Even after Caeso finished his long-winded plan, Tercius just blinked. He was… speechless. Among other things, it was pure disbelief that tied his tongue. Caeso had not only switched gears but also had hatched a rather brutal plan in a matter of moments.

A plan that would make Caeso look good just for surviving.

Caeso wanted to go home wounded and missing one man, rather than healthy and without a single soldier lost and it took a moment for Tercius to see why. Caeso obviously cared for succeeding in this endeavor for his personal gain and by failing to complete his task, while losing all of his money and then being told to go home like a misbehaving child, Caeso would be… the butt of a joke among his peers. His superiors would lose all confidence they had in him. As he said himself, everything he worked for so far would be gone.

Which was a fitting punishment for him, Tercius realized. A punishment he would like the man to be inflicted with.

Then there was the other side of the coin. Other than making Caeso look better, the plan would make Tercius’ Phantom the scapegoat for multiple crimes against the Empire.

Killing people, especially someone of Noble birth, would mean that the Peacekeepers and the members of the other Armies would get involved and try to get to the bottom of the incident. While Caeso would likely keep his mouth shut, that was not clad in iron. He easily let slip to the Army that the Phantom had a link to a certain family in town. A small act of petty revenge that Tercius couldn’t place past him, especially now that he learned a little more about the young man. That would undo everything that Tercius tried with this rather foolish and hopeful stunt and he didn’t want his family to be linked even remotely.

He wanted them to keep their anonymity for as long as possible.

Then there was Mistress Kalina. The mage was somewhere out there, maybe even in the room with them, observing his actions. Although he made sure to put her out of his mind, he knew that mages preferred to spare a life whenever they could. Whatever he did here would be weighed. How she ended up seeing him because of his action had little fetters on him and there was no way in Hells that he would tie his hands from doing the necessary just because he was trying to look good in her eyes, but it was still a factor that he had taken into account when he had altered his plans.

Based on multiple parameters, the only sensible answer was no. Besides, if he had wanted to deal with the threat by eliminating it— flower, stem, and root— he would have done it. Telekinesis and a kitchen knife would have done the job within ten minutes.

But… the young man’s ruthlessness towards his own now begged the question: could Tercius let Caeso live?

“Now you’re taking me for a fool, friend. Besides many more… active parts of the job, one of my tasks is to make sure that my charges aren’t compromised in any way because of my actions.” Tercius’ eyes narrowed. One hand held Caeso's throat as the other went for the blade at his hip. “But you know that, don’t you? The deal is as I say it is. You can either take it or… Well, you get the point. I need the answer now.”

“So you don’t know, do you?” Caeso whispered and Tercius could swear a smirk of pride was present in those words.

Why the pride? What did Caeso know that Tercius as Phantom was supposed to? Something involving his family? Most likely… But what was it?

“Know what?” Tercius asked directly.

The young man chuckled, a self-satisfied sound that grated Tercius Acting enhanced ears.

Tercius' upper lip twitched. There was something funny here? Why would he laugh in a situation like this? Did Tercius' neck squeezes deprive the man's brain of oxygen? Or was it one of those resistances to torture finally rearing its head?

“Know what?” Tercius asked once more, his mana getting agitated.

Caeso chuckle turned to a laugh, his eyes pleased. “Let’s just say that your charges won’t require your protection for much longer.”

What the Hells did that mean? Was someone else, someone higher in the hierarchy, after his family? He had to know what this was about. He had to know the truth. But what should he do to get that information? A question from the past few days surfaced where he asked himself repeatedly what he was willing to do, only now it came in another form— what wasn’t he willing to do?

At that moment, very little.

Tercius’ eyes hardened at the mocking laugh of Caeso, as he used Mana Manipulation to pacify his rolling mana. Abandoning the blade at his hip, the free hand covered Caeso's mouth as his hand squeezed that neck. The young man's dark eyes went wide, seemingly waking from whatever happened with him back there.

