(TLO) Chapter 144: Runebound Baron (Patreon)

Jonathan kept his eyes fixed on House fifty-eight, gold eyes activated so that he missed nothing. He had heard the rumors of the veteran adventurer but allowed none of it get to him. And they were as bountiful as they were nigh mythical.

He and his father had been searching for Seth since they’d learned of what had happened to his convoy. As much as he knew his father loved his brother, he often wondered if it was guilt that continued to drive the man’s search for his son. Regardless of it, the search was breaking their family. It was driving them to the ground making their name a shadow of itself in the places that mattered. Finding Seth was the only way to stop his father’s five years of spiraling. Even if he now was what he was.

So when House fifty-eight asked if the task was considered complete, he knew the man had made a conscious decision to go against him.

The fissure was already being sealed. It would prove a threat no more. And with their adventurers taking care of the silver beasts and Nikolai holding off all three hounds, the answer was obvious. Besides, House fifty-eight had no reason to ask him, with himself and Nikolai he already had the majority vote. It was completely within his right to leave. Still, Jonathan had a part to play as the representative of the Baron. He’d only come here to meet the man standing before him and he’d been lucky enough to have the boy he sought in his sight.

Yes, the task was done but he couldn’t let the man out of his sight. If the man ran, he wouldn’t be able to catch him. If the man chose to wait it out, the boy might die. And something told him if he decided to go after the boy, the man would still beat him to it. So he leveled his spear at him and gave his response.

“The Barony considers the contract fulfilled.”

That he’d chosen a fighting stance didn’t seem to phase House fifty-eight. The man looked at him like a teacher looking at a foolish student. It seemed the man had been gold for too long. This was an error many who’d lived too long in an authority suffered. They always began to forget gold was gold. Their strengths were the same. Whatever advantage House fifty-eight had on him laid in his experience. It helped him understand he would have to put his all into facing the man.

After a short while, House fifty-eight called out to Nikolai. “Is it safe to assume you need no help with the hounds?”

Nikolai took time out of his fight to look at them and laughed. He found the situation amusing, not in Jonathan’s favor.

The hubris of the stagnating, Jonathan thought with a sigh. He wasn’t under the illusion of victory. All he had to do was stop the man in front of him from leaving.

“I’ll be fine,” Nikolai said to House fifty-eight, returning his attention in time to avoid a snapping teeth. “Go do whatever you have to do.”

House fifty-eight nodded once, never taking his eyes from Jonathan. The remnants of the skill he’d activated to drive back the Baron rank beast still coated his hands even if in small amounts and the man seemed to have no intentions of deactivating it. It seemed an adventurer was willing to go against house Darnesh. Just how low had their reputation fallen.

Jonathan released his core and let his reia run wild through his channels. To fight with a shrouded core was the dummest thing a person could do. It prevented the core from maximizing its output. It made every action weak. He felt his reia fill him, ground him. In his gold eyes he could almost see the mist of his own reia as it rose from his body.

He was a man seeking out his younger brother. If his father could defy even the Baron in search of Seth, then what was a gold adventurer.

When House fifty-eight released his core as well, Jonathan knew mistakes had possibly been made.

No gold authority mage had any right to have reia so potent. Authorities were deciphered by the hues that colored their reia, the faint pigmentation, like shades to dim the almost cacophonous chaos of the different affinities that appeared in them, vying for supremacy.

What oozed from House fifty-eights body did not carry a hue of gold. It was not faint or translucent. It was not like looking at the heart of his reia through gold lens. No. What Jonathan stared at was too deep a gold that it oppressed the other colors swirling within. His reia was gold.

Then House fifty-eight blurred across the distance and Jonathan shifted from an offensive stance to a defensive one. Burning hands struck at his chest but met the defensive shaft of his spear.

Jonathan balked at the sheer force of the mage. The very contact felt like facing a battering ram. The utter might of him sent his arms sore in one strike and Jonathan had no illusions of holding on.

A fact hit him now. He’d been wrong. Mistakes hadn’t possibly been made. Mistakes had been made.

