Book 2, Chapter 41

It took the masked man a fraction of a second to realize the enchantment wasn’t working on me, and he immediately responded with violence. His leg snapped up in a roundhouse kick heading directly for my face, not a stretch to reach that height when I was so short. It was so fast that there was no way I could have dodged it either. I barely even recognized the movement before it reached me.

My shield ward knocked him back, throwing him off balance from the unexpected resistance. I chased after him, but even surprised, he was taller, faster, and apparently trained in hand-to-hand combat. He hopped back a step to avoid me grabbing hold of him. I tried again, but there was no way I was going to make contact, not without cheating.

Stone shape was not a combat spell. It took far too much time to get the magic going, and honestly, it was overkill anyway. Transmutations could be effective with proper preparation, but there was a much easier spell that could accomplish my goals. It took one second to cast stone needle instead. The conjuration shot a thin pillar of stone with a tapered tip straight out of the ground into the masked man’s back, or at least it would have if he hadn’t pivoted to the side. The needles from that spell disappeared after a few seconds, but that was more than long enough for me to cast the spell twice more.

Caught between the three thin pillars of stone shooting up around him at different angles, the man had nowhere to go but forward. He still almost got away by flushing mana into his muscles and leaping straight up over my head, but all I needed to do to win was touch him, just once. I smacked my hand against his foot and discharged the paralyzing grasp spell I’d been holding onto, then took a step back to let the man slide off my shield ward and land on the ground.

“Hi,” I said as I squatted down next to him. The mask was held in place with a leather strap, which I worked free of the cinch so that I could pull it off him. “This is a neat toy, but I’m guessing whoever gave it to you didn’t tell you about the weakness of this kind of enchantment. You see, it works fantastic to get people to not notice you, the person wearing it. But for anyone with any real ability to sense mana, it’s like a beacon drawing attention to the mask itself.”

The now-unmasked man twitched slightly, but didn’t respond. That was fine. I just needed him to be awake for this part, and the paralyzing muscle spasms would wear off in ten or fifteen minutes. That was more than enough time to roll him into his back and cast stone shape. Thick bands of rock emerged out of the floor at my direction, securing his arms and legs in place. More bands came down from either shoulder and circled under his armpits to hold his chest down, and I used two more on his neck and head.

I probably didn’t need twenty individual restraints to keep the man in place, but I’d already cast the spell and it barely cost any extra mana to go overboard on it. With the amount of mana he had left in him, he wasn’t breaking out through brute force alone. Part of me wanted to use mana drain to steal that away too, but I wouldn’t get enough from him to cover half the cost of the spell.

“Right, where was I?” I said after I finished binding him in place. “Oh yes, the mask. Interesting enchantment, but since whoever made it didn’t include a way to hide the mana, it’s kind of like having a bright light on your face to everyone who can sense that kind of stuff. It makes it very hard for the enchantment to do its job of forcing me to forget that I noticed you. But don’t worry, I’m going to remove all the mana from it anyway.”

Unlike people, enchantments could be drained at no cost to myself, and this one had a lot. It wouldn’t make up for all the mana I burned on that well-timed mind read, but it more than compensated for what I’d used capturing this man. I got back a good three cores’ worth of mana, then dropped the mask on the ground. Depending on what I learned from the man who’d been wearing it, I might use it as a focus for future divinations to find who made it, but that would come later.

“Based on your twitchiness, I’m estimating that the spell I tagged you with is going to wear off in the next two or three minutes, at which time I’m going to start asking you some questions. It would be… much easier for the both of us if you answered them honestly and fully, but if you don’t want to cooperate… Well, I understand. That’s why I picked this place to ambush you, and believe me, I just took enough mana out of the enchantment on the mask to block any noise from escaping for a good long while.”

In actuality, a good long while was only half an hour before I had to dip into my reserves, less if I counted the mana spent subduing and restraining the man. He didn’t need to know that though. I didn’t want him thinking if he just held out for so long, that he’d win.

Once paralyzing grasp wore off, I said, “So, let’s get started here. First question. Who do you work for? Blue Rat? Or someone else?”

The unmasked man glared at me, but stayed silent.

“Okay, let’s try again. How about… Who made the mask? I can figure that one out myself, but it’d save me a little time if you tell me.”

“Demon child,” he spat out.

I nodded. “I’ve been called worse.”

I cast aura of silence, then yelled at the top of my lungs, “I just want you to know that no one more than a few feet away from me can hear a word of this. Scream as much as you want.”

I cast the first of what was sure to be many mind spikes on the man.

* * *

It took twelve minutes to break the man. I had to be careful not to overload his brain with too much pain at once, but I got the job done. However distasteful torture might be, I wasn’t so squeamish that I’d shy away from it.

