The run was plenty long enough to tease out what he needed from the mana field and determine that it was essentially a suggestion field saying ‘you want to go this way; the thing/place you want is this way’. All he’d need to do was keep Andarit isolated from it and she should come out of it. Possibly a little confused, like waking from a dream, but she’d be fine.

The run was not long enough to cast the spell to fully free Andarit.

Worse, the Lowpeak residence wasn’t going to be much of a safe place to hide. Unlike most of the areas he’d passed on the run, there were clear signs of fighting having happened in the nobles’ area where the Lowpeak house was. Unlike many of the other houses, it looked like the Lowpeak residence hadn’t been specifically targeted, but the front entrance area had been scorched and several of the windows were visibly broken. It looked like the front door had held, but one corner of the building was crumbling like something had smashed into it.

It was intact enough to be worth sheltering in while he freed Andarit. It was probably even safe to stay overnight, though Serenity didn’t want to wait any longer than that. Coups were always a bad time, and the best thing to do was get out of the way and come back when things were settled.

The wards around the house were destroyed. It was a combination of too many people entering them and the actual physical damage. Serenity didn’t perform a thorough inspection, but even without one he could see several places where the damaged ground crossed a wardline; the physical damage alone might well have been enough to take them down. He hadn’t expected them to need to handle anything overt.

When Serenity reached the front door, it wouldn’t open; it took him a minute to figure out that the problem was another damaged ward. Unlike the property ward he’d established, the door ward was only damaged; unfortunately, the damage seemed to be to the part of the ward that recognized authorized guests, so it was locking everyone out.

Serenity momentarily considered entering through one of the broken windows. It would have been a good solution if he were alone or if Andarit were in her right mind. Unfortunately, he couldn’t trust Andarit not to run off if he set her down; she was docile now, but that might well be because of the odd effect he was having on the suggestion field. Trying to carry her through a window was simply a recipe for injury, even without the scattered glass.

He could use another door, but they were all more restrictive, not less. If he remembered the ward linkages correctly, and he was confident he did, they wouldn’t let him in. They all referred back to the broken authentication package.

No, the answer was simple: he needed to override the ward. It was a good thing he’d analyzed the ward before he set his own; he hadn’t dug into the authorization package since he didn’t want to damage anything and it was delicate, but he knew where the connections were to it. He could simply work up a spell to bypass the authorization and make the ward “think” it had an authorized guest, sort of like using a skeleton key on an old, low-grade lock.

Since the spellform was both purely informational and very simple, Serenity was almost done when Andarit stirred. “We’ve stopped? Are we home?”

“I’m opening the door now. There’s been fighting here, but it looks like it’s moved away for now.” Serenity pushed the last few things into place and fed mana into the spellform. It fit itself around the ward, which obediently swapped from registering his presence as unauthorized to authorized and the door lock clicked open.

Once he stepped inside, he released the spellform and the ward automatically relocked. He noticed that it had recorded the entry and the false authentication; that was fine. It wasn’t like anyone else was going to be able to find out about it while it mattered.

There was probably someone somewhere in Zenith that could craft wards like that one, but Serenity had no idea who. He hadn’t had time to look into that sort of thing. In many ways, it was too bad; it would have been far more fun to talk magic with a good wardsmith than attend almost any of the noble events Andarit had taken him to. Serenity wasn’t a wardsmith, but he knew enough to make it interesting.

Serenity carried Andait inside, then up to her room. He had his armor-self relax back to a more natural armor fit, but didn’t take it off Andarit, just in case. She’d have a bit of trouble getting out of the house, with the doors all locked. Sure, she could use a window, but that would give him time.

Once he set her down on her bed, Andarit looked around. “This isn’t home. Why are we back in Zenith?”

Serenity smiled sadly and sat down beside her. If his physical presence helped suppress the mind control, he needed to stay near her. He’d half-hoped her home would have something that would help defend her; it had once been a Guildhouse, after all, and the doors were proof that not everything had been removed. “We never left Zenith.”

Serenity started building the simple shield spell. It would take about fifteen minutes to complete, and at that it was a good thing he’d gotten practice with Jacob, Rissa’s brother. The shield he needed was definitely not the same, but it was similar.

Andarit sighed. “I really thought I was almost home. Then you picked me up and ran. There’s no way that was real, was it?”

“No. It was a suggestion spell of some sort. It seemed to be trying to pull you towards the fire.” Serenity felt the tenseness in his shoulders relax a little. Apparently his hope was correct; there was something about the house that was protecting Andarit, at least a little. He hadn’t checked to see if it was still active in the house; he could do that after he finished the shielding spell. It wasn’t worth the delay right now.

