Mistakes had been made.

That was all I could think as I finally made it back to my bedroom, still reeling from the events of today. I shouldn’t have gotten angry that Reizenbrahm asked me to kill hundreds, or indignant that I was being forced to help someone that wanted to kill me because I was too brown. That was obviously unreasonable of me. I should have argued calmly, or not at all in fact, and made good on my escape into the night, bringing Farhaan with me and trying my luck in some other country.

Instead, I’d spoken my mind in a fit of emotion that even my heightened Wisdom had failed to quell, expecting the erstwhile reasonable old man to understand that his daughter was a grown woman capable of making her own fuck-ups, and that she should accept the consequences just as he should, and we could be done with this entire farce.

In his defence, he was a parent. I should have tried projecting myself on him, and understood that there really was no distance he wouldn’t travel to save his child’s life.

Mistakes had been made.

Unlike the vast majority of idiots that inhabited this world, though, I didn’t dwell on my mistake for very long, and sought instead to test the length of my supernatural leash. I had already tested its integrity, poking at it with my sense-enhancing spells, and it seemed that I was in need of a very heavy-duty ritual to break it, beyond my current capabilities. Not for very long, however.

As for the wording of my sentencing, I was on house arrest. I couldn’t leave the grounds on the pain of death, not until I healed Janina’s mind. Even thinking about leaving was enough to remind me of the metaphysical burden placed on my heart, rendering me short of breath.

I couldn’t burn down the manor either. I had to be ‘of help’. That eliminated any options in which I could be of harm. It also forced me to lend my efforts in preventing others from doing the same, meaning that I was quite literally a slave to the betterment of this household for as long as Janina remained uncured of her madness.

This, however, did indeed mean war. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that Reizenbrahm wanted me alive. I’d signed my death warrant, in his mind, from the moment his entitled daughter walked right into danger despite my numerous protestations.

I was done playing around. Completely so. I had all the mundane knowledge I needed from reading his books: I knew all about most of this nation’s history, the broad strokes of geography and research into the system. Not so much knowledge, all things considered, but it’d suffice. The books had all too much overlap, very few of them actually providing me with new knowledge, though that was to be expected from a society as primitive as this one.

The bottom line was that I didn’t need Reizenbrahm anymore. I didn’t need to play kingmaker to an idealistic idiot who’d drop said idealism at a moment’s notice and commit an atrocity if it meant saving his family. He was just all too human, and that made him so much more difficult to control.

I should go back to the Harrow Woods, where no humans lived. I could carve out an easy living there, despite the dangers, with only my son and me, and while he grew up in the safety of my presence, I could seek to make the world a better place one spell at a time, taking things easy from now on.

All those were distant dreams, though. I needed to find a way to survive in the now.

I summoned my system sheet and evaluated my position.

Name: Reza Talib

Class: Biomage [Journeyman]

Title: Spellmaking Pioneer - Reduces mental strain of spellmaking by 15%

Level: 18 (50%)

Attributes

Power 4

Endurance 4

Coordination 2

Intelligence 49

Wisdom 50

Charm 6

Unspent points: 0

Spell points: 4

Inventing ‘Affix Glyph’ — carving glyphs into physical vessels — had netted me quite the rewards level and attribute-wise, the unspent points going exclusively to Intelligence, to keep it on par with Wisdom. It was the spell that allowed me to load entire spells into the Focus, so that even when the Focus itself ran out of energy, the evocation was still always evoked, so to speak. It required only the concentration of the caster to cast the spell, so long as they could tolerate twice the amount of Chaotic Immersion.

I had planned to reduce that number to nothing at all, so that the Focus wouldn’t be reliant on the fluid mind-veil to protect the caster’s mind from the Immersion. The research was still in its infancy, however, hence what happened to Janina.

Obviously, I needed to install some sort of safety that cancelled the evocation if it required too much power. An obvious oversight, all things considered, but one I hadn’t thought I’d need at this juncture, since I’d never foreseen anyone taking it.

Most of my other leveling experience simply came from my focused training, learning how to cast faster, more covertly, and in a more controlled manner, in order to eliminate as much Chaotic Immersion as possible, making sure that the gradual accumulation of it wouldn’t eventually become too much to bear down the line.

While Reizenbrahm took care of his own affairs, I needed to find a way to break the Ritual. Even if he moved faster than was reasonable, getting the amount of requisite sacrifices could take years, years I would have to spend in servitude.