Tercius stood up, as the wood of the bed groaned, and using his Spring of Crystal Thoughts in conjunction with his hands he picked Caeso up by his neck. The bed added to Tercius' height as he let the leg-kicking Caeso dangle off the side of it. The struggling young man tried to scream, but Tercius made sure his jaws were shut as much as his lips were sealed. Only muffled moans and groans escaped. Caeso's hands grabbed onto Tercius's wrists to hold his body weight, as an occasional kick went for Tercius' groin and legs. All around his skin was a crystal-cold wall that would stop a stampede of bovines in place for as long as Tercius had the mana.

“This is your last chance to answer. Know what?” Tercius hissed at the moonlit face of Caeso, his nose flaring.

He moved his hand just a tiny bit, just to let the man speak, as Caeso gasped for air.

“I can’t bre—” Caeso squeaked.

“Answer the question. Then you can breathe.” Tercius’ steel-like voice pressed for an answer, even as he loosed his grip a little and his hovering palm delivered a crisp smack across the man’s cheek.

“Your… stonemason… he called… for a-a r-recordkeeper… and a peacekeeper with… t-truth… skill… I can’t—” Caeso wheezed the words as if speaking through a broken whistle.

Tercius' tuned out the annoying man as his mind rolled.

Grandfather? A recordkeeper? A truth-telling peacekeeper? What? Why?

His grandfather wanted something verified to be recorded by the Empire’s bureaucracy? A transfer of property? The only thing of value they had was the land and the house on it and both of those had already been written down as a co-owned property of Rona, Petra, and Tercius. No… that was not it…

How did the old man even contact these people? He didn’t leave the house— Tercius almost smacked his forehead. The neighbor. Of course. He would have to talk to Ciron about this.

“That’s enough. Let him go. Neophyte.” an ethereal voice said and for a moment his whole skin crawled with surprise until he realized who it was.

As Tercius' focus turned to the outside world, he noticed immediately that something was wrong with him. His ears were ringing and under pressure to cave in as if he has plunged to a great depth. He was hot under the mask, the cloak, and the hood— unbearably so. He could feel cool drops of sweat rolling down his back. Silver-white motes of morphed mana had started pooling at the hand which held Caeso's throat, held back from Caeso only by the layer of telekinesis that clad his hand. The mana in his body… it was bubbling with something red hot and in need of a release.

“He’s asleep, you can let him go.”

Opening his hand he let the closed-eyed Caeso drop to the floor as he took a deep breath. Before he let that one out, he took another one. He stood on the bed while looking down on Caeso’s sleeping form, stupefied. He had let his mind wander for a moment and the next thing…

The intensity of those emotions… The anger alone seemed to carry the pressure that rested on the bottom of an ocean. The worry, the trepidation…

“What happened?” Mistress Kalina asked.

Tercius frowned, looking at his mana-covered hand. The silver-white mana gave out a low glow of its own, its innocence and purity seemingly untarnished. "I don't know, Mistress. He… and I… I was just… thinking about what he said and then…"

Mistress Kalina's hand rose to cup his mana-covered hand and she used a nail to scratch the telekinetic barrier that gloved everything.

"Tercius. I won't press if you don't want me to, but I think that this is important for you and you should explore this while it's still fresh. While wavering at a few instances, you've kept denying your emotions influence over your mana. But there was an instant where you granted them free reign to do whatever they wanted. Immediately after you got your answer from this man. What happened at that moment, neophyte?"

Try as he might, nothing came to mind. After that, for a while, he tried to find a parallel between the wild magic now and the wild magic that happened back in Chameos, but eventually, Tercius shook his head. "I don't know, I was just—" And then it hit him. The parallel.

Back then he had escaped from the possibility that the whole world was not real, while now he had tuned out Caeso, he had tuned out his turbulent emotions, along with the rest of the world, just so that he could try to understand Caeso’s revelation quickly and without interference.

“Did you figure it out?” Mistress Kalina asked, her voice hopeful.

