Chapter 21 : Failing willingly

It was the morning after the day of his moving in and Nikolaï woke up to the light of the day. He had purposely let the panes open to see the morning sun. These simple rays of light barging into his room would have put Nikolaï in a perfect mood for the rest of the day if it wasn’t for the presence of the mirror.

Nikolaï kept ignoring it and went to the bathroom to clean himself a bit. At least the mirror couldn’t see him there so whoever his stalker was, it acted on interest, not some pervert pulsions. Even that wasn’t enough to cheer Nikolaï up.

Nikolaï started to meditate shortly. He had reduced the effect of the poisoning he put himself through before moving in but meditating was the one things that he could do without being suspicious. The mirror had no way to measure the effect of his meditation so Nikolaï could do it in plain sight as long as he didn’t show off after.

After two hours he went out of his room. He was away from the spy but still felt trap. Nikolaï needed a safe place to work and practice. The Tower had a room that could be rent but Nikolaï wasn’t going to use them. If he started renting a Forgerune workshop it was the same as giving up information and he could also bring attention to himself.

Same for the spell practice, if he rented an underground room people would ask where he got the cash to do so and raise questions. Right now his moving in had brought a bit of attention to Nikolaï so he needed to stay low before resetting to his full activity.

Nikolaï went to the open market and tried to gather information on the other Tower’s Forgerunes. Aspirant Maxwell told him about the big names but he didn’t talk about his small suppliers. Nikolaï could have been disappointed but he was one of those suppliers so in a way he was glad that Aspirant Maxwell didn’t easily let go of the information.

The fact that Maxwell didn’t want to babble about others made him think that his identity as a Forgerune had still a few weeks of secrecy in front of it. But his discussion with the merchant made Nikolaï wondered if his spy didn’t already know about him being a Forgerune. Industrial espionage wasn’t estranged to Arcanists, they had invented it.

Nikolaï wasn’t entirely convinced that someone was looking for his Forgerune secret. The objects he had produced were not revolutionary work, his secret was in his precision and it was not something that could be stolen from him.

After the market, Nikolaï went to the library to look for a way to get rid of the mirror without raising suspicions.

He spent all day there and when he left he hadn’t found much of a solution. He had looked at all kinds of books but he needed to raise his general knowledge about Mystical Arcane if he wanted a chance to handle the spell.

Nikolaï last idea included his Forgerune talents. He was hoping he could create some kind of field which was going to parasite the spell. It was not a plan, yet, his big issue was how to pretend that it was a side effect and not the purpose of his work. If he couldn’t figure out how to pull that off it was the same as telling the spy that Nikolaï possessed a way to detect him.

The plan needed polish.

***

The next day Nikolaï was back in the library but he had given up on his parasite idea. He had found a few leads but he had also found a better idea. Creating a smokescreen for the mirror was nice but getting rid of it was the true purpose.

Breaking it physically had been out of the question. Nikolaï was confident that the spy had made sure it couldn’t happen accidentally but Nikolaï had been so obsessed with the object that he had forgotten that his target was the spell inside.

Nikolaï needed to neutralize the spell and made it look like it was an accident. He already had an idea of how and rented a few books about Forgerune.

***

Nikolaï was at his desk studying basic Forgerune techniques. From the outside, he looked like an average beginner, self-studying.

Nikolaï had accepted the fact that he couldn’t hide everything from the spy. He needed to take a few risks and revealing that he was a Forgerune was a calculated one. If he wasn’t under possible surveillance Nikolaï would have studied a more advanced book but that didn’t mean he had nothing to learn from the one he had.

Nikolaï had neglected his knowledge about basic enhancement material technic and had now the time to correct it. Once things that Nikolaï didn’t have to be convinced was that you can never know too much about the basic.

Studying wasn’t the only part of the masquerade Nikolaï was playing.

He had resumed his spell training and, after his morning meditation, he was casting Spectral Sword several times. The spell always seemed wacky but it was because Nikolaï was actually training Double Runic Alteration. The level 1 spell from Spiritual Arcane was simply the higher version of Runic Alteration and needed to be used on spells with two Knots.

Nikolaï was butchering Spectral Sword on purpose but it was not just for the show, he was receiving a lot of input about controlling the spell and its other properties.

The highlight of the show was another spell practice that Nikolaï was doing after his afternoon study. Nikolaï was pretending to learn Dissipation and use it on a pendant he had made. If showing that he had already mastered it would be very suspicious pretending to try to was normal for a Forgerune.

Nikolaï wasn’t just displaying poor results in his practice but was using the spell to degrade the Glyph in the mirror. The spell wasn’t made to act on distance but it was part of the point. Nikolaï was twisting the spell in all way possible to slowly nibble the structure of the watching eye.

If he aimed directly at the mirror it would be over in a second but Nikolaï was patient. Under the nose of the spy, he was destroying his precious device bit by bit.

