Chapter 21: Chapter 21: The Spellcaster’s Guild 

The Hero Became a Mousegirl
Chapter 21: The Spellcaster’s Guild 

 

Underground complexes were far from my area of expertise as Stelyrus’s demons were more keen on crafting grotesque castles above ground. Given my current level I felt confident exploring alone, though I still kept my eye out for obvious traps. 

There were a few injuries that would result in instant death no matter how high someone’s vitality score was. One of the easiest was beheading, which was instant death for all but the strangest of creatures, and the one I was most vigilant of. I assumed as long as I protected my neck, any other wounds I sustained could be healed. 

“I know they’re not permitted around the city, but I really wish I’d been carrying my sword,” I grumbled to myself as I came to a split in the path. Utilizing my holy magic I temporarily augmented my eyes so they would be able to see the auras of living creatures. When I saw nothing, I picked the left path for no reason other than I wanted to. 

After walking for a bit, I came across an abrupt end to my path. Figuring that there must have been some mechanism in the stone to open a secret door, I reached for the wall only for my hand to phase straight through it. 

“Illusion magic,” I smiled and stepped through the wall, finding a staircase on the other side. “I wonder if they expected me to give up and check the other path without questioning it.” 

Descending the stairs I entered a large natural cavern filled to the brim with slimes, each nearly as tall as I was, and at least twice as wide. “Slimes… I really, really, hate slimes.” 

Though there were a few varieties of slimes, the one I seemed to encounter most often was an orangish-color with the ability to melt metal, burn away clothing, and cause painful rashes on flesh. Those unlucky enough to run afoul of such a slime often returned to camp looking as if they’d just been trapped in a tent fire. 

“Alright then,” I took a battle-ready stance, cracking the knuckles on my right hand. “Let’s go slimes.” 

Using my holy magic I wreathed myself in a defensive barrier. Once my barrier was complete I funneled my mana just outside it creating a swirling suit of armor made entirely from blue flames. With my armor in place I decided to give my newly acquired earth magic a try by sending mana into the earth, willing it to take shape on my behalf. 

From the ground in front of me a staff of stone and hardened earth sprouted, the perfect weapon for slime subjugation. My preparations complete I took my earthen staff and lunged at the nearest slime, penetrating it with my staff before leaping into the opening I’d created to burn it from the inside out. 

The slime boiled, its fleshy outside tearing apart allowing it’s rancid innards to spill out over the cavern floor. Once it’d been eliminated I moved on to the next, repeating my assault until all the slimes had been defeated. 

“Bleh… nothing I can do about the smell,” I grumbled, holding my nose as I dismissed my magic. The putrid smell of the slimes fluids, made worse by the application of fire, hung in the air making my stomach churn. Desperate to escape I made my way to the far side of the chamber, where I found a single wooden door camouflaged into the wall. 

Twisting the door handle I let myself into the hallway beyond only to duck immediately as a lance of ice flew over my head.

In the darkness a second ice lance formed, this time I summoned a shield of fire, melting it into nothing before it could hit me. 

“Wait!” A voice called from nothing before several motes of golden light appeared to show three hooded figures ahead of me. “We mean you no harm.” 

“That’s not very convincing after you attacked me,” I frowned calling up a few balls of fire to intimidate them. 

“We thought an agent of the king had found their way here. Forgive us.” 

“And what makes you think I’m not an agent of the king?” 

“The band on your arm.” 

I gazed down at my arm in surprise to find that at some point the sleeve of my dress had been cut, revealing the band I’d kept hidden underneath it. “Guess I’m rather fortunate the fabric was cut, otherwise the three of you would’ve killed me.” 

“No, we only wished to subdue you. Killing you would only come after you revealed everything the king had learned about this place.” 

“Scary,” I chuckled allowing my fire to vanish. “I followed a blond haired woman through a transportation circle. I’d have given up the moment I found myself in this dungeon, but the return circle was nowhere to be seen.” 

“You know Lady Cesarina?” 

“Not especially, she ran into me in the market and I thought it’d be fun to chase after her.” 

“Fun?” The lead hooded figure turned to whisper something with their compatriots before waving for me to follow. “We will guide you to the guild. You will need to travel at least that far in order for us to send you home.” 

The leader whom I’d been speaking with removed his hood to reveal himself to be a middle-aged human with fiery red hair. He led the rest of us down the hall, his compatriots choosing to keep themselves hooded in my presence. 

The path twisted and split several times, though with a guide it bothered me little. I simply made a mental note of which paths to avoid in the event I had to come here again, and followed on in silence. 

“This is the Spellcaster’s Guild,” The leader said, a giant stone moving at the wave of his hand to reveal a massive circular chamber. 

There were at least a dozen doors splitting off the first chamber, each ornate in its design. While the chamber itself seemed to be something similar to a mess hall, as there were several tables with small groups of people sitting around eating. 

“How many of you are here?” I asked counting nine individuals in the room, beyond us. 

“We work hard to make sure no one knows,” The leader informed me. “So that if any of us are captured, such information cannot make its way back to the king. Now follow me, I’ll take you to a room where you can await Lady Cesarina’s judgment.” 

