Sery sat on the narrow bed with her legs crossed and eyes closed in a basic meditation pose, one she knew more about in theory than practice. Unlike most mages, she had not learned it in the course of maximizing the amount of magic she had access to, so her attempts to clear her mind were inconsistent at best.

It was too late to regret not getting into the habit now, and the stray thought was one of dozens that periodically crossed her mind and distracted her from focusing on the hum of her enna. She inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to clear all the distractions.

It was hard. The magical barrier around her made the air feel suffocating, and hunger gnawed at the pit of her stomach. She had no idea how much time had passed in the windowless room, but she had had a period of fitful sleep before her current attempt at meditation, so she counted it as a day.

She was used to being hungry, she reminded herself. Just not in the last year. The logic did not affect the hunger pangs in any way.

Sighing, she again tried to clear her mind, reaching for the state where she could clearly perceive the resonance of her enna so she could begin to tune it to what she could remember of Veltyen’s.

An unpleasantly familiar enna entered the range of her senses and her eyes were open when Tristane entered through the far door.

The smell of food hit her and her eyes were irresistibly drawn to the tray he held with a bowl of stew and a piece of bread, though she knew she should have been focusing on his expression and body language.

Fortunately, he was not trying to be subtle. “Have you thought about how you’d like the rest of your stay here to go?” he asked, stopping with the tray tauntingly out of reach. “I might feed you if you ask nicely.”

He was repeating the threat to starve her into submission. “I’ll stop emitting mana particles if I get too hungry,” she pointed out, realizing that her magic was her main bargaining chip.

His expression twisted in ugly anger at her lack of fear. “It’s no loss to me if you weren’t going to cooperate anyway. Maybe I’ll take this back to the kitchen if you don’t want it,” he said, turning to leave.

Sery had been in the hands of a similar man for many years. She knew that regardless of his threats, Tristane would not harm her in any serious or permanent way. She was much too valuable of a possession. That being said, she wanted him to be lulled into complacency, more likely to make a mistake that would let Veltyen find her more easily.

She needed to give him some of the deference his fragile ego demanded, but not change her attitude so quickly that he became suspicious. “Please,” she said when he had a hand on the door handle.

He turned back, victorious satisfaction all over his face. “That’s more like it. Please what?”

Sery did not value concepts like pride or dignity in the face of survival. “Please, may I eat?”

“Why, yes you may.” Expression once again smooth and outwardly charming, Tristane handed her the tray. “Why don’t you enjoy your meal and I’ll be back later to discuss how we might make things more pleasant for you.”

Sery dug into the food as the prison door clicked shut. She had no fear that it was drugged or poisoned; again, she was too valuable for that.

With the distraction of hunger out of the way, she closed her eyes once more for another attempt at meditation.

***

Veltyen woke up from a cold, dreamless sleep, having forced himself to rest after taking care of Mindseye. Asher’s second re-enactment spell had revealed a masked, cloaked figure on a nondescript horse who had wrapped an unconscious Sery in cloth to make it look like he was transporting luggage. In a supreme feat of talent, Asher had extended the spell to follow the kidnapper for a quarter league, just long enough to see him switch transportation and move into an equally nondescript carriage. It was clear that the man had expected to be traced by re-enactment spells, and Veltyen could only assume that he had made several more changes to his choice of transportation along the way to an unknown destination.

Asher was truly burned out and would not be able to cast even a basic spell for a few days. Foria had attempted to help track the kidnapper, but with her lack of experience in manipulating the time dimension, could only produce hazy silhouettes of past events, and had difficulty honing in on the exact period they were interested in.

The only others in Eterna with skill in the time dimension and power of at least three stars were Galen and his mentor Brovan, though they had specialized in the very large scale observations of weather patterns. Veltyen also had two colleagues he had worked with on kidnapping cases, and Ariela was helping recruit local time mages in Roswan. Everyone that might be able to help had been urgently contacted and were on their way, but without mage mounts, it would take them days to arrive while the trail ran cold. Veltyen was well aware that a time mage could be hired to muddle someone’s trail in the time dimension, and it appeared that the kidnapper was wealthy enough to do so.

He wanted to gallop off at top speed, to vent his fury and worry with violence, but he did not have a target.