For the rest of his time, Nikolaï was meditating but because he was too quick to consume the elementium in his room he needed to do something else while pretending to continue his meditation. He filed this time by trying to expand his canvas. It was a long way until he was able to cast a spell with a single hand but trying to create a canvas in one hand was invisible to the mirror and the average eye so it was the perfect training for Nikolaï.

***

Nikolaï’s farce went on like that for four days and on the fifth, he decided to act.

He was sitting in a meditative position, breathing slowly with his eyes closed. The bell announcing dusk rang and Nikolaï tensed a bit. The room started to fill with elementium but Nikolaï didn’t try to absorb it. He needed to act fast before the wall stopped to act as a disruption, he had perfected his timing for the last four days.

With his Third Eye fully activated Nikolaï looked at the mirror, the Glyph was damaged but more importantly, he was submerged by elementium. Nikolaï almost jumped on his feet and stood in front of the mirror. Every day he had taken advantage of the temporary blindness created by dusk to damage the boundaries of the spell. Today was the final blow, Nikolaï joined his hands and cast Dissipation directly on the glyph, dispelling it completely.

Nikolaï looked at the ether structure melting and every trace of the spell disappeared. He sighed of relief for a moment but it wasn’t finished. He took some tools from his desk and began to take down the mirror from the wall.

Nobody could see him but that didn’t mean Nikolaï had all the time in the world for the rest of his plans.

***

The next day, in the morning, someone was looking at the entrance of the lobby leading to Orwood’s room. The stalker was brooding about how Orwood had broken his device by doing nonsense in his room. The stalker had recognized the Dissipation spell but he knew by experience that it wasn’t something you could learn by sheer perseverance.

To master the spell he himself had practised hours in elementium bath to at least had an input of it. The fact that Orwood was trying to learn the spell in an area with average elementium density would have made him laugh if it hadn’t caused him so much trouble.

Orwood’s had tried to use a pendant that lightens slightly when gathering atmospheric elementium. He had probably thought that it could help see when the spell work but its design was too simple and weak to give meaningful feedback. To the stalker, it was proof of how green Orwood was when it comes to Forgerune matter.

Anyway, his repeated failure at Dissipation had rebounded on the mirror and damaged it. On top of that, the elementium passing through the wall behind the mirror had found a way to escalate the problem to the point that last night the spell had broken.

The stalker had lost his eye on Orwood but if he had learned something about the Aspirant was that he was a creature of habit. As to confirm the stalker train of thought Aspirant Orwood appeared in the corridor. He was on his way to breakfast and the stalker stayed out of sight.

When Orwood was far enough the stalker seized the buckle of his leather cumberbund and turned it. It wasn’t a very aesthetic object but it was one of his most precious talisman, one that could turn the one wearing it temporarily invisible.

The stalker left his hiding spot with a large package under his arms and, completely invisible, went to Orwood’s door. From his pocket, the stalker took out a strange-looking key made of wood that he shuffled into the keyhole. The key was although a talisman of his design able to grow into the basic lock and open it.

The door unlocked and the stalker entered quickly after checking that nobody was around.

“_ What a mess !” Commented on the stalker.

Through the mirror, he had seen the room getting messier and messier since Nikolaï had started working in it but it was different to see it himself. The desk was filled with books and paper to the point that other materials were piled up next to it.

If the stalker had time he would have taken a look at Nikolaï research but he needed to stay focused. He went to the mirror by stepping over a bunch of cloth on the floor. There was even a shirt drying on the open left door of the wardrobe.

The stalker put the package that he had brought down and unpacked it from the protective fabric he was in. It was another mirror, looking exactly like the one on the wall. The Stalker checked the resemblance and began to remove the old one from the wall.

A pendant had been suspended on its side and the stalker took it before doing the swap. Once down he put the pendant exactly how he had found it even if he doubted that someone as messy as Nikolaï would have noticed.

The stalker then quickly left the room after taking the previous mirror with him. While leaving he complained internally about the cost of the operation. Sure the mirrors were just the ones provided by the tower so it wasn’t hard to procure them but having to hide the attachment glyph required to partially dismantled the frame and that demanded a bit of time and patience. The stalker wasn’t happy about wasting his time on this but what concerned him was his “invisibility belt”. Inside the buckle were precious materials that were consumed every time he used them and wasting them for that was pissing him off.

The stalker left the area unnoticed and took care of the mirror before going back to his room.

***

While the stalker was doing his grim work Nikolaï was in the dining hall, eating his breakfast and paying attention to his surrounding. He had no way to know that someone was in his room but he knew that it was the best moment to infiltrate it. He looked for his neighbours and saw one of them on the other side of the hall.

Nikolaï had successfully identified each neighbour the last four days by just crossing path with them or a bit of investigation disguised in justifiable curiosity.

While eating Nikolaï couldn’t help himself playing with a pendant in his pocket. Nervously he was passing his thumbs on its engraved surface.

