Chapter 20 — Ana’s Big Day (Part II)

  “Clear the streets!”

  Ria’s head snapped up to see the source of the loud voice. Whoever those knights were, they were bad news. Their energy density put them closer to Lady Asara and Lord Jevaran than any fourth or fifth-year student. Clearly, they weren’t intended to be fought.

  Hence the event name: The Spy’s Escape.

  “Ack. That’s inconvenient,” Ria groaned to herself as the streets outside the gated estate she was infiltrating cleared of people.

  What point was a disguise if just being out on the streets made her suspicious?

  “Sure is,” Tallien sighed back through the communication stone. “That’s what happens when you acquire your jade slip.”

  “Once the chase is on, that will make it easier for us to grab ours and escape, though,” Katria’s voice gleefully pointed out, sounding eager for the challenge.

  “Yep. That’s why I recommended we each get in position and wait.”

  The hint of smugness from Tallien made Ria wonder if the third-year boy was feeling more optimistic about their chances.

  Seeing two of the knights already flying off with purpose, Ria sent her senses again through the outer wall she was hiding against and into the study where her jade slip was located. The noble inside had rushed to the window at the commotion, unlatching and opening the window to better hear, and was peering up with worry at the remaining black-clad knights standing in the sky, slitted helms surveying the city ward below. The desk drawer had been left open, the jade slip sitting inside where the man had returned it in his hurry.

  A chance!

  Ria couldn’t help a huge canary-eating grin. From what she had already observed, this was probably the best chance she would get to nab the slip. She summoned the spellcube Aldri had given her to practice spatial magic and began forming the spell’s matrix.

  There were two potential problems with her plan.

  One, the noble was a mage. Even if a weak one, whether he could detect her magic or not was an open question.

  Two, the notes on the map warned that the jade slip would destroy itself if placed inside a spatial storage or teleported, so Ria did have some worries about using spatial magic to retrieve the slip.

  As much as she really, really, really wanted to win for herself and her team, during practice was the time to test such things.

  Before the moment of opportunity could pass, Ria formed a path through the open window to the jade slip and tried to keep the magic as contained as possible as the carefully warped space shifted the slip along the path and right into her waiting hand.

  She did it! The jade slip was hers!

  A knock at the noble’s study door drew the man’s attention, and gave Ria a chance to slink past the window and deeper into the estate grounds. An exclamation of surprise came from the noble not long afterward, and Ria took off running.

  Her camouflage magic wouldn’t be as effective when moving quickly. She didn’t have the skill or control necessary, but the sound muffling and choice of direction would hopefully lessen the chance she drew enough attention for anyone to spot her before she got out of the estate.

  She darted through the back garden, keeping to the shadows as much as possible as cries of “Intruder!” sounded out from the manor.

  Her heart beat with the thrill of what she was doing even if the people here were all an illusion.

  “Got mine. Triggering pulse now!” Ria whispered to Tallien’s communication stone as she leapt and twisted in the air, catching the top of the estate’s back wall with her hand and dropping down into the fancy paved street below.

  Just as Tallien had warned them, the jade slip pulsed with energy the moment they left the designated property.

  Ria quickly hopped the wall of the opposite estate and ran along the interior, dodging ornamental bushes and—with Xander’s Luck—out of sight.

  “Got mine~!” Katria’s voice cheerfully lilted from the stone.

  Ria felt the pulse of mana not too distant. And faintly others. The other teams must have had the same plan—not wanting to be first and attract the powerful knights’ attention alone.

  “Good job, you two. Don’t forget to use a circuitous route to your extraction point,” Tallien reminded them.

  “Yes, mommy,” Katria snarked.

  To make the challenge more exciting while keeping in the spirit of the event, rather than continuously signaling the Black Watch and guards, the jade slip let out the pulse in fixed intervals. Which meant heading in a straight line directly toward one’s extraction location was a bad idea. Instead, a successful ‘spy’ used the pulses to misdirect the pursers.

