The Effaced: Chapter Forty (Patreon)

Happy Halloween and Diwali! Just as a reminder, next week I will not be posting much / if at all, as I'm with family.

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It became annoyingly apparent when Kelly and I left to try and go to Rhys’ apartment for some sleep that, despite all our planning, we hadn’t accounted for Noor, the floor guard. 

“Sorry, Mr. Doggan, but I can’t let you and your son through,” she said, shaking her head. “Mister Ermonte put you down as a guest, but that isn’t the same thing as letting you in whenever you want.” 

I paused when I heard her words, then sighed and stepped back into the lift, Kelly following me in. 

“Not a problem. He was staying late at work, so I’ll just let him know,” I called out to Noor. 

“Course,” she said, relaxing when it became clear I wasn’t going to pick a fight. I yawned and pushed a button, letting the metal and wind enchantments start lowering the lift. The moment we were out of earshot, I glanced at Kelly.

“Think that you can create a convincing mental illusion of Rhys?” I asked. 

“Probably!” Kelly agreed. “I’ve spent enough time with him to make a decent illusion.” 

We took a twenty minute break at a late night cafe, in order to give Noor the time to think we’d gone to Rhys work and come back, then we took the lift back up, while Kelly reached out for everyone’s mind in range and created a mental illusion of Rhys. The illusion looked a few years older and a bit larger than I thought the real Rhys looked, but Noor bought it easily enough, then I led Kelly to the door, where I paused. 

We really, really hadn’t thought this through. I glanced around furtively, then infused my hiding arch-star into a shape metal spell, then built a metal-sense spell, slowly combining the two on the fly. It took me a bit to find the wall switch where Rhys’ guest-markers were, and when I initially flipped it, nothing happened. I had to trace the ward lines back to within the lock of the door itself, turn them to unlock and realign them, and only then did I get two soft flashes of red light indicating we could enter. 

I pushed the door open, leaving Kelly staring at me. 

“Did you just hack his wards?” 

“There is a reason people thought I might be the one responsible for killing his dad,” I said. “They were wrong, but I did make the perfect scapegoat.” 

I rifled around in Rhys’ pantry until I found some bread and cheese, and made Kelly and myself some cheese toasties, then Kelly passed out on the couch, while I passed out in bed. 

The following morning, we left to head back to the lab, complete with the illusion of Rhys. 

There were still a few hours left until Rhys’ twenty-four hours were complete, so I spent the time in one of the lab’s many training rooms, doing the best I could to teach Kelly about aura manipulation exercises for fine control. His control was good, especially for someone of his age, but it could always be improved. 

When I finally freed Rhys, he stood up and pulled me into a hug, and for a second, my brain stuttered to a stop. 

Outside of my sister, I hadn’t been hugged in… a long time. 

It was strange, for something so innocuous to feel so strange, but I didn’t have many, if any, friends that I kept up with regularly. I saw a few of my college friends on occasion, but not all that often. 

I was a physically affectionate person, but also rather starved for touch. 

“I’m sorry about being so… that way,” Rhys said. 

“Why?” I said, hugging him back after a moment. “It was the spell. Not you.” 

“It was the spell talking, but I could still feel it,” Rhys said. “I tried to resist, but it… Didn’t work.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, stepping back after a moment. “You didn’t even say anything particularly bad. Sorry I kind of… broke into your apartment?” 

I explained, and Rhys laughed. 

“Ah, yeah, that was really a mistake on my point. But how are things in the city? Has the Arenamaster attacked again?” 

“If she has, it’s more subtle than last time,” I said. “I think the papers would be reporting if there was another massive explosion or anything of the sort.”

“True,” Rhys agreed. “Well, how long until your suit is ready?”

The next several days went by incredibly strangely. Perhaps they were passing normally, but after everything that had happened, normal time felt strange. 

And normal was relative. 

I was staying at Rhys’ apartment, and Kelly was sleeping on the couch. Rhys did a lot of the cooking, and unlike my terrible skills, he was an incredible chef. Not just because he could afford good quality ingredients, either. He was just good at cooking. 

Most days, Rhys worked. Not on the case of the Arenamaster, or anything related to me, but simple translation work, where he cross referenced photographs of a half dozen different artifacts – both magical and things like pot sherds – and worked to write out translations. He sent letters to others, sometimes through magic, but often simply through the mail system. 

I flew in to work one day to inform them I was being charged with a crime I hadn’t committed, only to learn that I’d been fired when I hadn’t shown up for several days. That was frustrating, but I couldn’t entirely say I was surprised. I didn’t want to find a new job until I was certain that everything with the Arenamaster and the legal case had blown over, so instead I spent much of my day working with Kelly, training him in magic.

We visited the library to get information on different mind magic spells. Much of it was restricted due to ethical concerns, but I understood the theory of building spells, and with Rhys’ help, we slowly worked out spells for Kelly to use. 

During the time Kelly went out to do his own things, I practiced my own skills. After all, while I’d been able to beat the Arenamaster’s newest indoctrinated child soldier twice, both times had been through tricking her perception. I was certain that the Arenamaster would be putting her through hell in order to correct those deficiencies, so I needed to be better than her on skill alone when we next met, or at least have a few more tricks up my sleeve. 

I did feel guilty about the fact that Fake-Mist was probably suffering because of me. Logically, I knew that I had to beat her in order to win, and that I’d done everything I could to rescue her so far, but that didn’t stop the emotions from running through everything I could have done better: I could have shot the Arenamaster instead of talking to her. I could have anticipated that Alphyzie’s magic would allow the Arenamaster to steal Fake-Mist from under my nose, since Firefright had used a near-identical ability to slip from Kelly. I could have followed the ship that the Arenamaster had requisitioned in order to launch her attacks. 

