Chapter 24 — The Shadow Raven’s Pact

Seeing how he was alone and the rest of the cultist mages had fled or were corpses, the remaining cultist mage released the shield and awaited his fate.

“Xyn, search the vampire,” Grandma Kaylie instructed and motioned with her sword at the female mage she had fought. “Ayla, quickly gather any documents or items that look important. Alennil, identify as many of the nobles as you can and write their names down.”

“There are vampires in the tower?” the surrendered cultist asked in disbelief.

“Seems, so,” Grandma Kaylie replied and sheathed her sword. “You’ll be coming with us since lingering here isn’t safe.”

The cultist nodded, wide-eyed, carefully keeping his hands in view.

Arriving at the body in question, Xyn found it to be just as oddly desiccated as the head—as if all the blood and fluids had suddenly evaporated. She certainly didn’t smell of anything recently dead. He collected the jewelry, weapons, and large red gem. It was unpleasant work.

“I found another one of those black stones on this guy,” Ayla called over. “I don’t recognize him.”

“Me, either. He’s probably another one of those Priests of Malor,” Alennil suggested after taking a closer look at the dead cultist’s face.

“Alright, time’s up,” Grandma Kaylie announced. “We’re leaving before this area gets warded against teleportation or reinforcements show up.”

She kept a hand on the captured mage’s upper arm as she guided him back to the room they started from. After seeing Grandma Kaylie’s strength, he was clearly doing his best not to give her any cause to finish him off, but his eyes kept moving in Alennil’s direction.

The cultist mage did gasp in surprise after passing through the illusion hiding Yillian and seeing the half-elf modifying the teleportation circle. “The teleportation circles are supposed to be only usable by the one they were made for…”

“I thought the same,” Alennil agreed, dryly adding, “I bet that’s not the only thing the Tower lied to us about.”

“Yillian, how much longer?” Grandma Kaylie prompted.

Yillian stood up. “Just finished.”

“Good, grab your stuff. We’re going to the other nearby beacon,” Grandma Kaylie announced. “I want to go after those three leaders who were using Shadow Avatars. Evil men like that can’t be left alone to continue.”

“Shouldn’t we head back first?” Ayla suggested.

Grandma Kaylie shook her head. “There’s no time. Performing long-range teleports is tiring, and the Tower could be locked down at any time.”

Ayla nodded, probably remembering Yillian saying that two long-distance teleports were his limit.

Once the group was squeezed into the alcove and in contact with Yillian, space stretched and the teleport room became living quarters.

“Your cousin’s private room in the Tower, as we suspected,” Alennil confirmed.

The cultist’s eyes were wide with realization. “Making use of a family member!”

“Yep. That’s how it works, apparently,” Alennil confirmed.

“I guess I should collect his stuff,” Ayla muttered.

Alennil shook his head. “They will be looking for which member’s teleportation circle was used. If you clean out the room, it will be suspicious and point toward your family. Taking the valuable items would probably be okay though.”

“Oh? That’s good advice,” Grandma Kaylie approvingly commented. “I’ll leave that to you youngsters to figure out then. Before that, I need Xyn to erase our new friend’s memory of you four. Then I’m going to take him with me.”

“Y-you’re the ones that attacked Nicolas Arden!” The cultist’s eyes darted to Xyn with a panicked look, and he would have backed away if not for Grandma Kaylie holding his arm. “I won’t tell anyone! I promise!”

“It’s safer for you if you can’t tell what you don’t know,” Grandma Kaylie fake whispered in the cultist’s ear as she let go of the human’s arm to tie a blindfold in place. “Now let’s move out of Yillian’s way, so he can get to work.”

The cultist’s lips formed a tight line while being guided out of the teleport circle and into an adjacent room.

Xyn followed, but there was something he didn’t understand. “Wouldn’t it be easier to erase his memory of all of us?”

Grandma Kaylie chuckled. “Ah, but I don’t care if the Tower finds out about me, and it’ll be easier to interrogate this guy and keep him cooperative if he has reason to be afraid of me.”