Andarit levered herself up on her elbows. She frowned and seemed puzzled for a moment, then looked down at herself. “Huh. I didn’t question it at the time; for some reason it didn’t seem worth asking. But, your armor? You can put it on someone else without them actually putting it on?”

“Yeah. It’s not ordinary armor,” Serenity admitted. “I can take it off you if you want, but can you wait til I finish this spell?”

He’d much rather talk about the spell than the armor. Actually, right now he’d rather not talk since he needed to concentrate. He wasn’t going to just shut Andarit down; if nothing else, it kept her occupied and meant she shouldn’t get recaptured by the mind control without his knowledge.

Andarit pushed herself up the rest of the way, then turned to put her legs off the side of the bed, sitting next to him. “What spell?”

“A shield spell. To help you with whatever that is outside.” Serenity waved a hand generally in the direction of the front door. “We can stay here tonight, but we shouldn’t stay too much longer, which means you need to be able to go outside.”

“Why didn’t it affect you?” Andarit tilted her head a bit as she asked. “Don’t you need a shield too? How can you keep two up?”

Serenity shrugged. “I have a very high Mind Resistance. I didn’t even notice the spell, it’s very low-power. As far as I can tell, it just warps things a little, makes you think that something you want is where it wants you to go. That’s why I was able to trick it and get you here.” Serenity paused and considered the spell a little, but didn’t let his thinking stop the spellform’s progress. “You know, I bet your father would have been able to resist it. There are a lot of undead with mental attacks, so he probably has a good Resistance.”

“You mean that spell might be why they wanted us dead or gone?” Andarit’s logic jumped ahead of Serenity’s; he’d simply been wishing for the presence of someone else who could help, not trying to put the pieces together.

Which didn’t mean she was wrong. In fact, Serenity thought that she could very well be correct. “Would you and he normally have been at the demonstration if you were in the city?”

“Of course. It’s THE big event. No other reason to be in the city on that day.” Andarit paled. “Which means they were worried about what we might do there, doesn’t it?”

“Probably. Don’t get too focused on that as the only option. This wouldn’t be the first time that the obvious reason is only one of several.” Over the years, Serenity had found that expecting there to be only one reason for anything was generally incomplete. Until they knew more, there wasn’t anything they could do except run.

“Back to the shield spell, I can’t keep it up full time so I’m setting up some triggers. I can keep a very low-grade version of it running that only maintains the spellform full time so that I won’t have to rebuild it, but in terms of continuous usage I’m only going to get about sixteen to twenty hours a day, and even that assumes that the suggestion spell stays low-level. Against high-end Mind magic, the shield will burn through mana a lot faster. Powerful enough magic will simply punch straight through it.” Sneaky enough magic could also do it, but Serenity didn’t expect to find anything sufficiently sneaky. Not if that suggestion spell was a good sample of what the Mind mage could do; it showed power to blanket a good section of the city, but it didn’t show the sort of subtlety that would work past a shield.

Andarit opened her mouth, then closed it. Twice. The third time, she spoke. “I didn’t think a Tier Three could hold a shield at all.”

Serenity shrugged. “Not a continuous one, but it’s not like there’s something magical about Tier Five. That’s simply where most people have the power to have a practical shield.” The one he was building for Andarit was actually a practical shield, now that he thought about it, even if it was mental-only. Many Tier Fives couldn’t hold them while they slept. Of course, he had an unusually high amount of mana for a Tier Three, even if his Mind Affinity was lower than a good Tier Five would use, so maybe that made sense.

Andarit turned towards a window and stared outside quietly. Serenity welcomed the quiet, because it gave him a chance to complete the spellform. Once it was complete, he triggered it into the ‘inactive’ version of the shield; no point in wasting mana if it wasn’t necessary.

The next step was a quick check for the presence of the suggestion spell. It wasn’t present. Serenity took a deep breath and let it out; letting some more of his tension go with it. “The suggestion spell isn’t making it in here. I have the spell ready, but it’s not actually shielding you right now.”

Serenity stood up and started to head out of the room; he wanted to send Rissa a message telling her to stay away, but he figured he’d do that from his own room. It was just next door, anyway.

“Can you take the armor off me first?” Andarit turned back towards Serenity and patted the armor at her shoulder.

Serenity hoped he hadn’t just flushed, but he definitely felt a little embarrassed. He’d totally forgotten that his armor-self was still on Andarit and that she couldn’t simply remove him. “Sure.”

A simple shift was all that was needed and his armor-self was back where it belonged before Serenity escaped into his room.