Captain Thorne was having a really bad day. When they had been contacted by a noble of the neighboring nation, he had thought they were finally moving up the food chain. When they reached Edruin’s capital, the noble told them they had to kidnap a child he accepted, even though that was nothing he was comfortable with, the noble promised them a recommendation on top of their reward.

They travelled to the school the kid they had to hunt was studying at and started gathering information. They were lucky, their prey was on a low level quest to hunt some feline creature. They immediately set out to find them, and managed to follow their tracks after they broke camp. As they were nearing their prey, the forest suddenly got harder to travel through.

They managed to catch up to them a few hours later anyways, where they found an unpleasant surprise, they had somehow been spotted and now instead of quickly overwhelming a bunch of kids, they had to assault them head on.

The following conversation had yielded yet another unpleasant surprise, apparently the school had at least some sense of concern for the security of their students, and sent a teacher to take care of the children.

And now only a minute after they assaulted the clearing, their effective fighting strength was down to twelve. Of course, all of them were mages, the six melee fighters of their company were all bound to the ground. After assembling, he spoke up.

“It looks like we underestimated them quite a bit, the teacher is quite talented holding a shield against the twelve of us!”

“Here is the plan, we are still about a days travel from their school, so we will attack their shield in irregular intervals!

We have time on our side after all, and the spell that broke through Hubertus shield looked really dangerous, so take no chances, always have your shield up when you leave cover and hit them hard and fast, you know the drill!”

The decision to press on and make sure to get to them today had payed out as they could now play it safe and slowly whittle down their opposition without worry of any of reinforcements.

He got up, cast his shield and went to the clearing again, shot a fireball against the group in the clearing, this time one that wasted less mana on flashiness and used its power to explode upon impact. Before he could retreat back in cover he was hit by two spells, which nearly broke his shield, the combination of lightning and ice was really nasty, there were no spells more effective against shields in general than lighting attacks and none that had more penetrating power than ice.

After arriving back at the staging ground they used for their attacks, he mentioned Yasmond to him.

“Don't go and attack them, they would break your shield, you’ll have to sit this one out!”

If the teacher was as powerful as Hubertus they would probably have to keep this up for an hour until they broke through the shield, he was pretty sure they would be ready to surrender the girl to them then, making the rest of their job way easier.

The next hour was repetitive, with each of his men throwing spells at the barrier to keep their opponents on the edge.

As the first hour drew close, another one of their number had been taken out by the lightning mage, but the shield started to visibly weaken. By his estimation, they should break through in thirty minutes. He neared the clearing once again, staying in cover.

“IF YOU HAND THE GIRL OVER NOW NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO THE REST OF YOU. BE REASONABLE, WE CAN ALL SEE HOW THIS WILL PLAY OUT!” He yelled. After getting no answer, he returned back to their camp.

“Well boys, it looks like they won't surrender, so let's get to it shall we?” Suddenly he heard something behind him, something dropped to the ground right behind him.

“Get to what, what where you baberians about to do?” Spinning around, he saw a woman in the attire of a magical scholar standing behind him, glaring at his men and him with an angry scowl on her face.

“And who are you, to insult us just like that, we have you outnumbered twelve to one!”

“I’d still beat you all to a pulp if there were a hundred of you!” She scowled at them again.

“Who do you even think you are, attacking my students unprovoked?” If what she said was true, they really had bad luck, running in another of the academy’s teachers when they started their attack, but luckily she chose to confront them without the other teacher and her students so they should be able to easily deal with her.

“You don't get to threaten me and my men after insulting us!” He growled.

“Show her the folly of barging in a camp and insulting the inhabitants! Give her hell!”

As one, all twelve of his men unleashed their full power against the woman.

Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next, instead of faltering under the combined magical powers of all of them, the woman laughed, her shield of water absorbing all punishment they threw at it without even faltering.

The most problematic thing about that was that she seemed to speed up the whole time.

Suddenly, instead of standing upwards and casting spells, he lay on the ground, his men next to him, all bound to the ground.

Looking around, he could see the ones they lost at the clearing as well, even Hubertus, while looking worse for the wear, looked very much alive, if a bit singed.

He could see the woman that somehow rendered them helpless on the ground, talking with a middle aged man. On the far side of the clearing, he could see a group of kids excitedly talking with each other.

One of them, a black haired girl suddenly moved in his direction. She sat down beside him.

“I see the headmasters spell finally wore off.”

“What spell, she didn't cast anything?”

“Well a group is weak as yours shouldn't, she is a water and time archmage after all. You never stood a chance, especially as she was pissed she had to fly all the way here!” Thorne silently cursed to himself, had they known there was an archmage near, they would have cut their losses upon arrival, to hell with that noble. The mission was doomed to fail from the start.

“You see, I wonder why you would take such a mission, you seemed reasonably competent, you didn't search for information of course, but your skills in battle are decent for a group your size. And yet, without apparent reason, you decide kidnapping a noble is a good idea.”

