Chapter 107: Report
Ant hadn't expected things to unravel like this. His projection's raw strength had exceeded Evan's by a wide margin, yet the limits on how long he could stay manifested had cost him the fight before it even properly began — Evan had forced him out of Fiat's body not once but twice, without either of them landing a real blow. Just as he tried to slip back in, Evan caught the opening and hurled Grand Disintegration straight at him. "You can't do this!" he roared in fury.
The words weren't even finished before the spell struck home. He existed only as a thread of consciousness, and the impact hit with a force that seemed to tear space itself apart. He let out one last, furious cry — "You'll see me again" — before that consciousness snapped back along its connection to the true body.
The moment Ant withdrew, Fiat panicked. He'd stayed in stealth the whole time, but it had never actually shielded him from Evan's senses. Evan had tracked him partly by instinct, partly by scent, and whether Fiat stayed hidden or not made no real difference to him at all.
Still, Evan didn't move to finish him. Raight remained in Fiat's custody somewhere, and Evan needed accurate information about where he was being held — without it, there'd be no chance of finding him at all, let alone a shot at summoning a devil out of thin air to explain any of this.
Fiat cast a wary glance around and realized the situation had already turned against him completely. Most of his real strength wasn't even stationed at headquarters tonight — who could have predicted Hollingburton would strike in the middle of the night? He'd assumed that on their first day in town, without any proof, they'd never make a move first. If anything, he'd expected to be the one to strike first. He'd made no preparations at all. But Evan hadn't followed any of the logic Fiat expected. Proof or no proof didn't matter to him — he'd already grown suspicious of James, and he certainly wasn't going to wait around for someone else to move first. Everything he'd done tonight had one purpose: to seize the initiative, to make his enemies react to him instead of the other way around.
Fiat had assumed his stealth was undetectable. Evan had blocked him more than once, but each time, once he'd closed the distance, he hadn't pressed the attack — a small mercy Fiat intended to use while he still could. He started slipping quietly toward the middle building.
If he meant to run, why head toward that building instead of simply fleeing? Because Raight was still locked in the cellar there. After days of every method he could think of, the man had given him nothing but the same useless claim — that he genuinely didn't know where the Fallen Angel's Tear had gone. Something ugly rose in Fiat now. He couldn't kill the necromancer standing in front of him, but everyone from Hollingburton deserved to die regardless, and before he fled, he intended to kill Raight — if only to vent some of the fury boiling in him.
Evan noticed Fiat wasn't running at all, but moving instead toward the middle building, and it struck him as strange — he had no idea what the man was after. He dealt quickly with someone lurking nearby who'd been hoping for a sneak attack, his body flickering as black smoke rose and he vanished with it, using a variant of Wraith Eye stealth that borrowed a ghost's concealment. The effect wasn't especially strong, but it was more than enough for the moment.
He watched Fiat duck into the building. Inside stood a spiral staircase, but Fiat ignored it entirely, pressing a hand against the wall behind the stairs instead, opening a hidden door and slipping through.
The door swung shut. Evan didn't hesitate — he repeated the same motion, and the door opened again for him. He followed through, finding a staircase leading down into darkness. He crept forward carefully, and Fiat's voice reached him, seething with rage. "Raight! Fine. You still won't tell me the truth? I'm out of patience. Just die, then!"
At those words, Evan's stomach dropped. His body surged forward at once, all thought of concealment abandoned, a wave of raw magical force bursting outward as he appeared in the cellar below.
Fiat stood there, greatsword in hand, his face twisted with rage, pointed at a man bound and slumped forward, head hanging — whether alive or dead, there was no telling.
Fiat had been about to finish Raight off when the surge of magical force hit him. He wasn't a mage himself, but his profession still carried some connection to magic — a thief's stealth techniques were a specialized kind of magic in their own right, tied more to bodily skill than pure spellcraft, but related to it all the same.
The surge of power made him freeze. He knew, instantly, that something had gone wrong, and a flicker of panic crossed his mind as he glanced toward the door — and that single moment of hesitation was all it took. Evan had already arrived.
Fiat let out a roar, light flaring along his blade as he swung it down toward Raight. Evan flung out a hand, shouting, "Wind Blade!" A shield of shimmering blue-green light snapped into place in front of Raight. The greatsword crashed against it, the shield's glow flickering under the impact but holding. Fiat roared again and struck a second time, and the shield shattered.
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Just as the blade closed in on Raight, Fiat's whole body jerked to a sudden halt — Evan's rapier had already driven through his back. His sword arm went slack at once, though the blade still carried forward on momentum, swinging on toward Raight regardless.
At that exact moment, Raight's bowed head snapped up, and a jet of water burst from his mouth, striking Fiat full in the face. Somehow, in the days he'd spent bound under the anti-magic spikes, Raight had scraped together just enough magic for one last, desperate gamble.
