Book 2, Chapter 66

My walk back gave me a lot of time to think. A four-day wait prior to the meeting was helpful to me since it allowed me to regain some of my spent mana, but I hadn’t been the one to suggest it. What did Monarch get out of the delay? Part of me suspected she was looking for the exact same thing I was: time to gather more resources. The Wolf Pack had cast at least two temporal scrying spells, and the necromantic ritual to create a vengeful phantasm was even more expensive.

It might just be as simple as both sides being low on mana, but I doubted it. I’d taken a lot from them already, but they’d had decades of their harvesting operations, if the ledgers I’d gone through in Velvet’s archives were accurate. It didn’t feel right to me that they’d need a break to catch their breath. If not that, the only other option I could think of was that it was more time to set a trap.

That was why I left the mirror in my original hideout near where the orphan crew used to live. The wards were starting to fail, but they’d still interfere with anyone trying to track down the device. I considered fixing them, but it wasn’t worth it to me, not for just the few days that they’d make it on their own. I was going to need to set up new wards for myself somewhere else anyway, somewhere I could recover my mana and maybe steal a bit from someone else, too.

The early parts of the night were spent in travel and set up. By the time I actually got to sleep, once again lacking a bed, it was well past true dark. In an hour or two, the sky would start to lighten, but I’d made sure to pick a place to fortify that had a solid east wall specifically to account for that. Young and full of mana I might be, but I still wanted a decent chunk of sleep after the night’s exertions.

That wasn’t likely to happen, unfortunately, not with me having to wake up every few hours to pour my mana into my staff. I had a plan to accommodate for that, though: sleeping in until noon.

I curled up into a corner, my staff resting across my legs, and waited for sleep to claim me. For some reason, it was elusive that night, and my mind was occupied with plans and speculations. It took me a while to realize that I was actually concerned that perhaps I’d picked a fight I wasn’t capable of winning.

None of these mages could stand up to me on their own. But then, they weren’t on their own, and I’d only been winning by picking them off one at a time. I’d even gotten lucky when two of them came at me at once and managed to kill one immediately so they couldn’t gang up on me. The element of surprise was gone, now. They knew what I looked like and had a decent idea of what I could do, and they’d proven they were willing to sink enormous amounts of mana into outmaneuvering me.

If this meeting was a trap, there was a very real possibility that I wouldn’t walk away from it, and I wasn’t sure if there was anything left in Derro to justify the risk. Who was I even fighting for at this point? The village? All the villages, I supposed. But it wasn’t like I was going to go around reforming each and every one, teaching them magic and fixing up broken ward stones.

Finally, I decided to put off the decision on whether to continue pursuing the cabal until after the meeting. At that point, I’d hopefully know whether they needed to be completely eradicated or if I’d done enough damage to keep them in line for the next decade or so. After that, I’d be able to rapidly advance from stage two to stage five. At that point, I’d be able to hold four to five times as much mana in my own body as I currently could in my staff and be able to generate it at a proportionate speed.

But first, I needed my new body to finish becoming an adult. That meant ending this conflict and devoting my time and resources towards finding ways to grow my core to full size more quickly. Confiscating whatever resources the Wolf Pack had been gathering would go a long way towards fixing the issue of my small size, but I could admit my reasons for continuing the fight were motivated by pure self-interest at this point. I’d already convinced my parents to evacuate, and I didn’t have much care left for what happened to Alkerist. It seemed unlikely that the cabal could track down my new home even if they wanted to.

That left just the possibility of an ambush at this meeting to take care of, and I had a few ideas to head that off as well. Once I managed to get that issue settled in my mind, I was finally able to relax and sleep.

*

Four days was not enough time to restore my mana to full, not if I was content to just sit back and let it happen slowly. Being proactive about it was riskier, but I wanted to be as prepared as possible for this meeting. There were a few different options I’d spent some time thinking about.

First, the Repositories. They were well-guarded, but I was sure I could get in and out without getting caught, as long as no one knew I was interested in them. I’d seen no indication that any of the kids I’d asked the initial questions to had told anyone else, but it would still be smart to evaluate them again before I committed to any burglaries.

Second, the enforcers around town. Each one was a walking mana potion, just waiting for me to drink it. They all had storage crystals and mostly full cores, but attacking them would be conspicuous and as far as I could tell, they reported to the cabal. Though the person who likely ended up dealing with them was Velvet, and he was dead now, so there was a possibility of taking advantage of some confusion in the ranks there.

Third, the smugglers who’d been working for Freak. Supposedly, Hyago was a mage as well, and one unaffiliated with the cabal directly. I’d seen his grow room. There was mana in there, and if I went and took it, I doubted the Wolf Pack would complain. With Freak dead now, they might not ever find out.

