Chapter 49: Chapter 49 – Interlude

Bishop Leonard

Alea's cabin 

“... right?” said a distant voice.

Leonard heard someone ask a question, though he could not identify it. Focusing, he tried to open his eyes and could not - for a moment. Peeling his eyelids, all he saw within the haze were scurrying shapes dressed in white. 

“Are you alright, sir?” the voice asked again. Slowly turning to his right, Leonard saw a familiar face. He moved to rub his eyes with both hands before something bandaged touched his face.

Rubbing his eyes with his good hand, he saw what was happening around him. The reinforcements had arrived, and tens of priests dressed in traditional Church white robes scrambled around him without clear purpose or direction. 

Disturbed by pain in his left hand, he moved his gaze and saw that it was missing his palm, the stump having been bandaged with white cloth, leaking blood. He frowned, looking up, and met the priest's gaze, who directed the reinforcements, alas a touch too late. 

“Apologies, sir. We could not make it quicker. I was knocked out, you see,” Jonas said, looking back down at the ground, not meeting the gaze of the esteemed Bishop Leonard, who was sitting against a tree.

“What happened?” the Bishop asked in a pained voice. 

“Emm… I was knocked out at the start of the battle. When I woke up, I ran back to the teleportation circle and met up with the reinforcements. We ran as quickly as possible to support you, but the battle had ended. The heretic ran away by the looks of it,” Jonas said and moved to help the Bishop stand. 

Not willing to show weakness, the Bishop did not accept the priest's help and stood up on his own, stumbling. “I see that he is gone. I mean, what happened with my hand?” the Bishop raised his right hand or what was left of it.

“It was cut off, sir. One of the priests wrapped it up while we await a competent healer,” Jonas replied quickly, handing a wrapped package. 

“No need for that,” the Bishop removed the rag on his stump and took his severed hand. After chanting words of power, mana pulled from within his blue core and cast a bright light where his stump and severed hand were, wrapping it in a bubble. After a second, the glow subsided, and the Bishop sagged in relief. 

Meanwhile, everyone around him stopped to marvel at the spell performed by Leonard. While not a healing specialist, Leonard was a bishop with a blue core. As such, he knew how to quickly attach a severed hand. While mana-costly and unpleasant, it was something he could do with relative ease. 

‘Seb, that goddamn whoreson!’ Leonard cursed inwardly, feeling his core was almost empty after the lengthy battle and the healing spell he had cast. Flexing his fingers, he saw they were working fine and nodded. 

Turning toward the gaping Jonas, he asked, “What is the status?”

Coming out of his stupor, he responded, “The cabin seems to be completely destroyed, sir. We recently managed to put out the fires and sent a detail back to Speyer to manage the situation with the locals. Multiple search parties are combing the forest around us.”

“Good. Though, do not bother. You will not find them. Seb and his entourage are long gone,” Bishop said, sighing, and took a step toward the destroyed cabin. ‘There was a reason Seb risked a fight with me. It was too dragged out,’ he thought and went over the pile of rubble, noticing that it lacked any personal items they might have left behind.

“Did you find anything useful?”

“No, sir. Just scorched wooden boards with runes, not matching our records,” Jonas replied, pointing to a pile of arranged wooden boards.

Walking over to the pile, Leonard noted the runes scribbled in the heretic free mage manner, not matching the ones used by the Church and the clans. ‘So he did find something here. Dammit!’ Leonard cursed and evaluated what was left of the cabin.

The two-story building was utterly smashed, leaving only the foundations relatively untouched. The wood was broken and scorched all around them, while the wild garden behind the cabin was entirely burned down. The entrance, where an old pickup stood, was riddled with large craters where spells had collided. 

Leonard bent down and picked up one of the charred boards. ‘This looks familiar,’ he thought, examining the board closer and noting that he had seen this manner of inscription somewhere in the Grand Library. 

‘Ah! The Walpurga! That is her signature,’ he remembered, his eyes widening in shock. 

