(TLO) Chapter 113: Adventurer or Hunter (Patreon)

Seth nodded to himself after a while and said, “We are.”

When he turned his head to Jim. Jim could see he had made a decision.

“So?” he asked. “What’s it going to be?”

“I’ll be a hunter,” Seth said.

Jim nodded sagely. “Then you’ll need a team. And I already have one in mind. Mind you, they’re all silver magi.”

Seth frowned. “But I’m Iron.”

“I know.” Jim reached into the drawer he’d pulled out the box bearing the black fragment and brought out a file he dropped on the table. “I have no idea why they want you to be with silver magi but there we are.”

Seth reached for the file on the table but did not take it. Jim realized he was waiting for permission and acquiesced with a nod.

Seth picked it up and flipped through it. He knew what the boy saw. The file was a comprehensive documentation of what was going to be his new team. And knowing what was in it, he knew Seth would object soon. Or at least question it.

When Seth’s frown deepened, he waited for the question but nothing came.

Instead, Seth muttered, “Jabari.”

He had no idea who that was. None of the adventurers in the file answered the name. And seeing as it was his surname, it was assumable it belonged to a family member or someone close.

Jim discarded the thought in its entirety. He was certain he would fail at whatever discovery his mind was going for.

“Any objection?” he asked while Seth still perused the file.

Seth shook his head. “I’m good. There is just one problem.”

There it is, Jim thought, but asked, “What’s that?”

Seth flipped through the last pages of the file, then muttered, “Got it? Good.” As if remembering Jim was still here, he closed it and said, “I know West Blue?”

“Huh?” Jim left his chair so quickly it almost tumbled over. “I thought you have amnesia?”

“It’s partial. I remember bits and pieces. Sometimes.”

“And how do you know you know this place?”

“I recognized the market I woke up in. I recognized old man Nathaniel’s store. Though I have no idea what he looks like.” His gaze shifted sideways ever so slightly. “We don’t,” he said, emphasizing the words.

Jim sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and fore finger, returning to his chair. “What else do you remember?”

“The Lord of West Blue is called Lord Darnesh. Or at least he used to be.”

“Used to be?”

“Yes. I heard he’s no more the Lord on my way here.”

“Oh. That’s true.”

That the boy came from West Blue was going to be a problem. And considering how much the Monsignor had set up for the boy, he doubted there would be a change of plans at the last minute. It would be left to him to rectify any issues. Solve any problems. He was a handler, after all, which meant it was his job to handle it.

“As for the Lord,” he continued. “It’s still a Darnesh. He’s just taken over for his father. Jonathan Darnesh is the new Lord.”

Seth’s face twitched mildly. It was almost nonexistent, but as a gold mage he caught it. In fact, he’d been watching for it. Was it personal recognition or did he simply know the name?

This pastoral year was already beginning to prove difficult.

“Do you know the name?” he asked.

Seth’s nod was slow. It was also ominous.

“Personally?”

His eyes narrowed. When he shook his head, it was equally slow.

Jim leaned forward. “Tell me what you know of West Blue, and how much of a problem this will be.”

“I remember a little. I remember being bullied by one of the visiting lord’s child. I don’t remember his name, but somehow I know he was a Lord’s child. I remember some parts of the market. I remember I wasn’t from a very rich family but ran into rich children. I remember I had a brother.”

“How many brothers?”

Seth frowned in thought. “One… I think.”

This was turning out to be a bigger problem than he thought. If the boy didn’t remember enough, then he couldn’t trust all of his answers. Recognizing Lord Jonathan Darnesh’s name was not necessarily a big deal. The boy had been famous for the speed of his evolution as a soul mage. There wasn’t a person in the territory that did not know his name. But while Seth might believe he came from a simple family, he might actually come from a richer one, a more prominent one. After all, the information of his group claimed three of them were known to come from families with clout.

Jim sighed again. He reached for his drawer and paused. There was much inside there but he doubted any of it would help. What he needed was something to hide the boy’s face. Height and weight and voice could change over time, but faces were different. He knew a man in his forties who still bore resemblance to himself at twelve save the wrinkles and acne.

He closed his drawer and got up, instead. When he rose from his chair, Seth’s attention followed him. Surprisingly, the boy did not take his eyes from the short swords still on his table, or perhaps he was looking at the file.

“You can sheath them back and put them on, if you want,” he said in an off-hand comment as he headed for a shelf of books at one side of his small office.

As if since waiting for the command, Seth began packing up the weapon, arranging it. Still, Jim couldn’t help but feel the seminarian’s attention had not left him.

He ignored it as he went through the shelf. It housed more than just books. There were artifacts submitted by his beneficiaries, trinkets picked up during adventures which they could not understand or merely had no use for.

