Making my way inside the building unnoticed was easy, and on the first floor I found a small group of goons sitting around a table playing some kind of betting game. I saw dice and some tiles, so maybe some kind of version of–
No, don’t get distracted. I’ll ask Marshan about gambling games later.
Sneaking past the men was easy. I dropped 8 SP into my stealth skill to advance it before I slipped inside, and I had my 5-point magic augmenting that, which was probably altogether overkill. My detect skill told me there were people underneath us, in a basement of some kind. Quite a lot of people, actually.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way down. No stairs were visible, so there was either a hidden staircase or a trapdoor somewhere. That was problematic.
It was clear that, whatever this was, Soa was in trouble. I decided to take a chance.
At least, I thought I would. I had never had a proper human partner for my party chat before, but it seemed to work well enough.
Soa said stairs, which means there was a secret staircase somewhere. The stairs could be accessed through a trapdoor but I suspected it was something a lot more straightforward. There was a bookshelf in the room that the men were gambling in, and I was willing to bet it was behind that.
Problem was, the room was guarded. I couldn’t exactly move the bookshelf while they were in there without them noticing. A distraction might just draw their attention and send them back downstairs. I needed to immobilize them.
I can kill them, like the bandits. I’d get some good experience for it.
The thought hit me like the truck that had killed me all those years ago. I felt my hands tremble. I could kill them, yeah. It would be easy. Trivial, actually, at least the physical act itself. What would that make me, though? I was sure these were bad men, but they hadn’t actually attacked me yet. They didn’t even know I was standing there. It would be cold-blooded murder.
I took a stabilizing breath, thinking the problem through. I had other options. Magic that most people weren’t even aware of, that I had practiced on beasts. It would cost me some MP that I might need later if things went wrong, but I had to try that first. MP could be recovered with a potion. Lives could not.
Focusing on the men in front of me, I pushed my magic into an area-wide 6-point magic spell. I concentrated on cursing them with a calm spell. The effect should have been subtle, relaxing, and sure enough I saw them start to settle down, losing focus on the betting and each other and turning their focus inward, breathing slowing down.
Calmed, I would try the next step. I approached each man from behind, invisible and silent, and tried to put them to sleep.
It was another curse like calm, but heavier impacting, sending them fully unconscious.
Being calmed, the other men didn’t react when the first guy fell asleep. One by one, I knocked the men out, and soon enough they were all slumbering away.
I pulled my rope from my inventory, and set about tying them up. My knotting skill went up in the process, using one of the skill points I was sitting on, but that was fine. I was pulling in experience for everything I had done since I entered the building, using skills I rarely used in a really novel situation.
I chided the part of myself that went right to killing. There were always options, and they helped me grow as well. Maybe not just as well, but at least my conscience was clear.
Once everyone was tied to their chairs, I enlarged my silence cone and easily moved the bookshelf with my strength. As expected, behind the shelf were the stairs down into the basement.
Sneaking down the stairs, concealing any squeaks with magical silence, I found myself in a room full of cages. Inside the cages were a bunch of young girls. I clenched my jaw, debating going back upstairs just to kill the men I had tied up, but just because they were guarding this place it didn’t mean they were the ones who were responsible for this.
When I found those that were, I would not hold back. Human traffickers didn’t deserve any pity.
The sad truth was, I had already been expecting this before I came down the stairs. As soon as I stepped into the district, I had started to fear the worst. It was just infuriating that the worst was also the reality of the situation.
I moved my way to Soa’s cage, and he sagged in visible relief. Then the worry ramped back up on his face.
“What are we going to do? How are we going to get out?” Soa asked in a quiet but shrill voice.
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That would be a challenge. Dumping a bunch of kidnapped girls into the streets outside would be a mess. I had put the interior guards out of commission, but there were more, and I had no idea how many others could be milling about the district. If I were lucky, they were all otherwise occupied making use of the services here, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t come running if there was a problem, depending on how well they were paid.
First, though, I disintegrated the lock on Soa’s cage. It dissolved into rust, and Soa’s eyes went wide at seeing what happened. I put a finger to my lips, and opened the door.
I couldn’t just save Soa. I had to save everyone. What to do, what to do…
I paused, thinking through my flash of inspiration. Did I have enough MP for something like this? With a potion, probably.
Moving quickly between cages, I whispered to the girls to be quiet and to gather up near the base of the stairs. Most of them were young, much too young, and likely orphans or neglected children. Some of the women were older. Almost all of them were southerners.
Once everyone was together, I motioned them all to listen.
“We’re going to run. No matter what you see, stay close together and stick with me until we get outside. I promise you, you’ll all be safe, even if it seems impossible. Get ready.”
Then, with a thought and a hefty MP drain, the district was on fire.
* * *
We ran up the stairs, the girls in a panic, into a building ablaze.
