Chapter Sixty-One: The Tempest of Cacophony

  Selriph appraised the sight before him. A human girl, no older than the day he found himself estranged from his home, his family—if he ever had one to begin with. Her garments, once elegant, were now in tatters; likely a result of the ordeal of her abduction. Her black hair and ocean-blue eyes were part of a face that vaguely resembled the one person who held affection for the former heir-apparent of the Daryth family.

  Selriph’s gaze immediately fell on the crude padlock that held black-glyph-adorned chains together, holding together a frame that was thin, frail, and almost sickly. Her body was glowing erratically with a golden-blue hue. Her expression contorted in pain, as if she were being tortured or tormented by an unseen source of pain.

  Selriph’s feet found purchase on the merchant cart as he vaulted onto it, his mind rehearsing the actions he was about to do, or rather, planned to do.

  Selriph’s fist clenched as he moved towards the young girl, now muttering incoherently.

  He hadn’t seen anything like this before. The fleeing mage’s eyes quickly searched her body, trying to understand the unusual arcane phenomenon. His acute magical senses detected something akin to a maelstrom—chaotic, wild, and untamed—emanating from the girl; her eyes glowed and dimmed within the mystical, smoky golden light, and her words matched her visions. Though incoherent in its structure, the sentence may have reflected the imagery she perceived.

  “Spire…vast ocean…stone icy walls…. get away…. Please, leave me alone.” Her words were directed in front of her, at Selriph, who was nothing more than a pudgy-faced individual towering over her—a threat, someone dangerous, at least in her eyes.

  She… should I even…?

  Selriph once more gazed upon the chains.

  No… she is likely referring to something in her visions—either way, she won’t survive if she is bound like this.

  Selriph, steeling himself against the distasteful task, channelled a precise spark of terramancy. The intent was to render the girl unconscious to prevent her from witnessing the magical process of her liberation.

  He moved his hand close to the shackles, intent on placing his arm around the girl’s neck. The purple wisp of electromancy travelled through his arm, wrapping around his fingers and palms like a living, mystical glove.

  However, as his hand came within a dagger’s blade of the girl, Selriph recoiled as he felt a stinging pain—as if he had simultaneously dipped his hand in molten rock while also being repelled like two opposing magnets.

  Damn… I cannot knock her out like this—not magically. Her aura is running rampant.

  Selriph’s hand, after its retreating flinch, hovered over his pouch. His mind guided his fingers through its contents, landing on a singular item that could undo the shackles—physical rather than mystical means.

  His memento from the ivory-skinned woman he saved from the rapids, brought to safety in Caer Eldralis. The one duty he had fulfilled in that debacle.

  The hairpin.

  The youth bent the wired object into a ninety-degree angle, bringing it to the padlock securing the chains, disregarding the near-electrical static that surged through his veins, a result of the erratic energy emanating from the captive.

  He inserted it into the keyhole—following the instructions that Relia had told him on their final night together in the Caer Eldralis library. Selriph meticulously manipulated the pin through the lock’s internal components, finally landing on the latch.

  With the pin pressed against the mechanism, Selriph carefully visualised where the pin was before giving a few tugs. Once and twice.

  Click–Clak

  The lock released, and Selriph started to unravel the chains. The touch of the chains brought a familiar feeling: coldness. That sensation didn’t originate solely from contact with the chains; rather, it was a familiar feeling, mirroring the one he experienced with the dark onyx pendant Vick gave him.

  The trinket that suppressed his signature.

  As the chains fell to the wooden floor of the cart, the magical surge from the girl began to buffer against Selriph’s body. His own senses, so fully attuned now, felt it. The increasing presence of chaotic magical energy from the girl was accompanied by the growing frequency of the erratic pulsing from the girl’s eyes and her body.

  What is going on…?

  He reached for the golden cuffs, which were decorated with runic glyphs that appeared to pulse out of sync with the girl’s magical energy. A single beat was misaligned from hers, as if it reacted to or suppressed her magical signature.

  Upon Selriph’s fingers encircling the girl’s delicate forearm, a gasp was heard, and he felt her magical energy press against his own, blending and contacting for a fleeting moment.

  Then came the scream as his eyes flared up with golden arcane light.

  “Aaaah! No! Get away from me! Monsters!!”

  Whatever sight—be it mystical or physical-she saw caused her veins to course with light, travelling through her arms. A surge of energy sundered the gold bracelets. The wood splintered as the cart collapsed beneath the force of the wind, followed by him being knocked out of his lungs.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  As the wheel came to a stop a few metres from the prone youth, Seriph felt the familiar brush of fur on his skin.

  Selriph righted himself, his hand placed on his face—no longer obscured by arcane energy, his arcane facade ripped apart by the magical burst.

  Damn!

  His eyes widened as he shot between the girl and back to the wolf. Emmett’s countenance seemed to portray concern, given what had just transpired in the last few seconds.

  “I am fine, Emmett… let’s leave her…her bindings are undone, there is no reason to….”

  The wolf’s gaze, however, turned, now fixed ahead at the collapsed figure among the shattered cart, almost in direct defiance of the human companion’s call for retreat.

  With the magical bindings undone—both by the hands of the runaway youth and whatever uncontrolled outburst that had just transpired- Selriph felt it in full. The immense, chaotic arcane energy radiating from the girl was far more than he had encountered thus far.

  Then the girl grabbed her temples in pain, now screaming and howling like a rabid animal, the noise threatening to attract the predatory descendants roaming the forest.

