“Alchemists only, to the center!” the shirtless marshal yelled. “Everyone else, make a bucket brigade, north side only.”

Hugo started filling buckets of sand and handing them off, the line of soldiers getting the sand halfway to the fire, and then handing it off to a line of alchemists. Their main stat was resilience, so they could stand the heat. The fumes from the fire didn’t make them cough either.

“You there, idiot major,” the marshal said, “Take everyone who is coughing to the infirmary. Let them know they inhaled something toxic. If anyone dies, I will have your head.”

“I was just trying to...” she started.

“Go!” the marshal yelled back, pointing towards the infirmary.

She ducked her head and picked up a coughing soldier. She directed a few other people to join her in escorting the injured to the military’s healers.

Hugo shook his head. If anyone had thought for a second before running around, all of that could have been avoided. It shouldn’t have needed a marshal to get this organized correctly.

It took another half hour and hundreds of buckets of sand before the fire was out. There had been a real inferno in the building. Even with his soulmarked strength, Hugo was exhausted by the end.

He plopped to the ground and stared at the smoldering building. A light mage was pointing out isolated hot spots, and a barrier mage was reaching in and digging them out so they could be extinguished.

This couldn’t have been an accident, Hugo thought to himself. The military in Deva may be a tad reckless, but there is no way that they would be storing this many dangerous and flammable chemicals without safety measures. Someone had to have bypassed the safety measures and started this fire intentionally. Sabotage.

He was fairly certain it was one of the other sentinel spies that had been sent in here with him. Perhaps it was good that he didn’t know the identity of the other spy. He really wanted to strangle him or her right now. This attack would make his own infiltration almost impossible. They were sure to beef up security on the entire base now.

The frustrating thing was that Hugo was almost positive that this building wasn’t the right target anyway. It was likely that the alchemy project in this building had nothing to do with the shimmer veins exploding. That stupid spy had hurt Deva and made his mission to save them all the harder.

Hugo shook his head. He was starting to think like his main goal was saving Deva. It was that damn oath, affecting his mind. He couldn’t wait until the effects wore off in another few months. Until then he would have to keep reminding himself that he wanted to save all eight cities, and he needed to keep his priorities straight.

Not that he planned on harming Deva in any way. Since he had gotten here, he had only learned how wonderful this country was. They didn’t have a nobility, instead they had an elected president. He was pretty sure this country had less corruption and more happy people because of that difference.

Dammit. This oath was more insidious than he had thought.

He got up and dusted himself off. He was overdue for his shift creating time runes, but he figured they wouldn’t mind if he took a shower first. He had sand everywhere and he was going to clean up first, even if they did mind him being late for his shift.

“Hold on there, enlisted. No one leaves the area until they talk to the light major over there,” the marshal said. He had his shirt on now and his hair was combed.

The marshal must have come to the same conclusion that Hugo had. Luckily Hugo didn’t have anything to do with this incident, so he shouldn’t have any problems talking to the investigator. He made a mental note not to be caught in the area after his own operation went down. He got in line behind a few other soldiers.

“Name and rank,” the major said when Hugo got to the front of the line. He held a clipboard and was taking down notes as he interviewed people before they left the area.

“Xhosa, rank eighteen,” he said.

“Military rank,” the major said, exasperated.

“Sorry, enlisted.”

“Did you have anything to do with how the fire got started?”

“No, sir,” Hugo said, glad to be telling the whole truth.

“Do you have any idea how it could have gotten started?”

Hugo started sweating slightly, “Well, it could have been improperly stored chemicals, but I doubt it. I would bet it was sabotage. Someone was trying to harm Deva’s military.” Hugo hadn’t meant to say that last part, it just slipped out.

“Do you know who that someone could be?” the major said by rote.

“No, just guesses. It could be spies from the neighboring countries, could be sentinels that don’t like what we are doing, I can’t be sure,” Hugo said. He was starting to panic. His oath was forcing him to guide the investigation to the right conclusion.

“Sentinels? Why bring them up?” the investigator said, paying more attention now.

Hugo shrugged and told the truth as worst as he could, “It’s just something I heard. I don’t know anyone who could have done this specifically.”

The investigator narrowed his eyes and said, “What do you know that could help my investigation along?”

Hugo swore internally. This man just wouldn’t let it drop. Hugo did know something that could help his investigation along, and his oath was prodding him to blurt it out.

Using every point of his wisdom stat, Hugo fought against the oath and said, “With investigations like this, you want to start with motive. Who would want to hurt the glorious military of Deva?”

It was good advice, so his oath let him say it, but thankfully it didn’t throw his fellow spy to the monsters.

The major stared him down for a bit before motioning for Hugo to leave. He gratefully took the opportunity and hurried across the military base.

He went straight for his barracks and took a shower. Once he felt presentable, he walked over to the restricted building and sat down to get to work. At this point he had been assigned his own desk and his own quota of armor parts. He made sure to keep pace with the other runists, both to keep up the façade, and to save mana for his projects later.

Enlisted Nobomi came over to his station and he braced for a dressing down for being late.

Instead she said, “Hey, while you were out, did you see what happened with the other restricted building?”

“Kind of, I was part of the team putting out the fires.”

“Do you know what happened, what they were doing in there? We were talking about that earlier. Daniel was sure they were working with poisons, he said they issued face masks to everyone that worked in that building. I was pretty sure they were working with explosives. ”

Daniel walked up to them and said, “I didn’t say it was poisons, I said it was something like that. It had to be something alchemical.”

“You were right, it was definitely an alchemy building. It caught on fire and was spewing out noxious fumes. They had to rush some of the first responders to the healer’s station,” Hugo said to the human runist.

Daniel gave Nobomi a triumphant look.