A moment after, his feet proved unable to keep him. Friction failed him and he was blasted across the room. He hit a wall hard enough to crack it and found himself fixed to it, buried into the very cracks he’d made. Ahead of him House fifty-eight shook the white flames from his hand.

“Do not follow me, kid,” House fifty-eight said, addressing him with something other than his title for the first time. “If you do, then I’ll have to put you down, consequences be damned.”

Jonathan glared at him with enough bale and shock to reconstruct the entire building. The man did not seem to care that he’d opposed a lord over a mere Iron mage. He did not seem to care the possible incursion of a Baron’s wrath.

When the man moved again, he blurred across the distance and was gone.

Jonathan had definitely been wrong. There were levels even amongst those of the same authority.

……………………………………………….

Jim came to a halt in the large hall. Its grounds were littered with corpses of dead shroud wraiths and a few adventurers. It was to be expected. Once a fissure has been left too long and had degraded as this one had, it was unreasonable to expect an attempt to close it with mages of the same authority to end without casualties. As a human, he looked at the carnage still being wrought around him with a sense of loss. As a Reverend, he looked at it with the detached interest of a man watching a grasshopper being eaten by an ant.

He turned his attention to the side, activating his gold eyes. He looked around, certain the young Darnesh lord would not be coming after him, at least, not any time soon.

Around him the world was filled with mists of silver hued reia with different discolorations of possible affinities peeking out from within. Each mage had a potential, dying or not. There were other touches of reia in the air, like embers rising from a burning flame. It filled the air in many colors but did not hinder his sight. They were neither deep enough nor strong enough.

Soon, he found what he sought. It stood out in the sea of reia, a mist of reia with iron hues and an aggressive stain of silver that looked horrendously wrong. It was an odd evolutioni to silver as far as he knew. And the fact that the boy was still evolving, even now, was a cause for concern.

The moment he found it, the reia in the air parted around it and it slipped into nothingness. When had the boy learned to teleport? He wondered. Nothing in the seminary’s report said anything about a teleportation ability. The only one of his peers that had it was called Barnabas and he’d been posted to the cold northern peaks for his pastoral year.

The argument Nikolai had offered where movemet speeds increased to teleportation on evolution was a deep level of bullshit so arrogant it didn’t even smell anymore. Even at gold, Seth’s movemet skill would remain a movement skill. It would not evolve into teleportation.

But that was an entirely different conversation.

Jim spotted the tainted reia again after a moment of searching and made his way towards it. At gold, none of the reia beasts would attack him. Not when they had a battle to face against so many silvers.

Reia beasts were never unaware of certain hierarchies. Beasts would never attack a mage of a higher rank than them unless they were unaware, forced to a corner, or in enough numbers to believe they could win. Normally, three reia beasts would not hesitate to work together to bring down a single mage of a higher authority.

Jim walked the distance, undisturbed, his mind working around the aberration of Seth’s teleportation. He’d seen a few teleportations since he’d become a soul mage, rare as they were. And the way they worked was different from what he’d seen when Seth had teleported. When a soul mage or a reia beast teleports, their reia reaches into the world and pulls it, somehow bidding it to accept the action. So the ambient reia wraps around them and sucks them in. then it expels them at their destination.

With Seth it was not the same. First off was the silent activation. The reia that spilled from a mage’s body had no effect on the world around them. The only way they influenced the world was with their skills, and they spoke the name of their skills so that their reia spilled from their lips to tangle with that of the world around them to execute the skill. As far as the world knew, it was the only way to affect the world around with reia for a mage that was not yet a Baron.

What Seth had done with his teleportation, however, was wrong. When he’d activated the skill, the reia around him had pushed against the world.

The anomaly had started from his left hand, dispelling th reia around it, chasing it away like an angry child fighting its mother, and the world had reacted accordingly. Like a mother that wouldn’t fight her infant for fear of causing it harm, the reia parted from him and his reia pulled him into the space. Then he slipped through it and appeared under the same circumstances.

When he found Seth, the boy was biting ravagely into the neck of a shroud wraith he’d somehow pinned to the ground. Now Jim was certain something was wrong with the boy. His shawl rested below his jaw and he struggled with the hair and skin of the beast as if offended by its refusal to tear.

