10

Teresa was standing by a large SUV.

“You aren’t really good at this subtle thing are you?” Teresa asked as soon as Serena joined them.

Teresa chuckled then flicked her finger. A buzz sounded out as a flashing needle shot from her hand.

“Crap!”

In the distance a figure darted away. A small flashing needle chasing after him.

“That should be enough.” With another flick of her fingers the needle retracted and shot back to her hand.

“Let’s get going.”

She threw the heir onto the back seat of the SUV and got into the driver’s seat.

The two guards entered behind her, both looking downcast. Neither of them was wearing a mask. Both were of the Gorian race, one male one female.

Serena got into the passenger seat.

They sped away from the district and headed to the island’s outskirts. After Teresa was certain that no one was following she then left for the Harcourt clan’s headquarters.

When they arrived Teresa got out of the SUV then commanded the pair. “Wake him up and bring him.”

The teenage boy sitting on the chair looked around in wonder at the room.

Clara sat behind a desk in front of him. She turned to look to the two guards then to Teresa. “You sure this is him?”

“Certain.”

Clara frowned. “He really doesn’t look like a Telmera boy.”

“Yes. But I can assure you of his identity Miss.” Teresa said as she gestured to the Gorians nervously standing behind her. “The Telmera bloodline has always been accompanied by Gorians. According to the loyalty they displayed I’m willing to believe in his identity.

“Additionally, I recognize those two. They bear a striking resemblance to their parents.”

“You’ve seen their parents?”

“On pictures. The Telmera heir is often kept hidden for safety, but the same can’t be said for their guardians.”

Clara hummed. If he was a Telmera, and a heir carrying the bloodline at that then…

“Does he have their ability?”

Teresa shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s not something you can just look at someone and know.”

“Wake him up.”

Before Teresa could move the two Gorians stepped towards the boy and lightly slapped him on the face. “Master, stop pretending to sleep. The lady wants to talk with you.” The Gorian woman said.

“What, why do you always have to treat me so roughly? Aren’t you supposed to be my most loyal and gentle servant?”

The woman scoffed and returned to her brother’s side.

Clara looked at the boy, who was blearily looking back at her. “Don’t get much respect?”

The boy huffed and stuck up his nose. “Ever since I’ve been deposed they’ve been getting ahead of themselves.”

Clara saw the Gorian woman tighten her fist and softly shake it. “So you say, but something tells me your situation is partly your own doing.”

The boy seemed surprised. “How did you know?”

Clara shrugged. “It’s just a guess. But it isn’t like the Telmera clan could fall so easily. Even though they were never ranked first they remained steadily in their position throughout the Meritocracy’s history. In addition…”

She frowned as she looked at the boy, “The Telmera would never fall so easily, not with your ability.”

The Telmera clan were one of the pure bloods. Each clan that were still headed by their founding bloodline was due to the special ability of the founding blood, and the great harm that would result if the founding bloodline was to be lost.

Thinking of this… “So, the other heir is also someone in your bloodline?”

The boy frowned, “That’s right.”

“The mistake made was not due to you, it was your parents. And after their death… Weren’t you suspicious of anything?”

The boy squinted at her, “You know, I really don’t like you pretending that you know everything.”

She shrugged lightly, barely lifting a finger yet conveying her contempt for his situation all the same. “If you weren’t caught up in such a clichéd situation then I would’ve waited for your explanation. Now… Are you familiar with your bastard sibling? Or have you run away before you could catch them in your sight?”

“No, I knew, we all knew. I… My parents never expected this to happen. I still find it hard to believe. My own brother’s trying to kill me.”

“Ah, now we come to the crux of the matter, you refused to retaliate when you caught word of your brother’s betrayal. Perhaps he even knew that you would be hesitant. He has had years to scheme and prepare his heart whilst you’ve always thought of him as your most dearest sibling. It takes time for someone to go from loving to hating. If people could just switch their emotions on a dime, the Meritocracy would never have been possible.”

He gulped, the nose stuck in the air lowered, and he looked at the ground, all sense of imperiousness gone from him. “That’s right.”

“Originally I was planning to help you recapture your position. I would’ve granted you your post as a sign of friendship. But now, with your brother already being a legitimate inheritor to the throne it makes things quite difficult. You understand this, right?”

“I imagine it’s not difficult for a the Harcourt heir to destroy the Telmera clan. I’ve heard of what you did. Those foreign devils of yours almost utterly destroyed the Elare clan’s headquarters.” He was interrupted by Teresa chuckling. He took a breath then continued, “In the future, a certain event unfolds…”

“I know.” Clara stopped him.

He seemed surprised. He stopped, then his eyes shimmered, “Yes, though we are clairvoyant it doesn’t mean we are omnipresent.”

Clara hummed then said, “Though you might think that your ability belongs to the realm of magic, this isn’t the case. In fact I think if you did some research you’d find that the Telmera’s gift is actually a mental power, something which uses no magic but instead the latent energy and structure of your body.”

She looked at the horns growing from hair and the small downy feathers covering his arms. “You aren’t entirely human… Have you spent any time wondered what your ancestor had been?”

His eye’s widened, “You know?”