  With the noise she is making, it won’t be long before something comes along…

  A wave of conflicting emotions washed over Selriph. For one, Selriph felt compelled to help her—he knew that whatever was afflicting her was magical in nature, something that he might be able to resolve. A solution was already crystallising in his mind.

  However, if he failed, it would mean bringing a screaming, unstable girl along with him towards Solvelis, a sure beacon of unwanted attention.

  His mind flashed once more to the fateful decision by the Great River Valdorea—helping a single soul.

  The result set the boy on a distraction from his goal.

  No, not a mere digression, but destruction. Folly.

  No, not again… not when I am so close to the border.

  Selriph began to turn, his voice ready to bellow out in a firm command to the dire wolf, who was sure to protest his action.

  He stopped in his tracks as he heard the whimpers, the cry—oh so reminiscent of the same pained plaints he would make at the whims of his tormentors in the Templar compound.

  “Please, make it stop! I cannot take it anymore!” Her voice, fluctuating between an otherworldly tone and a weak, sickly croak, reached out toward Selriph.

  Selriph, now inextricably drawn to help the girl—a fellow magic-endowed soul in distress—righted himself to his feet, moving towards her. Her untamed energy was overpowering, causing him to recoil as if physically repelled. He approached her with outstretched hands in a gesture of comfort, and a soft-blue translucent shield materialised, shielding him from the chaotic energy emanating from the girl.

  As he approached the girl, the cogs in his mind turned, observing the situation. Everything about her was abnormal. Of all the magical users he had encountered thus far—Vickthar, Kela, Kaela, and Ereknul—their mana felt calm, steady, and controlled.

  This was anything but; it was like being in the middle of a raging thunderstorm.

  His eyes beheld the shattered remains of the bracelets and the chains scattered around.

  Her mana flow … perhaps the bindings made it worse…?!

  After struggling through the shattered wooden remains that were strewn throughout the forest floor, Selriph knelt beside the girl, who was still writhing and rolling on the ground, doubled over in excruciating pain and agony.

  Will this even work…? With her flailing around like this, I won’t be able to attune to her signature…!

  Then Selriph felt it once more, the brush of fur as the bestial figure came into view with the

  “Emmett, leave it to me—” Selriph’s words met the determined face of the dire wolf.

  However, it wasn’t just the expression of the dire wolf that caused him to pause, but what was wrapped around the wolf. He had only seen it once before, when they encountered the frost wraith near the summit of Mount Erebus.

  A soft green hue wrapped around the wolf like a second skin; the wolf trekked through the arcane static as if it were nothing, placing a paw on the girl’s body.

  The girl paused as her gold-lit eyes stared at the wolf. Instead of exhibiting fear, her expression softened, as if tranquillised or soothed by the wolf’s actions.

  Emmett…!

  He shook his head, and he focused on the matter at hand—he would interrogate the wolf later on its mystical leaning, if it could even engage in such a conversation.

  What mattered was that whatever feat the wolf had just performed, it granted a lull from the erratic, involuntary gesticulations that plagued the poor girl. Selriph gestured with his hands in an intricate dance. At the same moment, his mind recalled the sensation, the tethering he felt with Ereknul.

  The arcane rope-like construct began to weave from the youth to the prone girl, wrapping around her person. The moment it made sense, Selriph did the opposite of what Ereknul had instructed him; instead of feeding the girl his arcane energy, his life force, he would siphon it.

  What he was going to attempt was based on a working theory: he wasn’t sure, but he had assumed that the arcane shackles that bound the girl likely were aggravating whatever arcane maelstrom was welling within her—possibly causing these erratic, horrific visions. Her mana was chaotic, as if something had forced it into itself, looping endlessly rather than flowing freely.

  Based on this rationale, if Selriph could dissipate or extract the surplus mana from the girl, it could potentially pacify her, at least sufficiently to halt her painful throes.

  Of course, he knew it could make it worse; after all, he had attempted nothing like this before.

  There was only one way to find out, and he was doing it right now. He began to direct the energy into himself. It moved from her core to his, the alien surge of sacred-magical energy flowing through him as he released it into the area, creating thick, golden, smoky vapours that dispersed into the fading forest.

  With each choreographed, almost meditative wave, the girl’s violent trembling began to subside as the excess arcane energy flowed out from Seriph’s fingertips. Her aura, once a tempest of cacophony, slowly subsided, calming to a swirling font. The glow in her eyes faded as Selriph felt her magical output subside to something she was more familiar with—that of a layperson.

  As the last of the glow left the girl’s person, Selriph waved his hand, his motion severing the arcane tether. His body then crumpled and collapsed, the foreign magical energy causing his muscles to go limp as he fell to his knees.

  He looked first at Emmett, who no longer had the green hue around him. Selriph contemplated whether it was merely a fabrication of his imagination. His gaze then shifted to the girl, and her eyes, the colour of the sea, locked with his; he could barely make out a whisper coming from her.

  “Thank you… sir...” as her eyes fluttered closed

  The youth surveyed the surroundings—the rustle coming from the woods beyond—attention drawn to the commotion that had transpired. The full moon, Raclune, cast its gaze through an opening in the clouds, resembling a luminous iris, as if anticipating the next unfolding event within the nocturnal forest.

  His hand once found a perch on his estoc, as he struggled once more to his feet.

  Don’t thank me yet … Once I deal with whatever is coming, you have a lot of explaining to do….

  As Selriph turned to face the oncoming opportunist that was about to make its appearance from beyond the night gloom, his loyal canine companion stood ready to face it with him.