Max appeared in Salae castle with Emi clamped to his shoulder and a small swimming pool’s worth of water. They arrived in a rectangular room fit with a deep red carpet contrast to perfectly square white marble tiles. About half way to the end of the room the floor lost the shimmer of the marble and was replaced by dull grey stone – the carpet remained, however.

A man, wearing full armor including a wide helmet, scrambled to draw his weapon – a short spear.

Beastkin, [Internal Palace Guard]

“Halt!” The man shouted before taking a single large step.

The Beastkin then retreated a single step, losing all previous confidence. [Water Mages] don’t just appear out of thin air.

Max felt the taboo feeling of being Inspected. He felt his internal being looked at, a feeling that had been muted by Goddess Ofes’s Divine Protection. Now with the protection gone, Max felt naked. He felt like this single interaction of mana removed his rights as a person. He didn’t like it and understood why most frowned upon Inspecting others.

The guard activated an ability turning his yellow eyes a waxy blue. The ability was an evolution of a high-level [Protector] technique – Stamina Chain. Invisible chains of mana launched out from the guard’s weapon, wrapping around Max like a snake suffocating prey. The idea was to force intruders to a crawl so they could be captured.

Max felt his stamina slowly dwindle. The yellow bar on his HUD ticked down in equal set parameters. Too bad mages don’t really use Stamina, He thought.

With a flick of his wrist, an Ice Bolt launched forward. The distraction allowed Max to jump a short distance behind the defending guard. At the same time the first bolt collided against the Beastkin’s spear, a second bolt smashed into his back.

The man spun wildly, striking with his long weapon. A third bolt caught him in the back of the knee, just inside where his armor protected. Emi – not having jumped with Max – released a volley. Pressurized streams of water, shards of ice, and boiling pools surrounded the man.

Each attack bore into the man’s armor, denting Salae’s best protection. The few attacks that broke through the defenses were weakened to the point of non-lethal damage. A few broken bones, multiple bruises, maybe a cracked rib or two, but no bleeding holes or scarred skin.

The guard was on one knee at this point – Max knocked the man out with a swift punch to the jaw. Through labored breaths Max checked on the man’s wounds. He would have a rough week unless healing magic was involved, but otherwise he’d be fine.

“That Stamina drain is no joke.” Max said to Emi while watching his Stamina bar raise, “If I couldn’t teleport I think I wouldn’t have been very useful other than for throwing attacks.”

“Chasing [Thieves] is important.” Emi agreed.

In a way Max and Emi were thieves. Did stealing other people count? Or was theft only described as monetary or material possessions? Max didn’t know and now was definitely not the time to think about philosophical questions.

After tying the guard with a thread of rope Max said, “Okay, time to go.” he held his arm out, allowing Emi an easy climb.

Together they traversed down the cobbled steps through the damp corridors and deeper into the dark corners of the castle. Along the way, they pulled every drop of water along with them, voiding the stone of its darkened color. Max hoped they would need the extra ammunition, but Clammy said there might be a second guard further down.

The hallway opened up to a crowded room. A thin passageway in the center was flanked by many cells full of humanoids. Max called to Alia but after not getting a response he pressed through to the second doorway. He didn’t know what all of these people were jailed for, but he couldn’t stop for them. Not realistically, anyways. Sure, some might be wrongly imprisoned, but that would take hours to sort out.

He did mist the air with healing magic. Bruises and easy-to-heal wounds were stitched up.

Through the doorway led to a second set of stairs. Half-way down Max clamped-up. His mana felt like it was being held down, like holding an unruly infant still with a tucked-in blanket. He recognized the effect right away – a space lock. Adding mana to his eyes, Max looked for cues and lines.

The staircase was littered with blue-white currents of space mana. They flowed down and to the left towards their source point. The bonded duo treaded forward slowly, but with as much haste as they could leverage. They were on a time limit – it was only a matter of time before someone found the downed guard – but Max also took this relatively safe time to solve the space lock.