Tercius hummed, as he turned his gaze on Mistress Kalina. Sharing what he figured out with her had both its pros and cons, which after a moment of weighing seemed equal in merit for different reasons. Sharing meant getting a perspective that could lead to a solution that wasn’t “don’t become detached while you’re emotional”, something which would likely be hard for him to follow through with since it was what he had done for a long while, while not sharing meant keeping a potential weakness and exploit covered…

While he had decided to take Mistress Kalina as a Mentor and would have done it if the woman had not insisted to wait a little more, that gamble was that gamble, and this one was this one.

His gaze slipped down to Caeso.

"Don't worry about him," Mistress Kalina assured him. "He's fine. He will sleep for ten to twelve hours. You sit down on that bed and take your time to think about this. We must figure out this strange trigger for your wild magic as soon as possible."

Tercius smiled wryly under his mask as he nodded and sat down.

It boiled down to what he wanted and there was no dilemma in him about that. Tercius wanted to cover it up, but another part of him whispered, You should go for the other one. That’s how you’ll get Willpower…

Tercius swallowed. Trust in someone was a gamble— the only thing he disliked about trust, really— but without gambling, you couldn't get to the good part. That was why he sometimes did it. And yet he knew that trust could be betrayed, so not only was it a gamble initially, it was a gamble perpetually. That was why he so rarely did it.

Tercius remembered something at that moment, something that shaped him into who he was today. “Throw the dice enough times and eventually you will get every number on it at least once.”

When he heard that initially, the budding cynic and pessimist in him had taken that as well as they could— eventual betrayal was just a matter of time, specific opportunity, and enough incentive. A belief that was then solidified with a few real-world examples and the rest was history.

It had taken quite some time and experiences for him to interpret that in another way and yet even as new sides to him grew, his cautious default had never changed. Perhaps it never would. If he was honest with himself, and he always tried to be, he was fine with his default. It was a great starting point in interpersonal relations. A few of his old friends cited the time and effort it took to progress that way as downsides, neither of which Tercius never really considered as such. If he desired to do it, time and effort would be there and the same should also be true for the other side. If not… well, nothing to it then.

But he also knew that “taking the leap” was sometimes the only way forward, no matter how much he disliked the gun-point option.

Tercius’ developing larynx bobbed. He had decided to trust this woman with his magical education, to allow his potential chair to be absorbed by her actual one, and even let her come to his home and meet his family. True, the way Mistress Kalina revealed the existence of his new sister could be easily seen as a masterfully devious excuse to get close to him and his, but… Mistress Kalina’s actions so far spoke in her favor. She was a little Energy grabby, but he would likely be the same in her place.

Tercius nodded to himself. “Mistress, I think that I figured it out—”

Mistress Kalina sat near him and listened. He saw that she took his theory with a grain of salt initially, but as they spoke further and Tercius explained more and more, she started to take him more seriously.

After she accepted the possibility of that, she proceeded to a spot he didn't find comfortable talking about. How did he and why did he develop such a process? Reluctantly he explained how he separated himself from others because he often found people and emotions distracting or simply too much to deal with and then delved into the actual how-to.

After the long speech, he realized something. People who spoke about themselves were the ones at the top of his ignore list, and he had almost found himself on it.

The conversation continued, and it took hours, during which he made himself more comfortable. It was hot under the mask and cloak, and with Mistress Kalina present there was no need for either. In any case, he had agreed to try to replicate the situation under Mistress Kalina's watch.

It was only when the dawn came that it dawned on Tercius where he was and why.

“Don’t worry about them anymore. I’m stepping into this, Tercius, whether you like it or not. You have more important things to do than for you to waste time on this. Sleep, for example. You look… half-dead. When was the last time you slept?”

“I got some sleep yesterday morning…” he said.

Mistress Kalina didn’t look convinced. “Fainting from Energy depletion doesn't count as sleeping, Tercius. That only makes it worse. What was your plan here, let me hear it—”

***

***

***

Half an hour later Tercius and Mistress Kalina walked out of the house, passing by a walking guard and a dog who neither saw, heard, or smelled them.