  The pulse itself felt of spirit energy, and Ria wondered if the enchantment she used to contain the spirit energy from soul-strengthening incense would also contain the pulses. Or, at least, make them harder to sense.

  Having rounded the corner of the current estate and hopefully gained enough distance, Ria hopped the walls again into another estate, continuing her flight, no doubt a blur of oddly shifting shadows and light should she pass through anyone’s view.

  Her glimpse of the street showed it deserted, and even the estate residents and servants seem to have sought shelter.

  Ria ducked into the shadow of a shed and sensed her surroundings. She could hear shouts and commotion that could be a search being organized, but didn’t sense anyone powerful near.

  Were the Black Watch not chasing her? Had the strategy worked?

  A quick check on Ranger showed him still leading a group of guards on a merry chase, now harassing Endreise who was engaged in a desperate fighting retreat while being bombarded by two of the Black Watch knights Ria had spotted earlier.

  Yes!!

  Ria quietly squealed and pumped her fist in triumph. If Ranger managed to get Endreise, that would be worth big points! It was all she could do not to maniacally laugh out loud. This event was sooooo much fun!

  A terrible screech both distant and also coming through the communication stone interrupted Ria’s gleeful celebration of how exceedingly well the practice event was going.

  “Gah! I think I just fended off Ulren… I might be under a pickling stone here,” Katria groaned, out of breath.

  Ria’s smile only grew. Together with Katria, she might have a fair chance of actually defeating the salt mage. If she managed to take out both Ulren and (with Ranger’s efforts) Endriese and reached her extraction point, there was no way she wouldn’t have the highest score! Besides, letting Katria get splatted by a competitor would only benefit Ria’s competition and make getting a top 3 score that much harder.

  “Hang on as best you can, I’m on my way,” Ria said into the communication stone. “Let’s take him down!”

  “Am I part of this take down?” Tallien dared to ask, sounding resigned again.

  “Nah, Katria and I got this,” Ria drawled, already on the move. “At least one of us needs to complete the event, or I bet Hulle will dock us for unnecessarily risking not having any team placements in the top 10 for the event or something.”

  “Sounds about right,” the third-year alchemist admitted. “Alright, good luck.”

  From the communication stone, the sounds around Katria became more raucous with clinking and cheers. “Hope you got a plan,” Katria whispered to the stone. “I’m sure to be found again next pulse.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Ria was grinning enough that her fangs were surely showing as she ducked into a shadow to let a patrol of guards pass by. “Couple ideas, plus one that might be a bit crazy.”

  Katria laughed. “Oooh, crazy. I’m always up for crazy.”

  Ana couldn’t help leaning forward on the edge of her seat as Young Lady Celestria vaulted over walls and darted from shadow to shadow to escape the guards searching for her. The whole illusionary city was swarming with patrols searching the emptied streets, and fights had already broken out all over the city.

  Sir Mage Orlisi had managed to avoid notice of the knights somehow after claiming her rectangle of jade—one of those ‘slips’ that was apparently the goal of the whole complicated event—but the werewolf boy on Young Lady Iselyn’s team wasn’t so lucky and he was in a running fight with one of Black Watch knights, jumping from rooftop to rooftop and getting generally smacked about by the crazy-strong knight.

  Likewise, the water mage fourth-year was in a similar fleeing battle thanks to Celestria’s familiar. The fourth-year had tried to splat Ranger several times, but the magical dog was surprisingly agile. Some of the chasing guards had been less fortunate. The fourth-year was also crazy strong! The strongest mage that Ana had ever seen! Yet, even riding a flood of water and lashing out with building-destroying water tentacles, the water mage was no match for the pair of Black Watch knights hunting her down.

  Even Young Lady Keira’s soon-to-be fiancé, with his teleportation magic, had been caught up in the fighting. Young Lord Aldri had drawn one of the Black Watch knights into a chase, flinging showy volleys of magic before teleporting back to where he had stashed his jade. A strange ‘mist’ with a rainbow sheen wove a path in front of the young lord and he raced away far faster than his strides should have moved him.

