[Illusion Magic] Level 4 acquired through use

For gaining a skill level you have been awarded 1 XP

Finally, I thought, as I watched Lundy head off, following a cart. She should be back before the [Greater Invisibility] spell wore off. My spy network was coming along, but there was still far too much work that needed my personal touch.

I sighed, and returned to creating a [Calculate] text, while still keeping an eye on the house I still thought of as Guillaume’s residence. We were fairly sure now it wasn’t - he never spent the night there - but we weren’t sure who did. Cloridan hadn’t managed to find us a hideout with a good view of the warehouse, but he’d had more luck in the residential district. I’d been able to rent a room with a window, ‘for my writing’.

So far we’d seen Guillaume enter and leave several times, and seen a few deliveries like this one, but we hadn’t seen the master of the house - unless he was actually the servant who accepted the deliveries.

Guillaume had actually paid me another social call, but I still didn’t know what he wanted with me. It had been a nice distraction from all the work I had to do, though. Surveillance was deadly dull at the best of times, so it was lucky I had something to occupy myself. Now I had another distraction, spending the 45 spell points that I’d gotten from my skill increase.

I’d spent some time considering this already, but I went back over my reasoning to see if anything had changed since then. My main options were:

[Phantasmal Entity]: Creates an illusory creature or person that can move or act as the caster directs.(25 points)

[Disguise Other]: Modify targets appearance and clothing as required (20 points)

[Dispel Image]: Destroys an existing illusion if caster’s effect level is higher than the target’s. (20 points)

[False Emissary]: Creates a false image of the caster that they can see and hear through. (20 points)

I’d looked, and there didn’t seem to be a detect illusion spell, which was a shame. That seemed to be the province of [Identify] or [Perception], with high enough effect totals. My own spell casting total was much higher than my [Identify], so spamming [Dispel Image] was a more likely way of identifying an illusion.

The next spell in the Phantasmal list was irresistible to me, to be honest. The thought of creating and controlling ‘real’ creatures was just too crazy to say no to, regardless of the tactical uses. [Phantasmal Emissary] might have been even better, but then I couldn’t get one of the other spells.

Satisfied with my choice, I picked [Phantasmal Entity] and [Dispel Image]. Giving in to temptation, I immediately cast [Phantasmal Entity].

A mouse immediately appeared on the desk in front of me. We looked at each other for a moment, and then I willed it to turn around and walk to the other side of the desk. It did so. I attempted to get it to do a little dance, and managed it… somewhat. It looked a bit like dressage I’d seen horses perform.

[Dispel Image]. The mouse disappeared, so it looked like it worked on Phantasmal spells too.

Right. Back to work.

“Honestly, I’m starting to think the man’s courting me,” I said to Elodie as I helped her prepare our evening meal. I’d received a request from Guillaume for him to attend on me tomorrow.

“He might be,” Elodie mused. She’d gotten used to filling in my ‘foreigner’s’ ignorance of local nuance. “It’s unusual for a noble to marry a commoner, but its not unknown. And it’s not like he’s an important noble.”

“Why now though? I was expecting some attention after the ball, but I shouldn’t have done anything to attract his attention yet.”

“Are you joking miss?” Elodie dropped her knife and looked at me in shock. “There’s all kinds of rumours swirling around about you. You’re the beautiful and rich [Enchanter] that charmed the guild-master and swept into a senior Guild position. You’ve had a personal audience with the Count and made his son back down.”

She returned to chopping as I blushed in silence. I didn’t think I was that famous. “…and that’s just what regular people know. If it was widely known that you had Lord Aubert eating out of your hand, and were forming a spy network…”

“Are people really talking about me that much?” I asked plaintively.

“Well…” Elodie considered, “That’s in the guild, I don’t hear much gossip from outside it.”

“He’s not in the guild though,” I said.

“He does live in the castle though,” she countered. “So he probably knew about your audience with the Count, maybe even your invitation to the ball.” She thought about it for a bit longer. “Perhaps he’s trying to get to know you before asking you to dance at the ball?”

“He’s going to- wait.” I interrupted myself. “I don’t know how to dance.”

“Oh hardly anyone knows how to [Dance],” Elodie reassured me. “Just-“

We were interrupted by an urgent knocking at the back door. Maslin was there, almost bouncing with suppressed excitement when I opened it.

“Miss, there’s a carriage left from the residence miss!” he told me. “It just left from the South Gate!”

It took me a moment to comprehend this news. Maslin must have followed the carriage from Guillaume’s house to the gate, and then come back here. It was weird to think of following a carriage on foot, but Maslin’s running skill was higher than mine. More importantly, it was barely an hour until sunset, and carriages didn’t normally travel at night.

There was a village with an inn barely an hour’s travel south of Anchorbury though.

“Was our mystery man in it?” I asked.

“I think so, miss, but I didn’t get a good look. He was wearing a cloak, and had the hood up.”

“Alright, go find Cloridan and let him know whats going on. Tell him that I’m going to check out Bourneby on my own. Don’t panic, unless I’m not back by morning.”

Maslin nodded and headed out the back door. Elodie had more objections.

“Miss! Miss Kandis!” she exclaimed as I went back upstairs to change into my armour.

“I’ll have to skip dinner tonight,” I said, as she came into where I was changing. “Hopefully this won’t take too long and I’ll be back later tonight.”

“You shouldn’t be running off like this,” she objected, but her heart wasn’t in it. “It could be a trap.”

