Chapter 20: Arc 2 Ch. 8: Hearts and Minds, Part I

Ciedrich…! Why the hell did that creep have to show up now? I should have known this would happen. I should have tried to get away with Alice sooner. I should have—

“How fortunate for us! I was just thinking of you,” Ciedrich continued with that same sickeningly pleasant smile. “A special astrological event is occurring tonight that allows mages to gather a powerful magical ingredient. After our last meeting was… cut short, I was dearly hoping you would join me.”

At this point, I couldn’t tell if it was the rush of adrenaline or Alice’s stamina potion finally kicking in that kept me standing up when my legs desperately wanted to collapse under me.

“Apologies, my lord,” I managed to say with a quick glance toward Alice. “We were just leaving.”

The creepy nobleman ignored me, giving my tattered dress a long, curious glance. “I am delighted to see that you have so thoroughly enjoyed your new outfit I helped you acquire!”

Oh no… My stomach started doing somersaults all over again. Ciedrich caught me wearing the dress he bought for me, the same clothes I’d been wearing since yesterday, a once beautiful dress now practically ruined. That had to be just about every worst medieval fashion faux pas imaginable, all happening at the same time! And I was in no shape to make a hasty retreat, physically or magically!

“W-Well, I… I think I might have some free time tonight…”

I felt Alice grip my hand tighter than she ever had before. Then she whispered two words.

“Don’t go.”

When I turned to look at her, I found her trying to hide behind me with her hands trembling slightly and her eyes transfixed on the ground. What did she know about him that I didn’t? Maybe I’d rather not know. We could still find any way out of this. Of course, there was no reason I had to go anywhere with him!

I cleared my throat. “Actually, we really were just about to—”

“By the way, you left something behind in my home,” Ciedrich interrupted with a sharp voice. He reached inside his suit and pulled out what looked like some kind of slipper and a long piece of… Fuck, that was the broken high heel shoe I smashed on his foot last night! “I am a generous man, but it would not bode well if high society were to find out a noble lady of your stature was so… forgetful.”

Christ, was he threatening to blackmail me?! This was insane! I, I could still…

No, even if I could find the strength, there was no use trying to run. Deep down, I knew that eventually I would have to settle things with Ciedrich once and for all, one way or another. If he wasn’t entirely full of crap, I might even get something valuable out of this if I ‘played my cards’ right. And it wasn’t like I would be completely defenseless with my new weapon and spells at my disposal. Well, if I could even use the latter at all tonight…

I gave Alice’s hands a gentle squeeze. “Hey, I have to get going now. I’ll see you later, okay?”

She looked like she desperately wanted to say something, but the words just wouldn’t come out. More than ever, I wanted to stay by her side, even for a minute longer. But that would have to wait for another time.

Ciedrich motioned for me to follow him, and the two of us took off down the street. I glanced behind me one last time.

I’ll never forget the look I saw on Alice’s face like she was never going to see me again.

***

Thanks to Ciedrich’s slow pace—probably because of his limp—and the sensation of my physical strength gradually returning for whatever reason, I somehow managed to conceal the full extent of my condition as we meandered toward wherever it was that he wanted to take me. I kept looking for a convenient getaway plan along the way, scanning the faces of passersby and guards for anyone familiar to no avail.

At least, until I locked eyes with Zack. He stopped midstride when he recognized me, still wearing that same set of guard armor. I wasn’t sure I could really call him a ‘friend,’ but if there was anyone who could help me out of this right now…!

I started to yell out to him, but Ciedrich grabbed my wrist and shot me a warning glare. Zack looked like he wanted to slam his fist through a brick wall. All I could do was grit my teeth.

Even as we continued along, I figured that as long as we stayed within the city, there was hope! I could still…

I froze when I realized his intention. Ciedrich brought me to one of those lavish horse-drawn carriages I saw yesterday—the ones that weren’t pulled by horses, but rather by those creepy undead reanimated horses. He handed a few coins to a well-dressed man standing next to the carriage and whispered a few words in the ear, or where the ear should have been, of the giant skeletal creature harnessed to the carriage.

Then he opened the door and gestured for me to get in, a nauseating smile spread across his face.

***

The soft cushions of my seat in the carriage were cold comfort for the reality that every bumpy second brought me further and further away from the city and everything I knew in this world. How the hell did this happen?

This felt much, much worse since we didn’t have a coachman with us in front driving the damn thing. My eyes jumped from the window to Ciedrich and back, watching and waiting for any sudden move. No, I should take the time to plan and be prepared for anything. If I sat just like this with my legs to the side, and put my satchel on my lap like that, I could rest my hand in the perfect position to grab my dagger’s hilt and thrust it—

“Is everything alright, Lady Beryl?” Ciedrich asked.

“Y-Yes, of course, my lord!” I said with a startle.

I tried channeling mana toward my hand again. I felt… something. Alright, my mana was finally coming back! I just needed to stall long enough, and I would eventually have enough to teleport the hell out if things went… Actually, I really didn’t want to think about what could happen.

“You smell delightful tonight,” Ciedrich smiled, eyeing my ponytail.

“Uh, yeah, thanks…”

This silent atmosphere was getting to be too much to bear, and something Zack told me last night lingered at the front of my mind.

“Lord Ciedrich, do you know why people would be spreading rumors about you?”

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His face hardened for a moment, then he released the tension with a chuckle. “That’s quite a question isn’t it? I sometimes wonder why people do anything.” He stared out the window for a minute before apparently deciding he should actually try answering the question. “As you probably figured out, my parents passed away when I was fairly young. I inherited all of House von Brauer’s wealth all at once, with only our maid Helga staying with me. I’m sure you can imagine the kinds of things that were said about me behind my back. You know how people… are.”