Space locks were oddly similar to the space puzzle [Arbor] Xylem had given Max during his stay in Esmel. The only difference was that a puzzle was created for recreational fun rather than completely countering a class – a rare class at that.

They reached the end of the staircase and were met with an armored door. Wards and runic protections were carved deep into the foundation of the enchanted wood. Max and Emi had no clue how to circumvent or remove the magical alarm system without alerting the castle of their presence. After eyeing the structure for a moment, Max didn’t think Bishop would be able to figure it out either.

These wards were highly specialized. If Max didn’t know wards of such capacity were being used, then he might have completely missed the door. Attention obscuring formations were common place in stationary defenses such as this.

Luckily, Max had an ace up his sleeve. Clammy had lived in the castle for nearly all of her life, she knew the castle’s defense enough to allow Max ease of access. That didn’t mean she knew had to get through the door without making noise, however.

Go. Emi said through their shared bond.

The two mages bombarded the door with highly detailed spells – one of the few ways they have found to bolster their spell’s potency. The door held firm, but the moist walls caved in having been weakened by centuries of water damage. They rushed the room.

Instantly, Max and Emi sprung to action. They each had a job to do independently of each other. Emi was focused on securing the room while Max set off to disable the space lock. They already knew the formation of the room, having been felt out by the Lost Lord’s racial trait from the Faye – Spatial Awareness.

The trait had taken a while to get used to, but now he didn’t know if he could live without it. Max could feel space in an area around himself. He knew how far objects were, he could see through thin walls and could easily decern people versus stationary items. People liked to wiggle a lot. The trait was especially useful in the dark, which gave him a very unfair advantage in the right scenario.

This, however, was not one such scenario. The room was decently sized and lit by the average mana light. The low ceiling made the room feel much more crowded than it actually was, the red-iron cells didn’t help either. To the right was a guard outpost consisting of a single table and two chairs. To the left was a set of cabinets, each held food and the odd torture device – as well as the space lock.

Emi fired three rapid attacks, each in succession and each grander than the last. Her target was one of two guards who were both playing cards. A bomb of steam exploded near the first guard’s helmet, blinding the woman in scorching heat. The second attack was a lousy excuse for a feint – one the second guard succumbed to.

He sliced the awkward projectile with the unsheathing of his sword, breaking the water construct into two halves. Mist blossomed through the prison, eroding all light and depth. The spell was a prototype but a well-liked one. Fighting in shrouded mist was a poor-man’s attempt at fighting in the cover of darkness, but one couldn’t be too picky in battles such as this.

The first guard screamed in pain as part of her face blistered and bubbled but found the urgency as well as the demand to counter attack. She drew a pair of twin daggers and jumped forward – right into Emi’s third attack.

Over the last week, Max and Emi had trained with Vel nearly every moment the three had been free of other obligations. The attack on the Plains, Tobyn’s death, and the ease Serana Cresthill battered down everyone at the Coalition caused a major fire to be lit in Max and Emi’s belly. They wanted to – they needed to get stronger so events would go differently next time.

One such way they decided to go about achieving that goal was to become proficient to an extreme degree with manipulating water. Max having a seemingly unique connection to water and Emi being literally a water monster gave the pair a great boon when it came to water magic. The boon didn’t so much as help when it came to creating new spells, but it sure as hells boosted free-formed water manipulation.

Emi’s third attack was a bola of sorts. The impromptu spell looked like an octopus made of links of water – like a steel chain. It spun like a shuriken but it’s slow speed allowed targets to easily dodge. That is, if the target could see the attack.

The first guard just so happened to be virtually blind in the mist as well as didn’t have the necessary Agility stats to dodge the sudden attack after it was within view range. The bola wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her chest plate, and knocking her daggers far away. The free-formed spell carried enough momentum to knock the woman off her feet and slam her into the wall.