With Mistress Kalina there to cast a searching spell for precious metals, progress had been quick. Another thing that made progress even faster was that Mistress Kalina had borrowed him a vial of something called "Dead Drop", a potent sleeping draught made for upper-tier mages. While mages like Mistress Kalina would take a drop or two, for non-mages it was enough to wave the vial directly under their noses.

Besides Caeso’s coins, which Tercius and Mistress Kalina found in two separate places, he took every single coin from every single underling in the house, while leaving a nice red message on every neck and forehead in the process.

The nobles and the mage on the top floor were not spared of either fate. With Mistress Kalina there to help him, he had found three more secret stashes of coin pouches around the mansion, none as big as the one in the safe, unfortunately.

Be they untas, dwetas, tretas, kvartas, or jewelry of any kind, not a single piece remained behind.

As Amber jumped down the tree branches to get to Tercius, he noted to Mistress Kalina that he was surprised with how alright she seemed with this kind of behavior.

"You mean because I represent the Law back at the Pyramid?" Mistress Kalina chuckled. "I'm old, Neophyte. I've seen a lot of things. As far as we are concerned, the Law states that as long as we mages use spells and skills for valid reasons, such as self-defense, protection of property, and such, and we try first to go with the non-lethal way, then everything is in the clear. In any case, for the past few hundred cycles, the Empire had shunned our ambassadors back every time we sent them, so none of our foreign relations Laws apply to their territory."

Tercius’ eyes narrowed with a sudden question. “I don’t know if I’m trampling on something forbidden here, but… Why is the Empire so against mages of the Pyramid, Mistress? I mean what started the animosity? I read that the two were something like allies at the start…”

"You're right about that last part," Mistress Kalina sighed. "It's a complicated issue, but the main point of contention, the one that sparked the rift, is that they claim ownership over three continents and countless islands, large and small," she explained slowly.

Tercius frowned. "What is the issue with that exactly? The Empire does stretch from Zagea to Isgea and from Nogea to Sogea…"

"They do indeed use that land and no one contests that one bit, Neophyte. The Empire can use its lands for as long as they are around. But their leader wents to claim perpetual ownership of the land, a notion that is… controversial. You see, under our Law, no individual or group can own a piece of land above or below ocean level, no matter the reason, magical prowess, or lack thereof. All can use it, but none can own it. Our ancestors all around the ancient world, both magical and mundane, had signed The Charters which state as much."

“Oh.” Tercius shook his head. Humans and their minds. Truly astounding. But… He could see how something like that wouldn’t sit well with someone who titled himself an Emperor. Can you actually be an Emperor without owning any land?

“Since then the Empire seeks from us something that they can’t ever get.”

"That's so…" Tercius trailed off, unsure if he would offend.

"Silly? You mean why do we mages care about a seemingly trivial little distinction? A little word? Such a silly thing to do, isn't it? That's what I thought when I initially heard the tale." Mistress Kalina joked.

Tercius just scratched Amber behind her ears, assuming that those were rhetorical questions. As he, Amber, and Mistress Kalina headed slowly to his home they walked past some early rising servants who carried fresh groceries with them. Some of those men and women probably worked for the mansion that he just looted… Where would they go for their pay? What would happen to them without money? Their children and elders? Tercius swallowed and forced his gaze away.

He wasn't the one who started this, but hopefully, he was the one who ended it.

“Silly or not, there’s a reason for it. A reason that you can’t yet know.” Mistress Kalina said.

Tercius gave a weak smile at that. It was the most common answer to all kinds of questions he posed, and almost a joke between them by now.

"I meant what I said back there. You're still not ready for this— not skills-wise," Mistress Kalina amended quickly. "I mean that you're not ready to see that side of the world, not yet at least. But you will be one day. For now, if these people don't take the warning you've left them, I will handle it in my own way."