by Tao Wong
Once we left the storage center, we’d wandered around for a few hours, taking a ferry ride across the bay then back again, muddying our trail. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing. After that, Alexa had taken the lead, first to a co-working space where we chilled for a few hours in a rented office before we finally arrived at the bowling alley as it opened.
“This way,” Alexa said, leading me straight to the storage lockers.
I twigged onto the concept fast enough and followed, casting glances around to make sure we weren’t watched. Unsurprisingly, the staff—made up of horny and bored teenagers—had little care for us.
Alexa pulled a large duffel bag from the storage locker and changed out her jacket for one that was within before she pushed the duffel at me. I frowned, opening it, before my jaw dropped.
“Where’d you get that?” I said.
“Took it,” Alexa said.
Within the now-open bag was a casting wand, a smaller version of the staff I’d been forced to leave behind. I blinked, staring at the wand, and remembered how I’d tossed it aside due to my dissatisfaction with the placement of the wards and then couldn’t find it. I’d lost nearly an hour searching the house for it before finally giving up, figuring I’d find it hidden beneath a couch cushion or stuck underneath my bed. Or on top of the bookcase, because that made sense when I put it there. But now, here it was.
I picked up the wand, frowning in consternation as I noticed numerous flaws. I’d made this nearly half a year ago, and I’d grown in ability and skill since then. Enough so that the mistakes I’d made were clearly evident with even a simple perusal. My fingers itched to fix them, but I pushed it aside and slipped the wand into my jacket. Not that I needed it, but like my staff, the wand could take over casting aspects—just not as many my staff.
I also took a bundle of cash, sliding it into my jacket after peeling off a few bills for my wallet. I didn’t ask how Alexa had managed to squirrel away this much. It really wasn’t my business. I was just grateful that she had done so. What was surprising was the set of fake IDs within, all in a Ziploc bag.
“Fake IDs?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes. Change them out quickly. We should leave the city when we can,” Alexa replied.
“About that… how?” I said. “I don’t think public transportation is smart, and it’s not as if we can get a rideshare. Not without our phones.”
“Got it sorted,” Alexa said. “Relax.”
I frowned but took her word for it, taking the proffered baseball cap and sliding it onto my head. Well, she was the expert in this. My expertise with disguise mostly consisted of pixels, rooftops, and killing the guards who found you sneaking by.
***
Three hours later, we were seated in the luxurious comfort of polyester cushions, colored a dirty grey and green, a black plastic divider between us and a LCD screen to entertain us in front. Cold air blew from overhead, doing little to drown out the loud grey-haired retirees making new friends and speaking of the next “attraction” they were going to see.
I muttered to Alexa, “A tour bus? Your great plan is a tour bus filled with retirees?”
“Yes,” Alexa said, looking all kinds of smug. “Public transportation, but not really. The windows are all shaded, so there’s no way for people to see inside. Tours like these run every day of the week, going to multiple locations. And unless they’re doing full checks of the bus, even traffic stops won’t matter.”
I had to admit, the woman was right. Most traffic stops would never board a bus, especially not on any of the major highways. The kind of delay that would create would only happen in the worst-case scenarios, and I didn’t think our opponents had that kind of influence.
Which meant…
“I’m assuming we’re not going to stay for the whole tour?” I said.
“No. We’ll change out three cities out, but for tonight…” She waved around the bus. “We’ll sleep through the night here and be out of the city.”
“As if I could sleep,” I said, which made Alexa smile slightly.
“Well, I can. So if you’re going to stay awake…”
I gestured, to which the blonde smiled and rolled up her jacket to rest her head against the window. In moments, the ex-Initiate was asleep, dead to the world, though I knew she would wake fully alert if necessary. I envied her ability sometimes.
“Might as well get to work,” I muttered and fished in my bag for the crafting material. Nothing special, but with only the equipment I was wearing, I needed more tools. The carving knife and blocks of wood would get me that.
Our attackers might have driven us out of my house and nearly killed us, but that nearly would cost them. I might not know who had attacked us or why, but it didn’t matter. We’d survived, and so long as we lived, we could get stronger. We could get better.
As the bus finally pulled away from the curb, its passengers fully loaded, I promised myself that I’d be back. Back to my home. Returned not in ignominious defeat but in triumph. One day.
I’d be back.
Chapter 14
“Are you ready?” Alexa asked as she stood over me.
I gave the ex-Initiate a quick nod, touching Lily’s ring and sending a mental reassurance to the jinn. Four months later and we had yet to summon her. There were a dozen excuses—from needing the right materials, to prioritizing new aura blockers, to not locating a quiet enough place to do it—but in the end, it meant we had left the jinn in the ring.
I had to admit, I missed the game-addicted jinn, late-night Smash Bros duels and conversations over meals. Occasionally, when I finished a quest, she’d slipped a sentence or two into the quest notifications, but it wasn’t the same. I missed my friend. But at least this way, the pair of us had a better chance of hiding.
“You know, I liked this place,” I said, looking around at the small house we had rented.