The second guard – unmolested except for the veil of hazy mist – charged Emi’s last known location. He took three steps before his left boot became waterlogged and frozen. A sharp pain exploded in his right hand – his sword clambered against the stone floor. A wall of water collided with the man next, a free-form shove of all of the ammunition Emi had.

The overloaded crash of water knocked him to his knees and threatened drowning, but the water receded before that became a definite option. Instead, the guard’s under clothes froze over, inhibiting all movement and cracking and popping joints of armor. He began to yell something, but a fresh patch of ice grew over his lips locking them in place.

Emi’s job was done, leaving Max to his hobby work. Max didn’t like thinking of space locks as a hobby, but in truth, he found the act of solving a lock rather fun. That is, if the situation wasn’t stressful such as breaking someone out of prison or trying to run from a crazed murderer. In these instances, solving a space lock was not fun. At all.

Max found the device at the back of a dusty, cobweb filled cupboard. Past a few mugs and dented metal bowls was a smooth canister with the seal of Salae etched across its head. It was just under the size of a coffee thermos but about the same in weight. It had a soft glow to it, unlike the lock that held the Plains hostage.

The key to this particular lock was the use of a false thread of mana. It looked incredibly out of place to Max’s eye. He had seen three locks at this point and a few space puzzles. Something such as false threads was rather common, but not to this degree. This gave him pause.

Is it a trap? Is it an error? He asked himself.

Behind him he could hear the ending of Emi’s battle. Good, He thought as he severed a line’s connection. The web of mana reoriented, and Max sighed trying a different thread. After the web reoriented again, he found the culprit. Hidden within the false thread was a real thread. The pair of lines created the illusion of a trap while also protecting against a novice [Space Mage] who didn’t know any better.

Max easily dissected the two lines apart and severed the real connection. The web didn’t move. With that solved, the rest was a cake walk. He systematically broke each mana strand before stopping at the last. Grabbing the device, he paired back up with Emi who was watching up the stairs.

“Ready!” Max said, holding out his hand.

Emi climbed up and the pair entered the jail proper, “Alia? You in here?”

A noise sounded from the far corner of the right jail cell. A shadowy figure moved in the low-light levels, “Max!? Emi!?”

Alia moved to the red bars careful not to touch the magically treated metal. As she neared, enough light caught her frame. The oldest princess of Salae looked haggard. Her hair was matted and split, clothes torn and stained, skin was without pigment, and skinner than healthy.

“Oh, there you are.” Max said, as he disappeared and reappeared within the cell. He severed the last mana connection to the lock – which returned access to his space magic but also put a short time limit on the lock reactivating.

A purple shimmer opened just past the Lost Lord’s shoulder, “Come on, let’s go. Clammy is waiting for you.”

Alia started crying, tears streamed down her cheeks like rain on a windshield. She crawled forward, her legs shaking and unable to support the rush of emotions she was plagued by.

Shouting and a low hum sounded from the stairway. The walls were draped in humanoid shadows and a chill could be felt. The guard was nearly here. A wall of ice formed between the doorway and the jail – Emi used all of her stashed ammo as fuel.

A presence stirred in the left jail cell. A man, unshaven and naked ran at the red iron bars – his skin was torn asunder by the aftershock of the magical metal. Ribs and muscle bled uncontrollably as they broke through skin. The man groaned like he was more disappointed that he didn’t break the bars than the seemingly lethal wounds across his body.

The commotion caused Max and Emi to prepare attacks, but Alia spoke up, “Max! Can you take him as well? I promised to help him!”

Max was holding Alia up at this point, her weakened state barely able to stand, “Sure, who is he?”

The eldest princess of Salae blushed and looked away, “The creator of Vast Empire.”

Max swayed his head as he deliberated this unprecedented information. A silent conversation transpired within seconds between the two bonded partners. In the end, Max teleported away from Salae while leaving the dungeon empty besides the guards.