  Beside Ana, Senior Tabimi was clapping in excitement. Young Lady Iselyn was surrounded by magic and quietly escaping notice.

  Had Tabimi’s young lady tasked her teammates with intentionally creating distractions?

  Wait. Now that she looked closer, there was a strange mushroom man fighting alongside the werewolf boy.

  Whether planned or not, Young Lady Iselyn wasn’t the only one to take advantage of the Black Watch’s attention being fully occupied elsewhere, Sir Mage Orlisi had used the ongoing distractions to fly the dock-worker boy over to attack Celestria’s red-haired teammate. The loud screeching sound had somehow let the girl escape, but the pair were now floating above the building, hidden inside a bubble of some kind, preparing a pink magic that felt drier than any desert and sharper than knives, as if it could scour flesh from bone far worse than the grittiest of sand.

  “Oh no,” Ana couldn’t help quietly exclaiming as Ria slipped into the tavern where Katria was hiding. She was almost certain, her young lady hadn’t seen the pair of enemies lurking above.

  Ria quickly found her teammate and started forming a spell with the same ghostly element as the ‘pulses’ made by the jade rectangles, but before she could finish the spell, the ghostly element expanded outward in another one of those ‘pulses’, passing through the building and out into the air and further.

  Ana yelled out her dismay, but it was too late.

  Salt-spears ripped into the building where Ria and her friend were and exploded into shards and clouds of salt that shattered glass and blasted away the facing and part of the roof, leaving dead and crying injured around Celestria and the red-haired girl who were the only ones unharmed. A dome of almost clear-colored magic centered on the redhead seemed to have protected them.

  “Oh-hoh, a two-fer! Hand over your jade slips, and we’ll let you escape before the Black Watch comes!” the dock-worker fourth-year laughingly boomed amidst the clearing debris and pained cries of illusionary people caught up in the violent magic, having perched himself on an exposed beam of broken wood.

  “You pirate brutes! You think you can just harm others and not tempt fate? Just because they aren’t your people?” Celestria called out in a loud voice as if she were a hero from a grand play.

  While Celestria was shouting, the colors in the air from all around swirled and were sucked into the young lady’s head. Her young lady took a deep breath, and with a strange word like the voice of a small dragon, blackness deeper than night streamed out from Celestria’s mouth surrounded by a rainbow of colors that billowed like flames.

  “Dodge!” the elf’s voice rang out, vivid shades of blue and green wrapping around her.

  The pirate tried, but Celestria turned her head to follow his inhuman leap. Salt and wind formed around the pirate like when he escaped before. The fire burned through it.

  “Hells-!” was all he could yell out before a red ‘X’ showed over his holographic bust.

  “Wha-? Was that-? Did she just breathe dragonfire?” Tabimi asked in disbelief.

  Ana couldn’t believe what she had seen either.

  All four of the Black Watch appeared floating above the destruction and engaged Orlisi before she could restore her invisibility, flames still burning the elf’s magic and the air itself while hiding Celestia and Katria from both discovery and approach.

  Even the illusion warped around the fire like it was burning! If Tabimi had called it hellfire, Ana wouldn’t have disagreed.

  Just how strong was her mistress?

  Then she noticed the equally stunned expression on Young Lady Celestria’s face and couldn’t help a laugh escaping. One that might be a bit crazy, huh?

  “Tha… that was awesome!!” Katria cheered and echoed Ana’s thought aloud, “One that might be a bit crazy, huh?”

  Celestria gave out a nervous laugh but frowned at the eerily-lit destruction and suffering around them. Ana’s young lady moved quickly and with surprising strength to grab a crying child and bloodied mother that survived the attack, carrying them to safety, away from the dragonfire’s heat. “Not all countries are the same. You have my apologies for your injuries.”

  Katria gave an amused head shake at Ria continuing to act the hero’s role. “Thanks for the save from Ulren, but I think we’d better make our escape if the battle outside is anything to go by.”

