Effy didn’t particularly like getting her face broken. For one, it hurt. Also, being as she was a healer, it was a pointlessly rude thing to do to a girl. It could only be interpreted as intentional when she had a whole body’s worth of targets to punch, but it seemed to always land on her face. Yes, the blows to her head made concentrating on her magic harder… but she was a highly trained knight. Using her powers, she kept her brain functioning just fine while she tanked the excessive violence to her beautiful mug.

If Effy had to point out one fact that she did appreciate in all this, it was that her capturers didn’t seem to have lustful intentions. She was a maiden after all. That act is reserved for her future husband. Or… maybe a really long-term boyfriend? Maybe just someone she likes a lot? Regardless, ogre-face and his cronies were a hard no.

Another thing that she appreciated, now that she was distracting herself from her current situation, was that because she hadn’t taken too much damage she was being targeted heavily. She wasn’t a masochist or anything… she just really didn’t want her sisters to get thrashed when they couldn’t fix it as easily. Though… maybe Rosalia? She could harden her skin to be like fleshy metal, so maybe she could take the blows instead for a while?

Hahh… how did this occur exactly, anyway?

Effy’s sisters had followed the Young Master into town so he could finally get out of the house for the first time in over a year. They all just went along with it, since standing guard around a keep is boring work. Never mind the poor sob that actually managed to get to the Lady. Effy couldn’t stop herself from smiling thinking of the lack of mess that would be left over.

Perhaps the same will befall these substandard gorillas? Effy thought maliciously. Then she got kicked in the ribs.

“Oi, @#%&$, look at me when I’m talking to you!” Crony ‘A’ said some typical trashy lines. The fact that the guards here hadn’t tried to kill the Knights yet meant that they had already lost. Once Zu finished a cycle, the whole building was going to go up in flames. Tess could keep them safe with her barriers. If any guards managed to survive, Effy would likely need to use her powers to keep them alive before Nera could murderify them. Effy could almost taste the dangerous aura radiating off of her, so it would be a struggle to get any information out of them later.

Oh well… at least the Young Master is safe. Effy thought happily as Syron strolled into the room accompanied by more guards. Her smile froze on her face, along with the other knights.

Welp, guess its too late to get information now, monkeys. Have fun in the afterlife! Effy thought while Zu started glowing.

Then all the guards just collapsed and started holding their heads while screaming. Effy looked over at the pigman ‘Mayor’ and noticed he was still monologuing like he didn’t notice all of his guards writhing in agony. She looked over at her Young Master and saw for a moment the unbridled fury only a Forrester could unleash. He stared scornfully over the fallen guards and kicked one in the throat. When the guy started choking, the Young Master then unsheathed the guard’s dagger and took it to Jeanette, the de facto leader of this excursion. He amateurishly cut her bindings, then gave her the dagger.

“Deal with these @#$%#. I’ve got an interrogation to do.” Syron said coldly as he took his place on the floor in front of the mayor and started acting out his part. Effy noted that all of the guards were still screaming and holding their heads while blood leaked from their ears.

Wow… that’s kinda hot.

Almost like she could hear her thoughts, Zu elbowed her and gave her a disbelieving stare.

“Quit looking at the Young Master that way you deranged pervert.” Her sister told her rather forcefully.

Effy was quite offended of course. Everyone knows that a maiden’s love could only be pure. There is nothing deranged and perverted at all about Effy. At any rate, what did Zu know? She was just as single as the rest of the women that worked in Rowan Keep.

Standing up, she walked over towards the Mayor and waved her hands in front of his face dramatically. She earned nothing.

Pretty terrifying alright… no wonder people are freaked by illusionists. Well, not that it ever particularly bothered me, anyway.

The Young Master quickly wrapped up his interrogation and got the answer that Effy and her fellow sister knights already knew. Half the knights of the House have been offered something or other to kill the Young Master. Not that Effy would have taken the offer… but they weren’t good enough anyway. They couldn’t have completed the job while the Young Master was still fighting off his illness, as the Lady Forrester was with him day and night. If she wasn’t, why would anyone want him dead? He was just a kid. It was only the time and inherent value that the Lady placed on him that he was deemed fit to die… so… what is the point in killing him now? Lady Forrester had gone back to her duties. The Young Master was no longer a colossal drain on the Kingdom’s strategic resource known as ‘The Warden’, so why not just let him live his life and enjoy his silly board games?

The Knights could all tell there was something seriously bothering their Young Master, but they weren’t sure what it was. So they did all that they could for the moment. They tied up the Mayor and his goons and frog marched them through town to have what is surely to be a very short meeting with ‘The Warden’.

