That was so totally worth it. One prank for a few days’ worth of entertainment is a pretty good trade. Sebastian thought with a smirk. Sarah had demanded to know why he would pull such a stunt, and when he came clean about what her mother had said to him, her face got even redder. She then proceeded to not talk to him for a couple days. Today was the first day that she managed to look at him without turning red from anger or embarrassment, he was pretty sure it was more than a little of both.

Of course, the downside was that it was probably because they all had other things on their minds now. Reports came in about the encroaching line speeding up in places, no longer staying straight. A few scouts didn’t return either, which certainly didn’t bode well. The mayor and captain ordered an acceleration of the evacuation, which meant more people were going to be forced to leave their livelihood behind. Within the next few days most of the town would be leaving, and when the wagons and carriages returned from the other side of the pass a few days from then, they would be given a few days to load up and head out.

They had gotten a list of items from some of the evacuees. Since most of the guard were going to stay and try to hold out for a while, to both slow down the Twisted as well as discover the actual level of threat they posed, they would continue to pack and send as much as they could until they were forced to retreat or the pass closed. The merchants had already left with the vast majority of the books packed away in their wagons as well, which left Sebastian avoiding the library. Something about being surrounded by all those empty shelves was depressing.

He had enchanted his cloak with the same enchantment he had put on the robes, and made more of those arrows, which he had decided to call his Frostfire Arrows. Now he was setting his mind to making traps, Sam had given him some of the plates and spikes he had wanted and since things seemed to be getting worse it was time to perform some rather dangerous experiments.

First things first, triggering them. Plates should be easy, they are fair sized and I can just set them to go off if they get stepped on. Spikes might be tricky, but that anatomy book gave me an idea that might work. It had touched on something they had called bioelectricity, he had learned that electricity was an ancient term for the stuff lightning was made out of. Which meant that the Ancients believed that living things had electricity inside them, and since so far everything he tested using their knowledge seemed to work he was willing to believe it. The problem was testing it, he was confident he could set up the enchantment to detect small bits of lightning and to go off when the right number came into its range, what he wasn’t too sure of was how big that range could be before it started to deplete its mana reserves.

It really wouldn’t do him much good to make a trap that runs out of mana before it gets a chance to do any damage, and if the range it could detect things was too short then it would be effectively just as useless. Which meant testing it. At least it will have the added bonus of confirming whether people have electricity inside them. He thought, it was both annoying that he needed to make an item to test an effect, and satisfying to be able to experiment without suffering for it. He had to use one of the stakes too, since its ability to absorb ambient mana was what would have to sustain its ability to detect things.

He set it to trigger if it found one source of electricity in its range, and made this test one light up as a result since he didn’t want to blow himself up. When the enchantment was done, the stake glowed merrily, and he started to slowly back away from it to measure the range. He frowned when he made it across the room without it turning off, he should be outside the range he had set it at by now. It wasn’t until he noticed a fly buzzing past that he noticed his mistake. He grumbled to himself about stupid insects making him work harder while he adjusted the thing the way he had adjusted his bow. He turned up its detection threshold until it turned off, then halved it. This time when he got about ten feet from it, it suddenly turned off and he took a step closer, smiling when it turned back on. I think three should work. It might go off on a pack of wolves or something, but that’s not a particularly huge loss anyways. Hell, it might do the hunters a favor and take out a few dire wolves.

He made a couple real ones, adding an extra trigger condition so they wouldn’t go off randomly in town. They would need to be driven into something first, a good hard blow on the top of one would activate its detection aura, which would search for three separate, equal sized, and moving electrical signatures, after it was cleared. That way if some moron tried to set the thing while standing next to his friends, or there happened to be bears nearby, or whatever really, it wouldn’t go off while the idiots were still standing around it. Now if they set it, got ten feet away, and then came back to it, well, not his fault.

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. Sure wish I could make more than three or four of these a day. The number of things he could make in a day had gone up, but not by a particularly huge amount, and for all he knew that was just because it not hurting anymore left him more willing to enchant things. He had figured out that he needed to leave himself with at least a little mana though. When he enchanted more arrows, he overdid it again, not by trying to do twenty at once, but even breaking them up into a couple of casts he depleted all of his mana and passed out. Waking up sixteen hours later with a huge knot on his head where it struck the table in his room and a massive headache taught him that particular lesson.

