Unruly Summon Chapter 10: Lies (Patreon)

"Ug," I groaned, trying to remember how to open my eyes.

I successfully managed my difficult quest on the third attempt, and was rewarded for my victory with the sight of the wooden ceiling of my borrowed room, coupled with a pounding headache.

"Wasn't I in the courtyard?" I mumbled.

"You passed out from mana exhaustion," came an answering voice. "You shouldn't try to cast spells when you're already worn out."

"Mary?" I asked, just to confirm, because it was going to be a few more minutes until I was up to sitting up.

"Yup. I carried you all the way back!" she proudly declared.

"Before changing, the poor girl," came a second voice, this one belonging to Christine, assuming my ears were now functioning correctly. "I've had some hot water brought in, and we've found some clothes that should fit, so please wash and dress yourself before your session with the princess."

"What? Why would we both need to change?"

No-one answered.

"Did I miss something?"

"... You threw up," answered Mary, sounding somewhat reluctant. She probably wanted to keep quiet about it, but was obligated to answer me.

"Yes, you did," confirmed Christine. "From what I heard, you once again did something incredibly foolish, knocking yourself out and wasting the scant time we have. And since Mary was holding you upright it the time, she got the worst of it. I know it wasn't deliberate, but nevertheless, I feel compelled to ask that you please don't mistreat our staff."

Had I been capable of moving, I'd have glared at her for implying I was mistreating anyone. Yes, I'd been a bit silly, but it had been a reflex. I was injured, so I tried to heal myself.

... How the heck did that become a reflex when I'd only ever healed myself once? It hadn't even been with the same spell! Was it some sort of weird hero instinct?

Had my mana muscle recovered enough during the enforced map to cast it again? How did I find out? Would healing magic even deal with mana exhaustion in the first place? Probably not, or Mary would have cast it.

"Well, are you getting up or not?" asked Christine.

"Not yet. I can't move."

She clicked her tongue in annoyance. "Mary? Please get him ready, even if he complains. If it's just mana exhaustion, he should be fine in half an hour or so. "

"Uh..." she said, sounding conflicted about it.

"It's okay. Until you're done, his opinion doesn't matter. Consider it payback."

"Yes, Mistress," she agreed, suddenly sounding cheerful again.

"Hey!" I complained, not enjoying Mary's sudden swing of opinion.

"You may not have noticed, but you're already naked," pointed out Christine. "We could hardly put you to bed in vomit-soaked clothing. Mary stripped you off in the courtyard, and Wendy hosed you down with water magic."

"Not just Mary, but Wendy saw everything too?"

"And half a dozen knights and guards that came running to investigate the explosion," helpfully added Mary as she threw the blanket off me.

I blushed furiously, assaulted by a dose of mortification that did far more damage than any fireball. I was too stunned to even comment when Mary effortlessly lifted me from the bed.

Christine sighed, although since she was outside of my field of vision, I had no idea what it was at. "Look, I'm sorry if I'm being harsh, but imagine things from my point of view. Humanity is in a position where its survival is best measured in days rather than weeks. Every hour matters, each one claiming the lives of more of our soldiers. Now all of humanity has staked its future on you, but we have no intention of sending you to your death, because that would just kill all of us, too. You need to win. You need training, and people are fighting and dying on the front lines to buy you the time you need. This is the second time in two days you've incapacitated yourself and delayed that training. How many lives do you think the delays will cost? How do you think I feel about them, given my position as your bodyguard."

"... Sorry," I muttered, but on reflection, I wasn't sure why. It hadn't been deliberate, like the body strengthening mishap. I'd simply followed Wendy's instructions, then accidentally tried casting another spell on top. With Wendy skipping over the bulk of the theory, I had no idea that serious mana overuse would knock me unconscious. Based on my experience with my first cast of Sanatio, I was expecting a mana potion to solve my problems.

... Wait, if we used mana from the air, what the heck did a mana potion actually do? It obviously didn't supply the drinker with more mana. Not a hugely relevant question to occupy myself with at the present moment in time, but there were quite a lot of irrelevant things I was prepared to think about if it distracted me from the way Mary was enthusiastically scrubbing my naked, paralysed body.

"Just... please don't do anything unnecessary," concluded Christine. "Now I know you're... uh... modest, so I'll wait outside until you're decent again."

I heard the door click open and shut, presumably indicating her lack of presence.

Thankfully, as Christine had promised, I was starting to get some movement back, already able to wriggle my fingers. Not that wriggly fingers were anywhere near enough to defend myself from the overenthusiastic maid.

"Were you always that strong?" I asked.

