§108 Pursuit (Patreon)

Kasper

"Let! Me! Out!" Kasper pounded on the walls around him. He couldn't see them – he couldn't see anything at all – but he could feel the surface in front of him to hit and claw at it. 

"I want out! I want out!" he screamed, but no one could hear. He knew what it felt like to be inside a privacy barrier. His shouts turned into a wordless roar, pitiful in the sound-stifled confines of his box.

That's what it was: a box. He wasn't standing up, but lying down. He stretched his arms until he could feel both sides, and he pushed and pounded and screamed and cried until his arms ached and his voice gave out.  

"Please," he croaked, "let me out."

It was happening again. Bagged and numbered for sale at an auction, probably somewhere far away. "Mama. Papa," he thought of Cook and Blake. His first parents were a memory of a smell and a blurred night of terrifying fire. The men who killed them carted Kasper around with them for over a year, locked in a cage. They only let him out to make him work. If he was good enough, they sometimes gave him something to eat.

He thought he was afraid before, but he wasn't. Thinking about his new parents, the ones he was so incredibly lucky to have, was scarier by far than being shut up in a box. They might be hurt somewhere, and he couldn't get to them. They could be dead right now, their blood spreading over the floors Chambers kept so clean. 

"Please be okay," he cried. He didn't try to stop the tears, since no one else could see them. "Please be all right. Please don't be dead."

For a little while, he lay still and felt the box jolt and rumble. He might be in a carriage. He desperately wished to look outside, to know which way they were going, or to know anything at all. How did he get inside the box? He sure as Death's sweet domain didn't climb in by choice.

Kasper remembered going to school and having his morning classes. And then … nothing. Did he go to lunch? Did he take his history test? Would his teacher accept kidnapping as a reason to take it late?

"I studied hard for that test!" He laughed at himself. It was dumb to worry about a test when he was probably on his way to slavery.

Boy! Boy! The words were soaked in urgency.

Tristan! How long had his bonded animal been calling for him? How many times did Taylor tell him that panic closed the mind?

Where are you, boy?

I don't know. I'm in a dark place. Be calm. I'm not hurt. But I think I'm a long way away.

Big Brother is here. Many lightning and spirits. He makes war for you!

A grim smile crept onto Kasper's lips, the kind that let his canines show. "Mon, these guys are going to be so sorry."

As Kasper calmed, he focused on his breathing, which made him calmer. The goal was to escape and get home, but that was more than he could do on his own. Still, he could do something. This wasn't like last time, when he was tiny and helpless. He was bigger now and several kinds of stronger.

"How do you eat an aurochs?" went the joke. "One bite at a time."

First, he made light. He wasn't any kind of magician, not the way Taylor was, but light was the babiest of baby spells. Anyone who tried could do it. For what it was worth, he soon had a view of his surroundings: a metal box shaped like a coffin, with airholes along the sides. He stuck his longest claw through the nearest hole, but didn't feel anything beyond. 

What else could he do? He used body enhancements for strength and defense, but only gave them a little juice. He could do other types, but he couldn't afford to drain his mana. With just those two plus light, he could keep his mana topped off, but push a lot more power into his enhancements if he saw an opportunity to escape.

What else could he do? Kasper tried to check his pockets, and that's when he discovered he was naked.

"Seriously?" he complained.

Taylor — Midway

The neighbors took it well, all things considered. It wasn't every day their street cloaked itself in darkness and then lit up with a hundred lightning strikes, thunder cracking against houses fast as a drumroll. The street filled with animal and bipedal forms, one per strike, until the full brigade was present. They stomped their feet in unison thirteen times and then halted as one, their sudden silence as deafening as thunder.

Aside from the IEF watchers at Mt. Uroda, it was the first time mortals had seen him summon a full army. The neighbors gawked before they closed their shutters and doors. Ras chuckled, and Briallen crossed her arms, frowning in thought. Ophelia's eyes shone. Cook, Blake, and Chambers lifted their heads even higher than they already were. Faith grumbled something Taylor couldn't hear.

