“You mean to say that you can find out any person’s whereabouts at any given time?” I say.
“Yes, but like I said, auras can be used for many other things,” Eiden says. “For example, if you study a person’s aura fluctuations carefully enough, you can tell if they’re lying or not. Besides that, you can also find out their age, their race and their mental state. If you tamper with a person’s aura enough, you can even stop them from aging! Speaking of auras, Barry, I happened to see your aura in very close proximity to two lessathi a few days ago. Did you remember to give them my message?”
Crap, he’s talking about the two lessathi that were with Diane. His stupid message was the last thing on my mind at the time. What am I supposed to tell him now?
“I’m sorry, I was barely even able to talk at that point,” I say. “I’d just been electrocuted.”
“That is true,” Eiden says. “I could tell even from afar that you were barely able to hold onto your senses at the time.”
“Yes, exactly!” I say. “That’s why I couldn’t—”
“However…” Eiden interrupts me. “If delivering my message had been your first priority, you would have surely been able to find the resources necessary to fulfill your task.”
“Wait, listen,” I say. “We can find other lessathi. We can still deliver the message!”
“Barry…” Eiden says. “I’m starting to get the impression that you’re not taking me very seriously.”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “Of course I’m taking you seriously!”
“This will not do,” Eiden says. “How am I supposed to get my point across if you’re not taking me seriously?”
“Listen,” I say. “I get why you may be thinking this, but trust me when I say that—”
“I know!” Eiden says with a smile, all of a sudden. “I should kill one of your friends! That should make you take me more seriously!”
“What did you… just say?” I ask him.
All of a sudden, I hear Rose starting to gasp for air loudly.
“Rose!” Daren shouts. “What’s happening?”
Rose tries to say something, but she doesn’t manage to get enough air in her lungs to articulate her words properly.
“You shouldn’t force yourself to speak, Rose,” Eiden says. “After all, the airways to your lungs are currently slowly closing themselves in. You should focus all of your efforts into breathing as much air as possible!”
“You bastard!” Daren shouts as he pulls out his sword. “I’m going to kill—”
Before he gets to finish his sentence, Daren falls to the ground, completely paralyzed, and the same thing happens to everyone else except me and Rose, immediately afterwards.
“Your friends can’t help you this time, Barry,” Eiden says to me. “What are you going to do?”
A feeling of panic overwhelms me all of a sudden. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening… We were finally rid of the collars. We were rid of them! Everything was going to be okay. Why did you have to come back? Why?!
“Time is running out, Barry,” Eiden says. “Your friend is at the end of her rope. How are you going to stop me?”
How am I going to stop him? I still have no idea how he powered up my stat device when I fought the dragon, and I don’t know any of his weaknesses. Does he even have weaknesses? Are there any words that can get me out of this like last time? What would make him let her go? What would convince him to let this slide? What am I supposed to do?
All of a sudden, there’s a loud noise of plates shattering to our right, and Rose finally manages to take a deep long breath, as both Eiden and I turn to identify the source of the sound. Flower is just standing there, with an expression of pure shock on her face, and with a dozen shattered plates lying at her feet.
“Well, if it isn’t Illuna, of the sacred woods massacre!” Eiden says, smiling. “It’s been twenty years, I believe? How have you been?”
Flower’s expression quickly changes into one of pure rage, as her eyes turn bright red, and her aura starts to fluctuate violently.
“You!” she shouts, as she points at Eiden. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
She then jumps towards Eiden and starts throwing a flurry of fireballs at him, as the stillwater casually dodges each one of them without even using any magic. Flower then shoots a beam of fire that engulfs Eiden completely, but it simply passes him by and leaves him unharmed.
“You killed them!” Flower says. “You killed them all! Bring them back! Do you hear me?! Bring them back!”
She then conjures a dragon made entirely of fire that flies towards Eiden and starts to attack him with its claws. Flower also joins the battle up close, and she tries to punch the stillwater with her flaming fists.
“Illuna,” Eiden says, as he parries the girl’s strikes with one hand, and the dragon’s with the other. “Do you think you can put a stop to this? I’m kind of starting to lose my patience, here…”
For a second, the girl’s eyes turn bright blue, and I can clearly see the fear in them. The next moment, Flower stops moving, and she looks as if she’s being held against her will by an invisible force.
“Let me go, Petal!” the girl says, as tears start to form in her eyes while she struggles to break free. “Let me go! I have to kill him! I have to!”
After trying in vain to free herself for a few more seconds, Flower then turns towards us.
“It’s him!” she tells us. “Don’t you see? He’s the one! He’s the one who destroyed the city of Olmnar!”
Chapter 11
“You’re the stillwater who obliterated the entire city of Olmnar with one flick of his fingers?” I ask Eiden.
“I am indeed,” Eiden answers.
“But didn’t that happen like… twenty years ago?” I say. “Just how old are you, exactly?”
Eiden pauses a bit to think.