The man tried to lie to me, just once, about halfway through, and claimed to be a spy for one of Blue Rat’s rivals. I didn’t even need mind reading to confirm that wasn’t true. The idea only barely made sense to begin with, and not at all once I reminded him that people who were sensitive to mana could see him through his mask and pointed out that Rat-tail, who’d escorted me to Blue Rat’s office, had been just such a person.

“So who are you really?” I asked after he recovered from the mind spike.

“Yano,” he said. “My name is Yano. I’m an aid for Lord Velvet.”

“Mmhmm. And who is Velvet?”

Yano went quiet on me again when I asked him that, but he gave in eventually. At that point, the dam broke and secrets started spilling out of him as fast as I could gather them.

“He’s a member of the Wolf Pack Cabal, from the inner city,” Yano told me. “He handles a lot of the city’s governance. I don’t know the details, just that my position is to go between various gangs and guilds on his behalf, gathering information, taxes, giving out instructions. They’re looking for you, want to ask you some questions. Blue Rat wanted to make sure you were the right kid before he told Lord Velvet.”

“And the sewer access points? Are those real?”

“I don’t know,” Yano babbled. “Please, I promise I’m not lying. I don’t know. I only ever use the gates in and out of the city. I think if they were real, someone would have destroyed those tunnels a long time ago. I wouldn’t expect to find anything like that anywhere.”

Freak’s tunnel system had certainly stretched to the outer city, but I believed Yano thought he was telling the truth. That one was a bit of an unusual circumstance anyway, what with the whole giant underground death lake. I wondered how much he’d paid those smugglers to brave a trip across that repeatedly.

It was probably a waste of time to go looking into those other tunnels on the map, then. I mentally shuffled them down to the bottom of my priority list, only to be explored if all other options failed. I might still consider them before using Freak’s lake tunnel again since someone had found my teleportation beacon down there and Yano had confirmed that the Wolf Pack was looking for a child, specifically. On the other hand, there was still at least one giant fish monster waiting to be harvested.

“Tell me about the cabal,” I said. “Velvet is your boss. He keeps you organized. So he’s up there in their hierarchy? Who’s his boss? Who’re his subordinates?”

“I-I don’t know,” Yano said. “I don’t meet with any of them, just Lord Velvet. I don’t even know who his other operatives are.”

“How about a guy named Sibilant?” I asked. Noctra and Iskara had mentioned that name months ago as someone she reported back to.

Yano just shook his head.

That wasn’t surprising. Informational security was important for any clandestine organization. If the Wolf Pack ran the city, they were doing it from the shadows. I wasn’t really sure why they’d set themselves up that way, given that they seemed to be the top authority in Derro. At least, they were in the outer city. I really needed to get a good look beyond those walls and see what it was like there.

“Next question,” I said. I reached down and scooped up the mask. “Who made this for you?”

“Lord Velvet gave it to me,” he said immediately.

“And he made it?” I asked.

“I don’t know where he got it from.”

“How long have you been using it?”

“A week, maybe ten days?”

That was long enough that an object reading spell would place Yano firmly as its owner, but I could get past him and see who’d had it earlier. Maybe I could even glean a bit of information about this Velvet character.

“You’re not a mage, are you?” I asked, changing the topic.

“No?” Yano seemed confused.

“Adept?”

“No. I only know how to turn the mask on and off.”

Now came the important question. I’d been spot checking him with mind read every few questions, just for a second here and there. It was too expensive to use casually, but I didn’t have anyone else to check his answers against. Every second of mind reading cost me an hour regenerating the mana for it, but for this question, I needed to know for sure.

“You know how mages are made?” I asked.

‘What kind of question is that? Everyone knows- who cares? Just answer the little psycho before he uses that spell on me again!’

“The spirits grant their blessings to someone at the end of a ritual. I’m sorry, I don’t know the specifics of how the ritual is performed.”

That was more or less the same answer my father had given me. It was the same answer I’d gotten from every person I’d talked to about it and every book about magic I’d been able to find. If Yano believed it too, then I didn’t have a lot of choice but to accept that nobody outside of the cabal itself was likely to know. They might not have a clue, either. I’d find out once I caught one a bit less dangerous than Freak had been and asked some questions. Perhaps Velvet would give me the answers I needed.

“I am feeling merciful today, Yano,” I said. “You’ve given me all the answers I needed.”

“Then you’ll let me go?” he asked, his voice mixed parts hope and disbelief.

“No,” I said. “But you won’t feel a thing.”

I wasted the mana to cast sleep on him, then used stone shape to tighten the band around his throat until he died. The ground opened up for him, and I smoothed it flat after he was buried.