Ignoring the moaning and loud complaining coming from each of the prisoners on how they “can’t see” or “I’ve gone deaf!”, the knights got a cart from the gates and started their ride back to the Keep. One of the prisoners started to swing his arms and act up, but one angry look from the Young Master had him screaming and holding his head again.

“WHY CAN I ONLY HEAR THAT SOUND!? WHAT IS THAT!?” He bellowed. Effy hadn’t healed his ear drums that had seemed to have burst, so she wasn’t really sure how the Young Master’s magic worked. Was the Young Master generating sound that burst the ear drums… or was it all in their heads? Strangely, it seemed to be both given how the deaf man could still hear him… but if it wasn’t actual sound, how could it physically damage their ears?

The Young Master just grabbed his knees and sat like a small child on a bench, only reacting to inflict what Effy assumed to be a rather horrible experience on any prisoner that started to get out of hand. Since none of them could see or hear… unfortunately they couldn’t learn from their fellow prisoner’s mistakes. Each of them tried at least once. Every time he used his power on them, the Young Master seemed to sink lower and lower into his seat.

“Young Master. There is no need for that anymore. We have recovered enough to properly detain them.” Jeanette said calmly. Despite appearing calm, however, each of the sister knights could tell how freaked out she was through their extreme exposure to her. It was a sentiment two others shared. Only Effy and Zu seemed to be fine with the Young Master’s casual mind raping of the cowering pathetic men tied up next to them.

When the carriage finally rolled up to Rowan Keep, Syron jumped out of the carriage and hid in his room for the rest of the day. He refused any servants to enter, and only allowed the Lady to visit him. By the evening, everyone in the Keep knew what had happened in Vanguard today, including the fate of the men that conspired against the Forrester House. As expected, once the Lady finished extracting whatever information she wanted, they all simply faded away like dust in the wind, not even getting a chance to scream.

The most important information was that the guards were targeting them from the moment they entered the town’s walls. Someone on the gate notified the Mayor that the Young Master had come to visit incognito. Marigold, whom was present during the interrogation shuddered when she heard that fact. Unfortunately, depending on how the slightly unstable Lady interprets that information, many guards might be under extremely dangerous scrutiny on the off chance they might have been colluding with the kidnappers of her own precious son. Or rather, since Marigold didn’t concern herself with their fate if they were actual accomplices, she was more worried about if they were only guilty ‘looking’ and not actually guilty of anything.

The next day, the Young Master returned to the library for the whole morning and afternoon, not allowing anyone to be around him while he worked in solitude on whatever it was that he was working on. When the maid attempted to enter and deliver his meal, she was stopped by a rather bemused looking knight guarding the library. Through the door, the muffled sound of shoes clacking on a hard marble floor mixed with the trill of a violin playing a song neither woman had ever heard before.

“Is he…?” the maid asked curiously to the knight with sparkling eyes.

“I think so. Want to sneak a look? We can say we were just giving him his meal!” The knight responded happily. Apparently, the good vibes they had received from the ‘silly’ Young Master from the past few months outshone any history they had before his coma, as well as any nastiness they may had heard about the day before. They cracked the door open slowly and peered their heads in, one on top of the other.

Syron had pushed the tables out of the center of the room and cleared a large circular area underneath the glass dome. Faerie lights of various colors and intensities floated here and there, playfully chasing each other around the room while the solo Young Master danced a traditional court dance with an illusionary dance partner. They didn’t recognize the girl’s face, but found her to be breathtakingly beautiful. They both came to the conclusion that he had met a girl while he was exploring the town the day before.

How romantic! They knight sighed.

How… sad… The maid sighed.

Occasionally an illusory double of Syron would move away from him slightly with the partner and the real Syron would adjust his steps so he was positioned properly once again. Once he had practiced the same move again and again, he completely overlapped the double and moved on to the next move.

With a flourish, the song ended and Syron’s partner bowed energetically to him. He smiled back at the celebrity he remembered from his previous life and she faded away to nothing. Feeling melancholic once again but no longer feeling like dancing to get his blood pumping, the music took a very different tone to reflect his sour mood.

The knight could only imagine that it was maybe… a hurdy gurdy? Or five? The sound was rather unpleasant, whatever it was, and it had such a violent drum beat to go along with it. It didn’t sound like any instrument she had ever heard before, though she could at least appreciate the rhythm.

Once the singing started, both the maid and knight left the room in a hurry. The voice was surely demonic. How could the Young Master imagine such a horrible sounding song? Was he possessed? Was it the music of devils? What language was that!?

Inside the room, Syron just closed his eyes and felt the music pulse around him, knowing the lights he had created were now all red and thrashing around the room violently.

“You look at me…

…but you don’t see…

…understand I’m a sinner.”