  “Wait.” Ria briefly glanced up at the fire that was rapidly becoming more transparent and formed the spell she had attempted earlier, shrinking it down onto the surface of her teammate’s belt pouch. “That’ll block the pulse.”

  “Really?! Sweet! Let’s disappear!” The bouncy redhead took off down one of the busted hallways, Young Lady Celestria took an opposite one. They soundlessly crashed through walls into adjacent buildings on opposite sides, Katria’s wall turning to dust with almost clear magic, Celestria’s wall annihilated with inky dark magic.

  They weren’t gone long before two Black Watch knights braved the flames, one chasing after each.

  The chase was fraught until Celestria ducked into a shadow after turning a corner and the knight ran past. Having lost her pursuer, she darted through a series of narrow alleys.

  The alleys reminded Ana of the ones that Miela had taken her to in the middle of the night. The alleys that led to the basement where she had been given her Fate Stealer and the truth of her test was revealed.

  Features calm, Ana let the memory of her sin replay in her mind again as it had many times since that night.

  ‘He is one of the ones involved in the attempt on Young Lady Celestria’s life. He is the son of an important House and the lack of proof of his crimes makes justice unlikely to come for him.’

  At first, Ana couldn’t believe it when the cold metal was placed into her hands, but Miela didn’t leave her any room for misunderstanding.

  ‘To empower your Fate Stealer and align its purpose to the defense of your lady, you must apply your blood to the handle and sheath, say your ritual oath of loyalty, and use the Fate Stealer to consume the fate of one who has sought to harm your lady. Easiest is to stab into his heart from under his chest. With that, you will become one of us.’

  Murder. That was her test! And not just some man, but a noble!

  The man squealed through his gag and struggled against the ropes that bound his arms and feet behind his back.

  Fear froze Ana in place. In a way, she envied the man’s physical expression of panic. Instead, she forced her finger to run along the symbols and designs engraved into the cold metal in her hands, the sheathed weapon in her hands.

  How much did she want to be with Young Lady Celestria? How much did she want to help?

  How much did she want to punish those that harmed her lady?

  Could she do it?

  They had ruined her lady’s big day. They had almost killed her. Injured and poisoned her so badly that even a High Priestess had difficulty healing the injuries. A High Priestess!

  Many others had died.

  And this man would escape punishment?

  If this was how she could be of use to Young Lady Celestria, she would do it.

  “I’ll do it.”

  “I’m so glad you are here,” Young Lady Celestria told her for the third time since the tower’s Grand Games team had finished for the day and they were able to meet.

  Celestria was reading a news publication called The Daily Shadow while Ana carefully combed the young lady’s oddly dark hair, hair that caught the light like stars in the night sky, careful not to catch the comb on the young lady’s black crystal dragon horns—something new she hadn’t noticed during the practice event.

  After Celestria’s triumphant performance and the subsequent after-practice meeting, she had bathed her mistress just like she had done when the young lady was staying at the Vorshan Estate.

  “Halders of House Denevi found dead, stabbed in the heart. Suspected assassination… hmm, seems the Novidus’ plot didn’t get them all, after all,” Ria darkly mused, shaking her head, a sense of pressure filling the room. “The name sounds somewhat familiar, too. Wonder where I heard it before…”

  Ana froze.

  Had her young lady figured it out? Did she know?

  Ana couldn’t stop herself from remembering the man’s terror and gagged screams as she forced the ice-pick-like tool into the space under his chest, digging around and trying again and again until the Fate Stealer found the man’s heart—then silence.

  No, not silence. She still had to pull the weapon out from the still warm body—the body with eyes frozen wide with terror.

  “Ah, Ana, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have read that aloud in front of you with all that has happened. It’s okay. I’m okay now, and I won’t fail next time. I’ll keep my friends safe. And if this works out, we will be together for a long time.”

  Ana let herself be held close by her mistress and let herself cry. It was fine that Celestria had mistaken the reason for her tears. Her young lady would never learn the truth. Miela was right; it was best that way.

  Returning her mistress’ embrace, Ana hugged tight to the friend and noble she had sworn her life and future to.