BT - Book 1 - Chapter 22 (Patreon)

“And this will be your room Squire Silver,” the servant opened the door to a mid-sized room about twelve stories up in one of the towers.  “You’ve been assigned to Ser Osswain for your apprenticeship.  Squire Thrakos will be by soon with your first assignment.”

“Do you know when Squire Thrakos plans to visit?”  Micah asked, taking in the snug but well appointed apartment.  “Do I have time to draw a bath?”

“I would not presume to know what a squire does with their time,” the servant still refused to make eye contact with Micah, instead staring at his immaculately polished shoes.  “I do know that it is best not to make a knight wait.  The punishment for doing so is quite harsh.

“Understood,” Micah replied glumly, walking into the room.  

The door closed behind him with a click as the lock engaged.  He sighed.  They’d inducted him into the Royal Knights.  Micah Silver, Squire Third Class.  According to Martin, he should be proud.  Usually the Master of Curriculum required test after test, constant proof of skill and loyalty, before a blessed would be made into a squire.  As it stood, Micah was brought into the Royal Knights at one of the youngest ages in recent memory.

It didn’t come without a cost.  The locked door confirmed that he wasn’t trusted, and even five minutes of conversation with Martin confirmed that the older man didn’t respect him.  He might be part of the Knights, but there wasn’t any sense of belonging.  They considered him useful, an asset.  Martin had so much as told him that any escape attempts would be punished with either death or dismemberment.

Micah walked over to the reading desk built into the wall of his apartment.  The arrangement was quite cozy, a bookshelf stocked with tomes on magical theory and ritual magic sat just to the left while a mage light hung from a gossamer thread above the desk.  He only needed to tap it to turn the light on, illuminating the room without any need for the dangers of an open flame candle.

On the desk lay a book.  Its cover weathered and yellow to the point that he could barely make out the title: Time and its Uses.  He opened the book gently, careful not to pull or tear at its ancient binding.  The book was a treatise on magical theory, specializing in time magic with a handful of spells scattered throughout its length.

He lost himself in the grimoire.  It divided the study of time into two major fields, transferring one’s thoughts and perception forward or backward in time and the actual energy related to the passage of time itself.  Perception was the easiest field to learn, with foresight and time echo being the two most discussed introductory spells.

Time echo was intriguing.  Although a fifth tier spell, it was a much easier spell to learn and use than foresight, instead focusing on past events that occurred at a specific location.  The user could cast their sight and hearing into the past, rewinding events at up to ten times their normal speed, only limited by the hefty per second mana cost of the spell.   At his current level, Micah could only rewind events by a couple hours, but he could almost immediately see how the spell would aid either a diplomat or a spy.

The sections on temporal energy were even more interesting, albeit borderline useless.  Temporal energy was just too powerful.  There were ways to recreate it with mana, but they were simply too mana intensive to do anything.  The book contained a powerful spell, temporal transfer that allowed a caster to create ‘age’ with mana or to draw ‘age’ from a target into the caster.  It was just that it took a full mana pool to create even a month of age, and drawing age into oneself predictably aged the caster.

With a single knock on the door, Brenden strode into the room.  He glanced around briefly before smiling at Micah.  The smile was an ugly thing, his lips were pulled back tight, displaying a mouth full of teeth without a single ounce of mirth.

“Squire Silver,” Brenden walked over to Micah as he placed a cloth bookmark in the grimoire and set it down.  “It’s good to see you so studious now that we’re both squires to the same Knight and all.  Ser Osswain sent me to get you. He has a task for you, but first he wants to show you a surprise to commemorate your induction into the order.”

Micah followed Brenden, thoughts flitting through his mind as he speculated as to the nature of the surprise.  Neither Brenden nor Martin were sentimental sorts.  Anything they gave him would come with a price tag, usually one far above and beyond what the gift was worth.

Brenden opened the door with a mocking flourish.  Inside was a well appointed dining hall with five sumptuous meals set out on a beautiful table carved from a single old growth tree.  Micah’s breath caught in his throat.

“No,” he whispered as Esther bounded around the table toward him, flinging herself into the air to wrap him in a hug.

“Martin thought you’d like to catch up with your family,” Brenden said with a laugh and a wink.  “Once you’re done with lunch, we’ll have them escorted to their new living arrangements and you can begin your project.”

“You mean-” Micah’s eyes went wide with horror.

“Squire Thrakos invited us to live on the estate of the Royal Knights,” his mother interjected excitedly.  “Apparently people have tried to use the families of Royal Knights as hostages against them in the past.  Now it’s standard practice to pay their family a generous stipend to relocate so that we can’t be used against you.  Of course, we couldn’t turn down such a generous offer, especially if it had the potential to put your work at risk.”

“Hostages,” Micah turned back to Brenden, his eyes wild.

“Tragic really,” Brenden’s eyes danced while he tried to adopt a dour tone.  “Families killed and tortured.  These days we try to do everything we can to prevent such a sad recurrence.”

Brenden left the room, Micah’s eyes still trained on him.  A slap on his back returned his attention to the room.  Trevor’s hand was on his shoulder as the big man leaned in for a hug, engulfing Micah almost entirely.

“By the Sixteen you’re huge now,” emotion choked his brother’s voice.  “You’re only Seventeen and you’ve probably already passed my level entirely.”

Trevor grasped Micah’s shoulders, pushing him back a step so he could look him up and down.  Micah noticed the shine of unshed tears in the other man’s eyes.

“You don’t know what the past year has been like Micah,” Trevor’s smile only wavered slightly.  “You didn’t get to come home from the Golden Drakes so we never really got a chance to catch up, but I’ve been so proud of you.  Plus, the minute they announced you were being transferred to the Royal Academy.”

