The Effaced: Chapter Twenty-Nine (Patreon)

“Zone isn’t dead!” Rhys said quickly. “Her body wasn’t found, and from what little we were able to find, there are reports she brought down about four heavily armored paramilitary types before fleeing the fire.” 

“What fire!” I half-shouted, before taking a slow, deliberate breath. “What fire are you talking about?” 

“Zone’s grocery store was set on fire by someone,” Rhys said. “They’re not sure who, though.” 

“Firefright,” I said, and Kelly nodded. 

“That’s what I thought too,” he said. “But the constables don’t have any proof, not yet.” 

“What exactly were you two doing out of the building?” Hadiya asked, and Rhys rubbed his temples. 

“Hadiya, it’s… Complicated.” 

It took a while, but Rhys and Kelly told us about how after being left cooped up in the labs for hours, they’d decided to see if they could put any of Rhys’ psychometry to work looking at details from the strange paramilitary who had been looking for me. 

When they’d found the place burning down, they’d had to quickly leave, returning to the lab for Rhys to cast a series of divination spells to figure out whatever he could about the fire. It hadn’t turned up much, but he’d been able to steal a couple of copies of the constables reports on it, including the report that someone had sabotaged the water producing enchantments in the building beforehand, and that Zone had fought off a group of paramilitary before making a retreat. 

“I see,” I said, slowly nodding. “That definitely sounds like Firefright. He’s stupid, but he’s strong.” 

“And I’m now pretty convinced that those soldiers were operating for the Arenamaster,” Hadiya said. “They attacked us when the Arenamaster blew up the White Rooms, after all. They might not be under her direct payroll, but at the very least, they’re working together.” 

“And they’re likely unrelated to proving the innocence of my case,” I said, letting out a long, slow sigh. 

“Actually, this is likely to be helpful for your case,” Rhys said. “Hadiya was with you at the White Rooms when they were attacked, and you left no evidence. As far as anyone is aware, the four of us stayed in the lab. We swear that in court and the fact that something is going on with Zone can be reasonable evidence that there’s a target on the previous children of the Arenamaster.” 

“Isn’t that perjury?” I asked skeptically. 

“Most people commit a bit of perjury at some point in their life,” Rhys said dismissively. “There’s even a specific faerie boon that’s easy to get to loop around the oaths that they make you swear, by temporarily altering the memories to match your story. It’s why hard evidence is so much more valued than testimony.” 

I blinked, Kelly laughed, and even Hadiya’s brows scrunched together in a frown. 

“I don’t think most people commit perjury,” I said. “Fallen Void, even I only have a little bit.” 

“How do you only commit a little perjury?” Kelly asked. “Also what is perjury?” 

“Lying under oath,” Hadiya said. 

“Oh, okay.” 

We lapsed into silence for a moment, until Kelly said. 

“Rhyssss! You only told them half the story.” 

“Right,” Rhys said. “After we grabbed what information we could from the constables, we went to your apartment. There were constables at the door –” 

“But I invisifielded us!” Kelly said cheerfully. 

“You what?” 

“Invisifield. Invisibility field. I  sensed all the minds around us, and threw out a big mental compulsion that Rhys and I weren’t there ontop everyone who’s mind I could feel. It’s like a field of invisibility.”

I blinked, then scrunched my brow, thinking over that. 

Most mind magic worked by first tossing a mind link from your brain to someone else’s, and then using that link as the origin point for the magic you were throwing around. That was what made it easy for an average mind mage to fake output detachment: by establishing a link, you could originate the spell from the other side of the link. 

It wasn’t technically detaching the output at all, but in essence, it achieved the same thing.

That strategy isn’t unique to mind mages, of course. Plenty of air mages faked output detachment by creating a tiny air current between their spell and where they were effecting. Mind magic just didn’t leave any physical trace or evidence.

The fact that the average mind mage relied on a link was what had made it so impressive that Kelly could alter Fake-Mist’s mind from so far away – he was well out of the range of what an average mage of his strength, leaving the only option to be detaching the output of his spells.

But it almost sounded like Kelly just… didn’t know that the link existed. Most mind mages would have linked to one target at a time, or if they had sufficient advancement, automated the linking with the fourth tier contingency arch-star. 

Kelly had entirely skipped that step, and had just shoved his one spell to everyone in range, which… Technically should be possible, but was staggeringly difficult. And Kelly didn’t even seem to know what

“It was rather disorienting, not being aware of myself,” Rhys said, and I shot him a look. Kelly was facing me, away from Rhys, but Rhys just nodded. He realized the same thing I had. 

“So anyways,” Kelly chirped without any regard for how impressive his invisifield was, “It set off one of the constable’s detection spells, and I had to do a really fast on the fly adjustment to make her think that it was actually set off because one of the ward lines on your neighbor’s apartment started to decay, and I think she accidentally got a citation for improper ward care…” 

I winced and hoped that the citation wouldn’t be too expensive, resolving to repay her once the mess was over. 