I shrugged, “A trap is still a lead,” I said. “As long as I avoid getting caught in it. I’ll be careful.”

She sighed as I completed my preparations. “Don’t forget, Lord Guillaume will be here at 10th bell, so don’t stay out too late.”

“I won’t. Help me with the door?” I asked, turning invisible. She sighed again, but went downstairs to let me out.

The sun had not yet set, so there was no problem getting through the gates. Invisibility helped me avoid questions as I slipped past the last minute incoming traffic. The carriage had more than a half hours start on me, so there was little chance of catching up, but I knew where it was going.

I headed out, in what I thought of as a quick jog. I was moving a bit faster than an Olympic sprinter, but I should be able to keep up this pace for the whole trip. After a bit of consideration, I started adding long jumps every ten or so strides. I’m not sure if it made me faster, but I’d been neglecting my [Jump] skill.

[Jump] Level 2 acquired through use

For gaining a skill level you have been awarded 1 XP

There, that was worth looking like an idiot for half an hour, I thought as the village came into view. It wasn’t like anyone could see me, anyway. The village had a wall, like all settlements on this world, but it was low enough that I could jump right over it. I noted that the gate (now closed for the night) was manned by uniformed Duvost troops, just like the city walls.

I saw the carriage almost immediately, outside of the inn like I had expected. My target was inside the inn, no doubt. I hesitated, planning my approach. It was the end of the day and people were heading to the pub, it shouldn’t be too hard to slip in behind one of them.

Or I could go and see what that’s all about.

About 500 meters down the street, there was a sudden loud clanging. I could make out people shouting as well.

Um OK… I dithered. That was clearly something interesting, and probably connected to my target, but he was probably in there, wasn’t he? Then one of the bystanders opened the door to the inn, and shouted out to the room.

“Hey, there’s an attack on the Mayors house!”

At which point nothing else would do but for them to all come pouring out. Some of them went off to help, but all of them came out to gawk. Including someone that had to be my guy. Dressed much more richly, with a hooded cloak, the middle aged man looked as confused as anyone.

Is this unconnected then? Or is he establishing an alibi? I didn’t know what was going on, but spam costs nothing.

[Dispel Image]

The image of the harmless rich man was replace by a decidedly less harmless looking thirty year old with a ragged beard and bad skin.

Oh ho ho.

“Hey, what happened to the rich guy?” One of the villagers next to him had noticed the change. He shouted and grabbed a hold of Bad Skin, attracting the attention of others.

OK. That guy doesn’t look like an Illusionist, so he must be the alibi, while the real illusionist is over there.

I started heading towards the fight. As I drew closer, I could see what all the fuss was about.

Demons.

Jet black skin that seemed to fade into the shadows, horns, no clothes - or genitals - and nasty looking claws about twice as long as human fingers. They were cutting a swathe through the lightly armed villagers. Some fought, others fled in terror, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to these inhuman monsters.

Or so it seemed. [Dispel Image]. One of the demons was instantly replaced with a greasy black haired man wearing chainmail and wielding twin short swords.

Amusingly, everyone else noticed before he did.

“What the fuck!” yelled one of the demons. “Bryce, what are you doing without your skin!”. Until the shout, Bryce had been occupied with slashing at a villager with an axe. The villager had noticed the change immediately of course, but demon or brigand didn’t really change the situation for him. Bryce being distracted by his commander did change things though. Bryce looked over to the commander and then down at himself. That was plenty of time for his victim to get a good swing at him.

The commander cursed at Bryce took an axe to his shoulder. He seemed to be in charge, so I did him next. [Dispel Image]

The commander turned out to be a woman, which I wouldn’t have guessed from her voice. She cursed as her true form was revealed, “Where’s that damn fingerwiggler!” she yelled. “His spells are no good!”

At this point, the fight had… half-stopped. The demons that were engaged were still fighting, but those without an immediate opponent weren’t chasing down new villagers anymore. Confused, they were standing around waiting for orders.

The villagers were less confused. Seeing the demons change had lessened the terror, but they were still fighting or fleeing for their lives. I knew that any delay favoured the home side though. The town guards were surely on their way, and they were a much more even match with these guys.

“Its not me, Commander.” someone said, their voice appearing to come from the air above us. “There’s another illusionist cancelling my illusions.”

Two could play that game. [Unseen Sound]

“I’m afraid this mission is compromised,” the voice continued from above, “So I’ll have to make sure you don’t live to reveal anything.”

One of the quirks of [Unseen Sound] was you had to hold the whole sound in your head when you cast it. It made conversations a little awkward, but it wasn’t too bad, unless you were trying to respond to surprising dialog.

The other thing was that it only started making sound after you finished the spell. So as ‘fingerwiggler’ responded to my spell with his own [Unseen Sound], I was already casting my next spell.

“Thats not me! They’re trying to fool you!”

[Improved Blind]

A dark bubble went up around the commander’s head even as the voice rang out. I don’t think she heard any of it?

“They got the commander!” One of the demons yelled.

“Who? Wasn’t it Master Archambault that did that?”

“Don’t say my name, you fool!”

Tch, tch, wasting your spell on people that aren’t going to listen. You should silence them like this, I grinned, even though only I could see it.

[Improved Blind]. My target was the fool who’d yelled the name.

“That was our guy that did that! Lets get him!”

“No, you idiot!”

By this time the fighting had stopped completely, as everyone was yelling at each other, or the sky. The commander was standing on her own, slashing out at random.

And then the guards arrived, and things got a lot worse for the bad guys.