Eli Pov

_________________________________

It was nightfall when I finally got the chance to move in on the jail.

I was in the treetops by Holstead, the town designated for the families of the workers. From my position I could see the wooden palisade surrounding the town. The road leading up to it was totally empty and the streets were almost abandoned with the occasional patrolmen on horseback meandering the streets. Both gates to the town were open and if I wasn’t mistaken, the inns seemed to have more carriages than any of the times I had previously visited.

The night acted as a cloak over everything while I struggled on whether or not to go in with my ‘regular’ gear or go in as my pandego persona. Thinking it over for a bit, I decided that having my more normal equipment could at least let me pass as one of the few random passerby that was seeing to one task or another, but having the deer skull and vine suit would draw every eye that ran across it. Leaving my suit high up in a tree, I then sat on the branch as I put on the leather booster pants with back piece, the tube, and the arm brace with the water jet.

I made sure to wear a darker brown shirt and black pants, these clothes at least made sure I looked more like the local Guild members and wouldn’t be as visible in the night as my typical white shirt. Shuffling down the tree, I came onto the forest floor and ran up to the section of the palisade wall closest to the jail, near the back end of the town on the right side. My feet crushed the dew laden grass as the starlight barely peeked out behind the clouds. If there had been a tower overlooking the field they would have spotted me immediately, but I was coming in from the woods away from any lights sources and the guards seemed more bored than anything else as they stood by the towns two main entrances.

Coming up to the palisade, I did a quick mental calculation and jumped up to the top of the wooden wall. This wall was just a line of huge spike in the ground and had no platform behind it, which meant I had to grab the portion at the top that was between the meeting point of two of the logs. Getting on top I looked around and saw the street behind the long one-story block of a building that was the prison was empty. Using a wind spell to come back down, I landed with a mute thump and skulked up to the back of the building’s grey stonework.

Fortunately, this jail was a low-end holder and not meant to hold criminal masterminds or high profile inmates with the stringent security that came with such high profile tenants. Along the wall was a series of barred windows with iron bars in each that was too high for me to peek into and forced me to use small boosted jumps to quietly grab onto the iron bars and peek in on the occupants.

Looking over the long rows of cells and the one opposite of them, I found a few local miscreants and one cell with a duo of grey cloaks who were both laying on the bench in their cell with nothing but their backs showing. These were obviously the two mages involved in the attack, but they weren’t going anywhere right now and I needed to focus on finding Salamede’s mother. It was the least that I owed her.

When I got to the last cell and looked across the empty aisle to see nothing in the cell opposite of this room, I felt a stone drop in my stomach. Before deciding to potentially wake the whole town up with a mage brawl, I turned to go to Salamede’s house to see if her mother was home. I went back over the palisade and donned my vine suit. Moving through the treetops, I eventually came back into the academy town. Staring out over the academy town with its now stone roads, huge white wall around the academy dorms and guards posted at various choke points, I decided that going through the main bridge wasn’t going to happen.

Coming around the bend of the river on what was from my perspective the right side, but had always been the left side as the world had been oriented on the academy outward, I used my vine suits enhanced jump to go out over the river and land behind my squat grey tower with vines around the exterior. Carefully hiding my vine suit among the ruins of the wooden tower behind my house, I strapped my regular suit with the tube, leather boosters and water jet back on with the helmet that had leather strips running down the eyes for the sound attack. The streets were mostly empty and a few times I ducked into alleys as guards moved past. Eventually I made it to my destination.

The front of the house had the bare woodwork getting replaced with a tarp of cloth and several large boards used to replace the fronts burned shingling. Coming towards the front of the house, I saw a candlelight in the window towards the back of the first floor. In front of it was Salamede’s mother going over several papers at the kitchen table.

She didn’t seem to be stressed out, more irritated than anything else. Since there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger, I knocked on the door as I prepared several spells to go off at a moment notice. She saw me through the window and quickly got up and away from the kitchen table. Opening the door, she wasted no time as she held out the candle on a metal plate with a handle.

“Where’s my daughter?” The small Kelton woman demanded, her white eyes showing irritation in her expression as her brown dress moved with a tapping foot below.

“In… Are you safe? I was told you were attacked.” I responded, determined to keep this conversation quick and to the point.

“Bah! A couple of drunk idiots. Mages or not, ale makes fools out of all men. Those weapons my girl gave me came in handy though and the government is going to cover all the repairs and compensation for the suffering of a poor frightened old woman. I- Don’t look at me like that”

My eyes must have given away what I thought of the ‘poor frightened old woman’ bit through the holes in the iron shell.

“I will be fine but how is my daughter?” She demanded.

“In a dangerous situation. I will return to her as quickly as I can, but what were some random mages doing here?” I asked.