He gave me a long, unsettling glance before he went back to staring out the window with his chin resting on his knuckles. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to ask him that…

I tried thinking of another topic to take my mind off of the awkard silence and whatever was to come, but nothing came to mind. Not until the carriage came to a sudden halt in the middle of a forest road, from the look of it.

“Ciedrich, why have we stopped?” I asked, trying to keep the concern out of my voice.

He stayed silent for an unbearably long time as he looked out of the window before he finally spoke up.

“We’re here.”

He exited the carriage slowly, taking care to not put too much pressure on his injured foot, holding the door open for me. We really had arrived in the middle of nowhere next to a forest I didn’t recognize. The last of the setting sun had disappeared beneath the horizon, and twilight was turning into nightfall. With a quick spell, Ciedrich conjured a small globe of light above his hand.

“Our destination is not terribly far. Please watch your step, my lady.”

Okay, this was getting way too creepy. “I don’t believe you’ve mentioned where we are going,” I said.

A flash of indignation crossed his face before he composed himself. “Fortune favors the bold, Lady Beryl.”

I gritted my teeth again, but said nothing in response.

As Ciedrich led me into the forest, I heard the ‘horse’ behind us turn around and begin its journey back to the city. That… wasn’t a good sign.

The crisp night air was a bit chilly, but not unbearably so. I had to imagine that it must have been around early or late summer in this world, and the color of the foliage we passed suggested the latter. Ciedrich wasn’t following a clear path into the woods, occasionally pointing out a root in our way we had to step over and guiding his magical light to illuminate the ground. I gripped the hilt of my dagger tighter with each step, but after a while when night was upon us in full, we apparently reached our destination.

Ciedrich motioned for me to stop in the middle of a clearing in the forest, surrounded by a ring of trees.

“There’s… nothing here?” I asked, ready to unleash my weapon at a moment’s notice.

He smiled, quickly dispelling his conjured light. “Not here. Up.”

Huh? Was this some kind of trick? I stared at him nervously, but lowered my guard when I saw how relaxed he was tilting his neck up to stare at the sky. I couldn’t help but do the same, and the sight that met my eyes nearly floored me.

“Two… three moons?!”

I never had taken a good look at the night sky before, so there was nothing I could do to hide my astonishment at the sight of a familiarly light-colored moon with a hint of blue-green nearly overlapping in space with an ominously darker, almost violet moon. And somewhere next to them looked to be another similar object, distorted by incredibly bizarre, shifting colors of the other two.

Ciedrich laughed. “One of them you are seeing is considered an optical illusion of sorts. This is a very rare eclipse of Gadea’s two moons that only happens once every twenty-three years. We call the bright moon Solana, and the dark one is known as Umbra. They both appear to have some manner of magical properties we can only begin to imagine, but when they meet like this… Look, it’s starting.”

He gestured with his arms around us, and a ring of glowing lights began illuminating the clearing. I bent down to take a closer look at the nearest source of light, and it looked kind of like a mushroom.

They were literally magic mushrooms! “Is this really part of the eclipse?” I asked.

He nodded. “This clearing is a special place that draws from the heightened ambient mana during this phenomenon, and those are proof of it. You should be able to feel it all around you, no?”

Now that I focused more on my surroundings, I could sense a humming vibration in the air, almost like the space around us was coming alive. I took a deep breath and let out a sigh of relief as I felt my body filling with mana, like I was finally able to drink a cold glass of water after being parched for hours. My mana, it seemed like it was all really starting to come back to me!

“And now for the grand finale,” Ciedrich said, reaching one hand into his suit.

I immediately tensed up and reached a hand into my satchel, but stopped when I saw him pull out what looked like a dull grey crystal.

“Most mana crystals crumble to dust when their internally stored mana is expended. But when used for certain types of magic, some crystals are simply depleted. Inert, in a way. Mages can channel the large amounts of ambient mana during this time to ‘refill’ these with mana that is slightly more suited to summoning magic. It’s an inherent ability anyone with magic affinity is capable of doing.” He paused, offering the object in his hand to me. “Would you like to try?”

I couldn’t sense any ill intentions from his gesture. I took the dull crystal in my own hands and began focusing my mind on the gently humming space around us. Was this another weird ‘test’ of his that he wasn’t going to tell me how to properly do on my own?

Whatever. The same way I channeled mana toward my hand before, I started channeling mana into the crystal. I felt my own mana begin entering the crystal until I stopped and tried to ‘grab’ the mana around me instead. It was one of the strangest sensations I’d experienced yet, like being at the bottom of a pool and able to slowly guide water with my mind. Following my intuition, I tried ‘grabbing’ as much mana as I could around me and focusing it into the crystal.

Slowly, a faint light formed within it, growing bigger by the second. It was only a matter of minutes until I had enough control over the process to sense that the mana crystal had reached its capacity, now glowing a satisfying light blue color.

“A success!” Ciedrich said with a smile that looked surprisingly genuine. “Well done, Lady Beryl. That is yours to keep.”

That was definitely unexpected, to say the least. I couldn’t tell what he was trying to play at any more, but for the moment, I didn’t really care. I took another minute to soak in that incredible scene far above and around us.

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t help but think that if I was here surrounded by this beautiful ambience with a girl I loved, I bet she would find this scene breathtakingly romantic. All alone out here, just the two of us…

Wait.

Oh, shit.

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