by Adam Elliott
A new message was waiting for him as expected. The type, on the other hand, was anything but expected. Sarah had never sent him a video message before.
Rather than sit and speculate on why he clicked on it.
Cayden immediately knew something was wrong as the screen filled with a transparent shot of Sarah's face. She was wearing a set of cheap AR glasses, that did nothing to hide the fierce anger in her emerald eyes as she stared into what he knew must be a mirror. Her hair was a mess, something unheard of for her, and she looked like she hadn't slept for days.
“Read it.” Came a voice from off camera.
“Go fu-” Sarah started, before a backhand caught her across the side of the face. The brutality of it was stunning, and Cayden flinched, trying to look away in spite of himself. Not that it helped. The glasses continued to project the image into his eyes, forcing him to watch as whoever it was struck her twice more.
“Fine." Sarah said at last. She didn't look too much worse for the wear as she turned back to the camera, not with Babel muting much of the damage and the pain, but there was little it could do for shock or fear. The point hadn't been too hurt her, but to send a message. "Cayden. As you can see, these clowns have kidnapped me."
“Read it right!” A voice shouted from off camera.
“And they've kept me up for the last three days straight, so my vision is a little too blurry to read their shitty script." She snarled at the man off screen, bracing for a blow that didn't come. It was hard to hear, but in the background, scuffling and someone was saying 'just let her talk.' "I'm sorry. I held off as long as I could but..."
His heart broke for her as he saw tears welling in her eyes. Physical torture such as beatings didn't work well in Babel. But sleep deprivation? Stress positions? Those were probably the least awful things they could be doing to her.
He could tell she was hurting, and a part of him wondered if he would have lasted half as long as she had.
“I just... I can't. I'm seeing things. Hearing things. I need to...” Her head drooped for a moment the image showing her chest and work uniform for several seconds before someone from out of frame managed to shake some sense into her and drag her focus back to the mirror.
Sarah's eyes were drained and sad as they stared at her reflection, forced to watch herself even as she felt she betrayed him. "This skinny little bastard needs you to come down to the Inn within the next eight hours and give yourself up. If you don't, they are going to kill me and find someone else you know."
“See, was that so hard?” Asked a rough voice from just off camera.
“Don't come.” Was the last thing she murmured before the camera shut off.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Is the news that bad?” Cayden asked
Silver frowned. Her eyes flicked down to the image of her stream in the bottom corner of her display before she spoke. "What gave it away?"
“You look angry.”
This time she laughed, a half-hearted, sleepy chuckle. “I've been told I always look angry. Especially when I'm tired.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh don't.” She stopped him. “If there was ever a time to wake me up in the middle of the night, this is it.”
“I'm just glad you answered.”
Cayden had spent the first few minutes after he received Sarah's message in a combination of shock and panic. Plans and schemes had flooded his mind, each considered, then discarded. There were too many variables. Too many unknowns for him to formulate any realistic plan. It hadn't taken him long to realize that he had only one place to turn if he had any hope of recovering Sarah in one piece.
Silver was not amused when she'd picked up after the fifth attempt. She'd been bleary eyed, her hair a tangled mop of black in the dimness of her room. He was fairly sure that she only answered with video so he could see the fury in her eyes at being woken up in the middle of the night.
Her expression had softened by the time he'd finished his story, and, to his surprise, she accepted his request without hesitation or talk of quid pro quo. Whether she had developed a fondness for Sarah that evening, they'd all spent at the tavern, or whether she was just that good of a person, Cayden didn't know. Nor did he care at that moment.
“Don't thank me yet.” She winced. “The bad news is that I can't find her. I can't even find a trace of her, which is worrisome in its own right.”
Cayden nodded. "Well she's still active on my friend's list, so we know she is still alive."
“Which leaves two options. Either she is in a guild hall with solid warding, or whoever has her also has a powerful mage on hand.”
“Probably the latter.” Cayden frowned.
“Oh?”
“They slapped her hard enough to do damage in the video they sent me." Cayden explained, "That rules out any guild hall based in a city."
“Since the Emperor's Guard would show up.” Silver agreed. “They could still be on a higher floor. There are a lot of Guild Halls on thirty plus that are outside of the cities.”
“But...”
“... you can't teleport her to a floor she hasn't attuned to.” Silver finished his thought before he could state the obvious. “And they aren't marching her all that way in a few days. Derp.”
“Which leaves us with a wizard as powerful as you."
“Let's not go crazy." Silver snorted in a decidedly unfeminine fashion. "I've only been searching with comparatively passive spells. Unless he is a top tier raid mage, I'd be able to break his non-detection and scry on her. But-"
“If you do that he'll know you're looking and they will probably kill her." It was now Cayden's turn to finish her thoughts. Any other time he'd have marveled at just how in sync they were with one another, but he had more important matters. "No way you can narrow it down."
Silver shook her head. "There are about five places on the second-floor that I cannot properly scry. If it were me, I'd have put up at least two fake ones specifically, so I don't stand out as the only place surrounded by high-level divination blockers."
“Which means we either guess or...”