He picked the boy from the beast by the collar of his shirt in one move and continued walking.

“Time to go, Oden,” he told him only to have Seth turn to him with bloody teeth and shriek at him.

He frowned at the sound and smell then slapped him.

The blow forced the boy’s head to the side and stunned him enough to silence him.

When Seth looked back at him again, it was with confusion in his manic eyes.

“Are you good now?” he asked.

Seth did not respond, at least not with words. Instead, Jim felt an odd sensation grow in his hands. A focused frown marred Seth’s face as he struggled to concentrate on something. Around Jim’s hand the ambient reia was slipping away. Parting with the reluctance of the strong refusing to harm the weak. However, it seemed more than willing to harm him in its departure.

The discomfort made him grimace. It was bearable, but something told him it would soon be painful, then damagesng. The fool was trying to teleport with him.

“Will you stop that!” he scolded.

Even at silver Seth wouldn’t have the power to take a higher authority with him. It was simply how teleportations worked. One could only take with them another of equal authority or less. Yet, the boy had already shown his teleportation did not work as it should. It made Jim wonder what exactly would happen if the boy did teleport. If he would really be taken along. Then he considered only his hand slipping with the boy into wherever teleporters go when they teleported and he found himself a little panicked.

He raised his other hand and struck the boy at the back of the head.

The ambient reia returned to fill the space his tainted reia had been usurping as the boy fell unconscious.

In mere minutes, he stepped out of the building with a limp Seth in his hand.

……………………………………….

Jonathan sat on the ground with his back against the wall. Beside him, his spear lay purposefully placed so that he could snatch it up immediately, if he needed to.

In the room Nikolai was cracking one of the Cull Hound’s ribs. He’d killed the last one about ten minutes ago and was checking them for soul fragments.

Silver Knight had still not emerged from the room he’d found himself in by going through a wall. Jonathan had taken the time to check on him, and while his broken armor no longer shined a touch of gold, he let out a mild mist of reia with the barest taint of golden hue. That he still emitted reia was a sign he was still alive. When the adventurer woke up he would be happy to know he had evolved.

As for the other gold adventurer, the mage was lying where he’d fallen after Nikolai had drawn the hounds from him. Judging from what Jonathan had gleamed from checking on him, the man had actually fallen asleep. He didn’t know if the adventurer was stupid or just that tired.

He was still seated with an arm rested on a raised knee when Nikolai approached him.

“How’s Lord Darnesh doing?” Nikolai asked, standing in front of him.

Jonathan shrugged. He wasn’t entirely sure. It was annoying to have lost so easily to a House. He knew the reputation of Houses in the adventure society. They were strong veterans, but their strength was mostly based on the adventurer’s ranking system. In simple truth, Houses were simply well versed mages who no longer went on adventures. They held the position to help in the recruitment of adventurers who could either join the guild or serve independently.

The title of House wasn’t necessarily given to the strong, it was given to the experienced and served to create some kind of decentralization of power within the society. It reduced the chances of those in authority abusing the power given to them. However, it did not mean they were weak. The title of veteran wasn’t given to just anybody.

Losing to one of the Houses wasn’t what truly irked him. What irked him was how blatantly he’d lost. A loss born from the difference in experience was one thing, but to know and understand their difference in power from a single clash was another.

His thoughts must have shown on his face because Nikolai laughed. “A horrible feeling, isn’t it?”

He looked up at Nikolai. “And you would know?”

The government official shrugged. “Every mage striving to be stronger has lost to someone before.”

Jonathan nodded without accepting the man’s words. He’d lost before. Losing wasn’t the problem.

“My guess is you’re bothered about losing to a House of the adventurers,” Nikolai added.

“His fifty-eight. And there are seventy Houses. Seventy.”

“Seventy-two, actually,” Nikolai corrected.

“Doesn’t matter. The point is, they are arranged according to hierarchy of strenght. That means there are fifty-seven more Houses stronger than him. How do the government and Barony hope to keep them in check if they have people that strong?”

“Because every House is voted upon. To be a House, the government and the Barony has to agree on it.”