“Well,” Trevor smiled sheepishly, wiping away the moisture pooling around his eyes.  “I just couldn’t shut up about how proud I was of you.  I think I told everyone at the Lancers about ‘my younger brother, the Royal Knight candidate’ at least twenty times.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Micah smiled back, trying his hardest to make the most of the moment with his family.  “They’ve been working me so hard that I haven’t had a chance to come home and visit.  It’ll be nice to have you all close at hand.”

Trevor shooed Esther away before leaning in close.  “What about your boss, that Brenden guy?” Trevor whispered to him conspiratorially.  “He’s pretty cute in an overly authoritative sort of way.”

“What?” Micah sputtered, “by the Sixteen no.  Never.  Gods above, I thought you liked girls.”

“I do like girls,” Trevor winked at him, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t like boys too.  I never really spoke about it back in Basil’s Cove.  It’s a smaller city and they frown on alternative lifestyles there.  You saw how the housewives treated Mom.  Can you think of what they’d do if either of us did anything other than settle down with a nice girl?  Hells, I wasn’t about to date an elf, boy or girl.  There’d just be too many rumors.”

“Here,” Trevor smiled, slapping him on the shoulder once again.  “Things are different in the Capital.  I don’t know if I’m going to let Mom and Dad know, I know they’re pretty keen on grandkids, but if the right guy comes along.”  Trevor shrugged.

“Squire Thrakos is NOT the right guy,” Micah shook his head empathetically.  “Please.  Anyone associated with the Knights should be considered off limits.  There’s a lot going on behind the scenes that I can’t talk about, but just don’t.”

“Spoilsport,” Trevor replied at a normal volume, pulling away from Micah with a laugh.  “Come on, lunch is getting cold and it sounds like you still have an assignment this afternoon.”

After the meal, Brenden led the way to Martin, constantly trying to draw his attention.  Micah knew better than to engage.  Brenden just wanted to bait and taunt him about his family.  The older man couldn’t help but target Micah’s every weakness.  He couldn’t really make out whether Brenden didn’t like him or if he was just an asshole.  Either way, he wasn’t keen to start an argument he couldn’t win.

Together they walked into a laboratory, books and reagents meticulously stored up against its vaulted stone walls.  Martin absently waved them in as he put the finishing touches on a ritual circle.  At its center, a swarthy man wearing only ragged undergarments struggled against metal bonds holding him to a steel slab.  Micah squinted at the man, his face vaguely triggering a thread of memory.

“Micah!” The man shouted at him as soon as his eyes fell upon Micah.  “You gotta tell these guys that it’s all a mistake.  Whatever they says I’ve done, I didn’t do it!”

“Who?” Micah cocked his head to the side, trying to ignore Brenden’s damning smile at his side.

“It’s me!” The man rattled his wrists against his bonds.  “Gheb!  The carriage driver?  I brought you from Basil’s Cover to Bitollan.”

“This man is a criminal Micah,” Martin replied indolently, motioning to Brenden who quickly gagged the struggling man.  “He’s a senior agent in the Resistance.  Under interrogation with a Truth Seer he admitted to gathering information and passing it on to dissident forces.  He’s already been found guilty of treason.”

“The Resistance?” Micah asked, frowning slightly.  “What are they resisting?”

“What indeed,” Martin smiled, walking over to a chair within arms reach of Gheb and seating himself.  “Everything really.  They’re a group of forgotten.  Their stated purpose is to acquire ‘equal rights’ for the forgotten, but really they’re nothing more than a bunch of rabble rousers, trying to create chaos and benefit from the suffering of others.”

“What is he doing here then?” Micah asked slowly, his eyes flicking from Gheb to Martin and back.

“The same thing you are,” Martin smiled.  “Serving your purpose in the greater scheme of things.”

“You see Micah,” Martin continued.  “Brenden told me you’ve begun reading up on the spell temporal transfer.  What the written grimoires don’t speak of is the theoretical breakthrough made by Karrin Dakkora.  Unfortunately, she didn’t have any time affinity so she couldn’t act on the theory, but she created a ritual to amplify temporal transfer.  One that would allow a caster to transfer years from one target to another.”

“Every nation has an organization like the Royal Knights,” at a nod from Martin, Brenden handed Micah a sheaf of paper containing the formula for a ritual.  “The problem is that it takes years to get soldiers to higher levels.  I’ve spent most of my life working my way to level forty four.  Enough to make me a full Knight, but I know my limits.  I don’t have enough time to make it far past level sixty in this lifetime.”

“Battles between kingdoms are decided by powers above level eighty,” Brenden grabbed a censer full of incense and placed it at Micah’s feet as Martin kept speaking.  “The problem is that anyone of that level is too old.  Often pneumonia is more likely to claim their life than an enemy’s arrow.”

“But,” a mad smile occupied Martin’s face.  “What if Dakkora’s ritual works?  What if we can transfer years from an old man like me and give them to refuse?  Then we can put our malcontents and prisoner’s to work while giving the elite of the Kingdom a second life.”

“I know my place,” Martin bowed from his chair with a self-depreciating flourish.  “I’m an old man that’s getting close to his limit.  I’m useful to the Kingdom, but if I die it won’t be crippling.  I am our test case.  Your job is to get that formula to work.  Once you succeed with me, you’ll return the truly powerful to the full glory of their youth.”

“Then,” Martin’s eyes shone with an unhealthy fervor, “the Kingdom will stand tall.  We’ll have blessed above level one hundred.  Once their classes evolve, they’ll practically become demigods.  None of our neighbors will be able to stand before us.  We’ll unite the continent in a generation.”

Micah looked down at the formula before glancing at Brenden.  The older man was standing in front of the door.  His only escape would be when the cooldown on his blessing ran down.