He was mostly just glad that Sarah had still been avoiding him at the time, after his proposal prank she probably would have been happy to take revenge on him if she had found him unconscious on his floor like that. He took out his notebook and started to work on something he had planned for the future. It was horribly complicated and would require the assistance of a blacksmith much more skilled than Sam, but it was an enjoyable way to pass the time between bouts of enchanting. Every time he went over it he was changing things, and the more he learned about his own enchantment and anatomy in general the bigger the changes he ended up making to the thing.

I should probably try to simplify it, it would take an insanely talented smith at least a year to make all the parts, and it seems like I add more every time I open this book. He knew that he wouldn’t ever bother to simplify the thing though, it was an interesting concept that was fun to toy with, and if he ever actually got the chance to make it a reality it would be his masterwork. The one major glaring flaw he had yet to work out was how to tie it all together, and how to keep it powered without regular charging.

Sarah came into the workshop while he was working on it and she sat across from him, wearing a rather distressed expression. He looked up at her, “What’s wrong? Other than the whole possible end of everything we have ever known thing.”

“The first caravan of people are leaving now, I’m just worried about my mom and dad I guess.” She ran a hand through her hair distractedly.

“Hey, they will be fine. There are guards going with them, and they have orders to escort everyone all the way to Clearlake. If anyone needs to be worried about it’s us. I mean we are staying here to deliberately pick a fight with however many Twisted decide to attack us. The only risk everyone else really has to worry about is pretty much just bandit attacks, and the bandits would have to be exceptionally stupid to attack a caravan of over a hundred people protected by experienced guardsmen.”

She stared at him, “Gee, thanks for that. You have that whole encouraging people thing down perfectly don’t you?” her voice was dripping with sarcasm.

Sebastian gave her a broad grin, “Hey it’s what I’m here for you know? It would be a real shame to leave you worried about everyone else when you should be worried about yourself, or more importantly, me.”

Sarah snorted back a laugh, “How do you do that? How are you able to joke around still, I mean I can barely hold it together with all these reports coming in, and everyone leaving, and, and, everything!”

He shrugged, “It’s easy, denial and keeping myself distracted.” He waved at his notebook, “Worrying about it won’t do me any good, so in my humble opinion, it’s better to focus on what I can actually do. If that happens to be making awful jokes to distract you from your worries for a bit, then that’s what I’ll do. Honest advice? Focus on your studies and practice, and pick up a hobby to work on in your downtime. I recommend cooking. You’re already half decent at it, and it would be nice to have someone around that can make more than porridge.”

Sarah squinted at him suspiciously, “So your advice is basically to relax, distract myself, and go make dinner because I need the practice?”

Sebastian stopped himself just in time. “Ye-, er, no not because you need practice! I suggested it because you are already a good cook and you need something to help take your mind off of things. It was seriously only a suggestion, pick whatever hobby you want!”

Sarah smirked at him, “Well what if I decide to take up your own little hobby, eh? Maybe I should take up enchanting in my spare time, maybe I’ll be better at it than you are.”

Sebastian froze for a second, “No!” he took a deep breath, “Just, just don’t do that, okay? You have no idea what it was like before, this,” he waved his hand to indicate the patterns on his skin, “I, don’t want to see you put yourself through that kind of suffering, not when you can do normal magic.” He put his hand up to forestall her inevitable protest, “I know you saw me passing out from the pain and all that, but, well, words can’t really describe it, and all I can say is that you really, really don’t want to experience it.”

She was taken aback at his sudden vehemence and seriousness. She just nodded in response, and they lapsed into silence for a time. They eventually started talking about magic, and ideas for traps Sebastian could make. He could tell that she was trying to take his advice to heart and keep herself busy and her mind off of the fact that her parents were travelling through the pass on a trip that uprooted their lives, their work, and would probably result in the loss of their home. Damn, now she has me thinking about it. I hope you stay safe mom, and that bastard George had better be protecting you with his life.

When dinner time finally rolled around, Sarah went downstairs to cook, while Sebastian went back to jotting down things in his notebook. Finishing a page off, he let the ink dry before closing the book with a thump and going downstairs to eat. This is going to be a long ass couple weeks. He thought with a sigh.