The third one had the least risk, but also the least opportunity for payout. I knew the mana was in the leech stones at the Repository. I knew the enforcers had full storage crystals capping their batons. I knew that Hyago’s grow room had existed a month ago, but with Freak dead, they might have cut their losses on the project. Hyago could have drained as much mana as possible from the otherwise-worthless plants and abandoned the whole thing.

But I had almost four full days to do some investigating, and there was nothing stopping me from attacking the smugglers and the enforcers if the first assault didn’t give me enough mana. I decided to save hitting either Repository for a last resort, as that was the one most likely to anger Monarch. Also, I wanted a bigger mana crystal to make sure it was worth it. Hauling out thousands of leech stones once I ran out of room to hold the mana was likely to collapse my phantom space, and leaving the mana behind defeated most of the purpose of the raid in the first place.

With that thought in mind, I stowed away my staff and started walking toward the Hyago’s grow room. If I was lucky, it would still be there. If not, I had two backup plans. And if those failed, there was always the option of mugging people for their mana-infused money. I mentally marked that as a plan of last resort, not just because it sounded desperate, but because it would be tedious to accomplish.

For all the concerns about my brain not being able to fully handle the information I fed it, I had no problem retracing my steps back to Hyago’s hideout. I approached it casually and walked past, using my ability to perceive mana to look for any trace of the grow operation. I wasn’t unduly concerned about not finding anything. The building wasn’t warded, but the skylight was, and I hadn’t sensed the occupants or the herbs in there last time, either.

I spent a bit of mana to cast life sense and bit back a grin as I felt nine people appear in my mind. Additionally, rows and rows of plants were still thriving. For whatever reason, Hyago hadn’t moved things yet. I wondered if that vault would still be in there. Now would be the time to crack that open and get a look inside.

I was not particularly worried about getting caught this time, so I did not bother to scale the walls and slip in through the roof. If I’d known where the sewer tunnel entrance Hyago’s gang used came out at, I might have gone that route just to preserve a bit of mana, but then again, it might have ended up costing me more breaking through any defenses there.

I cast phantasmal step and walked through the wall to appear in a corner that I remembered being relatively cluttered with tools and supplies, a good place for me to hide if no one noticed my entrance. Luck was with me, and I slipped inside undetected.

That was about where my luck ended. None of the plants had the mana invested in them that Freak’s personal lab had. I could have sworn they’d been at least a bit mana-infused the first time I’d come through here. Maybe they’d used it all up growing, and Hyago’s crew hadn’t been able to add more since Freak was too dead to supply it.

What I was left with was a set of wards on the skylight I could drain for mana, nine adults I’d need to subdue with a mass sleep spell, and whatever was behind that partitioned and warded area. If that was a dud, then I was going to make back the mana I spent and not much more.

It wasn’t much of a gamble. I’d either score big or break even, or somewhere in between, but there wasn’t much of a risk of a loss. With that thought in mind, I quickly put everyone working in the grow room to sleep, then emerged from hiding and examined their mana cores to determine who, if anyone, had enough built up to justify the cost of a mana drain.

The answer there, sadly, was none. The people barely had more mana than the plants. I walked past them and up to the section of the floor that had been separated from the rest of the grow room. The walls had wards infused into them, simple defenses to keep anyone who wasn’t allowed in from walking through them.

It took me a minute to find the artificial cores powering the enchantment, then another minute to drain it dry. That by itself made up for the sleep spells, and I entered the room, eager to see what sort of treasures Hyago was hanging onto.

I probably should have expected it to be more gardening supplies and equipment. Bags of soil, useful but not terribly valuable, were stacked up against one wall. I started to walk past them, then stopped and frowned. The tops of the bags were open, and the rich, black soil inside was clearly visible. It didn’t match the dirt in the planters. If it wasn’t being used there, though…

I glanced around again. Trowels and shovels were hung up on the walls next to rakes and pole saws. Pruning shears, axes, and branch loppers were all laid out neatly. That was strange. Other than the trowels, there wasn’t much need for this kind of equipment in a controlled environment like a grow room.

Opposite the soil was a trio of barrels, unremarkable at first glance. Only when I went over and pried the lids off did I see the runes carved into the inside of the barrels. All of them were full of water enriched with mana. What were they using it for, though? I distinctly remembered watching a half-dozen laborers bringing water in by the bucket.

I was missing something. This was just a supply room, and even if some of the supplies had value, there wasn’t anything here that justified the mana usage to keep it warded. My eyes flicked back and forth between the tools, then stopped and lowered to the floor beneath the table. Why was there so much loose dirt there?

I scuffed it with my foot and nodded. “Of course, a trap door,” I said. “But what’s under it?”

There was only one way to find out.