Vir was standing still nearby, looking down and clearly thinking.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“We received a message last night,” spoke Jayen.
“Another mission,” Vir finished. “You’re not specifically listed on this one, but there’s nothing ordering you back. Considering we’re a little shorthanded at the moment, we could have you with us if you’re willing.”
“Depends on the mission.”
“One of the beginner teams has been captured. We need to rescue them.”
“I’m down for that!” Helianna exclaimed, a bit more enthusiastically than she intended. She had been worried it would be another execution. She wasn’t ready for another one of those missions yet, especially considering how the duke had acted on her first one.
“Then we’re headed southwest to Shohlchester. Their mission was to investigate and possibly kill someone who was rumored to be experimenting with weapons of war that the academy is worried about. It seems they got captured instead so we gotta get them out. It was one of the baby teams. Only two members.”
“Zoe’s not gonna like this when she comes back,” complained Zane. Vir winced.
“Why?” asked Helianna.
“Three reasons. They failed their mission. And as a team of two, there’s not much they can do compared to a larger team. In her eyes, there’s nothing more important than a competent team. She also doesn’t like working with others.”
“Why, she’s just a walking stereotype, isn’t she?”
“You’re not wrong. We were waiting to leave until we knew if you were coming. I was about to wake you up, so this is good timing. Let’s get going.”
Fortunately, Sholhchester was only slightly over a full day’s ride away and they arrived late the next morning. Zane was driving the carriage when they stopped and he knocked on the door to get their attention.
“Vir! Need you out here!”
Everybody followed him out to see a semicircle of men in front of them blocking the road. Many of them had their weapons at hand if not fully ready. Heliann quickly noticed however, that they were poorly equipped despite their numbers being intimidating at first glance. The bows were simple farmer’s bows with little draw power and most of their melee weapons were woodcutting axes. Only the man in the front and center had a proper sword and it looked well-made. Additionally, she noticed there wasn’t a single human among them. But she had no idea what it meant, if anything.
“What is your business with us?” questioned Vir.
“You are to turn back. Shohlchester is currently at odds with itself and we have no need for others to come in and make things worse
“At odds with itself?” The man shifted slightly and she saw several of the men tense.
“Yes. Now please leave or we will be forced to take action.”
Vir calmly stepped down from the carriage and started slowly walking towards the man. Several weapons were raised and pointed at him, but he remained calm.
“I’m sorry sir, but I can’t do that. The Academy has business inside and cannot be denied. I suggest you lower your weapons before we force you to.”
Everybody went still except for Vir, who continued nonchalantly walking up to the man in charge. He stopped only a few feet in front of him, nearly touching his sword before speaking up again.
“What will it be?” The man flinched and one of his men reacted, instantly firing on Vir. Instead of flying true, the arrow dropped as if under the weight of an ocean, barely making it halfway to Vir. Helianna heard Zane grunt quietly, but Vir still hadn’t moved. They could hear the leading man’s teeth grinding all the way back at the carriage, but he eventually sheathed his sword.
“Stand aside and let them pass,” the man commanded. He spit on the ground as he moved to the side of the road. Vir calmly walked back to the carriage and gestured them into the carriage. Once inside he sighed dramatically and collapsed onto one of the benches.
“I hate doing that kind of thing. Why did Reina have to die at Arington?”
“Why did they let you pass?” questioned Helianna. “You could have been bluffing. It doesn’t take an ithrax to do what Zane did to the arrow.”
“You’re right. That was impressive, but it doesn’t take an ithrax. But in regards to the bluffing, I’m honestly surprised you don’t know this. You’re from Wulvinia, aren’t you?”
Uncertain how to respond, she simply cocked her head in confusion.
“Doesn’t matter. Masquerading as an operative of The Academy is only for the suicidal. The Academy pursues people who do that with extreme prejudice. He knew that either we were who we said we were, or insane enough to risk it. Neither of which he would want to deal with.”
She nodded in understanding and the carriage fell back into silence. Before long the carriage stopped and they stepped out to see what for. In front of them was a large crowd congregating around a square. In the center of the square, they could see a large stage being built. When they asked members of the crowd what it was for, nobody knew and the team shared uneasy looks. After a few moments of deliberation, they decided to find an inn for the night.
As they struggled to maneuver the carriage through the crowded streets, they had an argument on what they wanted to do. Zane expressed his frustration, wanting to get this done as quick as possible. He wanted to simply rush in and do a simple smash and grab. Jayen and Helianna wanted to investigate what was going on the stage, but Zane clearly didn’t want to. They couldn’t come to a conclusion until Vir eventually stepped in, having been simply watching. He decided to give at least twenty-four hours for the team to investigate either the stage or where the team is being kept prisoner, after which they would decide their course of action.
The rest of the evening was uneventful and Helianna left early the next morning. She planned to start at the stage to see if it was complete and then use that as a starting point. However, she instantly had her answer when she saw the stage and recognized what it had been made for. It was made for an execution.