Despite the worries and guilt, The Arenamaster didn’t attack, and even the ship that she’d had captured was reclaimed by the constables. No evidence that it was used for anything criminal was found, which I suspected was Nexus pulling the strings in order to disappear the evidence, and it was largely blamed on a malfunction from the producer, Lloyd’s Labs. 

It left me nervous. There were still attacks that the Arenamaster had paid for, and they would definitely be committed. It wasn’t just me who knew this, but the city itself seemed to be abuzz with fear and concern over the ‘random’ terror attacks. Constables were using the fact that several days without one had passed as a way to signal that they’d stopped them, but few in the undercity believed that was true. 

Kelly did approach me, a few days into the stay, while the jury was being assembled as rapidly as Aiden and the prosecuting attorney could manage. 

“I need help. You know how you told me to stop living where I used to, in order to live somewhere else? Under the Concrete Crown, or with Rhys if he’s willing to put up with me sleeping on his couch?” 

I hadn't told him to keep staying with Rhys, but I understood what he meant. 

“Yeah, I know. What’s up?” 

“My… My ah, old landlord? I don’t want to confront him alone. Could you… come with me?” 

He flushed and looked away, embarrassed at asking for help. 

“Confronting someone who held power over you is a brave thing,” I said, putting my hand on Kelly’s shoulder. “There’s no shame in asking for help when you do it.” 

“Yeah, I guess,” Kelly said, shifting from foot to foot. 

“Do you want me to suit up? Or not?” I asked. 

“Yes,” Kelly said, nodding rapidly. “They have guns, and they like to threaten people.” 

I had to resist staring at Kelly. Just how bad was his landlord? 

Still, I suited up and we began heading down into the undercity, weaving through the decently maintained streets and to the cordon. Kelly’s apartment wasn’t on the other side of the cordon, but it was close to it, where the least city maintenance was done. The entire place was drab and run down, and Kelly seemed to shrink as we walked closer, then looked at me. 

“You can levitate metal, right?” 

“I can, it’s one of the most basic spells for a metal mage to learn,” I said. 

“Can we… Pack? And then levitate some of my stuff out first?” 

“Of course,” I said, then ruffled his hair and gave him a mock-glare. “You just wanted me here to help you pack, didn’t you?” 

Kelly laughed, but there was a hint of nerves in it that wouldn’t normally be there. When we entered his flat, however, it had been ransacked, and Kelly seized up. 

“I… I had an idea they’d go through it, looking for money,” he said. “I just didn’t think it would be this soon.” 

“Let’s look and see if there’s anything left?” I offered, gently patting Kelly on the back. 

We spent some time poking through the turned-over flat. Most anything that was valuable had been taken, but there were a few sentimental objects that Kelly stored away – a photograph with his late father, a small clay vase Kelly had made as a kid, a battered old suitcase that had belonged to his dad and a few other trinkets, when there was a coughing sound. 

“I haven’t pawned all your stuff… yet,” a man said from the doorway. “If you’ve got the money, the aura – in a crystal this time, no more of your magic transfer stuff – and are willing to spend some as our entertai–” 

At those last words, a few things clicked into place, and I decided it was time to intervene more directly. Normally, I’d have Kelly fight his own battles while I was nothing but support.

But sometimes there was a good reason to call in cavalry. 

“You’re the landlord?” I said, standing to my full height and taking in the other man. 

He was about a hundred and seventy centimeters, well below my more-than two meters. Skinny in a way that might be attractive to some, but belied a substance abuse problem that many might not see. All in all, fairly normal sight for the undercity, but it was often the ones who looked normal that were concealing skeletons in their closets, while people unafraid to stand out had less to hide.

He cracked his knuckles and looked up at me. 

“Who do you think you are?” he asked. 

“Someone who would have been better off forgotten,” I said. “Taking crystals for rent and not returning a crystal with the same auric capacity is illegal. Doing it since the kid’s dad died? That’s a lot of crimes to wrack up. And judging by the way you were talking, that’s the least of your crimes. 

I cracked my neck and split my stream of consciousness to begin building spells. 

“Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to give the kid his stuff back. He’s going to leave. And you’re going to sell this place to the Concrete Crown, then leave. Got it?” 

The Concrete Crown had their own sense of justice, and right now, I trusted it more than the constables.

“What makes you think you can demand that?!” the landlord said. “I own this pla…” 

He trailed off as the building began to shake.

I had, more or less, pulled exactly the same trick that I had when I’d held the hospital together – shaping out a simple, but massive spell, and infusing my third arch-star into it. Only, there were a few key differences. 

First of all, this building was a lot smaller than the hospital, so I didn’t black out. 

Second, instead of setting the metal to reinforce, I set most of the structural beams to gently shift back and forth. Dust began to rain from the ceiling, and the man turned and ran, but the building kept shaking. He sprinted down the stairwell, while I kept my magic the same, tuning the motion to be just enough to dislodge dirt without risking the structural integrity of the entire place. 

And third, I was going to use it to take a page out of Firefright’s book, and use the illusion of being a lot stronger than you were. 

When the landlord got outside, I leapt out of a window and caught myself with a pair of spells in my main stream of consciousness, floating to the sunken tunnel street, then let them go. As the building visibly leaned towards us, I jerked a thumb at it. 

“So, are you going to do what I said?” I asked. “Or am I going to have to throw your own building at you?”