When the maid first arrived, Syron thought it was strange that it was one that didn’t normally attend to him. Namely, it was usually Marigold, his personal maid. The new maid was one that he had played against earlier in the evening in that analog chess game. He was never all that spectacular at chess, but he had played it quite a bit in school, as well as later in life against a few of his neighbors. Ultimately this resulted in him being really good against the completely uninitiated, but against others with similar experience he was found lacking. Rather embarrassingly, the way that Syron saw himself losing against the butler was the same way the butler was going to beat him… Syron just couldn’t count turns properly.

The maid didn’t have a caring or impassive look on her face. Her expression was torn between anger and determination. When she pulled the wicked looking dagger out of nowhere, his mind went into overdrive. He just started talking, trying to sound calm, but internally freaking out. He knew there were people out to kill him. He knew the day would come where he’d be targeted. Again, if the way people kept saying ‘accident’ was any indicator. Outside, he was trying to sound calm and slowly humanize himself so that he could gather time to accomplish his actual goal. He finally found his Magic Soul again and started pushing on it, trying to get his magical engine moving. Throughout the past week, after he had realized he magicked the Warden at her Trial, he had started doing small experiments when he thought he could get away with it.

He had managed to create an image of a formless light, like a wisp, and immediately modified it into a lightbulb to put over his head. I’ve got an idea! He thought proudly before he lost control and the image vanished. Whenever he lost concentration on his images, his Magic Soul would immediately stop and his consciousness would figuratively bash its nose against it. That was apparently magic recoil, or feedback as one book called it, and it was far more disorienting than one would think.

Next, he had managed to make a noise. It was barely a whisper in his ear as he pushed the magic as slowly as he could manage. He didn’t want to alert Marigold or his mother that he was practicing. Finally, he willed into shape the world’s tiniest violin and made it appear to play one of his favorite songs from his previous life. The song was nostalgic, even if he was certain that he wasn’t playing the whole song. Easily recognizable parts, such as the lead or drums, were crystal clear in his memory. Others, like every other instrument in the song, were just… not there. Clearly, Syron hadn’t paid as close attention to his favorite song as he had thought he had.

All of this practice, though entertaining and a welcome respite from weeks of translating books letter by letter, wasn’t all that useful in a life-or-death situation. He didn’t have the control to make a believable illusion fit for fooling an intelligent being. He’d been working on it a week. Obviously, there would be bits and parts of the image that would be out of focus or nonexistent. Since his body couldn’t save him and he couldn’t finesse his way through the encounter, he did the only thing he could think of. He cranked against his magic as hard as he could, getting it to spin faster than he had ever managed to push it. It didn’t matter if it struck against his magic channels and hurt him. He’d be dead soon if he couldn’t do something big. Resolving his mind, he looked into the maid’s eyes one last time. Strangely, and Syron found this off putting enough to nearly crash his magic cycle, he was seeing a strange dullness overcoming her eyes like she was hypnotized.

“Flashbang.”

BOOOOOOM!

Instantly, Syron’s world turned white and silent as a shockwave knocked him sideways. He tried and mostly failed at rolling on his bed away from his assailant while he shut his eyes from the pain. Shutting his eyes didn’t help. While he couldn’t hear or see anything, he could feel the fluid dripping from his ears as well as his bed shaking from another person on it. He frantically tried to locate his Magic Soul; he had let go from the shock of his flashbang and he needed to start cycling it again. Locating it, he started pushing and imagining his entire room filling with blinding light on the off chance the maid had gotten her eyes shut in time to still be able to see. He leveraged as much will as he could into his Magic Soul but just couldn’t get it to move. He knew he wasn’t making the magic materialize, so he just kept rolling away so that maybe he could get away just long enough for the knight posted outside his door to come and save him.

A feeling of intense dread and savage hunger engulfed the room, freezing Syron in place as he was suddenly drenched in sweat. As quickly as it came, the feeling was suddenly swapped out with a happy, fulfilled aura that Syron was immediately able to recognize. Calming, he just laid his head back into his pillow and sighed. If she were here, the situation was likely already resolved.

Perhaps that dread aura was her unnatural cycle getting to work? That’s… terrifying.

As the healing magics washed over his body, Syron noted that the afterimage was rapidly fading from his view so he tentatively opened his eyes. Already, he could hear a muffled voice and see a human silhouette above him. Just in case, he put his hands up and out to potentially block a knife thrust to his heart. His hands were casually knocked away and he was tightly hugged, the source of the pulsing aura of healing magic being the silhouette in question.

“…ron! M… …by! Can you… … e?” Everything sounded like it was underwater.