“I thought you were going to send me home?” 

“Lady Cesarina is quite benevolent, so I am sure you will be returned home unscathed. Still, it is ultimately her decision to make.” 

“Right. So we’ve gone from, ‘we mean you no harm’, to ‘you are our prisoner to punish or release as we see fit’.” 

“You are an incredibly powerful sorcerer, I assure you we don’t want to antagonize you. Forgive me for misspeaking.” 

“Just take me to the cell.”

“You won’t be imprisoned, you’ll be given a comfortable room to wait as we inform Lady Cesarina of your arrival.” 

“Right,” I sighed and followed after the leader who guided me into a small room furnished with a pair of plush couches. Without waiting to be told, I hopped on one of the couches, gazing at the trio who brought me here with upturned eyes. I’d intended to silently convey a bit of annoyance, but the blush my actions seemed to cause on my captor gave me the feeling I’d unintentionally done something embarrassing. 

Since I was making quite the show of my obedience all three of my captors vanished from the room, leaving me alone and presumably unsupervised. I used holy magic to check for auras, and though I wasn’t quite accustomed to using it, I probed the walls with my earth magic to check for peeping holes. 

Despite my earth magic’s less than stellar range and my inability to fully comprehend the feedback I was getting, I felt confident that I’d been left entirely unwatched. That gave some weight to the leader saying they didn’t want to antagonize me. This room seemed far from the kind of place one would keep a prisoner after all. 

I sat obediently on the couch for a bit as I waited for their lady to arrive, though boredom soon overcame me. To keep myself entertained I began fidgeting with my tail, curling it between my fingers, and then twirling in place to see if I could get it to naturally wrap around me. I was in the middle of my third twirl when the door to the room opened. 

“What… are you doing?” Cesarina asked as she stepped into the room. 

“Ah, nothing,” I froze and fell backward onto the couch as my face grew hot with embarrassment. 

“You’re awfully carefree for someone who waltzed in unannounced and killed all the slimes we’ve been raising for our defense.”

“Using a mindless creature that cannot be trained to know friend from foe is terrible defense.” 

“As if you could do better,” The woman huffed, crossing her arms before falling back onto the couch opposite mine. “I am Cesarina Flora Kalreya, Grand Sorcerer of the Spellcaster’s Guild. And you are?” 

“Caelan, my family and I are in Shadewind on vacation.” 

“Caelan huh?” Cesarina smiled. “I bet you were unaware, but you share your name with an ancient hero.”

“Really?” I fought back the urge to say the hero Cesarina spoke of and I were one and the same. 

“Yes. Though many of our archives were destroyed when the royal family began to persecute those with the capability to cast magic, we still have documents that date back nearly fifteen hundred years.” 

“I must admit that I was raised in a very rural community in a nation far from here. I was actually only banded recently after entering the kingdom unaware of its policies towards spellcasters. Do you happen to know why this kingdom has such a strange policy?” 

“It’s a long story,” Cesarina sighed. “Not a pleasant one either.” 

“I’d love to hear it. I don’t have anything better to do, and I can’t go home until you show me where the transportation circle is.” 

“It started about four hundred years ago. I believe King Cornelius IV was still alive at the time. The kingdom had just finished a massive western expansion, crushing many smaller nations in the process. As part of this expansion they claimed the city of Belstow, where a massive college dedicated to magic was located. A year later, plague spread rapidly across the kingdom.

“The plague, known as green lung disease, killed nearly everyone who caught it. Artificers and Alchemists together crafted defensive items and healing elixirs against the plague, but neither group created anything that could be mass produced. Obviously this meant that the nobility survived, as they could afford these rare items, while the common citizens died in droves. As the commoners learned that most of the noble class had survived the plague, riots broke out, and the kingdom fell into chaos. The king at the time declared that they’d tracked the source of the plague, it was a curse caused by the spellcasters of Belstow.”

You are reading story The Hero Became a Mousegirl at novel35.com

“So he turned the people against spellcasters, and then created the policy of banding so it looked as if he’d punished them?” 

“The bands come later. The King’s armies descended upon Belstow and laid siege to the college. It cost the lives of nearly a thousand of the King’s best soldiers, but they laid the college to waste, and then declared to the populous that they’d killed those responsible for the plague.”

“That college… it was eventually rebuilt into the Artificer’s college wasn’t it?” 

“You’ve been to Belstow then? Yeah, the Artificer’s built their compound on the bones of my ancestors. Just thinking about it pisses me off.” 

“So where do the bands come in?” 

“Well after the plague, the public came to distrust anyone who was born with magical abilities. Spellcasters were shunned by their families, and run out of their towns. Even if the kingdom had declared the culprits dead and justice completed, in the eyes of the people, the mere existence of spellcasters was another plague waiting to happen. 

“It was to this environment a young princess was born to the royal family. Following a custom of noble born children, the princess’s batton was made when she was seven, revealing that she was a Spellcaster. A few days later, she was found dead. One of the maids in the royal castle had strangled her in her sleep.” 