Nikolaï eventually finished his meal and went back to his room the more naturally possible. He arrived at his door, anxious and opened it. He acted carefreely but he was looking for any sign of invasion. They were none at the naked eye but Nikolaï sight wasn’t like anyone else. The room seemed the same that this morning but Nikolaï could see a new glyph into the mirror.

He went to the bathroom and change his clothes. He took the jacket hanging at the door of his wardrobe and faced the mirror. Nikolaï was pretending to look at his reflection while actually observing the spying device with his Third Eye. Nikolaï took the pendant hanging at the mirror too and put it around his neck.

He realised rather quickly that the mirror had been replaced as he had expected, but what he hadn’t anticipated was the fact that the device seemed to have been upgraded. The spy had added protections to his work by making the glyph more complex. Nikolaï estimated that the improvements were not strong enough against a direct Dissipation spell but enough to be protected from his “miss-shots”.

After “fixing” his appearance Nikolaï went to his locked chest and took some money from it with the key that he was keeping with him at all time. With coins in this pocket, he left his room.

Nikolaï was going to the open market but his mind was preoccupied. The improvement of the spying device wasn’t surprising but Nikolaï hadn’t predicted it so he was reviewing his plans and what it meant for the rest of the operation.

Nikolaï started to climb down the stairs but stopped between two floors and took out the pendant he had played with from his pocket. He checked that he was alone and infused a lot of ether into the medallion before letting it hanged by his string.

The medallion turned in a strange manner, the engraved part seemed to face a specific direction rather than following the way it was attached to the string.

Nikolaï put the pendant back in his pocket and moved in the direction suggested by the pendant. He took it out several times on his way when he was confident nobody was looking. With the help of his talisman, Nikolaï followed a path to a large storage room. Its door wasn’t locked and the only persons Nikolaï had to avoid were regular servants.

Inside the room was all kind of furniture and it didn’t seem like a well-inventoried place, more like a room that the servant was used to store everything they couldn’t put elsewhere.

Nikolaï activated his Third Eye while walking in the alleys formed by the mess and found what he was looking for. Next to a dresser with only half of his drawers was three-mirror exactly like his own. He grabbed the one that wasn’t covered in dust and inspected it.

It was the one he had in his room not so long ago. He knew it because Nikolaï had marked it with Minor Spiritual Print and could see it with his Third Eye. Nikolaï had practised the spell at night when the mirror couldn’t see him and he had been hard to hide it. Last night when he had destroyed the spying spell he had disabled part of the frame and put his own glyph on the mirror.

Minor Spiritual Print was a level zero spiritual spell which creates a temporary mark on its targets. Some high-level spells were capable of targeting someone without the caster needing to aim properly. But in order to do that the caster had to mark the target with a Spiritual Print first. Minor Spiritual Print was the weakest version and variation of a marking spell, it was barely going to stick to a living being but on an object, it could hold for a week. The spell was too weak to be used as an aiming beacon but it had small use.

Nikolaï had marked the mirror and the pendant with the same Print so when he activated the glyph from the pendant it was drawn to the one from the mirror. It was an echo reaction rather than true tracking and it had only worked because the distance was under a hundred steps.

Nikolaï had hoped that his spy had been carefree enough to take the mirror back to his room but apparently he wasn’t an idiot. Nikolaï wondered if the spy was suspecting a thing but he believed that if the spy knew Nikolaï was on to him he would have done a better job at hiding the mirror or more simply just destroyed it.

Nikolaï finished inspecting the mirror, looking for any kind of clues that the spy had let since last night but he didn’t found anything. He gave up and left quickly for the open market.

When he went back to his room, it was with his arms loaded with all kind of supplies. Some for Forgerune but also paper, ink and more mundane stuff. He had enough on his arms to justify the time he had spent away from his room.

***

The night was starting to fall and Nikolaï had played his routine for the new mirror. Dusk had passed and Nikolaï waited for the night to come. Before bed, he took a wash but even at this moment he had kept the pendant that had been hanging on the mirror around his neck.

Nikolaï was lying down, his eyes were wide open and the lights from the stars were casting weak shadows in the room. Nikolaï was still wearing the pendant as a necklace but was holding the medallion in his hand, waiting for the right moment.

Marking the mirror wasn’t the plan, it was a bonus of the plan. The true reason Nikolaï had learned Minor Spiritual Print was for the pendant he was holding. On one side he had put a glyph with the spell attached to it and on the other, he had done the same but with an inadequate attachment glyph. Because of that, the spell had been unstable so when the spy had taken down the pendant the Print had passed on him without him realising it.

The mark on the spy was weak and damaged but Nikolaï believed in his flawless cast. Every characteristic of the spell was going to be weakening but he would hold for at least a day.

Nikolaï decided it was time and straight into his bed and look at the wall. He powered his Third Eye to the max and poured ether into the pendant. By activating an identical mark the one on his spy was going to react and draw more ether in it which was going to make it visible to Nikolaï’s eye.

Nikolaï scanned his wall, looking at each of his neighbours but a panic expression formed on his face. None of them had the mark.