“...you turn yourself in. Cayden, I haven't known you long enough to be sure, but that has to be the dumbest idea you've ever had.”
“You know, Celia said something similar to me just the other day." He laughed. "It can't be that bad of an idea; you had it too."
She looked away from her recording device, a nervous hand pulling tangles out of her dark hair as she chose her words. “I can think of it because I wouldn't be the one doing it.”
“But you would have my back. If they decide to put me down right outside the city, you'd know, and you could jump in and stomp them to put us back to square one. If they bring me back to the lair, then we've got a shot."
“A long shot." She frowned. "You realize that once you find the place, I'll probably have to tangle with the mage before I can come in and help you. You'd have to stay alive for at least a couple of minutes while I put him down."
“No chance of calling in the cavalry then?" He asked.
Silver shook her head once again. "I didn't even ask because I don't want to put Luxuria in that position. Any mage who can block me this well is probably part of a guild. If it is just me, I can frame it as a personal thing. If I bring a party, they might treat it as an attack. With all the work she's been doing, Luxuria can't afford to risk another Guild War."
“Was worth a shot.” Cayden sighed. “I did come up with one plan that might work. I'm pretty sure it'd get Sarah out anyways, and that is what matters, right?”
Silver's eyes tightened, but before she could give a response, the door to Cayden's quarters swung open. Aaron was standing there, a stern expression on his face. "I'll fill you in when I get back to the second-floor. And Silver... I owe you one."
“You owe me two.” She corrected. “Don't worry though. You can start by explaining why you are on the forty-ninth floor, and how you got there.”
Her image winked out before the swe
ar left his lips. He'd been relatively sure from the moment he contacted her that she'd realize he was somewhere he shouldn't be, but up until that moment, he'd still held out hope. Hope really was the first step on the road to disappointment.
“Aaron." He said, at last, acknowledging the silent Elan.
“Cayden.” Came the measured response.
This was no social visit. The gregarious sorcerer was angry, even if he was doing his best to conceal it.
“You've been spying on me the whole time then?" Cayden asked. It didn't take a genius to put two and two together. Aaron didn't just arrive in a tizzy out of the blue.
“You haven't completed the quest set out for you by the Great Emperor.”
Cayden frowned. If Aaron had been watching, then he would have seen Cayden's reaction and heard him explain it to Silver, even if he hadn't seen the message itself. That his mentor cared more about the quest rubbed him decidedly the wrong way. "With luck, I will be gone only a day or so. If not you'll be out of your obligation."
“When I released you I told you that you had been confined to the Mage's Quarters unless accompanied elsewhere. Has something changed to give you the idea that you can go where you will?" Aaron snapped.
“You're serious?” Cayden shot back. “The teleportation crystal is within sight of the front door!”
Aaron returned the words with a stare.
“You are serious about this?" He continued, meeting Aaron's stare. When no answer was forthcoming, he began to shout. "You heard all of it. You're going to keep me here while a woman dies?"
“I will do what I have been instructed.”
Cayden threw up his hands, stomping towards Aaron. “I need to pass your trial then? Is that it?”
“It is the Great Emper-”
“Then give me the damn trial already.” Cayden interjected.
Aaron studied him, his eyes softening just the slightest hint. “If you take the trial now, you will almost certainly die.”
“If I don't then Sarah certainly will.” He retorted. “Give me the trial.”
“You aren't ready.”
“Give me the trial or get out of my way Aaron!”
The mage didn't flinch back from Cayden, even as the young man all but shouted into his face. Their eyes locked with one another, and Cayden could see that there was no bargaining with him. Aaron had made up his mind and chosen his protege over a stranger.
“Don't.” Aaron warned.
“Telis!" Cayden shouted, throwing himself back from Aaron in the same instant that the magic took hold. It was the runic word for imprison, one that allowed him to manipulate nearby physical objects to trap or restrain his target. In this case, he used it to cause the very floor beneath Aaron's feet to bubble and swell over his feet, while the stone of the doorway reached out to ensnare his arms.
It wouldn't hold a mage of Aaron's power for long he knew, but it earned him at least enough time to invoke Lianre, or shatter. In an instant the stone wall beside him exploded, then the one behind it as well, creating a pathway that cut clear across the apprentice's quarters to the laboratory.
“Cayden!” Aaron shouted as he ran. He could hear the sorcerer chanting words of power to free himself, and cast words of his own as he ran. Ileia crafted a wall behind him as he ran, while another use of shatter opened a hole at in the floor ahead of him. He jumped, targeting the floor of the main hall some thirty feet below him with a Leap Attack to nullify the damage.
Aaron knew where he was going. But if he could get there quickly enough maybe he could get out while his teacher thought he was still-
The wave of force hit Cayden like a truck. He'd been hit by a truck when he was eight, and it was uncanny how similar the feeling was. The sudden confusion, the sense of weightlessness, the dread, then the second impact. He crumpled to the floor through the glass of a sitting table, for the moment barely capable of determining which way was up.
Aaron Beresik's Force Thrust hits You for 892 Force. [Stunned]
It was the first time Cayden had ever been stunned in Babel, and he decided it was a status effect he'd have to avoid in the future. Everything was fuzzy. His limbs felt like dead weight, responding to only the most general command as he squirmed and shifted in the pile of broken glass and twisted metal.