“I thought that they might be connected to those people you were running from because they came here asking about you. When he started slurring his words and I noticed that the one in the back was staring at the door frame, I realized they were just idiots who knew you and promptly evicted them from my doorstep. Then one of them sprouted a tongue of flame and sprayed it over the front of the house. As nice as it is to talk about kicking two mages butts, what kind of danger is my daughter in?” she demanded.

“It would be safer for you to not know. What did the mages look like?” I asked her.

“Two stooges. One with short black hair and a scar above his eye and the other was darker tanned with a scar along his jaw. Name was John.” She said.

My breath stopped for a moment. Could she be talking…

“Thanks for your assistance. I promise to bring your daughter safe and sound” I said as I turned around and went out back into the street with the closing of the door behind me.

Those two mages in the cell. I didn’t want to risk getting caught interrogating them, but if one of them was who I thought they were... Losing no more time, I kept my mind on getting back to Holstead. When I put my vine suit on, it was particularly frustrating to have to spend so much time on getting the helmet right and the bits of regular clothing under the vines. Leaping over the river, I went back through the treetops. I ripped holes in canopy’s and sent the occasional branch falling to the ground this time as I went full speed with no concern to the local trees.

Coming back upon the town, I felt the sudden impulse to just jump straight into the jail with my full suit. Reason won out in the end and I took off the helmet with impatience coursing through every movement of my fingers. When I finally got back into my full ensemble with a dark brown and pants with the tube, water jet, and the booster with the leather pieces along my back, I headed down the tree and followed the same path I did less than an hour ago.

Peering inside, I saw the two laying on their hammocks, now laying face up. And sure enough, in the bed to the left lay the fort commander and in the right was the mage from the dock trials. I got down and I used a wind spell to deaden the noise of me cutting into the stonework. When I leaned over to start cutting int the wall, I felt a sharp prick in my back.

“Whoah there, you must be mighty eager to talk with my friends. Not often a fellow air mage is seen around these parts.” A female voice said behind me.

I made a metal spell through my skin and pushed it at the point as I stood completely still. Not taking the risk, I immediately activated the spell.

“Uaghh!” A cry resounded behind me as the cracking of bone told me she didn’t let go of the knife before I shoved it back with the spell. Whipping around I saw two female mages around the one nursing a broken wrist.

“What happened?” the blond to my left asked.

“I- I don’t know. The knife just-“ The rough looking brunette clutched at her hand for a moment before turning her brown eyes towards me.

“You! You’re that fucker who killed Joren!” She said as scowls plastered the faces of the red head to my right and the blond to the left.

They were going to the knives and swords at their sides as the possibility of a peaceful resolution closed.

I threw up my right hand and cut the arm off the brunette as the hair thin line of water sliced through her arm like butter.

“Uaghh!” She cried as she fell back clutching at her stump.

The right redhead conjured up an earth spell with her good arm as the blond summoned a fire spell while pulling out her sword. I dodged backwards while preparing to fire the lava tube at the blond. But before I could fire, the redheads earth spell went off. The soft rumble behind me told me she used her spell to bring the poorly made wall of the jail down on me.

I tried to do an elongated jump sideways, but I couldn’t move fast enough as the rough bricks fell on top of me in a thunderous crash. The sharp pain of stone falling on my back and head was the only thing that registered as I was forced to the ground. I covered my head as I was buried under a layer of brick and continually used a healing spell on myself.

Looking around, all I saw was the crumbled stones with bits of the stars above me with flames peering out around some of the stones. As I processed the fact that I was being cooked to death in an oven, what stood out to me was the distinct pain of broken bone in my shoulder. Pushing through the pain, I started absorbing mana from the environment but halfway through healing the broken bones and summoning a few water constructs, the flames stopped.

“Stop!” Came the muffled cry from somewhere to my right.

A sudden woosh of air caused all the flames to die out as the oxygen was sucked out around me. I saw a small gathering of leather boots and metal chainmail to my right as I took a last desperate gulp of the fleeting air and started the most useful spell I could think of. There was no sound now as the mages sucked out almost all of the air, but they needed mana to keep it going.

Three water circles above my back indiscriminately sprayed water all over the surrounding stones as the water sizzled on the grey stones with none of their usual pops. The air I gulped down was running out even as the leather feet to my right pushed forward. Eventually, pinned under the several layers of stone and no way to stop their spells, I started gasping for air, but none would come to fill my lungs. I tried using my internal mana generation for a wind spell but before I could use it, the mana got sucked up into the mages spell through the stone.

My lungs burned as the sensation of the heated stoned scorched my skin, my mind couldn’t decide which agony it wanted to focus on as my limbs struggled against the stone coffin. There was a light popping sound that faintly registered as my vision faded and some noise that I couldn’t process before it all faded to black.

“Stay and guard him!” A shout somewhere off to the right by the stones almost yelled. No, not the stones, the stone wall. Bolting awake, I felt faint pain all over my body and looked down to see I was wrapped in white bandages in a plain stone room on a regular wooden bed. The beams of light filtering in through the window just behind me said it was early morning as the gold beams of light played across the light oak floor. My first instinct to move was stopped when I found my hands strapped to the bed.