Cecilia laughed. "You really can summon an army."

"I have a second one about this size." Taylor didn't know why he told her that. It wasn't the type of information he normally gave away. 

"Briallen, can I count on you to organize the defense here? I can leave half of these here, with Dogeneh in charge. Are you okay with splitting the brigade, Dogeneh?"

"Aye, Dux," spoke the flaming great dane, "what about the rest?"

"They're my reserve, in case there's fighting along the way. I don't know what they'll throw into my path."

"I was planning on coming with you," Briallen objected. "What are you planning to do?"

"Rescue Kasper and deal with his kidnappers."

"Obviously. But you know what I mean." She was worried about his ethics, that he might kill someone he didn't have to.

"If they're as lame as Otis was, I'll giftwrap them for you. But if they're fourth tier, I won't give them a chance to fight back."

"Don't get carried away with your vengeance. Remember, it's useful to keep them alive for questioning."

"I'm not out for vengeance," Taylor sighed. "I just want my family to be safe. Cecilia, please stay here. I should be back by morning."

Tristan came around the house, ready to ride. Blake had managed to saddle him in the few moments while Taylor wasn't looking. Such improbable feats were increasingly typical of his servants.

"Cook, give the mirror to Ras. I'll keep you all updated through him." He mounted Tristan and began his layers of body enhancements. The horse was trained to handle them and could maintain fifty miles an hour with the right balance. "We're off. Try not to worry."

He disbanded half of the Praxium Brigade and tried not to crush any pedestrians on his way out of the city.

It didn't take long to find Kasper's tracking medallion. The kidnappers had stripped him down to his fur and buried his belongings among some underbrush, a hundred yards from the road. They even buried his little coin purse.

It took a disciplined crook to leave money behind, even if it was small change. Some people carried cursed coins, in case they were robbed. The money would inflict a minor malady, like a vivid rash or terrible acne, on whoever took them by force. In spite of this, robbery was still an occasional fact of life in Aarden. Kasper didn't carry around cursed money, not that Taylor knew of, but the kidnappers were smart to leave his purse behind.

Taylor almost stuffed the things into his satchel, but changed his mind at the last second. He wouldn't put it past someone to add their own tracker to the goods, so they'd know if he was following them. Or curse the items to slow him down. None of it was valuable, anyway. He left the cache in place and resumed their run. 

Can you sense how he is?

Boy is full of fighting spirit.

Tell him not to do anything or tell anyone we're coming.

I am.

Tell him to listen in on their conversation.

Boy is in darkness and silence. A strong box.

"Definitely not a spur-of-the-moment kidnapping," said Taylor to no one.

Tristan startled drivers on the road, careened past a caravan, and passed a fast coach. On the shores of Fingers Lake, they veered around the town of Disford so they wouldn't have to slow down.

Ten minutes past Disford, wolves howled ahead of them, and horses screamed. The forests around the lake gave way to open plains as they bore down on the commotion. Dozens of dark shapes circled two wagons and a fistful of bleeding guards.

They stopped short of the conflict, and Taylor called his reserves from the brigade, with fifty lightning bolts that split the sky and thundered across the grassland. Wolves and guards stopped attacking each other to see what new danger had appeared and confirm which side the newcomers were on. All eyes were fixed on the Praxium Brigade reserves stamping out their count. Men and beasts heard Taylor give them orders.

"Protect the mortals. Kill the wolves." Fifty spirits split into teams and charged into the fight. The wolves ran as soon as the odds turned against them, but most didn't turn soon enough and were mowed down by the brigade.

Despite the poor odds, the wolves only moved to a bow shot away, too afraid to come closer, but unwilling to leave. The brigade stayed near the wagons they were protecting. In winter, wolves often came down from the mountain to hunt domesticated animals, but seeing them on the plains in summer was rare, especially in large numbers. Their behavior was entirely strange.