Nobomi turned back to Hugo and said, “How do you know it was an alchemy building? I heard it was a new type of ammunition, maybe something to take down city walls. That’s why the whole building was going up in smoke.”

Hugo shook his head. “No, I am sure it was an alchemy building. I was part of the fire fighting force. They had sand nearby because a lot of alchemical ingredients don’t extinguish with water. I saw broken potion bottles in the building and the smoke was green and everything.”

Nobomi frowned and stepped back. A few more runists walked up and they kept gossiping. Hugo was the man of the hour since he had been on the scene. They had all kinds of theories about what had happened and why. Hugo felt safe to admit that he was sure that it had been sabotage, but refrained from speculating on who it could have been.

He did learn something interesting though. It seemed likely that the southern restricted building wasn’t his target either. One of the runists had said they saw light mages and crystals going into that building. Neither seemed likely to affect the shimmer veins.

He kept working on his personal runecrafting project, but didn’t make any plans to use the distract runes. He made sure to top off the completed runed plates daily, but he didn’t feel like using them to sabotage the city just yet. He didn’t want to hurt anyone that could help defend Deva.

...

A week later, Hugo was finally given leave. He got paid and was allowed to leave the base for twenty six hours. He packed a small bag and left as soon as he was allowed. The first thing he did in the city was to return to the same inn he stayed at a month and a half ago. He spent the day in the inn’s common room. It was a fun place to hang out, with food, drinks, and music. He didn’t allow himself to think of any other reasons he would be staying here.

Early the next morning, there was a knock on the door.

Hugo blearily walked to the door and answered it.

“Enlisted Xhosa?” the robed man asked.

“Yes, that’s me. What’s this about?” Hugo said, still waking up.

Instead of answering, the man held out his hands and a flash of bright light washed over Hugo. He fell to the ground, spots in front of his eyes. He was overcome with a wave of nausea and a massive headache.

“That was the treatment you asked for. The blindness and nausea will pass quickly. The headache will probably linger though. Sorry. Can I please get the second half of my payment?” the robed man said and held out his hand.

Hugo walked back to his nightstand and handed over a few silver to the man. He said, “Thanks for that.”

“If you have any lingering issues, please don’t hesitate to ask. I stake my reputation on the treatment’s effectiveness.”

Hugo nodded and closed the door. He went back to bed and curled up into a ball. Despite the headache, he fell asleep like that.

Hours later, Hugo felt human again. Well, nox again. Either way, the light mage’s treatment had worked. He had been worried about dealing with shadow magic, but the plan he had put into place had evidently worked.

Unlike the human cities, nox were fine with using shadow magic. It was just a different culture. Luckily for Hugo, that culture also had built in ways to deal with magic that could influence your mind. Before he had enlisted with the military, he had contracted with a light mage to clear away any shadow magic if Hugo ever stayed at this inn again.

He was glad that he had thought ahead. Now that the oath didn’t have any effect on his mind, he could see that he had been delaying his attack on the Black Marshal’s building because of an artificial sense of loyalty.

His first step with his clear head was to write a report to send to sentinel command. He actually wrote two of them. One coded message that was sent through pulsemail. The second one was a longer version of his report, sent through regular mail and he made sure not to let himself get seen mailing it.

That task done, he moved on with his plan. He took out the titanium plates he had brought with him. It was time to do a test. He slipped the runed plates into his uniform. He had taken the time to sew pockets into the inside of his uniform, so he didn’t look strange in his runed outfit. The disregard runes should let him get into restricted areas. The guards would still see and remember him, but they would ignore him. He should be able to walk right in.

At least that was the theory. He wanted to be sure before he put his life on the line though. He walked down to the inn’s common room and put a bowl of fruit on his head and a tablecloth around his neck like a cape. He got several strange looks and a few chuckles. One by one, he activated each plate. It was a weird sensation. He found that he couldn’t focus on himself, and kept bumping into things.

He could focus on the rest of the world though, and got a hang of things quickly. No one in the room was paying attention to him anymore, so he wandered out into the street. This wouldn’t last long, so he wanted to give it a proper test. He made it to a busy market. He walked up to a few food stalls and added their wares to the bowl on his head.

No one noticed a thing.

He happily wandered around the market, goofing off, and no one gave him a single strange look. He knew that he didn’t have much time left before the mana ran out on the disregard runes. He turned around to go back to the inn.

Someone was staring at him.

One of the nox shopkeepers across the way was following his every move. She was sitting under a sign that said “Household Rituals” and she could definitely see him.

He gave her a jaunty wave and threw her a piece of fruit from the bowl on his head. She caught it, surprising the customer she had been talking to. He hoped that his nonchalant attitude would convince her he had nothing to hide.

As soon as he rounded the corner, he took the bowl off his head and folded up the tablecloth. Not a moment too soon, as people started paying attention to him now. He estimated he got about twelve minutes of people ignoring him with a full charge.

The ritualist didn’t ignore him though.

She knew just how weird he was acting from the get go. How had she seen through the runes when no one else did? What was so special about her? He needed to figure out if this was going to be a problem.

He wouldn’t have been surprised if a light mage had seen through the disregard effect. They were particularly well suited to seeing through illusions and other magical effects. Hugo wasn’t worried about them because he knew that the Black Marshal didn’t employ any light mages. He did employ ritualists though, so the question was would other ritualists be able to see through the disregard rune?

As he thought about it, he realized that it must come down to the wisdom stat. Light mages could see through illusions, but anyone with a high enough wisdom stat could resist magical effects that affected the mind. The disregard rune must count as a mental magic that wisdom affected.

That would mean that any sufficiently leveled ritualist would be able to see right through his magic. The question was, where was the cut off? Would the low level ritualists the military employed be able to see through his magic? Further testing would be required.