“I don’t give a rat’s fucking ass! Disembowel those mages if they try anything.” The voice, now registering as Tansen’s, was coming from behind the closed oak door to the right.

“Ye-Yes sir!” A scared soldier responded.

Then the door opened and Tansen walked through. His goatee and usually immaculate black hair showed a few nights of lost sleep even as his brown eyes displayed a strength of will that resembled either a demon or a determined saint. He now wore a white kimono with gold inlaid vines along the arms and his eyebrows shot up around the ridge running down his forehead.

“Ah, good. Nice to see you’re awake Eli.” He said as he moved forwards and came to stand right by my bed.

I had my face covered with some cloth bandages, but I made no attempt to keep the question out of my eyes, not just at my situation but the metal disk with four ridges that was in his right hand.

Tansen took a deep breath before looking me in the eyes.

“The guards were given specific instructions to keep an eye out for you. When they came upon a smoldering pile of bricks, they managed to talk the mages back and get you to safety.” He said as he fingered the tester in an excited circle.

“Thank you, Tansen.” I said through the wraps around my jaw. What little skin I could see between the wraps said my body was pretty crisp. I wondered at the lack of pain but the dull movements of my head and general sense of numbness told me they must have used some kind of anesthetic.

Tansen then walked out the door and quickly returned with a chair. But he stopped at the door to look to his left.

“Anyone tries to interrupt me aside from Aki, kill them.” Tansen said in a casual voice as he then moved forward, closing the door behind him before the sputtering guard could articulate his objection. Tansen walked forward, his goatee and sharp eyes showing no outward emotion as he placed the chair in front of my bed. But as he sat down in the chair, his gaze suddenly seemed to hold a heavy weight.

“Eli, do you know how these testers work?” He asked casually as he put it forward in his palm.

“No.” I said honestly. I had idly wondered at the item in question but staying alive took precedence over solving little nothing mysteries.

“They take in the ambient magic and force it into the mana pathways of the subject. This mana is then fed through a bit of monster skin that blocks the mana if the person whose body held that mana doesn’t have its element.” He said like this was just another school lecture. A lecture on a subject I couldn’t give any less of a shit about.

“Sure. Tansen, why-“

“Do you know why you, someone with all four affinities, were mistaken as a crafter?” Tansen said, his eyes betraying no emotion.

Shit, he didn’t hold back with that one. I prepared a few earth, fire and electric spells and held off using them even as the web of pain from spell overuse started aching. Tansen, however, seemed very casual as I took in the ambient mana.

“I know you’re preparing a spell. My, my. Using so much ambient mana so quickly. You’ll be a mighty force to be reckoned with.” Tansen said non-chalantly as he leaned back into his chair. Contrary to my expectations, he just continued talking.

“That battle at the docks. Men say a lot just before they die. Not in words but in their faces. And when you cut into Jorens neck when he was about to attack you with a water spell, his face said one word: How. It took me a while… got led down a wrong path, but…” He then leaned forward and put the tester against an exposed section of my leg as it sucked in mana. After a few seconds, all four of the tester's symbols filled with mana.

I looked up to him with a raised eyebrow.

“It took some digging, but I eventually figured out the problem. The regular testers, they check for the two circles with the most mana in them.” He took out another tester from the chest of his robe and put it against the same spot on my leg. It sucked in some mana but remained a dull tester with no sign of mana in its symbols. “When you have all four elements, the two circles with the most mana is none. This was a mechanical error I had fixed.” He finished with a happy little smile as he showed off the two testers to me, the one brimming with mana in his right hand and the dead one in his left. But then he took a deep breath and looked at me with a stern gaze.

“Suffice it to say, it was quite a surprise when you ran off like that. May I ask what prompted you to ditch town like that?” He asked. Tansen sounded peaceful but his furrowed eyes said he would have loved to strangle me.

“I had enough.” I offered. Not a lie, but not the total truth.

Tansen closed his eyes and leaned back into his chair. He took a deep breath as the morning sun shined down from the window over him. He released his breath before he started talking again.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter too much at this point since we can’t… Suffice it to say things are going to get very interesting around here. If you would stick to the story that you became a caster on your little escapade, that would help me immensely. And right now I’m the only one whose going to be in your corner when it comes to Salamede.”

Her name sent a stab of guilt through me. She was still out there fighting the good fight against my enemies while I laid in bed. The fact I could do nothing to help her only made that guilt more agonizing. Tansens voice interrupted my thoughts before I could wallow in my self-pity for too long.

“Things will be getting very interesting and we need to work out the details of our story once you’re at full strength. Oh and in case you go back to your tower, I had to bust down the door when I was looking for you. But don't worry, I had it replaced.” He said as he got up. Tansen then picked up the chair and walked out the door, leaving me to my thoughts.