Bursting from where the bookshelf used to be, I ignored the unconscious guards and motioned the girls out the door. On the street, people were screaming, fire leaping from building to building, heat in the air, crackling timbers snapping, the sounds of people shouting.
Those with the clarity of mind to really focus might notice that the flames were a bit too regular, and that the heat wasn’t nearly enough, that no buildings were falling, and that the people that were shouting all sounded kind of the same, at least until they added their own screams. It was, without a doubt, the largest illusion I had ever cast, and it was exhausting.
It made for an amazing distraction, though.
As the district evacuated from the threat of fire, myself, Soa, and the girls fled without pursuit. Once we were sufficiently far away, I turned to them.
“Run, hide, go back to your homes if you have them. Keep a low profile and don’t get caught again. Go!” I yelled, and they did, sprinting away.
I grabbed Soa by the hand and we ran back to the warehouse district without stopping. Once we did, we both collapsed to the ground, chests heaving while we sucked down the cool night air.
Somewhere along the way, I dropped the illusion, and people were no doubt going to be very confused and very angry.
Once recovered, Soa and I looked at each other.
“How… just how? How did you find me? And talk in my head? How did you do that?”
“Magic,” I said, waggling my fingers weakly, then bringing a finger to my lips as I had before.
Soa pouted, glaring at me with only half-hearted anger. He was still running an adrenaline high from the escape and the whole thing, so it didn’t last.
Looking him over, I saw that he was wearing my old clothes. Folded a bit, tucked a lot, and slightly modified, it was a massive improvement over what he was wearing before, especially with the addition of cleaned and brushed hair. So cleaned up and presentable, it was now all too easy to see what he had been trying to hide. Not that I had ever really had any doubt.
“I’m sorry, Atlessoa,” I said, saying her full name for the first time. “I didn’t know this would happen.”
Soa stiffened at her full name, and looked back at me with the same awe as before. I smiled softly, waggling my fingers again.
“Is this why you let me continue to treat you like a boy? Did you know this would happen, or were you just nervous of me?”
Dirtied and ragged, with rough chopped hair, no one would really spare a glance at the young girl on the street. Cleaned up, even just a bit, and she was already hard to ignore. I had accidentally turned her into a target, and I had no idea whether she had been doing it on purpose or not.
When I first met her, of course I had immediately appraised her. When she gave me a different name, I suspected something was up, although I didn’t know for a fact either way. I actually had mistaken her for a boy, until her awkward response about the bath. That and all the blushing.
Soa’s shocked expression faded a bit, then her face fell.
“It’s always safer to be a boy on the street than a girl. I’d seen kids disappear before, but I didn’t really… it’s not like I thought you…”
“That’s ok, Soa. Do you want me to keep calling you that? Treating you the same as before?”
I watched as Atlessoa carefully thought it through, tears welling in her eyes.
“No. I want to be me. I’m just… scared.”
I nodded, then stood up.
“Then, for as long as I’m still here, I’ll teach you what I can so that you don’t have to be.”
* * *
I held Atlessoa’s hands in mine, pushing a small amount of MP into her.
“You feel that? The feeling of magic moving into your hands?”
She nodded, awestruck.
“Good. I want you to try and push it back, but into this enchantment,” I said, putting one of the light magic enchanted discs in her hand.
I watched as she struggled to get a feel for magic for the first time, no training and certainly no special gifts like Nodel. Atlessoa was only level 3, at nine years old, and only had a stealth skill. Hopefully she didn’t have all her points in it, and could pick up some new skills, but in order to be able to control her MP well enough to not die, I needed to get her channeling magic in a safe way.
The enchantment should provide the practice she needed for that. I was reasonably certain it wasn’t possible to burn out life force, or HP, on an enchantment. They could only be channeled with MP by the user, because the user wasn’t actually casting a spell, just providing MP for an existing command. If there wasn’t sufficient MP supplied, the spell would simply fail. A person had to actually be casting the magic themselves for the overdraw to get pulled out of their HP.
At least, that was my working theory. Since people bought enchantments and used them and didn’t fall over dead from it regularly, I was pretty sure it was accurate. If using enchantments was as dangerous as just learning and using magic, they wouldn’t really have a reason to exist.
Finally, after struggling and pushing and squeezing and altogether just fighting through the unusual feeling of trying to push a foreign power outside of oneself, Atlessoa produced a light from the enchantment.
“I did it!” she said excitedly, beaming.
“Good work,” I said, walking over and patting her head. “Now do it again.”
She scowled, and got it to light again, but couldn’t manage a third cast.
“Right. Take a small sip of this,” I said, handing her a potion I made. She would only need a tiny amount to replenish her MP.
“Now keep that lit up as much and as often as you can from now on. If you can’t make it light up, take a sip of the potion. The more you do it, the stronger your magic will get.”
I watched her alternate between making lights and sipping potions. I just needed to figure out how to get some experience points into her.
“Hey, Atlessoa… are there a lot of polerats in Roko?”