I looked at the two broken pieces of the Focus I had brought back to my room, and the staff it had dislodged itself from. Wasting no more time, I summoned the glyph of ‘time’ in my mind’s eye. The glyph, one that symbolized a fundamental effect, was positively thrumming with chaos. My attributes had grown considerably since my last attempt at meddling with it, and yet the most mileage I could get out of it was to attach it to a simple purpose, reversal of damage.

That was enough for now.

In my mind, the glyphs combined into one, and I evoked it.

Spell creation complete! You have successfully created a new spell. Remember to share your findings in a World Obelisk for additional rewards.

No reward, nor a name. The spell didn’t seem to exist in any other cluster either, a lonely star in a sea of otherness.

The Focus resonated with the spell, clenching together and becoming whole and unbroken once more. Without warning, a ripple of magic exploded out from it, ethereal and green. I held back my surprise long enough to immediately evoke the spell for Manipulate Magic, in case any of the runaway energy went rogue and created some harmful effect.

Thankfully, nothing of the sort occurred. Instead, at the core of the diamond ball, an inexplicable green light shone. I hadn’t filled the Focus with the mind-veil fluid, yet it had seemingly spontaneously occurred inside of it.

Congratulations! You have successfully helped create a familiar soul and bonded to it!

No further messages occurred, not even a reward received from the system, from something as momentous as the creation of an entirely new ‘familiar soul’, whatever the hell that meant. By its naming scheme, it seemed to imply that it was subordinate to me. Either that, or it was a demonic gift from the devil. Earth definitions were entirely unhelpful. Though the system was mercifully enough in English, for myself at least, that probably meant that it relied on imperfect translation for certain terms, and this ‘familiar’ was probably one such example.

Obviously, the fact that it was a soul, or had one at least, didn’t imply sapience. All animals had souls, as far as I could tell. Even insects had magical signatures, which was the benchmark from which I determined what had a soul and what didn’t.

I probed into the Focus, to see if the preloaded spells were still there. What met me was a most peculiar sort of resistance, followed almost immediately by acceptance. The pale imitation of the starscape I had created, a list of the spells it could contain and unleash, now had a life of its own. I could even feel a hint of otherness in it, held back by a rudimentary will of its own.

Was this a consequence of extreme Chaotic Immersion? The sudden and unexplainable genesis of life as we knew it? There was just so much that I didn’t know about magic that it was times like these when I felt humbled by the depth of the undertaking I had run headlong into.

“Cure Disease,” I said, and the Focus obeyed. The mind-veil fluid, something that I absolutely needed to give a proper name to, drained from the Focus until nothing remained as the spell cast, and for a moment I thought I had killed it somehow.

No. The ‘intrinsic spark’ was still there, an ethereal, almost invisible—even to my own senses—source of power and life.

I tried to cast through the Focus again, but nothing occurred. Even when I was ready to suffer through the tiny amount of Chaotic Immersion that would bleed off from the spell, the Focus remained unmoved.

Carefully, I poured more Veil into it, all the while monitoring the state of the subordinate soul. I found it as easy as, well, looking into my own, which wasn’t very easy at all. It was, however, simpler than gazing into the soul of Reizenbrahm, the time I gauged what it took to transfer a person’s Attributes to another.

This was markedly simpler. The soul didn’t waver at the introduction, and I continued at a faster clip, until the Focus was throbbing with green, arcane light.

Congratulations! Your familiar soul has increased in level!

Entirely unbidden, its system sheet appeared.

Name: Focus

Class: Familiar

Title: None

Level: 1 (0%)

Attributes

Power 0

Endurance 0

Intelligence 0

Wisdom 0

Unspent points: 4

At the very least, now I knew that this ‘familiar soul’ was completely subordinate to me. How else could I not only see its sheet, but have the option to invest points as I saw fit?

The sheet was missing several different attributes and aspects of the system, but the ones it wasn’t missing brought more questions than not.

How could the soul gain Wisdom or Intelligence? How would it even use that cognition without sensory organs to perceive and collect information? It seemed… extremely cruel, unaccountably so, even, to leave it in what was effectively a vacuum of zero information, with only its rudimentary cognition to live off of. Not just for that fact alone, either, but also for the fact that the Focus was, and would always be, a giant, golf-ball sized diamond that I used to cast spells.

What possible reason did I have to uplift an existence as subordinate as that? It was like giving life to a hammer or a screw-driver. Entirely pointless.

I did it anyway.