After a tasteless breakfast, he pulled out all of his gear to clean and maintain just for something to do. He usually found the repetitive motions relaxing, but this time, his muscles remained tense.

Suddenly, his enna exploded.

The very air itself hardened and shattered around him as the usual defensive spells he had ready were activated with an ocean of magic. He had no way to gauge if it was a thousand times or ten thousand times more than he usually had access to – it just felt infinite.

As abruptly as it started, it was gone again. Veltyen let out a slow, shaky breath. Looking around, it seemed like less than a second had passed, and people were just starting to look up at the noise.

He was surrounding by a perfect circle of fine, translucent powder. Touching it and probing with his power, he found that it was mana crystal programmed with the distinctive style of his own personal defence magic.

“What was that?” Ariela asked, coming out of a nearby tent.

Beside her, Devlin touched the ring of powder. “Since when were you able to generate mana crystal?”

“I’m not.” Veltyen attempted to describe what had happened, having to repeat himself several times while various mages gathered around.

Everyone was mystified. “This doesn’t match any phenomenon described in the current model of magic,” said Asher, “not even hypotheses that haven’t been experimentally verified yet.”

“This could just be wishful thinking,” said Foria, “but any time something weird and unprecedented in magic happens, I immediately think of Sery.”

As soon as the suggestion was said, Veltyen’s mind immediately latched on to it. He could only hope that it meant she was well and experimenting with her magic rather than suffering through something that had made her lose control.

“We can only hope that is the case and Sery will only be doing this to Veltyen,” said Ariela. “The only reason nobody died was because all of his readied magics are entirely defensive. If the same phenomenon hit me…”

Devlin took her hand and the couple exchanged a wordless glance before Ariela spoke again. “I think I will have to withdraw from the search and aid at a distance. We have no idea if proximity is a factor in triggering this, but I can’t afford an uncontrolled release of magic, let alone one at augmented power.”

No one disagreed, having seen only a fraction of her destructive powers on display at the Games. “Where are you going to go? It’s pretty clear the kidnappers went back to Oslethia, so you might be going closer if you head back to the guild,” said Foria.

“I will stay at the Roswian Guild Association headquarters for the moment,” Ariela said with a catlike grin. “I think my presence will motivate them to aid our endeavours with their full effort, if they don’t want me to extend my stay indefinitely.”

***

Sery had succeeded. Just for a second, but she had tuned her enna until it resonated with Veltyen’s.

It was the sensation of being connected to him again that had snapped her concentration. She wiped at her eyes and realized she had been crying.

Lying down, she curled up in the bed, shaking with relief and fresh loss. She had no idea how long she stayed like that before Tristane entered the room with a new tray of food.

He seemed taken aback by her appearance. “What happened to you?”

Sery did not have the energy to explain or try to put on a performance. She sat up stiffly and simply waited.

Tristane surprised her by walking across the room and sitting on the bed next to her. “You’ll be okay,” he said, his voice softer than she had ever heard it. His hand came up to stroke her hair.

The contact made her skin crawl but she looked down to hide her expression with her hair.

“The magic isolation device will be done by the end of the week, and I’ll be able to let you outside,” he said. It appeared he thought she was feeling claustrophobic because of the physical walls, not the magical ones.

Sery simply nodded, acknowledging the words without accepting the assumption that she would let him put on whatever magical shackle he had designed.

Tristane stroked her hair for a minute before standing up and picking up the old food tray. “I’ll be back with dinner.”

Sery dug into the new meal, trying to collect her composure and her thoughts. The sight of her loss of composure had elicited far more sympathy from Tristane than she had expected.

She thought back to what she had observed of him, and Veltyen’s stories of their youth in Academy Oslethia. He was a powerful mage, a high-ranking noble, blessed with wealth and good looks. He liked to be admired. She guessed that as long as he got the admiration and deference that he felt was his due, he could be quite generous. It was only when things did not go his way that the meanness of his personality was revealed.

That meant that the more harmless and afraid she appeared, the more freedoms he would grant her, with him deluding himself into the role of her protector.

Given how she felt with her wavering connection to Veltyen, she was not going to need to put on much of an act.

Still shaken, she decided that she would spend the period until her next meal just practicing meditation rather than trying to tune her enna to Veltyen’s.