Bog Standard Isekai

Part 3

Three days after the Ball, Brin visited the prison in the Tower. That fact there even was such a thing came as a pretty big shock, even though it wasn’t a secret and anyone could’ve told him where it was. It would make sense if they were sort of like the secret holding cells on cruise ships–sometimes you needed to confine someone dangerous until you got a chance to turn them over to the authorities.

But that wasn’t what this was. This was a long-term prison facility whose purpose was to hold, with or without trial, anyone that the [Archmage of Chaos], the Master of the Tower, deemed inconvenient or dangerous. This wasn’t his old world where only the government had the power to arrest people. An institution as powerful as the Tower, led by a man as legendary as Chaos, was a government unto itself. Of course, Chaos wouldn’t arrest and imprison nobles without a formal and legal process. But monsters, commoners, or foreigners? They were fair game.

Over the last three days since the Ball, Brin had asked around about the prison, and he’d learned the names of a few of the prisoners. Tranceling. Rot Owl. Scarrot the [Corrupt Eye]. And currently, Brin’s [Valet], Tonin.

They’d been informed that Tonin would only be held for a week, but Brin thought he might be able to spring him early, and he owed it to his [Valet] to at least try.

He took the elevator to the sixtieth floor, together with a lady’s maid, Sanpurana. This was actually Sancha’s maid, the one who accompanied her to the Tower every day. Apparently, she and Tonin had developed a friendship when they were both working in the Tower while the nobles were at school, and she’d begged him to bring her along to see how he was doing.

Other than asking to come along, she hadn’t spoken much, and the elevator ride was spent in silence. She looked a lot like Sancha; he’d thought so the first time he’d seen her, and now that they were alone together, he was sure. Sanpurana was blonde, had the same brow and the same twist to her mouth, and even stood the same. Except where Sancha’s stature looked bold and proud on a woman in a perfectly-tailored dress, it looked upset and resentful when worn by someone in a servant’s black and white. He wondered why Sancha had chosen a ten-percent less pretty version of herself as a maid, but he couldn’t exactly bring it up with Sanpurana. Talking to the servants wasn’t seen as humble or egalitarian, it was seen as overbearing.

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened, revealing an entrance hall of white stone coursing with the flowing light of enchantment, some scribed openly and some only sensed by the power they held. It didn’t look like it was openly trying to be intimidating, the room was flowing and circular, as if trying to forbid any straight lines or edges. It certainly looked a lot less like a prison than the Circle of Fire, but that was only if you were using your eyes. The sheer power in this place had a weight to it that didn’t feel like he was up hundreds of feet in a Tower. It felt more like the prison was here and the Tower below was hanging off of it.

Two [Sentinels] stood on either side of the entrance, great armored figures. Magical golems of some kind in diamond-shining armor and limbs carved of pure ivory. They followed him with their eyes and completely denied the possibility of anyone ever getting comfortable in the two rows of padded benches in the center of the entryway.

Brin walked past, towards the guard. The guard was a level 50 [Warrior], a thin, sharp-eyed man. He sat in an enclosed box and spoke to Brin through a speaker on the glass.

“State your name and business.”

“My name is Lord Brin the Mistaken, son of [Archmage] Lumina, and I’m here to see Tonin, my [Valet].”

“Tonin has been detained under the direction of the High Circle of the Tower,” said the guard.

So Chaos hadn’t arrested him. It was the council made up of the Circle Masters. That was good to know.

Brin had prepared for this, so he delivered the line Hogg had given him. “The High Circle of the Tower must either release him into my custody immediately, or provide an explanation for why they’ve deprived me of the service of a valuable asset.”

The guard nodded. “Put your hand up on the square.”

“What?” Brin asked, surprised at the lack of argument.

“It’s not that serious,” said the guard with a shrug. “They wrapped up everybody involved with the incident for questioning, but if they actually thought these commoners knew anything they’d have been up here by now. You want him, you can have him. Hand on the square.”

This was on the wildly optimistic side of how Hogg had warned him this could go, so he pressed his luck, “What about the other servants you’ve arrested?”

“Hand on the square, please.”

Brin held his hand up to a square of white on the transparent wall that separated the entryway from the rest of the prison. The doors that it would open were transparent, and Brin could tell two things about them right away: One, they weren’t made of glass. Two, if they didn’t open for him, he was never getting through.

He was confused for a moment when he tried to place his palm flat against the square, but his fingers didn’t uncurl. They he remembered he had lined the inside of his glove with glass and sent some magic into it to get it to move.