The blast of water sent Fiat staggering, his body tipping backward, the blade grazing past Raight's clothes and tearing a strip of fabric — missing him by the barest margin.
Fiat slumped to the ground, all strength gone. Evan let out a breath of quiet relief and hurried to untie Raight, only then seeing the full extent of the damage — barely a patch of unbroken skin left on him, both legs snapped, the tendons in both hands severed, his arm bones fractured, several ribs broken, one eye blinded entirely.
Fury burned through Evan at the sight — this had been pure torture, nothing else, and it told him exactly what Raight had endured these past few days. Raight rasped out, "Thank you for saving me."
"Don't talk. I'm going to set your bones. It'll hurt, but Hollingburton won't let this go unanswered," Evan said, working through each break one by one, resetting them in turn. As a necromancer, he knew the human body intimately, but the pain would still be unavoidable — and yet Raight didn't make a sound through any of it.
Once the bones were set, Evan murmured an incantation, drawing on the body's latent vitality to speed the healing of wounds and fractures. It wasn't complete, but he managed to close up six or seven-tenths of the damage before he noticed sounds starting to rise from the street outside — the early vendors and farmers heading out for the day. He checked his pocket watch. Nearly four in the morning. He helped Raight back to the abandoned house.
The moment they stepped inside, Lidis woke. Seeing Evan return, she let out a breath of relief — but the sight of Raight, even after everything Evan had done for him, still drew a sharp intake of breath from her.
Once they'd heard the full story, both of them were shaking with anger. Evan pulled bread, cured meat, and sausage from his ring and handed it over. "Stay hidden here and heal for the next couple of days. I'll get word to Hollingburton to send someone to bring you both back. Don't show your faces in the meantime — leave James and everyone else to me, and leave the matter of those materials to me as well. Anyone who's laid a hand on Hollingburton is going to answer for it, every one of them."
With dawn not yet broken, Evan made his way back to Hollingburton's outpost. Jessica hadn't slept at all, anxiously waiting for him. James hadn't slept either, though he was putting on a good show of it, waiting anxiously himself for word from his own men. Strangely, no word had come all night — and neither had any sign of Evan.
Only Jaymes and Peter had slept soundly through the whole thing, blissfully unaware of everything that had unfolded that night. Ignorance, sometimes, was its own kind of peace.
Evan slipped back in just before daybreak. Jessica hurried to meet him, keeping her voice low. "Well?"
"Went well," Evan said with a smile, then switched to a minor telepathic link, giving her the essential points of the whole night. Jessica's expression shifted.
Are Lidis and Raight safe where they are? she asked through the link.
"Safe for now, but this town's about to come apart today. Keep an eye on them with the two students, but don't go there directly. There's a café not far from where they're staying — go there today, have some coffee, and keep watch from a distance. Don't give the location away," Evan said.
And what will you be doing?
"I need to reach Ortlando and have him send reinforcements. This is only going to escalate, and we need to be ready ahead of it."
A minor telepathic link won't reach that far. How do you plan to send word — surely not the owl kept here?
"I'll use the owl here, for the sake of appearances — there are only certain things I can say through it. Underneath that, I'll summon a messenger and send the real letter through another plane entirely. I didn't expect Hollingburton to have made itself this many enemies here already — even James has turned out to be a problem," Evan thought to himself.
Jessica nodded. "Once it's light, I'll take the two students out to look around properly and gather what information we can. You should rest — you've been up all night."
Evan nodded and returned to his room, checking it carefully for anything listening in before sitting down to write his report. Once it was finished, he murmured a quiet incantation, and a green light bloomed in the room, resolving into a beautiful bird of paradise. He tied the letter to its leg and set a ward on it — only Ortlando would be able to open it; anyone else who tried would find it burst into flame instead. He gave a wave of his hand, and the bird vanished.
He wrote a second letter as well, this one saying only that he'd gone out the previous night and, acting on suspicion, had taken down the headquarters of two gangs — leaving out any mention of rescuing Lidis and Raight, any solid proof he'd gathered, and any hint that James had actually betrayed them. He set it by the head of the bed and went to sleep.
When morning came and everyone rose, only two of them had actually slept through the night. James knew Evan had come back, but he hadn't tried to listen in on their conversation — Evan was an Arcanist, and James had no confidence he could eavesdrop without being caught.
Once it was light, he played dumb and asked Jessica, "Did Mr. Evan make it back?"
"He did, around four o'clock. He's resting now," Jessica said with a smile.
Just then, Evan appeared in the dining room, yawning. "Morning, everyone."
"Morning. Won't you sleep a bit longer?" Jessica asked.
"I'll go back to sleep in a bit. Would you mind sending this letter to Hollingburton for me?" Evan said, handing it to James.