“What? Why?” 

“She would’ve been heir to the throne. I guess the maid in question didn’t want to risk a future where a plague bearer ruled the kingdom.” 

“So then…” 

“The bands came shortly after that, to police all spellcasters with the loss of their powers at the guards’ digression. The hope was that if something more drastic and permanent was put in place the public would stop fearing the spellcasters so much.”

“So people who could use magic got punished, as a means of protecting them?” 

“Originally, yeah. Though it’s been nearly three centuries since then, and it seems the current King has forgotten this entirely. As we speak he continues to bolster his ranks of mage hunters, and in many cities those who are known to be banded are treated quite poorly. You were wise to have it hidden under your sleeve.” 

“Is Shadewind one of the cities where magic is policed heavily?” 

“No, those cities are almost entirely in the far east of the kingdom. Still, better to get in the habit here.” 

“So tell me, if the banded are so heavily persecuted, why are you not removing people’s bands?” 

“If I could I would!” Cesarina hissed pulling up her sleeve to reveal her own band. “I’ve done everything I can to remove this thing. The only way we know how to make it work is to severe the arm.”

“Can arms be regrown?” 

“Not without rare elixirs we couldn’t hope to get our hands on. Our guild is forced to act in secrecy like thieves. Because of this we have little avenues to grow our wealth.” 

“Speaking of thieves, I happen to remember you stealing a considerable amount of food from some poor merchants in town.” 

“They are far from poor,” Cesarina’s eyes narrowed. “They’re awful people who deserve what they get. I never steal from the merchants who are fair.”

“So you’re stealing as a means of punishing them? Not because the people here are starving and you’re out of coin?” 

“We are not so destitute that we would let our members starve.” 

“Well then, perhaps you should stop with the thievery. Instead you could spread rumors exposing the practices of the nefarious merchants around town. Have the people run these unwanted schemers out for good.”

“You’re quite cunning I see.” 

“I’m a few things,” I moved to sit beside Cesarina. “May I see your band for a moment?” 

“Sure?” 

Wrapping my fingers around the band on Cesarina’s arm I infused it with holy magic, causing the band to glow with golden light, before shattering completely. Just as the band Syene had tried to put on me in Belstow had done. “There, all gone.” 

“W-W-What did you do?” 

“I umm… I could tell you, but it’s something that no one but me can replicate I’m afraid.” 

“H-How, why… wait, why are you still wearing a band if you can do this?!” 

“Mine is a fake. I’m sure I could take it off whenever, I just haven’t felt the need to.” 

“A fake band… magic that destroys bands,” Cesarina grasped my hands in hers. “Please Caelan, please join our guild. We need your power, with it we could change so many lives for the better.” 

“Well… can I have time to think on it.”

Cesarina whined before rolling onto the floor, bowing before me so that her forehead touched the ground. “Please Caelan, no, Miss Caelan, no, Lady Caelan! Great, beautiful, wonderful, benevolent, Goddess Caelan. You have to help us.” 

“Seriously, I’ll think about it.” 

“Is there anything I could do to get you to agree right now? I’ll do anything.”

“I already removed your band… why are you so desperate?” 

“Because,” Cesarina looked up at me with tear-soaked eyes. “This is my one wish. Ever since I was given the title of Grand Sorcerer I have sought a way to destroy these bands. They were a misguided attempt at mercy when they were created, and now they’re a mark of fear among our people. I’ve tried everything and right when I began to believe it completely hopeless, you appeared. I will do anything to secure your aid.” 

“I’m only one girl, and my methods can’t be replicated. There’s no way we could save everyone.” 

“Even if we can’t save everyone, we could still save hundreds.” 

“And what will you do about those who are getting their batons for the first time? Those who have yet to be banded?” 

“We just have to overturn the law.”

“How?” 

“Kill the king, and place you our magnanimous Lady Caelan on the throne.” 

“You’re talking of a rebellion! You realize how terrible that could end? Innocent people would die.” 

“Then… you could marry the King, and carefully educate your children so they will change the law when your husband dies.”

“I’m gay!” 

“Marry Princess Ruta then. She will someday claim the throne, perhaps you could twist her heart to our favor.” 

“You…” I pinched the bridge of my nose as a terrible headache began to form between my temples. “Fine, I promise to help you. But I’m not going to marry royalty, I just got my first girlfriend earlier today. Asking me to woo a princess is a bit harsh.” 

“As you wish. I would attempt to marry Princess Ruta myself… but the Kalreya family has fallen out of favor with His Majesty. All of us were banished from the royal capital when I was still an infant.” 

“I guess… thanks to the baton system you can’t simply sneak into the capital and woo the princess under a false identity huh?” 

“Not without an artificer we could trust to forge a false baton. Unfortunately, for fear of revealing ourselves to our enemies, we’ve been unable to forge an alliance with any artificers.” 

“That’s another thing I might be able to help you with,” I sighed. Please forgive me Syene, but it looks like you might be sharing in this troublesome guild’s affection.