“Mother? Is that you? I can’t hear or see well right now!” He called out, most likely far too loudly. She just hugged him tighter and Syron was forced to recognize yet another fact about his mother. She was absurdly strong. She eventually let go of him, the pulsing of her magic getting faster and more intense until he could see clearly once again. In the place where there once was a maid assassin was now a spherical hole that cleanly took out rounded bits of the floor, ceiling, and even a little of the wall. The edge of Syron’s bed looked like a perfectly rounded mouth took a bite out of it around where he was sitting at the start of the ordeal.

Yikes… apparently that’s what it means to, what was it that she said she could do? Remove things? No joke. It looks less like the opposite of healing magic and more like void magic. There’s nothing left of her…

“Syron, my baby boy… Mommy’s here!” She once again latched on to Syron and started stroking his head like he was the one having a panic attack.

“I’m glad you got here so quickly Mother…” Syron acknowledged, though he wasn’t certain how to deal with how frantic she sounded. It’s not like he was actually stabbed in the heart. Just… almost.

“Of course I got here quickly, silly boy! I was sleeping in my pallet on the floor next to your bed in case I needed to give you another round of healing when you woke up!” She exclaimed, making it sound like Syron was the one acting crazy.

Is it just me… or is she acting a little… no, nevermind. This is totally likely, isn’t it? She’s lost her husband and daughter, and nearly lost me twice now. Of course she’s manic.

“I’m fine Mother. You don’t need to sleep on my floor…? Right, you don’t need to sleep there, and I’m totally safe so could you please stop rubbing my head raw?”

Eh, acting like an impertinent tween that pretends like he doesn’t like affection is exactly what she needs.

Finally, Syron heard the whimpering. Sitting up completely, he looked to the source and found a female knight bleeding out from her arm that was simply not there anymore as she tried desperately to staunch the flow. She was in the opposite corner of the room, apparently out of range of the healing pulses.

“Mother! That woman needs your help!”

“She is fine, baby. You need me more than she does…” The Lady Forrester chided Syron.

“No, I damn well don’t! She’s going to bleed out!” The knight looked up at Syron as he yelled that, gratefully.

“I cannot just leave you here! What if you go into shock from your ordeal?”

This can’t go on…

“Mother, get off of me! You’re acting like a lunatic! Get your ass out of my bed this instant and help her! If you won’t go, I will!”

She ignored his yelling, though she did frown slightly at him saying ‘ass’, like that was the first ‘unnoble’ thing he had ever said. She sat up next to him and put her arm over his shoulder, pulling him into her chest. He struggled to free himself, but she, as he found out recently, was incredibly strong.

Nothing I say is working… she’s gone completely unhinged… what can I do to help this Knight?

Once again, Syron tried to push with all of his will against his Magic Soul, but it refused to budge even slightly. It even seemed to roll back a little bit against his pushing.

F it. This is the only thing I can think of that might work, so hopefully it does.

Syron stopped pushing on the Magic Soul, and instead started pulling it backwards through his channels. It moved easily. He stared directly into his mother’s eyes, hoping beyond hope that she was both susceptible to his magic, and that she was deranged enough to fall for such a stupid illusion. From across the room, the knight had transformed into a grainy, slightly misshapen facsimile of Syron. He started loudly crying and in between sobs, just pleaded “Mother! Please help me! You’re leaving me to die, Mother!” At least… that’s what it looked like in her head.

Instantly, she let go of the real Syron and flew off the bed, blasting the whole room with enough magic to make his hair start growing at a visible rate. When the Lady Forrester arrived at the Knight, she grabbed her arm and channeled enough power to make her arm glow. The Knight’s arm grew like a bean sprout coming out of the ground in an extreme, super-fast time lapse.

What the?!

The room started dimming as Syron felt he was reaching the limit of how much magic he could use, and was forced to stop cycling. Like waking from a dream, the sudden swap from Syron to Knight seemed to stun the Lady for a moment while she continued working, her lifetime of practice kicking in to continue the task until it was completed. Once she finished the dedicated healing, the Lady stood up from the Knight and sighed, straightening her sleepwear smooth. She turned to her son and looked at him for a moment, then at the hole she made in his room.

“I want three guards on my son at all times from now on. No one is allowed to be alone with Syron without my express approval.” Syron looked towards the door and noticed the small regiment of Knights standing at attention in front of his mother. She shook her head lightly, and turned back towards her son.

“I am tired, so I’ll be retiring to my room since you are recovered. If you need anything in the night, just cry out and a Knight will come get me. Good night, my son.” And she left.

Syron looked at the three Knights that were standing inside his room now, and brought about his own sigh.

“Well that was exciting… I guess… good night.” Syron shifted his body to his pillow, turned away from the door, and closed his eyes. An hour later, he finally managed to fall asleep while ignoring the woman’s death five feet from where he was laying. Fortunately, due to Syron’s sickly physique, he eventually felt too tired to not sleep, so he did.