“To be honest, I sort of lost track a few hundred years ago,” he says. “The calendars have changed at least five times since I was born, so I have absolutely no idea what year we’d be in according to the old calendar. The closest approximation I can give you is that I’m somewhere in my early six hundreds.”
“You’re… more than six hundred years old?” I ask him.
“Yes, that’s what I just said,” Eiden says. “Try to pay attention.”
“How could you?…” Flower asks Eiden, while a tear flows from her eye. “How could you kill all those people? What did the people of Olmnar ever do to you?!”
“To me?” Eiden says. “Nothing. But the people of Olmnar were the first ones who began hunting animals as a sport. They are the sole reason for the whole war that has started between the animals and the humans. They needed to be punished.”
“Punished?” Flower asks, as her eyes turn red with rage once more. “They all needed to be punished?! Even the elderly? Even the kids? Who gave you the right? If anyone’s, it should have been Eleya’s decision to make, not yours!”
“Oh, right, the old fox!” Eiden says. “I’d almost forgotten why I came here in the first place.”
He turns to me.
“Barry,” Eiden says, “did you know that the golden fox cast a tracking spell on all of you before you left the lessathi ruins?”
“A tracking spell?” I ask. “Why would she do that?”
“I do not know!” Eiden says. “But I’m suspecting that she must have taken an interest in you as well!”
He then starts moving his index finger through the air, as if he were pushing some invisible buttons in front of him. After a while, a golden light begins to shine brightly all around us, and a hologram of the fox’s head appears in front of us, soon afterwards.
“Eiden?” Eleya says. “Eiden, is that you?”
“Hello, old friend,” Eiden says. “Did you miss me?”
“Eiden, what are you doing?” the fox says. “Stop this at once!”
The stillwater pays her no mind, and he continues to fiddle around
with her spell, until he grabs onto what seems to be a golden string, made of solid light.
“Eiden!” Eleya shouts. “Eiden, don’t you dare!”
Eiden smiles and waves at the fox, as he pulls on the golden string, and both the light surrounding us and the fox’s head quickly disappear, with a loud clinking noise.
“Was that it?” I ask Eiden. “Did you deactivate the spell?”
“Yes, but the spell is set to reactivate itself if its targets remain in the same area for too long,” Eiden says. “I believe I overheard you saying that you were headed towards the city of Thilias, were you not? Allow me to give you a ride to your destination. Free of charge!”
He snaps his fingers, and I suddenly feel my whole body compressing itself into a single point, as all of my senses fade for one brief moment, and when I wake up, I find myself standing in front of a huge stone wall that seems to spread for as far as the eye can see.
I turn to Rose, who seems to have recovered from her violent coughing, and who is now measuring up the walls with her eyes.
“Rose, is this…” I start to ask, but Rose answers me before I finish my question.
“Yes,” she says. “The city of Thilias. He wasn’t lying. He really teleported us to our destination…”
“Rose!” Daren shouts, as he rushes towards us.
Apparently, the paralysis effect has worn off, because Kate and Hadrik have also gotten up, and are now slowly approaching us as well.
“Rose, are you alright?” Daren says. “Do you need healing?”
“No, I’m fine…” Rose says. “I only got a big scare out of it, nothing serious!”
“Arraka,” I say, as I now look towards Flower’s amulet. “Do you sense Eiden anywhere around us? Is he hiding invisibly again?”
“No, he didn’t teleport here with the rest of us,” Arraka says.
“Could you let us know if you ever sense Eiden hiding invisibly around us again?” I say.
“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Arraka says.
“Really?” I ask, surprised. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Arraka says. “As long as I get to piss Eiden off, it’s time well spent for me.”
“So, I’m guessing you and Eiden have a history, then?” I ask.
“Oh, yeah, he and I go way back,” Arraka says.
“Is that so?…” I say.
“Flower…” Kate says, as she comes closer. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Flower says, curtly, as she wipes the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Do you need to talk, or—” Kate starts to say but Flower interrupts her.
“I’m fine!” Flower shouts.
“Oh, yes, you definitely look fine to me!” I say.
Flower frowns at me.
“I’m not stupid,” she says. “I know you’re making fun of me. I also know that all of us combined wouldn’t stand a chance against Eiden if he were to go all out. I know that! But even so, I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing!”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Daren says. “I acted much the same as you the first time I met Eiden, and I didn’t even have a personal grudge against him like you do.”
“You did?” Flower asks.
“Yeah,” Daren says. “I already knew that I couldn’t stand a chance against him, but I charged at him like a bull, regardless, and the bastard just put me to sleep with a single motion of his hand.”
“You, there!” we hear a city guard shout, as he rushes towards us. “What is your business here? Identify yourselves!”
“It’s okay, Ralph!” Rose says, smiling. “They’re with me!”
As the guard approaches, I see a warning message in front of my eyes, telling me not to hurt him because he’s a local. I then get the same message for one of the guard’s colleagues, who remained near the gates.
“Rose, thank the gods you’re back!” Ralph says. “The whole oildrip situation has only gotten worse while you were gone. The entire Sparrow’s district has now been quarantined.”