Jonathan looked up at him, surprised. He hadn’t known this.

“And you have nothing to worry about,” Nikolai added, easing himself to the ground beside him. “Jim’s not like the other houses.”

Jonathan looked at the man beside him, confused. “How do you mean?”

“Well, normally I’d have tried to help you keep him from leaving, seeing as the government and the Barony like each other more than the adventure society or the hunters’ association.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

“One, because I don’t like you. Your father was a better Lord than you are, and if you keep playing puppet to your mother’s puppeteer, he’ll be a better Lord than you’ll ever be. Second, while I dislike House fifty-eight more than I dislike you, I respect him more than any gold I know. Wanna know why?”

“Why?” he asked, allowing the insult slide.

“Because he stood his grounds against the Barons and government officials during the Baron wars against the priests.”

This was another piece of information he didn’t know.

“He was a gold like me during the time of the war,” Nikolai continued, staring with the vague face of the reminiscing who told a tale pulled from memory. “When we chose to go after them, he’d been amongst those drafted for it and the first thing he’d done was let everyone know he would not be found killing a single soul mage, priest or not. It’s another reason I didn’t step in even though I knew you were going to get your ass handed to you. Jim’s the only gold I know that’ll stand up to any authority and refuse to kill a mage.”

“But why?”

“According to him, we don’t have enough mages to take on the reia beasts currently roaming the world. If we continue to decrease our numbers, a day’ll come when a world crack will be the end of all of us. In summary, we need living mages to fight the beasts, no matter our disagreements.”

“So you respect him because he stood against Barons and your superiors.” Jonathan shook his head, losing interest, then added sarcastically: “Must be nice.”

Nikolai simply chuckled. “If you want that boy, you’ll need to go through the proper channels to request an audience with him. However, you better be prepared for some push back.”

That surprised Jonathan. He’d already planned to summon all those involved in this event for questioning and punishment for the simple excuse of getting a moment with the boy. It was well within his right and would be easier to gain than applying for an audience with the boy through the society or Jim himself. But if Jim had defied authorities during the Baron wars then why would he have pushback. Powerful people don’t like being defied, they should be more than willing to push against Jim. It confused him and he asked as much of Nikolai.

Again, Nikolai laughed.

“That’s simple,” he said. “It’s because he’s the reason most of those who weren’t Barons that survived the Baron wars survived it. He never killed any of those wretched priests but he was always the first to go in search of lost comrades and our captured men. He ventured into places no one was willing to and came back with those we’d all but given up hope for. If you weren’t dead, he’d find you. Sometimes he even brought back the dead for no other reason than someone else’s sentimentality. The powers that be may not like him but there’s no one who was a gold or less during the Baron wars that does not owe him something.”

That was something to think about. The man was respected by mages in different major organizations, considering how many of them had come together to fight the seminary. And he’d almost disrespected him. If the man held a grudge, it could worsen the Darnesh household’s standings. They could lose more political power than they already had.

There was much to think about.

“And what do you owe him?” he asked Nikolai as he pondered on what to do.

“A rematch.”

Nikolai got up from the ground as if remembering he had more to do. “I know you and your father’s obsession with finding your brother,” he continued. “But don’t let it do to you what it did to your father. There was no one that didn’t respect your father, but there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed and he crossed it. You don’t go against major tennets of the Barons and expect to come out unscathed. Your father’s need to find your brother consumed him so much that he achieved what we all seek to achieve. But at what cost? Everyone knows what became of him. Bound and commanded. A being forced, not compelled, to do another’s bidding. There’s always a price to pay for every action. Ask yourself how far you’re willing to go? What price are you willing to pay?”

With that, Nikolai walked away heralded by the clinking of his armor.

Jonathan didn’t have anything to think about. He knew his father’s fate for his actions. He’d been there when the Baron of the Deep had enacted his father’s punishment and raised him to his father’s position. They’d engraved runes he couldn’t even understand unto his poor father for the crimes of looking for his son. There were so many runes that when they were done, they’d even bound his arms in them.

Now his father was no more than a husk of his former self. His mind was beholden to others. It was what had given him his new moniker: The RuneBound Baron.