Chapter 39

Hydrabridge

The Voidlands North of Maston

“Lillian. I have something to tell you.”

Lillian basked in the morning sun as she walked through the voidlands west of Hydrabridge. She didn’t have the heart to tell the man who walked beside her that she had taken on a new name. It was he who had given her the name three years ago.

Reah stopped in her tracks, looking on the face of Rufus Lance for the first time since he had pulled her from a different life. He held his mask in his hand, one of the three ivory masks given to the most important military figures in the province, artifacts handed down since long before either of them was born. He was never supposed to take off that mask.

Rufus’ eyes showed signs of strain, his face was downcast, clouded in frustration and sadness. “Your name has come up a great deal recently.”

Reah turned towards him fully. A feeling of dread in her heart. “The organization?”

Rufus simply nodded. It was all it took to crush Reah’s dreams. Suddenly she was as scared as she had ever been. “Why!” She screamed. “I’ve done nothing but follow the empire’s demands! There have been no warning signs!”

Rufus looked at the ground. “The organization has as many lines of reasoning as there are stars in the sky. I don’t know the reason for this though. I have no answer for you.”

Reah felt her heart beating hard in her chest. She found her gaze drawn to each bush around her. She instinctively evoked wind mana all around herself. The extra perception did nothing to reassure her. She knew perfectly well that if the organization was talking about her, she would soon end up dead or worse. “Is that why you dragged me out here with you? To make things easier? To let them kill me?”

Rufus put his mask back on. Instantly, Reah cut her own emotions off too. It was so much easier to do that when you could pretend you weren’t with another human.

A voice came out of the mask. “We’re not out here to fight the organization’s assassins, Lillian. We’re here to deal with troublemakers that seek to bring chaos to the province.”

Reah felt a spike of anger rising up through her chest. Why should she help with these troublemakers? Why should she help to protect the province? Why did everyone else get to have an ordinary life aside from her? She pushed those feelings down. That wasn’t who she was. She had never had control over the most important parts of her own life, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make the lives of others better. That was what her heroes would do. Primrose would do it; General Ford would do it; even Rufus would probably do it.

Reah took a deep breath then asked for details.

“We’re dealing with troublesome opponents. Someone hired a pair of imperial auroras to stir up chaos, consume our resources.”

Reah frowned. “That’s not why you’ve been here investigating. You’ve been looking into the incident with the ivory force.”

“Absolutely! It was lucky chance to be honest. I never would have discovered them if the ivory force hadn’t given us such a loud message.”

Reah sincerely doubted that. From what Reah could tell, Rufus played a very dangerous game. He balanced threats to the province on a daily basis. The thing about Rufus though was that he was good at his game. Nobody liked him—Reah included. He lied constantly to his own people. Every company in the conglomerate of faces had suffered damages from his lies. Every notable member of the nobility had had their reputation tarnished in some way by him. The duke of the province had a particular hatred for him. Reah knew that he tried to have Rufus thrown from office three times in the last three months. Despite all that, Rufus remained in his position. The province needed him because he was so good at what he did.

Rufus shook his head at her.

“What?”

“You look so serious. Its almost like someone just gave you a death threat.”

Reah glared at him. “You tried to kill me just last night.”

“That was just a joke. You never would have been hurt by an attack like that.”

Reah privately disagreed. He had hit her hard. Reah very much thought that he had wanted to kill her. He had probably been thinking of it as a mercy. There were only two things that the organization might do to her. Of those choices, Reah’s preference very much was death. Better that than becoming a puppet of the tree.

“There it is again. You just look far too serious.”

Reah groaned in annoyance. “I feel like I have every right to be a little serious. If we’re out here to fight auroras, we’ll need every scrap of strength we have. Neither of us are quite skilled enough to match one.”

“You have killed a far more powerful opponent before.” Rufus pointed out. “That is why they call you the reaper.”

“I took him by surprise along with nine others. We should all have been too young to evoke more than a puddle of mana. We attacked him from inches away, and I was still the only survivor.”

Rufus nodded slowly. “You make some good points. Perhaps I should talk you through the situation a little more.”

Reah took a breath. Imperial aurorae were the Perralin empire’s own elite certified mercenaries. She had only ever seen one imperial aurora in action, and they had been skilled enough to take on a small army.

Reah was a much stronger arcaner than anyone else her age. She could count herself among the most dangerous arcaners in the province, but the province was just one small backwater place in the empire. The standards to be among the strongest in the empire proper were much higher.

Though he rarely showed his personal strength, Rufus was probably slightly stronger than Reah, but still not in the league of an aurora.

“Two days ago, we ran into some bandits to the north.” Rufus gave a cursory scan of their surroundings, a mostly symbolic gesture since he was evoking wind mana. He would sense an ambusher long before he saw them—although Reah did know of a way to avoid detection even when intruding through another’s evoked wind mana. “The bandits were attacking a small village, one too small to have any soldiers stationed there.”

Reah winced. Almost all bandits were arcaners in some form. Most commonly, they were deserters unwilling to do their duty. When they attacked an unguarded village, they usually just raided some of the supplies, but if things went poorly, things could quickly turn into a nightmare.

“When the bandits were interrogated, they confessed they had been ordered to attack the village. We found three other villages nearby. Each of them had seen brutal raids.”

Reah considered that for a moment. “You think this pair of aurorae is behind the attacks? Forcing bandits to do their bidding?”

“It’s a possibility. We don’t actually know if there are any aurorae in the area. Its just the working theory based on what the bandit told us.”

“Who would hire aurorae to get bandits to do such a thing?”

Rufus rolled his shoulder. “If there really are aurorae, I would guess that their goal is to cause a distraction, force us to move our resources away from the borders.”

“Just to weaken the borders?”

Rufus shook his head. “I think its more likely that someone is attempting to sneak something past the border.”

Reah felt something click in her head. If the aurorae’s goal was to cause a big enough distraction to pull soldiers away from the railway, killing the minister of education would be a good way to do that. “We’re bait.” She whispered.

To her right, Rufus gave an imperceptible nod.

The nice morning sun had suddenly become far more ominous. Reah redoubled her efforts, concentrating on her evoked wind mana, looking for something specific. She felt it a moment later in a few different places. Slight disruptions as some of the particles making up her wind mana were moved by an outside force, diverted slightly form their predetermined path. It wasn’t as obvious as if the wind mana was actually bumping against the people, but it was still clear to Reah that they were being followed by arcaners with light mana.

When she used her eyes to detect their followers, she saw nothing. It was relatively simple to turn nearly invisible with careful use of light mana techniques. Evoked wind mana was much harder to fool though. The combination of light mana and wind mana was a popular one for arcaners focused on stealth. Reah knew instinctively that none of the five people she sensed around them were auroras. If the auroras came, Reah wouldn’t sense them coming.

The ones following them were Rufus’ men, agents of the minister of education. They were to be the jaws of the trap.