Perris’s leather gloves had saved his fingers, or at least kept them connected to his hands, but he’d still burned away quite a bit of flesh in the explosion. Lumina had referred him to the finest [Physician] available who’d already replaced the skin with grafts he’d grown in a pot on the stove, but it wasn’t perfect. His body hadn’t accepted the grafts right away, and they still oozed, and frankly, they stank pretty bad.

But even though it hadn’t healed all the way, he’d already seen some gains.

[Recovery] 18 - > 21

[Scarred, but Healing] recovery rate: 458% -> 482%

The Death Curse of Arnarra -83% -> -82%

He hoped the guard wouldn’t need him to remove his gloves, because that wasn’t happening. Luckily for him, the doors slid open as soon as his hand hit the square.

“Stay on the path, follow the lights, no magic, no funny business. And stay with your Sentinel."

Brin flinched when he noticed one of the huge Sentinels of living stone was already standing right behind him. Too quiet for something so large. “Understood.”

A string of lights lining the bottom of the walls indicated that he should turn left after the doors, and he quickly trotted through and down the hall. Sanpurana stayed behind. She stood next to the benches, hands folded in front of her and head bowed.

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Brin had kind of hoped to see some of the infamous prisoners, but the cell doors had no windows, and nothing even marking who was in each cell. He bet the Sentinels knew, and who else would need to?

Finally, he arrived at the cell, signified only by the fact that the lights stopped glowing at this door. The Sentinel stepped forward and opened the door. Brin walked inside, and flinched again when the Sentinel closed the door behind him.

The cell was an elegantly appointed studio apartment, with color coordinated furniture and a fantastic view of Steamshield. He’d imagine Tonin might love to live here if he hadn’t been randomly thrown into the place even though he’d done nothing wrong.

Still, his mental state must not have deteriorated quite so badly in three days, because he’d kept it fastidiously clean. The man himself blinked at Brin three times, as if not quite understanding, before he snapped to his feet from the loveseat he’d been lounging in.

“So. It looks like the Servants’ Tea was as wild as you said it would be,” said Brin.

“Lord Mistaken! I… oh. Oh no,” said Tonin. “Oh no, how could you?”

“How could I what? Tonin, I came to get you out of here,” said Brin.

“You’re matching a jet black coat with charcoal pants!”

Brin looked down. There was nothing wrong with what he was wearing. “Black is black.”

“Black is…” Tonin sniffed in disgust. “We must rectify this at once. Lucky for you and the honor of your house, I keep an emergency stash in your locker. You say you’ll be able to retrieve me from here?”

“I can, but first, how did you end up here? Despite everything, I don’t think you got drunk and drew mustaches on all the portraits in the Hall of Mundane Art,” said Brin.

Brin had been so distracted by the fallout of Calixtum’s appearance that he hadn’t even heard that the Servants’ Tea had also ended in blood and screaming until the next day.

“I can’t say exactly what I was doing when it arrived; the finer details of that night are a blur. I can tell you what happened after I consumed the Sablite. I took to thrashing the thing with a firepoker, at least until I remembered–”

“Yes, but what was it?” asked Brin.

“Vines. Vines and thorns. My [Monster Sense] reacted to it and I received a System Message for defeating it, so it was a true Monster instead of a spell, but its quick-growing nature makes me think it originated at the party rather than crawling up the sewer pipes or some such devilry. I thought at the time that someone had misread a label on some magical seeds they’d brought for recreational use.

“I can’t say it was too strong; some of the serving women took cuts from the thorns, but no one was seriously hurt, thank Anshar,” said Tonin.

“You killed it yourself? That was well done. You deserve better thanks than being locked up in a dungeon,” said Brin.

“Oh, no, I only held it back for a moment. Once I had my wits about me, I summoned Bedelia and she made short work of the thing,” said Tonin. He reached into his coat, rumpled from four days of use, and produced a bookmark-sized slip of hard light.

He offered it to Brin, who pushed more glass Mana into his gloves so he could turn the bookmark over in his hands. It was black, but when the light reflected just light, he could make out the work “Bedelia.” He handed it back.

“Master Hogg provided them. All one must do is break it to summon her. Oh, she’s in here, too. Will you free her as well?” said Tonin.

Brin shrugged. “That’s on Hogg. But honestly, they’re crazy if they think they can hold her here against her will.”

“There’s one more thing. A few [Mages] came by to question me. They weren’t at all interested in the party and what substances may have been abused there. They also didn’t seem to be interested in the Monster itself. Instead, they were very concerned about a theft.”

“A theft? Of what?”

“They never came out and said it, that’s only the impression that I got. I’m sorry, my lord. I don’t know any more,” said Tonin.

“That’s already enough,” said Brin.

“Very good, sir.”