I added two points into Intelligence and Wisdom, in order to kick start its nascent cognition. I bore no illusions that it would immediately be able to communicate with me, but given time, it most certainly could.

If this did end up being an unconscionable experiment with no good outcomes, I’d just make a new Focus, but for now, I needed information and knowledge, and what better vessel to deliver that than a brand new soul inhabiting an inanimate object, its express purpose being channeling spells? Perhaps it could even glean more secrets and mysteries on the nature of magic than I ever could by sheer virtue of its atypical existence alone.

I cast my mind inside the Focus, to the spells that were there, and tried to formulate thoughts of some sort, loud thoughts that it could perhaps understand and respond to.

My attempts were met only with silence. The intrinsic spark, that indescribable wireframe that folded in on itself, made of potential and energy, bubbled and frothed with lights and minute humming. I could see the Veil circulating around it, shielding it from Otherness. I could even see it deplete and replenish entirely on its own, a cycle that would allow the intrinsic spark to exist in perpetuity so long as it didn’t decay on its own.

A glyph formed in the air, burning more Veil as it did. The glyph was simple, a question that required an answer when developing a spell. The question glyph was general, not specifically tied to any sort of requisite argument.

If I had to translate it, it would be ‘what’, ‘why’, or ‘how’.

A query.

I wracked my brain for a method to respond, and picked out the glyphs that I thought would convey the idea. “You protect me from madness,” the jumble of glyphs more or less suggested. “You help me harness power, and absorb the backlash.”

‘Query answered,’ it said, burning more Veil as it did.

“More queries?” I asked.

None arrived. Something shifted in the soul. It calmed, the bubbling and frothing stilling into a placid lake even as it continued to fold inwardly.

“Hello?” I called out. Nothing occurred. The soul had gone dormant. I couldn’t guess at the reason why, since it still had more than enough Veil to continue the conversation, but I decided to leave it be for now. Retracting my mind from the Focus was like backtracking through a tunnel, and before I knew it, I was in my bedroom again, where Farhaan slept between two mounds of blankets, and sleepiness was just starting to nip at me.

Obviously, sleep was a luxury I simply couldn’t afford right now. Always more work, never enough time. With a quick evocation, I immersed myself in the ‘Rested Mind’ spell and got to work on figuring out how to break my sentence, and also perhaps make myself more combat ready.

My greatest weakness was not being able to go on the offensive in a moment’s notice. I’d have to rectify that.

000

Daiclovius Reizenbrahm had fetched the guard, and every guard he had spoken to that night, four in total, and summoned them to his private study to do something very difficult, albeit something he could afford.

The five stood before him while he sat in front of his desk, gathering his thoughts. They were nervous, frightened of the powerful man before him, and he couldn’t blame them. They were probably leveled in the mid-teens, none of them having physical attributes above twenty. It would take him five seconds flat to kill them with his bare hands alone, and they no-doubt knew that, sensed it from his discontent, from the words of the mouthy guard who was fidgeting much more than the rest.

Thankfully, they hadn’t done anything that Daiclovius would punish to such an extent.

“One thousand golden crowns,” he said. “To be divided among you.” They gasped now, unbelieving of the words they were hearing. They could hardly even dream of ten golden crowns in their possession at any given time, one crown being their yearly wage. A thousand would set them up for life. Their families would never want for anything again. They could even go home to their villages and become lords.

In truth, the Oath that Reizenbrahm had required from them was worth much lower than two hundred crowns each, but that was a sum that they could refuse. To raise it to this extent would not only fulfill his end of the Oath, but also make it that much harder for them to question him going into it.

It was a life-changing sum for a life-changing task, one that Daiclovius feared would stain their conscience for as long as they were alive. “In return, I demand Oaths of silence and loyalty. You may not even speak of what you see to each other, and you are only allowed to report back to me if something comes up.”

“My lord,” one of the younger ones, Harnis, spoke up. “What is our task?”

“The Oath first,” Reizenbrahm replied. “Now.”

“I cannot in good conscience—”

One of the older ones grabbed him by his arm. “Forgive Harnis, my lord. He is… inexperienced.”

It disgusted Reizenbrahm to see this, a person who would sacrifice their morals and break the law for money. It disgusted him even more that it was he who demanded this. “Very good, Lorkan. I wasn’t asking.”