“No!”

He seemed to sulk at this, she smirked before continuing. “But you should be able to find out!”

“What do you mean?”

“Use your powers, but instead of looking into the future, I want you to look into the past.”

“Yes…” His glimmering eyes dimmed and he started swaying.

Clara chuckled.

Around the room were small canisters that are emitting a certain type of fragrance. This is something mostly harmless and often secretly employed by foreign merchants when they invite a upcoming businessman into their home for negotiations. The fragrance calms the mood and stabilizes the mind. It also subtly influences a person’s mind which means it could be used to lead someone on using various methods.

Clara was planning to use this against the heir. It wasn’t like he was the one in the position of power after all. And she didn’t have the time to waste getting a former enemy to relax around her. So when she’d started guiding the boy to look into the past she’d also increased the amount of fragrance being emitted from the jars. It wasn’t enough for the boy to notice, but the two guards had been on high alert and instantly realized that something strange was in the air. They leapt up and rushed to guard the boy.

“Don’t bother, if I meant to harm him he would be dead by now.”

Clara stood. She started walking out of the room, since it would be a long time before the boy would be waking up, a memory from thousands of years ago was a long way away after all.

“When he wakes up he will understand. Oh, the thing in the air is called Sati smoke. I’m sure you’ve heard of it before, no need to be afraid.”

Teresa came along with her. Behind them the two guards wrapped a turpentine cloth around their nostrils and took out a small device from their clothes.

“Should we trust them?” The brother asked.

The sister looked down at the boy. “He said to do so. We have no choice but to follow our lord’s orders.”

He growled, a sound that resembled a beast, “Don’t tell me you trust those people!”

She drew back her fist and punched him in the face. “Quiet. Remember your oath, the utmost loyalty to your liege, for the many years of friendship between our people and the blood debt that can never be repaid.”

On the floor her brother seemed to have calmed down. He sat up and rubbed his chin. “But what if his blind faith gets him killed? What are we going to do then?”

She chuckled. “Are you still asking this? Then we’ll follow him, all the way to hell.”

Usually she wouldn’t help someone. Especially if there was nothing for her to gain in the process. But she believed that the boy, while innocent, was not stupid. As long as he remained alive long enough to grow he would one day become someone powerful and influential in his own right.

So she might benefit from this, but it required trusting the boy’s potential, and also trusting in her intuition.

Teresa chuckled, “How’d you know they wouldn’t run away?”

“It’s pretty simple, he wouldn’t be caught so easily if he wasn’t willing. Otherwise he would long since be dead.”

“You think he predicted this was going to happen?”

“Of course he did. There’s no other way he’d have been able to escape, I’m guessing the Telmera soldiers are thoroughly under the other brother’s control. Either through threat or greed, there are ways to sway people.”

“Is that really enough to convince them to launch such a blatant coup?”

Clara was quite for a moment, she took Teresa’s hand in hers and looked her in the eyes while smiling. “Loyalty isn’t something which is forced upon someone from outside. It comes from within. The loyal can never be broken, for it is the upholding of the ideal that gives their existence meaning. They have solved the greatest question in the universe, the reason for their existence. It is in the defence of this that they gain such immense fortitude.

“As loyalty in service comes from within, so too does loyalty in obligation, the ruler would waste his followers if he bears an empty heart.

“The loyalty we have is not something forged from obligation, nor from duty, it is a loyalty of love. You would surely join in a coup if I was to ask. I too would die for you.”

Clara stepped away and looked out over the balcony. “This is why things are complicated Teresa.”

“You think the loyalty they have to the other heir is one of the heart?”

“Yes, certainly not all of them, but perhaps a key few. Ones with enough influence to convince the others to hold their tongue. You didn’t hear a whisper of their possibly being another heir did you Teresa?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Then it means that he is accompanied by loyal subordinates, and that trying to take back the Telmera clan’s throne will be much more difficult.”

“But we can do it. We have more than enough power.”

Clara was silent for a moment, “Forget it, we won’t go along with it anymore.”

“What?”

“The price will be too high. Even if we manage to spare the innocents there are still those loyal followers we have to worry about. Removing them might render everything else meaningless.”

“So you are going to let the Telmera clan slip through your hands?” Teresa asked.

Clara smiled and shook her head. “I do not know that bastard child’s personality. But if he is someone willing to murder the family that loved him, then he is also certainly hollow inside.

“While he might have found ways to gain the loyalty of his followers, he himself is disloyal. Someone like that will never grow to be a thorn and his power will soon wither. Now that he’s accomplished his lifelong dream, I wonder if he would cherish or waste this precious opportunity.”

Teresa seemed to get it. “So you are going to wait for him to destroy himself?”

Clara grinned. Her grin seemed somewhat evil. “No, I’m too impatient for that. I was thinking we help him over the edge and right into the abyss.”

Shadow arrived at the Sage Guild early in the day. From the outside everything also seemed normal. Shadow faded into the shade, a truck passed and he used the slight distraction to slither past a guard at the door. Inside he heard two woman speaking. The voices came closer so he quickly chose a good spot and hid away.

“No way right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I told him. He didn’t believe me either.”

“What happened then?”