The cultist gulped, and Xyn nodded in understanding.

“Ready, Xyn?” his grandmother prompted. “Show me what you’ve learned.”

Xyn took a deep breath and slowly let it out as he focused his mind. Repeating the process twice more, until his thoughts felt clear enough to perform his task. He really wanted to impress his grandmother and took his time carefully forming the complex weave, shaping each strand with exacting precision until the weave was complete.

Worried about losing his focus, he pressed on without seeking his grandmother’s reaction, letting his breath push the weave into the cultist’s forehead. Having a conscious target made the process more difficult as the weave met resistance from both the cultist’s magical protection and his will resisting the foreign aura.

Xyn wasn’t about to fail in front of his grandmother and asserted his will on the construct, keeping its form intact as it slipped through the defenses and passed deeper to wrap around the human’s tree of memories.

“Think of the red-maned swordswoman, Ayla, who attacked you earlier,” Xyn told the cultist, and tightened the winding winds around the memories that illuminated at his prompting.

The genius of this recommended method for selecting the memories was that trying not to think about something tended to cause the target to think about the subject anyway.

“Think of the half-elf who was modifying the teleport circle, Yillian.”

“Think of the fellow cultist who assisted the attack, Alennil.”

“Think of the cat-kin with the memory erasing technique, Xyn.”

Though there were less memories affected, carefully affecting only the sought after parts required extremely fine control. If not for the gains in mental strength from the meeting with the Shadow Raven, such a complicated use of the technique would have been impossible. Reaching his limit, Xyn activated the weave, causing the affected portions of memory to fade and drift away.

“Impressively done,” his grandmother and master evaluated with an impressed grin, but a finger to her lips indicated that Xyn should stay quiet.

“Who are you talking to?” the cultist worriedly asked.

“Oh, don’t worry about that, dearie,” Grandma Kaylie cooed and patted the cultist’s cheek. “You may just make it out of this experience alive.”

Suddenly, Xyn felt a seal release and knowledge of how to make use of the boundary of the world began to flow into his mind. At first, he thought the breakthrough was due to his success with the Breeze of Ephemeral Dreams but quickly discounted that.

This was something different. Something related to his encounter with the Shadow Raven. Earlier in the morning, Fenton’s parents and the female, Jainna, had asked if the land god intended harm upon the child. After hearing the answer, Fenton’s son must have been taken to Ravenhill’s land god and marked as ‘kin’, fulfilling Xyn’s promise.

A pact! Xyn's thoughts turned to when he was shown the vision of the world’s boundary. The Shadow Raven must have subjected him to a pact at that time without him noticing! He thought the rewards had outweighed his promises at the time, but there was more to the exchange than he realized!

Xyn cut off that line of thought. This was no time to be wasting on figuring out why’s and how’s! Dazed, he found an open space and sat down to meditate on the revelations before the clarity of understanding left him.

The boundary wasn’t the end—just a boundary. The Mists of Creation could be traversed. The method was fundamentally different from Yillian’s teleportation which bent two spaces until they overlapped. And traversing the Mist wasn’t without risk. Without an anchor, returning to this world might be impossible, and maintaining one’s existence when in the Mist required a strong concept of self.

But those dangers could be mitigated as long as some portion of a being’s existence was kept on this side of the boundary! By pushing the physical characteristics of his body across the boundary he could become insubstantial and impervious to attacks. Held objects could be made insubstantial as well. Both of the techniques that he had previously envisioned were reachable.

No. This wasn’t the time to get greedy. He needed to focus on one and work on the other later. Applying the revelation to his Floating Petal Step was the priority—to be able to pass through solid walls and phase through attacks… maybe even step out of and back into the world, instantly traveling distances without passing through the intervening space or needing to bend the space.

The revelation was starting to slip from his mind, Xyn knew he needed to hurry if he was going to succeed and began envisioning the weave that would make his desired technique a reality. The initial envisioning was much too complex, and Xyn reigned in his ambitions, pruning and simplifying until he reached something within his capability to use.