He stood up and activated his Judge skill, a general Noble class skill that any aristocrat above level thirty-five would have learned. “I demand Oaths of silence and loyalty”—the second was the more brutal part; loyalty was slavery in all but name—“until the task I assign you to is complete. Your silence, however, will remain with you until you die. You may never speak of what you see or hear in service of this task to anyone else, not even each other, and may only report anything you find prudent to me and me alone, Daiclovius Reizenbrahm the eighth. Say ‘I swear’ and let the matter rest, and in return for this Oath, a thousand gold crowns will go to you, to be divided equally, or this Oath will be rendered null.”

He waited for everyone to swear. Lorkan stepped up first. “I do swear.”

The mousy guard who had first found Janina unconscious, Arnos, and alerted him, whispered, “I swear.” Guilt radiated off of him, and for a good reason. Had he held his tongue, then his friends would not have been subjected to this ordeal.

“I swear.” An unremarkable young man, Rolan. He betrayed neither happiness nor sadness at the Oath, merely accepting the outcome as a given.

“I do swear, my lord.” The chubby-cheeked Gilric bowed his head as he spoke. All eyes fell on Harnis, who looked around searching for allies, but finding none.

Daiclovius hoped beyond hope that he would not have to spill blood, necessary blood. Despite himself, he hoped less of this man’s character, or at the very least, more of his pragmatism and common sense.

“I-I…” His hands shook. “I swear.”

Daiclovius slumped back in his chair, suddenly exhausted from the interaction. Even Harnis’ comrades were relieved, all placing a hand on his shoulders.

“I hold your money in trust to you, and am ready to surrender it as you see fit. You need only come to me, and it will be done, as I am compelled by the same Oath you all are. Now… I want two of you to guard the dungeon full-time,” he said without looking at any of them. “There is one prisoner there, whom you need to watch. You may figure out the rotations on your own. Provide food and water in a timely fashion and treat the imprisoned with respect. Dismissed.”

The tension was palpable, but their loyalty prevented any of them from staying behind to question him.

Good. Now, it was time to inform Losinda. He returned to his bedchambers, and with a knock at their door, she stirred awake. “My love?”

“It’s… Janina,” he said. “There was news from the warfront. A crushing defeat. They called her back.”

“When did she leave?” she asked, sitting upright. “Why has no one told me? Is she still here?”

“No,” he said. “I fear… she may have deserted. Those among the dead happened to be someone in her company, a man that she loved.”

She gasped. “What?”

“I will do my best to take care of the fallout of her choice,” he said. “In the meantime, I will have men search for her, though I fear someone as formidable as her would be able to disappear quite easily.”

“Why would she leave us?” Losinda whispered. “Was it I that drove her away? Was I to simply accept her behavior and raise no protestation after all our dear Reza had done for us? Why—” she hiccupped. “Where did I go wrong?”

Daiclovius embraced his wife, trying very hard not to join in her tears lest he lose himself to his grief and admit to all of his sins.

000

Harnis knew this was wrong. None of this made any sort of sense to him, least of all the fact that they were supposed to guard one solitary prisoner.

And if Harnis’ hunch was correct, then this prisoner wouldn’t be just anyone. It was Arnos who had found Janina Reizenbrahm unconscious on the floor, with that outlander hovering above her with Gods-knew what designs her foul mind could conjure.

They were to guard this woman, no doubt about it. He had wanted to share this theory several times, but his Oath of silence tugged on him heavily, dragging him away from any course of action that went against the will of Reizenbrahm.

He’d known this would happen, known that the Oath would oppress him in such a way. Even with the exit clause, vague as it was, and the incredibly generous reward, he didn’t trust it as far as he could throw the old man.

Guarding the Goldman didn’t explain all the secrecy that was required of him, unless of course a crime had been committed by her, a most foul one at that.

Madness. It was madness, no doubt about it. She was a madness-touched witch come to bewitch the noble Reizenbrahm house, and in the last moment, the lord Judge Reizenbrahm had struck back and captured her, but remained fearful of being implicated in her crimes, having become a beneficiary of her trade after all.

Harnis knew there was no way someone could be healed of such injuries. The lord had been crippled almost two decades before Harnis had even been born. Even with the greatest medicine in the world, it would take nothing short of magic to heal him.

The Reizenbrahm manor was large, but Lorkan knew the way. He was an old hand, fifty this year, and had worked at the estate his whole adult life. He likely knew all the nooks and crannies worth knowing, all the secret hallways and entryways that he could use to give head-maid Manalia a visit in the night.