“Oh, we broke up! Haha.”

“For someone that got dumped you don’t seem so sad.”

“Well~~~ There’s the thing. I found and dumped him. Luckily we never got too serious, he took it well.”

“You and your flings.”

The two passed by, Shadow stood up from behind the desk. He went entered the hallway the woman had come from.

He sneaked through the hall avoiding detecting from any of the office-workers that came in early and finally made it to a stairway. He ran up a wall and hoped off to stand on one of the metal support beams that was scattered throughout the whole building. This place was dusty, making it clear that no one had been here in a long time.

He looked at the various places he could go and at the stairs. “Well then. Where to next I wonder.”

Down or up? He felt a suddenly pulse of magic and then just as quickly the pulse vanished.

“What the…” He narrowed his eyes.

No longer having any time to think he further hid his presence and headed up the stairs as quickly as he could.

“Well then, Teresa said that the leaders of the factions haven’t contacted them and she suspects that their being influenced by another player. Magic in the Sage Guild, the Meritocracy handles magic like a trained dog with their gadgets. This signal is obviously not something the Sages could do since they weren’t mages.

Guess I’ve confirmed that there are other players making their move now.

He came to an office. The door was closed but the eerie feeling he felt coming from it meant that someone had left a nasty surprise for anyone daring enough to approach that office.

Shadow’s mission wasn’t to cause trouble so he decided to hang back and wait for whoever had set up the trap to leave before he went in to confirm the guild traitor’s identity.

It was obvious that they were going to great lengths to hid the fact that someone was meeting with a mage. Someone who hasn’t been trained in detection magic would never be able to feel the trap by the door. But their subconscious would certainly feel something, and they’d decide to do something else whenever they approached the door.

Shadow waited. The tense feeling grew stronger and then, with another pulse of magic the feeling disappeared. A man came out of the door a second later. When he was outside he breathed deeply, looked around then finding no one he sighed in relief before walking away.

Shadow stepped away from a shadowy corner then turned to leave. Gotcha.

“What is this?” Teresa looked at the stack of documents pilled on her desk.

“Research documents. Don’t worry I only took the important stuff. I’m good at spotting those.” He said and smiled cheekily.

Teresa chuckled then shook her head in hopelessness. “I’m guessing you’ve already planned things so that they don’t know its missing… Right?”

Shadow nodded. “Yeah nothing serious, just swap a few copies around and people will just think someone made a mistake. The other things were covered in dust when I found them.” He shrugged, “I couldn’t find anything newer. But at least these won’t be missed.” He remarked.

“Alright mister spy, have you actually gotten what we’ve sent you for?”

Shadow nodded, “Yeah,” He passed her a small camera. Teresa tapped her comm-ring against it then said, “Project.”

She saw someone she was familiar with. Radam Neihere, the one that Clara had said was leading the Sage Guild when she’d been there last.

“Hmm.” Shadow looked at her expectantly. “Oh, good work shadow.” He smiled brightly. Teresa turned her eyes before his smile blinded her.

He wasn’t the prettiest man around but she could appreciate his skill.

He was only slightly less powerful compared to her, and she’d been trained by a member of the legendary Black Ghost tribe. Although Shadow’s mentor, Galen, was also skilled it was a far cry from Amara, Clara’s mother. On top of that Galen was raising and training tens of kids at once.

All this meant that shadow’s skills was mostly thanks to the effort he himself has put in. And not due to his teacher or and any artificial methods. Teresa had always been attracted to strong men. A weakness perhaps; Clara called it taste.

Teresa started sifting through the documents.

Shadow was still standing there. His smile as bright as ever.

“Anything else?”

“There was a mage there. A powerful one at that.” As if realizing how he looked he suddenly became more serious.

“A mage… Clara needs to know of this.” Teresa stood then left. Shadow followed along.

“Shadow take the rest of the day off.”

“Okay, can I come along?”

“…Fine.” She relented.

“And the documents?”

“You aren’t surprised?”

“No, only something exceptional would’ve kept the Sage Guild from joining my side. I was going to wait for them to join me before doing this but now… Teresa, see that you investigate any and all family members of the Sage Guild, starting from the top. When you find something strange contact me… There’s a chance that Radam Neihere’s family was kidnapped. If possible I want to bring them back. If they are already deceased then I want to inform him.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just expose him?”

“What did I say about loyalty?”

Shadow stared suspiciously at Clara.

Teresa’s seemed to fall into contemplation. Then, her eyes widened and she exclaimed, “I understand!”

Clara nodded, “Good. See to it.”

Teresa bowed then left.

Shadow remained.

“Leave.” Clara said.

“Why are you still treating Teresa like a slave. She thinks the world of you.”

Clara closed her eyes, frowned then sighed.

She opened her eyes, and looked into Shadow’s. “Shadow, I know not whether you hopes of being together with Teresa will ever be realized. But, I think to have any hope at all you need to understand something. Teresa will never love you, at least not unconditionally. Her heart belongs to me, and I, as selfish as I am, refuse to let go of it.

“If this is news to you then you really need to revaluate how much you really know about Teresa, and whether your feelings isn’t some kind of childish infatuation.