The guard then looks at each of us in turn.
“I’m guessing you folks are the ones I should thank for bringing Rose back home safely,” he says. “You all have my deepest gratitude! Our town would not be the same without her.”
“Is there anything I should know about before heading over to the Sparrow’s district, Ralph?” Rose says.
“Yeah,” Ralph says. “Nurse Martha said she needed to talk to you as soon as you came back. You should drop by her tent before doing anything else.”
“Alright,” Rose says. “I’ll be sure to go there as soon as I lead my new friends to my house, then. Thanks for letting me know!”
After finishing his conversation with us, Ralph waves to his colleague, and the latter then opens the city gates to let us through.
As we enter the city, I am surprised to see that instead of luxurious manors and villas, we are greeted by broken down, wooden houses, and a stench that could even drive off a skunk. Most people on the streets are dressed in rags, and they are all looking at us with an uneasy look in their eyes, as we pass them by. Naturally, every single one of them has a warning message floating above their head, telling me that I can’t harm them.
“Forgive me for maybe coming off as ignorant, Rose,” Daren says, after we walk down the city’s streets for a while, “but aren’t the towns of Varathia supposed to represent the peak of human civilization?”
“They do,” Rose says. “But this is the Beggar’s district. We entered through the eastern gate, but the nobles and the royalty mostly only use the western gate when they come into the city, and they rarely, if ever, set foot in this area.”
“Your towns are divided according to the amount of wealth each individual possesses?” Daren asks, shocked.
“Yes,” Rose says. “Isn’t it the same on the other continents?”
“No, of course not!” Daren says. “That would only further increase the disparity between the rich and the poor, and cause unnecessary conflict between them!”
“Oh, in Varathia, most of the poor people are too afraid to seek conflict with the nobles, because in doing that, they’d only be endangering their entire families.”
“Their families?” I ask. “Aren’t there laws against this sort of thing?”
“There are!” Rose says. “But the nobles aren’t subjected to them.”
“That sounds terrible!” Daren says. “I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of discrimination that these people are faced with every day of their lives because of these unfair laws. How can this be allowed to happen?”
“Uh, well…” Rose says. “Technically, it’s the nobles and the royalty who are allowing it to happen, so obviously they don’t really have a problem with the way things are right now. You guys really live in a completely different world from us, don’t you?”
All of a sudden, Flower, who hasn’t really spoken a word since we entered the city, gasps loudly and puts both her hands over her mouth.
“Oh, gods!” she says. “I completely forgot! I needed to buy a new chain for Arraka’s amulet. Can you guys wait for me here? I’m pretty sure that there was a shop that had what I wanted somewhere near the city gates.”
“Well, hurry up, then!” Hadrik says. “I wouldn’t want to spend more time here than is absolutely necessary. This place gives me the creeps.”
As Flower hurries off to the shop, Hadrik starts to look around for something to do while he waits.
“Hey, Daren,” Hadrik says. “There’s an armor shop right over there, by the corner. Wanna come see what they’ve got? This might be the perfect opportunity for you to finally get rid of that ugly breastplate of yours!”
“I’ll pass,” Daren says, with an acid tone in his voice.
“Suit yourself,” Hadrik says with a grin, and he goes to enter the armor shop.
“You two really don’t get along, do you?” Kate asks Daren.
“I don’t know what you’re ta
lking about,” Daren says. “Hadrik and I get along just fine.”
“Right…” Kate says.
As we all stand there and wait, we suddenly hear a girl’s scream coming from our right. When we turn around, we see that a large man in his fifties is currently brutally beating a fifteen year old girl, in the middle of the street. Judging by his extravagant clothing and the jewelry around his neck, he would seem to be one of the local nobles, or maybe even royalty.
The girl is dressed in rags, but not the sort of rags that would be worn by the people we’ve seen so far in the Beggar’s district. These clothes of hers look much more worn-down, and it doesn’t appear like there’s been any effort put into making them look aesthetically pleasing even when they were new. Leaving her clothes aside, what is really strange here is that the girl doesn’t seem to offer any sort of resistance while she is getting beaten. She does not raise her hands to defend herself, she does not try to run, and she’s not calling for help. What’s more, the people on the streets are simply passing them by and ignoring them, as if nothing was happening.
“What the hell is wrong with everyone?” Daren says. “They’re all acting like this is perfectly normal. I can’t just stand around here and watch things go on like this. I’m going to teach that fat bastard a lesson he’ll never forget.”
“Daren, wait!” Rose says, as she grabs him by the arm. “You can’t! That man is related to one of the kings of Varathia, and that girl is his slave. She is his rightful property!”
“She’s his… what?” Daren says, as his look darkens.
Rose hesitates for a second, when she sees the look in his eyes.
“That girl is a slave…” Rose continues. “She doesn’t have any rights, or freedoms. That man is legally entitled to use her in any way he wishes, and to dispose of her whenever he sees fit.”
Daren just stands there and looks at Rose for a few seconds, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Magium: The Mage Tournament: Book 1 Page 29