"I can use body strengthening. My mana capacity has always been poor, so it was a good way to train my control without draining myself too rapidly, and there was a small amount of overlap with the images needed to cast healing magic. With my limited mana, I was never going to be a great healer, but I was at least aiming for Sanatio."

And then I'd gone and cast it in front of her accidentally. That must have sucked almost as much as my vomit bath. "Sorry. It must have hurt to see me cast it effortlessly like that, then."

"Not at all! Seeing your accomplishment made me happy!"

Couldn't argue with that. She was the same earlier today, too. Was it because I was the hero, fighting to save her?

"Well, thanks for getting started, but I think I've got enough movement back to finish cleaning myself, now," I said, once I'd regained enough movement in my arms.

"Sorry, but Christine told me to get you ready, and not to listen to you until I was done," she answered without even pausing.

No, she'd said my opinion didn't matter. Close, but not quite the same thing. Something had always niggled me about Mary's behaviour, but now it was getting to the point I couldn't write it off as her simply being naturally enthusiastic. She'd strictly obeyed her orders, and became incredibly uncomfortable when mine conflicted with someone else's, but all it took was Christine telling her to ignore my opinion, and suddenly she was able to act against my will without missing a beat. Occasions where she should have grown frustrated at me—for example me throwing up all over her, or accidentally casting a spell she'd been unable to learn—she simply didn't.

It all felt a bit off. Unnatural.

Stephanie had claimed any magic that affected free will was illegal, and Mary had removed her collar without issue, or else that would have been my first thought.

And then I remembered Wendy's about-face with Magus Visus. The way she'd glanced at Mary.

Perhaps it wasn't the collar?

By the time she'd finished washing me, I seemed to have completely recovered. Leaving the privacy screen to get dressed confirmed the pair of us were alone in the room. A glance at the arrowslits revealed no-one overtly hanging around outside. There could have been spies just out of sight, or Christine could have had her ear to the door, or someone could be watching with magic. It was a risk, but I simply had to know.

Spell images seemed to all be simple enough; gather mana and imagine it doing what you wanted it to do. Even the magic words followed a pattern. So I imagined mana gathering in my eyes, filtering the incoming light, and showing me what I wanted to see.

"Magus Visus," I whispered, trying to keep the invocation as quiet as possible, but as usual, the magic took my words and amplified them, odd harmonics echoing around the room.

"Tom! You shouldn't be using mana yet!" admonished Mary, for the first time ever sounding genuinely cross at me.

Whether Christine had heard my spell or not, she certainly heard Mary's yell, and she burst back into the room.

"Seriously?" she complained.

"I'm fine. I've long since recovered," I answered, quickly grabbing the change of clothes from where they were draped over the back of the chair and darting back behind the privacy screen.

"Then why aren't you dressed? If you can move around already, you should have been ready ages ago."

"Because you ordered Mary to wash me regardless of my opinion, and didn't include any clauses about backing off once I could move again."

Christine grunted in displeasure as I threw on the clothes, but didn't answer back. Simple trousers with a rope belt, along with a tunic. Both halves were scratchy, made from something like poorly woven hemp, which I suspected I'd find myself rather irritated by before too long. For now, though, I had more important things to think about. Most notably, the new overlay to my vision, showing me the nearby flows of mana.

For the most part, it was like looking into a thick fog. I couldn't see far through it, which made partial sense given that mana was supposed to be pervasive. Since it was also supposed to be unlimited, I wasn't sure why the spell worked at all. Should the fog not be infinitely thick? But for whatever reason, I could see a few yards, even through otherwise solid objects, like the privacy screen. In fact, to my mana sight, the privacy screen, and even the walls of the room, were completely invisible, indistinguishable from the air.

Christine and Mary were voids in the fog. As they moved, the fog rolled around them, obviously avoiding coming into contact. Nevertheless, small amounts seemed to be sucked into Christine, whether it tried to avoid her or not, where it flowed through her bones, nerves, blood vessels. Every part of her body, but in such a way that I could pick out individual components. At a guess, she was using body strengthening. Did she keep it active at all times? Was it reflex in response to Mary's shout?

Was it something more nefarious, a prelude to an attack against me?

The sword at her hip glowed more brightly than the fog, presumably enchanted in some way. As did her armour, and I could see a few other small trinkets glowing beneath that armour, but since only the enchanted parts were visible, I couldn't tell what they were.

And as for my suspicion of nefariousness... Mary only carried a single enchanted item; her collar. And I could see thin wisps of mana detaching from it and floating into her brain.

I finally had my first definitive piece of evidence that these people had lied to me.