He picked and discarded objects one by one. There was a pocket knife with a rune carving that kept its blade always sharpened. A ring that pulled ambient reia to its user. There was a length of rope that could hold any weight, so far there was nothing it had not proved able to hold.

Finally, he found what he was looking for. It was on a shelf high enough that he’d had to stretch to reach it. When he retrieved it, he dusted it with his palm, then blew on it. Each action expelled dust from its surface. Then he raised it to his face and looked through its eye holes.

In his hand he held a brown wooden mask. Its aesthetics were anything but pleasing as it was squared and unpolished, but not much found on adventures proved pleasing to look at. But their uses were always outstanding for new mages. This mask, for instance, granted its wearer gold eyes. However, it did so at the cost of the wearer’s reia.

He turned to Seth still holding it and held it out to the boy.

“Have it.”

Seth reached for it slowly, skeptical. “What does it do?”

“Hides your face.”

Seth frowned as if having heard something. “You can feel it, too?” he asked.

“Feel what?” Jim asked, moments before realizing the boy was talking to himself.

Seth’s frown deepened and he dropped the mask on the table. “That thing draws on reia,” he said with a touch of disgust. In his eyes Jim saw mild trauma. “I don’t have enough reia to use it.”

Jim picked it back up with a frown. The seminary had sent him a boy with reia too little to even use a mask. What exactly was Monsignor Faust thinking?

“If you have memories of this place, then there’s someone out there you don’t know that’ll recognize you,” he said. “We can’t have that.”

Seth shrugged. “Then we just get me a mask. Or a shawl to cover my face.”

Jim opened his mouth to object, then closed it back without making a sound. That would work. He smacked his forehead, cursing his complex stupidity. What had made him think he’d need one of the artifacts?

Because you have too many things on hand and want to make use of them, he told himself. It’s not because you’re stupid.

“Do you have one you can…” he didn’t complete the question. His eyes ran down the boy and knew the answer. “Sorry I asked.”

Seth’s response was an absent shrug as he adjusted his new weapons on his back. He reached back and beneath him and took hold of their hilts. When he unsheathed them, they came free with a silent hiss and he smiled.

“I’ll be right back,” Jim told him, then left.

He went into his room, took out a thick scarf designed for use during the winter and returned with it. He found Seth still standing, short swords returned to their scabbards. Without a word, he went to the boy and wrapped the scarf around his neck so that it came to rest above his nose, concealing the lower parts of face.

“We’ll see your team tomorrow morning,” he said. “Depending on how they react to it we might have to buy a mask. Till then, I’ll bring you up to speed on recent activities.”

As a soul mage at the peak of Gold authority, he had since developed the ability to expel his reia at will, to give it physical form no matter how weak. So he touched the shawl around the boy’s face and inscribed it with a simple rune. A faint touch of reia, gold and weak, leaked into the shawl and he felt it grow more rigid.

He studied his handiwork and flicked the shawl with his finger. Now hardened, it did not budge.

“Good,” he said. He looked Seth in the eye and found the boy’s gaze slightly unnerving, the swirl of silver like liquid poured was almost daunting, it would intimidate the weak. “This way we won’t have to fear it coming loose.”

“And how long will it last?” Seth asked him.

“Two days, maybe three.”

“Judging from the team on that file, I’m going to be an adventurer, regardless of my choice to be a hunter.”

“Yes,” he answered. “Do you think it unfair.”

Seth shrugged. “It’s neither here nor there. The point I’m trying to make is, don’t adventurers travel for days on end, even weeks? How am I supposed to keep this up during that period? Three days is nothing on an adventure.”

Jim nodded. Then went back to the shelf of artifacts and took out the ring that drew in ambient reia. “We’ll have this stitched into the scarf. It should keep it functioning indefinitely.”

“And what does it do?”

“It draws in ambient reia.”

On hearing his words, Seth looked at the ring with a different kind of curiosity. He had the eyes of a boy who wondered how exactly it worked. It was a good sign. Curiosity was good in adventurers.

“Now,” Jim said, turning towards his room. “I’m not expecting any visitors for the rest of the day, so you can take the couch. Tomorrow we’ll go see your teammates and register you as an adventurer. They’ll test you to be sure you’re good enough before they accept you. So you better get your rest.”

Seth nodded.

As he walked towards the couch in the living room, he asked over his shoulder. “Will I be fighting humans or beasts in this test?”

Jim chuckled as he walked into his room, the blue glow of lantern light dancing from their places in his walls were the only source of light in the darkening evening granting him vision. His response, he was certain, shocked the boy.

“You’ll be sparring against a Gold authority soul mage.”