Dark Lord in Chains 121 (Patreon)

As I looked at the exhausted state of Aria while the elven spy dragged herself away, I decided to call it a night. Teasing them was fun, but I still had some work to do. 

Like learning where exactly was their base, and how they accessed that. But, that didn’t prevent a jolt of disappointment from passing through me as I left Aria behind in her room, exhausted, tainted, and collapsed in her chair. It took quite a bit of willpower to ignore the temptation to stay back and spend more time with her, but I was afraid the spy would get away, and once she did, it would be hard to follow her. 

Even as I dressed quickly, I cast a subtle tracker on her, one that would only send a weak signal when she used magic, hopefully, her aura hiding it. Not the best method to follow someone, but her impressive magical abilities didn’t leave much range to operate. 

I sighed as I listened to her footsteps getting away, but I didn’t follow her immediately. I focused on establishing an impressive number of wards to dampen my presence despite the risks it contained. The number of wards around me actually reduced my own defensive spell casting … but that was something I had to suffer to follow someone with such a strong magical sensitivity. 

I wouldn’t have dared to do so if it wasn’t for her … distracted mood. She wasn’t paying much attention to her surroundings. Even with it, It was risky to do so, of course, but not as risky as letting my opponents make strategic moves while I sat without doing anything. 

I walked fast, maintaining the dampening wards as I closed in the distance, and soon, discovered my little spy, under some kind of invisibility spell. 

I wondered if she was her brand of exhaustion working, or if she was that poor of a spy and relying just on her magic. Because such invisibility spells never worked well for spying. It hid her from view, but it also left a magic trail behind that could be followed by a determined agent. 

The latter theory, about her incompetence — as a spy, not as a mage —  got stronger as I followed her. Rather than using a secret passage, of which there were many in the palace from servant passages to emergency extraction tunnels, she just walked down to the palace garden. 

Soon, she stood in front of the garden wall, only to temporarily melt the wall rather than using a more mundane method. Once again, the spell itself was near perfect, but also unnecessarily complicated and left a track to follow. 

After she left the palace, following her got harder. She summoned a disk that allowed her to fly, still invisible, and I used her magical presence to track her as I run through the rooftops, pushing my body to the limit as I tried to catch up. 

Soon, she landed on the roof of a mansion neighboring the mage guild — which didn’t surprise me considering I had already discovered links between elves and the mage guild. Though, I still didn’t know whether it was a connection that went quite a bit to the past like the subservient one between the phoenixes and the dark families, or something more recent. 

That question was important, but not immediately so. I started examining the mansion. It was deceptively a defensive location, with tall, magical walls surrounding the garden, and several trees in the garden that was placed carefully to create a kill zone while still looking beautiful. 

I had a guess that it wasn’t my shy spy that had built that. She lacked the sense of practical utility to do so. 

However, the wards that surrounded the building were certainly so. There were several wards, distinct from the walls, perfected to catch any agent that dared to approach the place, or somewhere else. 

It would take a while for me to sneak in. First, I created a small warded location to keep me hidden, right at the roof of the building with a nice view of it that would keep me isolated from outside. 

Breaching the wards was important, but it was not urgent, at least not for the night. I stayed on the roof, slowly trying to understand the nature of the wards, and how could I bypass them. I didn’t know enough about the elven magic to unravel her wards without raising an alarm, but luckily, I didn’t need to. 

Not when her lack of attention worked wonders to give me the opportunity I needed. She had established her wards, but while doing so, she ignored the walls had their own enchantments, and it was clashing. 

And, I didn’t need to know the working principles of her magic to abuse that mistake. Slowly, I shaped my magic into a chisel, softly hitting the breach again and again,  weakening the connection of the impact. 

It was a slow, exhausting task, and it took almost an hour to create a small breach that I could sneak inside … but sneak inside, I did. 

As I entered, I felt a flare of magic in a very close location. My trusty shadows were there to hide me, disappearing from the view in the poorly-lit garden. 

I wasn’t shocked to see it was Emma, leaving the garden, using a sigil to open the gate from inside. I memorized the sigil even as I shook my head in dark amusement. At this point, Emma’s weakness and her tendency to betray were getting amusing.

I might have intervened,  but luckily, Emma was not as smart as she thought she was,  meaning whenever she tried to betray, she was accidentally creating breaches that  I could leverage instead. All told, she helped more than she harmed … she just did so accidentally. 

As much as I wanted to go and visit my spy,  my presence here was difficult to handle. Instead, I started exploring the downstairs — the lack of additional wards was another mistake — and even magically copied several books on elven magic. 

I doubted that those books were anything important considering there was no protection — and I could feel several additional wards, both for the basement, and for the upper floor — but under my circumstances, basics of elven magic were much more useful. 

Just like the phoenix magic had been. Too bad that it was not intense enough. 

Pity I didn’t have any time to start working on the topic. I heard a voice coming from upstairs. I hid, only to see my cute elven spy walk down the stairs, only a towel around her. 

Rather than taking the risk of dashing away, I moved behind the bookshelf, using the simplest way of hiding myself. Unlike the palace, I didn’t dare to use the shadows, because her mansion wasn’t filled with magic unfamiliar to her.

Luckily, the ordinary method of hiding worked excellently with her lack of attention. I smiled as I watched her sit on a couch, and started working on the documents I had provided for her. I was happy to note she was just removing them from their envelope, meaning she hadn’t talked to Emma about it. The last thing I needed was that politically-incompetent elementalist poking around. 

With her attention on the documents, I could sneak back to the garden, but I paused when I noticed her shedding her towel, revealing her amazing body, still bruised after my merciless attention, her nipples still hard. “That bastard,’  she muttered as she grabbed her breast, squeezing. Tempted, I cast a spell. It was a weak one, tantric in nature…

Inflaming her arousal even more, one that would stay in her memories. It worked quickly, resulting in an amazing show, though, that was not my only aim. I wanted her to be distracted as she read the report, in case there was a slight mistake. Though, I certainly didn’t expect her to be horny enough that she stopped reading the documents altogether and conjured a toy for herself. 

 I should help, I thought, no matter how much staying and helping sounded tempting…