“You sure do know your way around, Lorkan.” It was Gilric who spoke. The ponce was a bastard son of a lord, common as the clouds, yet always holding himself above his peers any way that he could. But Harnis had to hand it to him, he knew how to tell a good joke. The rest of the company chortled while Lorkan groaned.

“I’d teach you a thing or two if you knew how to use that tiny little dagger of yours.”

Harnis laughed. The tension eased, if only just a little.

So of course, Arnos had to ruin it all. “How do you all feel?”

“About?” Lorkan asked.

“This arrangement.” He gesticulated vaguely.

“Forget about it,” Harnis said. “It is what it is.”

“I am to blame,” Arnos said. “Had I only kept my peace, then…”

“Then I’d be two hundred golden crowns lighter,” Lorkan laughed. “Personally, I’m thankful, even if you feel like shit.” He looked up and sighed pensively. “Although, promising my loyalty stings a tiny bit. Means I can’t get my sword wet in the manor anymore. It’d be disrespectful.”

As funny as that was, Harnis did feel a new level of obligation to the judge that far exceeded what he was used to. His loyalty, a promise forced out of him, required that he also take pains to preserve the man’s dignity, and protect him and his name in any way that he could.

Even now, he felt compelled to reproach Lorkan for even his past transgressions.

It would take some time getting used to. At least he had a reward to look forward to, one that could tide him over for the rest of his life, provided Aellia still stood.

They took the stairs down to the underground floor, where Lorkan opened its door with his keys. The dank underground smelled of stale air and wet stone. Harnis had never heard of this place being in use before, and had only ever assumed it to be a general fixture in every nobleman’s home.

It made sense on the surface level; a judge with their own prison facility. Still, why would Reizenbrahm go through the trouble of taking a convict all the way to his own house to sentence them?

Gilric had brought a lit candle, providing them just enough light to see the whole dungeon, a simple hallway with metal barred cells on each side. The end was a right turn, but if Harnis concentrated, he could almost hear… mutterings.

“This is where we’d keep our prisoners of war,” Lorkan said. “Judges are one of the few Classes that can force truth out of someone’s mouths, not just tell whether they’re lying or not, so the king makes them all build places like these in case there’s a huge influx of them, more than the palace can hold. It’s how we beat the barbarians up north thirty years ago.” Lorkan chuckled fondly. “Every Judge in the land razed through every prisoner, and before they knew it, we knew everything about the Krastag tribes, and learned how to turn them against each other.” He knuckled his chest proudly. “Judges are our reward for living in civilized society. And a functioning aristocracy. Law and order, boys.”

“Hear, hear,” Gilric proclaimed.

Do you hear that, Harnis tried to say, but found that he couldn’t. After all, he was banned from speaking of what he saw or heard here. Harnis looked at the others’ ashen faces, and found that they too could hear the mutterings increase in volume.

When they rounded the corner, they saw someone at the end of the hallway, chained to the floor. A woman.

She sang, but it could hardly be called music. It was more like a chant, or really just the opposite of a song. Every note was combined in such a way that it sounded utterly unpleasant, random, and disordered. Had this been a bard in his favorite tavern, Harnis would have picked a fight with them on the spot.

As they came closer, it was not the sight of olive skin or raven black hair that met their eyes, but instead of blonde hair, pale skin and royal purple gem-eyes, inherited from her mother, Lady Losinda Reizenbrahm.

Janina, not the outlander.

Harnis felt the constraints of his Oath more than ever. Everyone did, judging by their gaping mouths. Harnis tried to force the words out, any words at all, but came up empty every time.

How cruel could the Judge be, to prevent them even this simple way of venting?

“If no one ever recounts a story,” Rolan, the erstwhile silent member of their party, finally spoke. “How then will it survive? Who is to say that it is even real?”

Harnis doubled over and retched.

Arnos sobbed out. “It’s real to—” His breath caught at the last word, and he jabbed a finger at his chest.

Harnis couldn’t understand what was happening, why the hero Janina was chained up, muttering like a mad-woman, and why that Goldman wasn’t in any of these cells, suffering a similar fate.

Was the healer truly innocent, or had she already subverted the very lord whom Harnis had sworn loyalty to?

What would that mean for him, then?

“It’s been a long night,” Lorkan said. “Rolan and I will take first watch. Two among you three will relieve us when you wake up, or when dawn breaks, though I suggest Harnis take the third rotation, with me.”

“Understood,” Gilric said.

Harnis regretted not defying the Judge. Though his body would have met its end, at the very least, his soul would still be clean.

He had only his cowardice to blame.