Taylor didn't have time to hang around and finish this properly. "Take these," he handed minor healing potions to one of the guards without caring if they were the leader or not. The potions weren't much, but they could stop a major bleed and keep someone from dying. "Check your carriages for monster lures. I'll leave this lot to protect you."

The guard looked dazed at the sudden appearance of a masked rider and so many spirits. An arc's head stuck out of the wagon, a girl child with silver curls. "Who are you?" she asked in Orlut.

The brigade sub-commander answered the child. "He is Dux Twilight, the greatest summoner alive."

"Protect them," he ordered the spirits of the Praxis Brigade, "get them to the next town, then disband." Taylor turned Tristan around to a new heading.

Big Brother! We're going the wrong way. Boy is that way!

"There's another way to do this," Taylor said out loud. "We're going to get ahead of them."

By running faster?

"Not faster. Smarter." Tristan was alarmingly intelligent, for a horse, but he had no sense of strategy. 

Tristan and Taylor charged off the road into the grassy terrain, toward his nearest portal tree. Their path led straight through the pack of surviving wolves, which was unfortunate for the wolves. Taylor Sliced a dozen of them with repeated force magic, invisible and sharp, without a care for saving pelts. To the spectators, it looked like the wolves exploded into a curtain of red spray while Taylor rode straight through it. He used to hunt the larger, dire variety when he was ten, in the dark, in winter, while it was snowing. These barely monstrified animals were no threat except in larger numbers.

He had the sense they were being followed. He looked around and, when he didn't find anything obvious, he scanned the sky. Something was following them from high above, on black wings eighty feet wide, edged with gold on the primary feathers. 

He stopped Tristan and dismounted as the giant bird folded its wings and dove. They never discovered the giant bird's intent. Taylor took careful aim and, when it came within a hundred yards, blasted it with repeated Dragon Shots. The wet and meaty bits plummeted in their altered trajectory to hit the ground twenty yards from Taylor in dense, damp smacking sounds. The feathers lingered in the air, drifting.

Silas — The Road North

Thorn swept in from the roof of their fast coach, through the window, and onto her seat. "We're going to need something a lot bigger. Is that the best you've got?"

"It's a monster lure," said their magician, a ratkin known as the Black Rod. "You get what's in the area. How strong was it?"

"Level fifty," said Thorn.

"Should slow him down, at least."

"Yeah, it did," she smirked, "long enough for him to take aim." She addressed Silas. "He's changed direction. I don't know where he thinks he's going, but it's not a shortcut to Bostkirk."

"Maybe there is one," said the Black Rod. He scratched at his long chin hairs with a sharp black claw. "We know he gets around the empire remarkably fast, but nobody has ever seen him on anything faster than that horse."

"It's a damned fast horse," added Thorn, "but I get your point. What are you thinking?"

"What if he's uncovered one of the ancient dimensional highways?  Darius One had his portal mirrors. He made so many that they still pop up once in a while, and the emperor has to send people to retrieve them. Hunaphu connected all the dwarven holts using a magic tunnel. He could march an army from his kingdom to Han-Karan in two days."

The Crooked Knife, who was silent through the exchange, looked to their leader. "What do you think, boss?"

"I think," he smiled, "he caught on to us a little too quickly, don't you? Someone warned him, almost as soon as we reported to our client. If he knows who the client is, then he can guess we'll try to load the cub onto a train to Avimore. He knows he won't be able to touch us so easily, there." The train system was an imperial endeavor, and at least one compartment was always reserved for imperial business. The letters Silas bore would get him into places where the young magician couldn't start a fight, not without incurring major repercussions. But, even that might not be enough to keep him at bay.

"We could go northeast after Crossroad, catch the train before it gets to Bostkirk," suggested Crooked Knife. "Take the train east, then ride it north to Hecuria and west to Avimore."

"No, I don't think so." Silas's smile was glowing. "He thinks he can intercept us at Crossroad." He turned to the Black Rod, "Let's use the specials."

"It'll be messy," warned the magician.

"I don't mind a mess," beamed Silas. "As long as we win, our client can hire someone else to clean it up."