It all left him a bit flat-footed, because he’d honestly gone in here expecting the official story to be the right one. The Servants’ Tea had gotten a little out of hand, so the Tower leadership had grabbed a random number of them and locked them up for a few days as a deterrent. Tonin and the other servants who had been arrested would’ve been let out in the next day or two even without Brin’s interference. So what was this about a theft?

His paranoia immediately went straight to the idea that both the disturbance at the ball and the plant monster at the Servants’ Tea had been a distraction–it definitely would’ve kept the attention of a good deal of the Tower’s defenders. But that was a stretch. Brin had been the one to decide to make a scene at the Ball. No one had put him up to it. Had they?

Brin stood appraising Tonin for a moment, before deciding. Tonin deserved to know a bit more than he’d been told so far, and now was actually a pretty good time to do it. Hogg had told Brin the anti-eavesdropping wards were better than anywhere else in the Tower, and Lumina had said the warden here could be trusted. Bottom line, if he wanted to have a private conversation, now was actually the best time.

“We should talk about events on my side.”

“It is never my intention to pry into the secrets of my employers… but I would not object to such, my lord,” said Tonin.

“I’m sure you’ve heard Hogg and I talking about the Motley shroud. It’s a super-weapon that the Cobols were secretly developing for the war against Arcaena. Officially, at least. According to them, it ended in failure and all hands save one were lost. But then at the party the other night, I forced Vitor to reveal that he wasn’t the only survivor of the Cobol’s blacksite disaster. There was another, though perhaps survivor is the wrong word, since I’m not sure he’s even human any more. A [Mage of Water], previously, and now? A weapon. He defended Vitor when I went too far in a duel, and he was strong. Really strong–he tanked a few spells from Lumina before escaping through the wall. And then after that… poof. Disappeared. No one knows where he went, or how he got away. I got an [Inspect] off right before he escaped, though. Calixtum Tanner.”

“Tanner? Not a noble’s name,” said Tonin.

“Exactly right, but you’re skipping to the end, so let me back up. If you add the original research crew to the investigation team that Vitor was part of, you’ll get around a dozen [Water Mages] of varying level and ability, along with another several dozen support Classes. Hogg has put a lot of effort into putting together a file on each of those people, and we found that Calixtum was perfectly average. He wasn’t the weakest [Mage of Water] present, but he was far from the strongest. He didn’t have a single Class Skill, Title, or Achievement that wasn’t also held by at least two other members of the expedition. Cobols share with each other, so they tend to walk the same advancement path,” said Brin.

“So the difference is that Calixtum was the only commoner?” asked Tonin.

“Close. Vitor and Calixtum were friends growing up. Vitor was poor for a lord and Calixtum rich for a commoner, and both of them were students of Lord Barros. They were close, and Cobol’s camp didn’t skimp on training either of them. Calixtum earned himself three points of Magic per level with pre-System Day Achievements. Vitor didn’t lag behind. If you saw the two of them together, you’d almost start to think that titles and rank didn’t matter that much. Until Calixtum made [Mage],” said Brin.

“Because that’s when he’d need to swear a System Oath,” said Tonin.

“Exactly. Most people in Calixtum’s situation would swear to Duke Xander himself, but Calixtum asked for an exception and apparently, Xander was generous enough to grant it. Calixtum swore his System Oath directly to Vitor. There were three other [Water Mages] from commoner backgrounds, but they’d all sworn to Xander. Calixtum was the only one who’d sworn a System Oath to someone also part of the expedition.”

Tonin nodded. He was standing straight-backed with his hands clasped behind them, the way that the [Footmen] back at the house stood when Jeeves was giving them their morning briefing on their assignments for the day. “I appreciate the candor, but I must admit, this is rather more information than I’ve come to expect in Hogg’s employ. Am I to keep an ear out for word on this Calixtum, then?”

“Yes, but mostly see what you can find out about the Shroud. We need to know if there are any more sightings. Hogg is more certain than ever that Cobol is going to make a play for the throne, and his pet monster is going to be a part of that,” said Brin.

“I understand, my lord.”

“Good,” said Brin, and clapped Tonin on the shoulder. “Then we should get going. Sancha’s maid, Sanpurana came up to see you.”

“She did?” Tonin couldn’t hide the smile at hearing that.

“We shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

“No we should not.” Tonin was out the door before Brin, but he froze in the doorway when he came face to face with the lidless stone eyes of the Sentinel. He scooted to the side, walking sideways and keeping his eyes on the Sentinel as if it were one of those statues that would attack the moment you stopped looking at it.

Brin had to push his way through the middle, and then demonstrated manly valor by walking back down towards the exit, without looking back towards the Sentinel once.