“And anyways,” Kelly continued. “Once we were inside Rhys and I moved the dressed and we got the cloth!” 

He reached into his back pocket and tossed me the sheet of neatly folded cloth, and I sucked in a breath. 

“Kelly, Rhys, you…” I trailed off, not even sure what to say, and instead pulled both of them into a quick hug.

I spread the cloth down on the table and began swirling power into the enchantments, inefficiently powering the foci. Hadiya examined the sheet, as did Rhys, while Kelly just watched with some amusement. 

After several long seconds, reality tore open into a gate to the Wandering Path, and I saw my guns, swords, and my old coat, all neatly folded up like I’d left them. I let out a sigh of relief. 

When I’d fought the Fake-Mist before, she’d had every advantage. Not only was she in shape and used to fighting, but she was armored, had her weapons on hand, while I’d been making do with whatever I could scrounge up. 

I never should have been so foolish as to think just a single knife and a metallic undershirt would be enough for me, but events had moved quicker than I’d expected. 

I moved to step in when I noticed Kelly, Hadiya, and Rhys were all staring at me. 

“What?” I asked. 

“That’s… Is it even legal for someone not in the military to have all of that?” Rhys asked in a half-strangled voice. 

“I purchased all of it legally,” I said, then paused as I considered the gun that was built for airship combat. “Or salvaged it.” 

“How did you even get that?!” Hadiya asked. 

“I was in EC-Six for a bit,” I said. “I took it off a group of air pirates.” 

I stepped into the Wandering Path and began to armor myself in full. 

First things first, I pulled on my armored coat, using a bit of metal magic to get the clasps and buttons to attach themselves for me, then summoned two belts with a wave and wrapped them both around me. Having two belts was a bit much, but I’d been a kid, and I’d thought it had looked cool at the time. 

“You all are–” I paused. I was about to say ‘help yourselves’, but that wasn’t true, I didn’t want them killing themselves with weapons they didn’t understand. 

“With your permission, I’ll outfit you all as well,” I said instead, and Kelly immediately nodded. 

As I picked up both of my pistols and tucked them into the pair of holsters, I picked up a little pea shooter, one that could only hold two bullets and tossed it to Kelly, alongside a small box of ammo, a knife, and a lightly armored undershirt. It was little more than chainmail, but it was better than nothing at all. 

“I have my own weapons and defenses, thank you,” Hadiya said, and I shrugged, tossing the sword I’d stolen from the Fake-Mist with the other spare swords, and instead belting my old combat sword – enchanted with anti-tampering and an absurd amount of durability reinforcement spells to handle increasing its mass – onto the other belt. 

“I… Should I?” Rhys asked. “I’m not a combatant, but…” 

“People are going around trying to kill one another,” Kelly said. “That might be you. Isn’t it better to have the option than to just die?” 

I nodded my agreement, but I was busy strapping some enchanted grenades I’d acquisition from EC-Six and claimed to have used in the field into the inside of my coat, and checking that their activations hadn’t worn thin in the years since I’d last checked up on them. 

“I… suppose,” Rhys said, then sighed. “I did have to learn a bit of fencing growing up, so do you have anything like a rapier?” 

“Not a duelist’s rapier, but I’ve got a war rapier in here somewhere,” I said, pushing aside a few swords until I found it. “They never suited my sword style very well, so I don’t have many, but I do have this one.” 

“How much do you have in there?” Hadiya asked, sounding morbidly curious. “How much is it worth?” 

I shrugged, passing the war rapier over to Rhys, alongside a belt. It was a bit small on him, but he managed to get it on.

“I don’t know, I don’t really track the worth of such things. I think Darren guessed that it was probably a lot, it was one of the things that we argued about a lot towards the end. He wanted me to sell it all and settle down, and I… Couldn’t.”

“Darren?” Kelly asked, and I thought I saw something flitter across Rhys’ face. 

“My ex-boyfriend,” I said. “We met in college, after my military time.” 

“Oh,” Kelly said. “That makes sense. I was wondering why the other Mist was saying those weird things about you being too old for me.” 

I chuckled at that and ruffled his hair, glad to move the topic away from the old sore spot. 

“No interest in you, sorry. I like my men older. Late thirties, early to mid forties. Don’t know if I could do fifties, that’s a bit too old.” 

Hadiya coughed, and I turned to look at her. 

“Sorry. Sure you don’t want a gun?” 

“Give me a disintegration grenade,” she said, and I raised an eyebrow. 

“Really?” I asked. 

“I’m not a combat mage. Most of my combat artifacts are just meant to incapacitate. But if I want something dead, I want it to be dead.” 

“Can’t argue with that,” I said, then tossed her a grenade. I wasn’t too worried about it – it was a purely enchanted grenade, not one of the ones that mixed alchemical, mundane, and enchanted explosions. Hadiya tucked it into her bag, and Kelly looked around. 

“Well, we’re armored up. Now where do we actually go?”