We’d found the advertisement in a gas station, pasted in the window, and moved in. Once a wedding present, before the enterprising couple realized that the small house lifestyle wasn’t for them, now the simple single-story, container-turned-house sat in their backyard, filled by transients like us. The rent was cheap, the amenities barebones, but it had been nice.
“It was a change from the flop-houses,” Alexa said, making a face.
I flashed her a wry smile, knowing that the pretty ex-blonde had had it worse in those locations. She’d dyed her hair soon after we left the city, going for boring black, and touched up her roots every few days. But bad dye jobs and baggy clothing did little to hide her beauty.
“But we can’t stay. You know that.”
“I know. The dice said eleven days, so eleven it is,” I said.
Rather than fall into any recognizable pattern, we’d chosen to stay where we could, when we could, based off dice rolls. We limited ourselves to a maximum of twelve days in any one location. Even our next destination was a roll of the dice, public transportation and small towns our go-to choices.
Hefting the backpack, I slid it on. We closed the door, left the key in the mailbox, and headed out into cold autumn weather. Luckily, we’d been trending south for the most part, staying in warmer climates by roll of dice and choice. We’d debated long and hard about moving into another big city or sticking to small towns before we decided to leave it to chance. Our enemies were varied and numerous, and there were no good choices.
Big cities had teeming masses of people, enough that we could get lost in the anonymity of the populace. On top of that, big cities had a wide variety of cash-only jobs, the kinds that we survived on these days. In a pinch, we could mug and steal from the local drug dealer or pimp, taking their illicit gains for our own before departing town. Of course, we’d only done that twice. While criminals might not make police reports, they were prone to gossip. And guns that don’t fire, sudden disorientations and fatigue, and a highly-skilled female martial artist beating the crap out of them
with a pair of sticks were the kind of rumors we didn’t want spreading.
For all those advantages, big cities had higher concentrations of supernaturals, increasing the odds of randomly running into someone dangerous. On top of that, big cities were the centerpiece of our surveillance state. There were few areas we could go in a major city without having our faces recorded. And my new mustache, a ball cap, and a pair of contact lenses was a poor disguise, even if it was supplemented by magic.
Small towns, on the other hand, substituted technological busybodies with human irritants. The number of inquisitive neighbors we met—especially those who were surprised by our mixed-race relations in certain smaller towns—was staggering. It had gotten so bad that I’d used glamour spells to alter my race at times, just to avoid the questions.
On top of that, smaller towns and out-of-town cottages offered little in terms of employment or other amenities. With our resources extremely tight, we couldn’t afford to stay in such places long before we had to move on, looking for work where we could. And rather annoyingly, smaller towns also often had their local guardians—pagan magicians, shamans, or local supernaturals. Even if they didn’t desire to be involved in the politics of the greater supernatural community, we only needed a single one of them to put together the clues and report us.
“Do you think we’ve managed to lose them?” I said, cocking my head toward Alexa.
The town before, we’d been attacked. A group of journeyman Mages, bearing the symbols of the Mage Council—though probably not directly commanded to—had located us. We’d left their corpses and a destroyed neighborhood behind, stealing their belongings and funds before driving for two days straight.
“Maybe,” Alexa said, weariness in her voice.
I saw the bags under her eyes, the tension in her shoulders, and I winced. She walked to the junker we’d picked up, dropped her bag in the back, and got in even as I hurried to catch up. I knew how tired she was, how little sleep she took each night. The duty, the burden of our safety had fallen on her, for I was focused on the only way out we had.
Studying. And leveling.
It would be fitting to say I had grown in strength by leaps and bounds. I was now Level 76. A significant increase in strength. But it had been four months, and at this rate of increase, to meet the standards of even a single Third Circle Mage, I would need another half decade. A decade minimum to be where we needed to be for battle.
As I looked at the strained face of my friend, the bags under her eyes, then looked at my hands, I wondered. Could we last that long?
***
We were taking a small country road, driving carefully because small and underused also meant badly maintained. We were doing just under forty miles an hour after taking a turn, green vegetation from fenced-in fields all around us, some farmer’s crop swaying in the wind, when the man stepped into the middle of the road. I jerked up against my seat belt as Alexa braked, instincts overriding caution as we screeched to a stop a bare foot away from hitting him. The car fish-tailed slightly as Alexa tried to dodge him at the same time.
Turning my head sideways, I regarded the man standing in the center of the road, hands on a small cane. He was dressed in a simple green cotton jacket, sleeves rolled up on tanned skin, light brown hair close-cropped. When he smiled, the wrinkles around his eyes deepened, showcasing the lack of chemical injections to his face and his advanced-sixtyish age. My eyes narrowed when Lily flashed a Status notification.
Julian Barber (Level 218)
HP: 3100/3100
MP: 0/0
None of that told me who he was, but the lack of Mana signature, the lack of magic was a relief. His level, on the other hand, wasn’t, and I had to wonder how he was that high-leveled and still not a Mage. The ridiculous hit points was a clue of course. A very pointed one.
“Mage Tsien. Ms. Dumough,” Barber called, tapping the cane on the ground. “Do not flee. It will not help. I am here to speak only.”