“Sir! We have found an entrance to a basement of sorts!” one of the priests inside the ruins of the cabin yelled from across them. Leonard dropped the board on the ground, walked to the priest in question, and looked down at the hole.

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“A trapdoor in an old cabin like this?” he said and jumped down. “Wait here,” he instructed the priests gathered around the entrance. He went down the dark corridor, conjuring a simple flame atop his palm, using what little mana he had left. 

Shortly, he arrived in a large storage room filled with empty racks and creates. Walking to the middle of the room and glancing around, Leonard noted that the space was utterly empty, save for the storage items left in it. 

“Dammit!” He yelled, not caring if the priests above heard him. “That trash found her cabin!” Leonard said and threw a fireball at one of the racks, blowing it up and igniting the furniture. Without looking closer, he returned to the entrance and jumped up. Seeing his foul mood and having heard his outburst, the priests scurried away and made themselves busy.

Meanwhile, Leonard walked back to the forest and sat by the tree he woke up next to. ‘Good job, Sebastian. In the end, you managed to find the cabin,’ Leonard thought quietly, contemplating what he knew. He recognized that while the Church managed to snag many of the treasures created and compiled by the free mages, some eluded them.

And the greatest of them all, according to the Cardinal, was where Alea stuffed away her prized possessions. More precisely, the secret to cultivating mage cores skipping the steps and time required of them today, due to the scarce mana. 

‘That explains the barrier spell. My initial attack did not manage to pierce it,’ he thought, remembering his failed assault on the cabin. As Alea was the craftiest and mightiest of the free mages, she was well known for her defensive spells, which managed to keep away even their Pope when they faced off. 

“Emm, sir,” Jonas interrupted Leonard as he raised his gaze to look at the young priest. “If I may?”

“What?”

“I want to make a full report on the heretic, if possible, while I remember the finest details,” Jonas uttered, mixing up his words. Leonard waved a hand for him to continue, glad someone was taking up his time for once while he recovered. 

“The reason I called you immediately and did not capture the boy was that he was, well, practicing magic, sir,” Jonas explained, waiting for an answer. 

“And?” Sebastian asked, annoyed. 

“He was not casting our spells. And was not moving simple objects around. From what I could see, he cast a decent-sized fireball, without any signs or chant, before he knocked himself out.”

Sebastian frowned, feeling an itch at the back of his head. As if he had forgotten something important. Looking ahead and away from the priest, he remembered his last attack, aimed at the heretic. The details came back to him in a blur, and he remembered.

‘That…,’ Leonard thought, his eyes bulging in surprise. 

“What is it, sir?” Jonas asked, seeing the Bishop’s reaction. 

“It is much worse than we feared, young Jonas,” Sebastian started. “What you saw in the garden was nothing. You know why I was knocked out?”

“I am not sure, sir. Because of the other blue core that was here?”

“No, Jonas. I almost bested him. The heretic is much worse than we feared.” Jonas cocked his head to the side, evaluating what the Bishop was saying, unsure what could be worse than a loose heretic running around and casting spells. Simple spells but still spells. 

“You see, there are things long forgotten after our esteemed Pope brought peace to our world,” Sebastian explained. “At the time when the free mages ran around, inflicting false beliefs on the commoners and poisoning their minds with their filthy magic, there were few who did much worse.”

“I do not understand, sir. What could be worse than ruining the path to our lord?” Jonas asked, unsure.

“Our Pope is mighty, yes. And leads the astray sheep back to the promised path. And he always could do it thanks to the gifts granted to him by heaven. His affinity, creation, has allowed him to cure what is incurable and provide us with what we lack.” Jonas nodded, his eyes wide, remembering all the episodes covered in their holly books he loved as a child. 

“But against him stood few great foes. There were members of the cursed Conclave who practiced dark arts, aimed to cause confusion and undo what our Pope worked so hard to provide.”

“How?” Jonas asked, disbelieving. 

“Chaos magic,” Leonard answered, looking the shocked young priest in the eye. “An affinity that can undo any spell, attack, and even take away our cores. Such is the power the heretic has gained,” the Bishop paused. “He must be found before he fully harnesses it.”

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