“So why hasn’t the crown prince come to see his father?” I asked as soon as we left my two apprentices behind.

Conrad shrugs, “I’m not honestly sure, he keeps making excuses why he doesn’t want to.”

“And the royal guards who are with him, what do they think?”

“All of them keep apologizing on the prince’s behalf, but...” Conrad admits, “I get the impression that they are acting strange.”

“Your men or the prince?”

“Everyone at that lodge I’ve been able to talk to,” Conrad replies, “Which is why I need you to be on your toes, and why I’m bringing two squads of extra royal guards with us, including our best mental mage.”

Well, that’s not ominous, I think to myself as I watch over a dozen mounted knights join our carriage. A lanky older man joins us in the carriage as well, and he’s introduced as the mental mage expert.

“My name is Tobias, you may call me Toby,” he introduces himself.

I shake his hand, “Toby, I’m Jason.”

He nods slightly, “I can’t help but notice your ring, it’s a mental ward I’m sensing? But there’s an extra layer?”

I hold up the ring I’d finished last night. “Yes, this is a ring of mental magic resistance, but the extra layered enchant is for detecting mind-controlled individuals. It should work by detecting the faint reaction present in the mental ward when people under the heavy influence of mental magic come nearby. It will glow bright blue.”

Tobias nods slightly, “That’s clever.”

“Conrad brought you in because he thinks someone might be using mind control magic?” I hazard the guess.

Conrad and Toby exchange a look, “Well, yes, that’s why I’m here. But, really, it’s pretty difficult to mind control someone with a mental magic resistance ward on. It takes a great deal of effort to breach those defenses. The first step would probably be to make that person remove any such ring, implant commands, then put the rings back on so as not to be suspicious," Toby said.

That initial breach of the ring’s defenses can’t be hidden though. So, I’ve also brought a list of everyone who should have such a ring, and I want you to check to see if they’ve been breached,” Conrad explains.

I nod. “So we’re going in to try to figure out if the prince is avoiding coming home to see his sick father of his own free will, or if he’s been coerced, along with all his guards?” I ask.

“Pretty much,” Conrad said grumpily.

“How many people with mental resistance rings do you suppose are in that lodge?” I wonder.

“Maybe twenty or thirty?” Conrad replies after some thought, “Counting all the crown prince’s noble friends, maybe forty or fifty.”

“So if anyone used mental magic, I should be able to find it with so many rings to test,” I point out. I was also somewhat impressed by how much wealth was gathered at the lodge, that so many people could afford such protections. Ward rings typically needed to be renewed once a year.

Toby frowns, “I find it strange that anyone could have controlled so many. I consider myself an expert at mental magic, but even if I were also a trained wizard with a staff to help me, I still wouldn’t be able to break through more than two or three wards a day. It’s very exhausting to bypass a ward.”

That was pretty much the point of most defensive wards, I think to myself, they weren’t full protection, but the sheer amount of mana required to overcome them meant that it would be difficult to infiltrate a group of ward wearers without someone noticing anything. You would have to get them one by one, or in pairs at the most. It also took a lot of intent and willpower to overcome a ward and wearing a ward made it much easier for the person to use their own willpower to resist. This meant it wasn’t very likely that while trying to take control of a large group, not even one person would successfully resist and raise the alarm.

“Are you sure we’re bringing enough force, if you think someone has taken control of the prince and the royal guard assigned to him, shouldn’t we bring more?”

Conrad shakes his head, “I’m stretched pretty thin, what with the threat of a dungeon break, I can’t leave the castle unprotected. What’s worse is, if I show up with a small army, someone might take it the wrong way. They might think I’m showing up to arrest the prince rather than try to rescue him. Also, I don’t have any evidence. I can’t just bring a large force to see the prince on suspicion that something might be wrong. But, I am bringing a wizard, so in a fight, I expect you to be able to handle half a dozen mages, right?”

Conrad doesn’t appear to be kidding. I nod heavily. While it was true that I could probably handle that many mages, I didn’t think I could do so while holding back. What if they were mind-controlled? I start thinking about non-lethal options and find myself wishing I’d known about this ahead of time so that I could have prepared some simple sleeping gas potions. “Couldn’t you have told me this earlier?” I ask Conrad.

“Not without risking someone finding out.”

Perhaps I can’t make potions, but there might be a few other steps I could take. “Give me a feather, please,” I ask Blackwing.

Sighing, she plucks a feather and hands it to me, “Buy some, carry them. You have pouch,” she tells me resentfully.

“Sorry, but your feathers are better,”

“So mean,” Blackwing pouts.

“What are you doing?” Toby asks, curious.

“A little trick Blackwing taught me,” I explain, using a knife to prick my finger and adding a drop of blood to the feather. There were many ways to make enchantments, modern enchantments relied on runes. But there were older techniques, that relied on the meaning provided by potent reagents like blood and feathers tainted by demonic energy. This was, ironically enough, considered a shaman spell. What would the dungeon core think if it saw me using shaman spells? I wonder. It would probably find it amusing, too bad the dungeon couldn't see beyond the surface area directly above it.

I take some gold thread from another pouch and start weaving them between my fingers until the space between my palms is covered in something that resembles a gold spider web. There was a subset of magic generally referred to as sympathetic magic, like unto like. Make something that resembles something, use it as regent for a spell that has similar effects. Since a physical item that has some sort of meaning is the primary requirement for an enchantment, for stored single-use spells, it was possible to get… creative.

When the sun begins to dip towards the horizon, I had a few such tricks prepared, and was not surprised when near the mansion a group of royal guards shows up to meet us. I glance at my new ring, even from this far, it is already starting to glimmer with blue light.