His mental faculties were fully intact, however, allowing him to plot his next move, even as Aaron shouted at him from mere feet away. "Cayden, that is enough."
The only thing he had going for him was that Aaron didn't want to kill him. The mage had at least eighty levels on him, likely more. A stand-up fight was out of the question, as was trying to outrun him apparently. He could threaten to take his own life, but he suspected that Aaron would just let him drop, then heal him back up for a respawn once he had.
That left trying to be clever.
“Natha Sere!” Cayden yelled as he scrambled to his feet and rushed towards a nearby fireplace. He made it barely a handful of steps before a sudden, immense heaviness from his left leg sent him sprawling face first into the fire. It didn't matter, the moment he touched the fire his flame walk spell activated, the short range teleport able to deposit him at any fire within roughly three hundred feet.
Aaron expected him to go outside; he knew that. The blazing bonfire was close enough that he could have reached out to it and found himself within fifty feet of the teleportation crystal. The problem was that Aaron expected that, and he wasn't the only one who could teleport.
Instead, he went up, rolling out of a hearth back up on the guild's third floor. The room was innocuous and out of the way, the last place Aaron would look.
“Skill Use: Grasp the Earth.” Cayden commanded, leaning against a nearby wall. He'd need all the HP he could get if Aaron decided to take another swing at him.
Not that the additional HP could cure all of his woes. A look down at his leg confirmed what he had expected; his limb was petrified from just below the knee. Flesh to Stone was the spell Aaron was most famous for among all his many talents. More than once he'd heard apprentices or other soldiers talk about Aaron's signature ability and the fear it struck into the heart of Axfell's enemies. Particularly in combination with some of his other tricks.
As one soldier put it: Flesh to Stone, Stone to Mud, Mud to Stone, Stone to Flesh. Eww.
All he'd bought himself by coming here was time. It was unlikely that Aaron could scry him directly, not with Silver's Non-detection ward still fully in place, but if the rest of the tower was under the same observation as the apprentice rooms, then it was only a matter of time before Aaron managed to locate where he'd run to.
He needed a distraction. But the only idea that came to mind was likely to put two angry magic casters on his tail instead of one.
“If you've got a better idea." Cayden mumbled to himself. He might call Silver, but she wasn't likely to get here in time, and he honestly wasn't sure she would even be able to take Aaron on his home turf, let alone if the soldiers, apprentices, and other assorted combatants joined the fray. No, it looked like he was going to stick with plan A.
Because what problem couldn't be solved with a little fire?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
This was a bad idea. Cayden knew that in his bones.
When he'd first started speedrunning, he'd been more than a little arrogant. He'd talked more than his fair share of smack, and it had come back to haunt him when the community refused to share strats and ostracized him from events. His mom had sat him down and given him a big speech about how he needed to avoid burning his bridges once he crossed them.
Cayden wondered what her opinion would be on the subject of libraries.
He'd had no trouble getting into the library. The badge Aaron had given him gave him more or less free reign of the mage's guild, and if he could turn it off remotely, Aaron hadn't yet thought of doing so. Cayden knew the library was replete with wards that, unlike his mentor, would be happy to vaporize him if he'd been unauthorized. He also suspected that at least some of t
hose wards would attempt to suppress his fire. Hopefully, they'd only been designed with unintentional fires in mind.
“Natha.” Fire blossomed on the tips of Cayden's fingers as he stumbled among the ancient tomes. This felt wrong, but what other choice did he have? A simple distraction wouldn't work, he needed something that required Aaron's attention even more than the duty he had sworn to the Great Emperor.
Piles of dry parchment caught fire with ease. Everywhere he walked he left fire in his wake, individual volumes bursting into sudden conflagrations as the flame leaped from book to book with startling ease. He might as well have been touching a match to a pile of oily rags for how easy it was to burn it all.
A sudden shimmer of light appeared up ahead, causing Cayden to duck into a gap between two rows of shelves. It wasn't Aaron, he realized quickly, nor was it hostile.
The air elementals sped past Cayden's hiding place without even acknowledging his presence. At least, he thought they hadn't acknowledged him. It was difficult to tell precisely what a bulbous sentient cloud considered important, though considering how they raced towards the ongoing fire he could make an educated guess.
Behind him, the summoned creatures were doing their best to stamp out the fire, their diminutive forms expanding to cover roughly five square feet at a time. At first, it was hard to see what they were doing, but as he watched the fire engulfed by their forms flicker and die, it became clear. They were drawing all of the oxygen into themselves and then manipulating it away from the fires, a clever fire suppression system that removed the threat without destroying what hadn't yet been damaged.
Clever, but too slow. For every fire the elementals managed to quash, Cayden set five more. The summoned monsters were single-minded, incapable of deviating from their assigned task, so they could do nothing to stop Cayden as more and more of the library was set to the flame.
Nearly half the entire collection was fully ablaze by the time the expected smell of ozone and a heart-wrenching scream told Cayden it was time to leave.