“We didn't know you are noble, we thought you were some brat that offended the noble and he wanted some personal payback.”

She looked at him incredulously.

“Are you stupid? Only noble names have an animal in their last names!” She looked at Hubertus. “You know, I'm really relieved I didn't kill that one.” And with that, she left him lying there.

Verecundia was royally pissed off, someone actually had the nerve to hire mercs to kidnap one of her students. Luckily they had been noticed before anything bad could happen. Taking care of them had been easy enough, they had nothing to defend against her time magic.

What she had been told didn't make any sense though, the beastkin’s nose may be good enough to smell them over that distance, but the gust of wind that tricked them off was just wrong. As the wind blew in the opposite direction this time of the year.

She really didn't know what to think about that. Her college told her it didn't originate from the children, though he also added he had never been able to see if the Falconbridge girl cast magic.

Theoretically it was possible to perfectly conceal your cast, if the control you had over your mana was perfect and you stopped any stray mana appearing out of your spells.

Of course that wasn't really necessary, as the miniscule traces that appeared were next to impossible to notice by most. That he couldn't sense the girl casting magic was nothing short of astonishing though, he was quite adept in sensing mana.

That however, begged the question how the girl knew they were being followed. She really respected the baron, otherwise she would have the girl bound to the ground as well, there was no way she should have been able to know they were followed if even the beastkin and teacher hadn't noticed a thing.

There was only one real way to find out what was happening, so she called up her mana and messaged her father directly.

“Lady Verecundia, what gives me the honor of your message?”

“I have a small problem with your daughter here!”

“Did something happen to her?”

“Well not really, a couple of mercs wanted to kidnap her, but I dealt with them.”

“What's the problem them?”

“You see, they should have been successful, but were spotted by one of her teammates.”

“How come they should have been successful, if they were spotted by a child?”

“More like smelt, your daughter is friends with a beastkin that joined the academy this year, and she managed to smell them because of a gust of wind that blew in the wrong direction.”

“I fail to see where my daughter comes in here!”

“She is the only one of the group she was with who has enough control over her mana to hide it from the teacher I sent with them!”

“So you are saying she somehow spotted mercs behind them that even a beastkin couldn't and instead of saying anything relied on an untested spell to tip of the beastkin? Come on you know how that sounds.”

“I do, it sounds exactly like someone raised by you would do, always hiding their true capabilities!”

“Now tell me how she did it or I will have to throw her out regardless of her talent!”

“You know you won't be able to push me with threats. We have been there already and you know where that leads.

I'm not cruel, I'm gonna give you something, but you’ll have to find out the rest for yourself, though you will have to assure me you won't talk about any of it to anyone.”

“You have my word.”

“Take a look at her pet!”

And with that, the insufferable man cut off his supply of mana and ended the spell. She mentioned the girl over to her.

“So I was told you showed impressive decisiveness and intelligence in dealing with the situation.”

“I just did what everyone would do!”

“Oh you did so much more, you may have been able to fool your teacher, but I want to know how you knew the mercs were there!” The girl looked at her with innocent eyes.

“Because Taimanu told us, she has a really good nose!” Verecundia condensed some of her mana around the girl.

“Don't play games with me, we both know she was only able to do so because you delivered the smell to your friend!” After finishing the sentence, she looked around herself and saw she had overdone it, all students around her except the beastkin and the one she wanted to intimidate were shivering in fear.

“That's mean, the others didn't do anything!” She was yelled at. It baffled her, normally none of the first year students were resistant to that. Reabsorbing her mana she looked at the two quizzingly.

“How did you manage to withstand that?”

“My father has a much more terrifying aura when he is angry, even across the mansion.”

“The more powerful members of my tribe did the same, that had their aura up to scare the weak beast away.”

“The two of you, follow me now!” She bellowed.

After they were out of range for anyone to hear them, she turned back to the two.

“I already talked to your father, and being the insufferable human he is, he only told me to take a look at you pet, now I will only ask this once, what is your pet?”

“I have a falcon!”

“Is there any way to call him, or is it her?”

“His name is Starshadow. But I will only call him if you don't hurt him!”

“Done, I didn't plan to do so anyway. Now call him!”

The girl simply raised her arm, and a minute later a falcon came falling down from above.

After landing on the offered arm, the bird started to groom his feathers, seemingly content with sitting on his owners arm.

On the first glance, she could see nothing extraordinary, so she sped herself up.

Apart from its behavior, she noticed nothing that distinguished it from other falcons she had seen, the mana pool was clearly larger than normal, but nothing she hadn't seen before.

Really strange considering Branston had yet to lie to her even once. That meant it had something to do with its strange behavior. There were several reasons an animal could behave differently than its wild brethren … no that couldn't be, could it.

She had heard rumours he always found talented kids, but something like that, surely not.

Luckily, it was easily verifiable.

It was actually true. The girl had a familiar bond with the bird. But that wouldn't explain why she was able to spot the mercs.

“The bird is your familiar!” She stated.