The technique was still incomplete when the revelation left him, but he was certain that it was a substantial improvement over the technique it was based on and, unlike the Floating Petal Step, made proper use of his composite element. As a tentative name, he would call it: Illusion Step. When he used it, he would become like an illusion—there, but not really there.

As Xyn’s creative fugue faded, he remembered where he was. Eyes snapping open and aura flaring out, he took stock of the current situation.

His grandmother had woven some kind of illusion over the rooms belonging to Ayla’s cousin. Ayla, Yillian, and Alennil were in the study. Grandma Kaylie and the captured cultist were nowhere to be found.

“Ah, Xyn, you’re okay now?” was the greeting he received from Ayla upon entering the study. “Your grandmother said you were undergoing an epiphany and not to let anyone disturb you until it was completed.”

“Thank you for watching over me.” Xyn brought his fists together to salute his friends. “Sorry for being a burden. How long was I out for?”

“About two hours,” Yillian grumbled. “The teleport circle is ready. We’ve been going through Fenton’s books while we were waiting.”

Xyn was relieved that the revelation had only lasted a couple of hours. From his reading about the great masters, some epiphanies could last for days—particularly when an insight led to a revelation about a primal truth. “What about Grandma Kaylie and the cultist guy?”

“She took him with her and said to head back without her,” Ayla reported. “She said she would handle things here—that infiltrating powerful organizations was her ‘thing’ and that she would contact us through Master Valence or Master Arienos.”

Xyn wasn’t sure what to feel about his grandmother taking over their mission and sending them home. “Have we learned enough to complete the tasks assigned by Master Arienos?”

Yillian nodded. “Yeah, from the notes that vampire had, they were planning to use ice magic to freeze tangleweed and other growths for harvesting the Chaos essence caused by the Xogg’s presence. There are also preliminary plans for feeding undead to the Xogg to see whether death energy could poison the Xogg or if it could adapt the essence and body of a ‘living’ undead such as a vampire and transform into an undying being transcending both life and death.”

Xyn grimaced. That second plan sounded like a singularly horrible idea—zombie tangleweeds that could regrow or reform from any leftover parts and could siphon life-force from their surroundings… and the Xogg was already unkillable enough. It could become a threat that might consume the entire world.

“Alright, let’s head back and report,” Xyn suggested.

The man looked out from his balcony at the sprawling city below, and his eyes lingered on a tall tower in the distance before turning to the robed man who had entered his chambers. “Tell me, Archmage, what news do you bring from the meeting?”

The robed man inclined his head in respectful deference. “Your highness, the Special Mission Taskforce was attacked during the meeting by an unknown force. Many of the researchers were killed during the attack, including the acting project lead, and the meeting notes were taken. Unfortunately, my Shadow Avatar was disrupted at the beginning of the assault, but from what was seen of the attackers, they were highly skilled youths with bloodline affinities. Of worry is that the only way into the sealed meeting room is through the project members' personal teleport circles."

It was all he could do not to groan in frustration at another setback. At least the land god’s revival had succeeded. “Will this impact the timetable?”

“The experiment sites are still secure,” the Archmage assured. “And though the risk has increased, if we can successfully acquire the proposed new recruits, meeting the planned timetable should still be possible.”

The depravity of the kingdom’s nobles was a perpetual disappointment, but that did have its advantages at times. “See to it that no resource is spared. If they want coin or treasures, make use of the treasury as needed.”

"Thank you, your highness. I’m sure they will serve our cause well.” The Archmage gave him a full bow this time.

He almost snorted at the Archmage’s posturing, but if letting the man feel important kept him loyal, that was a small price. More seriously, the external interference to the project had become worrisome of late, someone had clearly infiltrated the taskforce, and the force behind that infiltration was no longer content to observe. Action needed to be taken. “As to the attack, start investigating the families of the missing researchers.”

“I was thinking the same thing and have already started making inquiries. The forces will be dispatched immediately.”

“Good. See that you don’t fail. Humankind has failed for too long to put the tribes of the Beastlands in their proper place.”