Alexa growled, backing the car a bit and straightening it out. She never took her eyes off Barber as she angled the vehicle to go around him, all the while trusting me to safeguard us. When she was finally happy, she reached down beside her seat and picked up the pistol, aiming it at Barber while keeping it hidden. Only then did I roll down the window.
“Talk,” Alexa said.
Now that Alexa had her attention on him fully, I cast a quick Detection spell, a variation on the Scry & Observe spell that I had known so long ago. This one was a Detect Life spell whose gain was set to just a little higher than a squirrel. As the spell washed out, details flickered through my mind. A couple of crows and Barber were the only ones present in the five-hundred-yard radius the spell gave good data on. Outside of that, returned data broke down, but even there, the area around us was relatively clear of major life-forms.
“I have a message for you.” The cane rose, making the pair of us tense. But it was not an attack, just a pointer. “The Mage, that is.”
“What’s the message?” Alexa said. Softer, her eyes never moving from Barber. “I’ve heard of him. He’s a famous tracker. Lycanthrope.”
I swore and almost missed what Barber said next.
“You have until the new year. If you do not return to the city by then, they will kill your mother. And one more for every month you continue to hide.”
I shuddered, his words making me break out into a sweat. My family… my sister… What? How? For a time, my mind went blank, unable to process the threat so casually delivered.
“You can’t!” Alexa said angrily. “They’re not part of this. Not of our world. They’re mundanes! The law—”
“Tradition can be broken. Will be broken.” Barber made a face. “I am sorry. I am just one of many messengers. What they are doing, I do not agree with. But if you did not receive this message, they would have carried out their threats anyway. Those who want you dead are not the kind to offer clemency or extensions.”
“Why end of the year?” I croaked, my mind latching onto the portion that had surprised me.
“A compromise. You have done well, hiding. There was some concern you would dodge all the messengers.”
I grunted, my mind casting back to my mother, my sister. To those I’d left behind. I’d forgotten about them, forgotten they’d be vulnerable too. I should have thought of it, should have known. Should have…
“Is that all?” Alexa said, glaring at Barber.
When he stepped away from the car and nodded, Alexa floored the vehicle, taking us away from him. No longer caring about potholes or sudden cows, she took us away. All while I considered my failure.
***
We didn’t stop for hours. We crossed half the state and ended up in another broken-down motel, paying in cash for a pair of beds that I cast Cleanse on the moment I finished setting up our protective wards. In the meantime, Alexa verified that the room wasn’t bugged before snatching the keys and doing another check on the car. Not that she hadn’t done that hours ago, but we were somewhat paranoid. Half an hour later, we’d done all we could to ensure that we weren’t tracked and were seated across from one another on worn, if now clean, beds as an old cathode ray television played in the background.
“I have to go back.” I broke the silence, facing the truth head-on. Stating what I knew had to be said, even though I knew it was the wrong choice. The expected choice.
“I know.”
“You shouldn’t try to convince me—” I paused as my brain caught up with me. “You’re not going to argue with me?”
Alexa let out a bark of laughter that cut-off. “No. They are threatening your family. I would be disappointed if you chose not to go.”
“Even if it might be a bluff?”
“Can you risk it being a bluff?” Alexa asked. When she saw the look on my face, she continued. “That is why it is such an effective threat.”
“I should have…” I drew a deep breath, settling my emotions even as I
pushed aside the need to explain, to make excuses. It was too late to tell the truth. To warn my family. To do something different. Yet I could not help but feel the gnawing guilt in my stomach, the pain from putting people I loved in danger. But I could not have given up Lily either. Not to be used, abused, for ages.
“It isn’t your fault,” Alexa said softly. “You never had a good choice.”
“But maybe I could have trusted them. They asked. Begged me to trust them.” I turned away and wiped my eyes. “Now they might die.”
“They won’t,” Alexa said firmly. “We’ll go back and we’ll make sure they’re safe.”
“We?”
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Alexa said.
“I can’t ask you to do this.”
“Who’s asking?”
I found myself smiling in gratitude. “So. What? We go back now?”
“No. Not yet.”
“But…”
“They’re not going to harm them. He gave you the deadline for a reason,” Alexa said, her eyes narrowing. “We have two months. Let’s not rush it.”
My stomach twisted, first with fear then with anger. “You can’t be sure they won’t act before then.”
“And you can’t be sure they won’t hurt your family if you don’t give them Lily,” Alexa snapped. “There’s only one ring, remember? What if you went there and they fought over the ring? What if the group that didn’t get it wanted to take it out on your family? Or they tried to make you give it to them first by taking your family first?” When I had no answer, Alexa continued. “You don’t know what the status of your family is. Are they captured? Are they just watched? I assume they’re watching them, but what if I’m wrong? We don’t even know who ‘them’ is. Not really.”
“But it was the…” I fell silent. I had no idea who was threatening my family. I assumed it was the Mage Council, because… I wasn’t even sure why. Because they were the ones I thought had been following me? But they weren’t the ones who’d launched the first attack. After all, they had a way in back then. I’d just assumed. This entire thing was really getting to me.