Chapter 60. Beware of Chicken
Sael and Richter spent most of the day visiting the corrupted professors in their homes, beating each one to near-death before purging the Corruption from their bodies.
And then heal them, of course.
It was methodical work. Exhausting, not physically—Sael could have done this for weeks without tiring—but mentally. Each professor required the same careful calibration: enough damage to trigger the Corruption's survival instinct, precise enough not to kill the host outright. Then the purification spell at exactly the right moment, followed by healing extensive trauma while the former host sobbed or screamed or stared at nothing, processing what they'd been made to do.
By the fifth professor, Sael had refined the process down to a grim efficiency. But unfortunately, the intelligence gathered proved disappointingly sparse.
Most of them knew very little beyond their immediate circle. The network's compartmentalization was thorough, almost paranoid in its design. Each professor had been recruited individually, often years apart, chosen for what they could specifically contribute to the Corruption's goals rather than for any broader strategic value.
One specialized in warding theory and had been maintaining protective enchantments around certain meeting sites; places where the Corrupted could gather without detection, discuss their findings, coordinate their search.
Another had access to restricted archive sections and had been slowly copying forbidden texts, ancient references to primordial entities, methods of binding or summoning, anything that might lead them closer to understanding how to locate or create a suitable host.
A third managed the university's rare manuscripts collection and had been researching historical accounts of exceptional individuals, those with unusual magical affinities or bloodlines that might prove compatible.
But their actual lives were remarkably normal. They taught their classes. They graded papers. They attended faculty meetings and complained about budget cuts and maintained cordial relationships with colleagues. The Corruption simply gave them an additional purpose, a secondary agenda that ran parallel to their ordinary existence.
And crucially, none of them had bothered with students at the Astra Academy itself.
It made sense, really. Their goal was finding a host for the Primordial, not recruiting an army. Students were irrelevant to that objective. The Corrupted needed researchers who could access obscure knowledge, specialists who could identify potential candidates, protectors who could secure their operations. So the Astra Academy's student body had remained untouched, at least for now. A small mercy, though it did nothing to provide Sael with his next lead.
By the time they finished with the last professor—a quiet man who taught history and had been cross-referencing genealogical records with documented cases of magical anomalies—the sun had begun its descent toward the horizon.
Sael healed his fractured skull and broken jaw, watched him slump against his bookshelf in numb silence, and felt the familiar weight of frustrated futility settle over him.
All these people purged, yet zero useful leads.
The cart ride back should have taken them directly to the duchy. Sael settled into his seat, prepared for the return journey, watching the countryside roll past as workers continued their frantic preparations for the King's birthday celebration.
Then the cart slowed and Sael glanced out the window only to find that they weren't at the duchy. They weren't even in the general city proper anymore. This was the outskirts.
The cart came to a complete stop as Sael looked at Richter, one eyebrow raised in silent question.
He knew this place.
The dirt path, the way it curved just so before opening into a small clearing. The ancient oak tree standing guard at the property's edge, its branches wider now but the same gnarled shape he remembered.
The house itself sat nestled into a gentle hillside in that distinctive halfling style—though no halflings had ever lived here—with round windows and a door painted green that was just slightly too small for someone of Sael's height. Not inconveniently so, but enough that he'd had to develop the habit of ducking. He could, of course, have made it larger by magic, but he never had. The first few times he struck his head on the lintel had been accidents; after that, it became deliberate—an easy, harmless thing he could do on the days when Eirlys was sad, because seeing him hit his head like an idiot on the doorframe never failed to draw uncontrollable laughter from her.
The roof was thatched, well-maintained from the look of it, and smoke curled lazily from the stone chimney.
Someone had been keeping the place up.
The garden had expanded since his time here. Neat rows of vegetables, herb boxes beneath the windows, flowering vines climbing trellises that hadn't existed before. Everything carefully tended, clearly loved. A stone path wound through it, the same stones he'd laid himself, though the moss had claimed more of them now.
Beyond the house, perhaps fifty yards distant, he could hear the river. The sound of it hadn't changed. Still that particular gentle rushing, not quite a babble and not quite a roar. It was constant, clean and exactly as he remembered.
"I'd hoped to see you more often," Richter said, clasping his hands behind his back as he surveyed the property. "And I suspected that would be the case from now on. So it seemed logical that you should have a place suitable to dwell in while you're here in Orlys."
Sael opened his mouth—he had his cloud for that, perfectly comfortable, no need for—then closed it again. Richter was still talking, and interrupting felt unnecessarily rude.
"At first, I arranged for a suite in the castle itself," Richter continued. "Private quarters, your own staff, maids, the whole business that someone of your station would typically—"
Not at all, Sael thought.
"—but Great Aunt Margaret informed me you would absolutely hate that."
Sael's opinion of Little Margaret's perceptiveness increased marginally.
Richter turned to face him fully, expression somewhere between apologetic and pleased with himself. "So Great Aunt Margaret asked me to renovate the home you and your wife, Lady Eirlys, lived in when you were still teaching here. When you were acting as the first headmaster of the Academy, centuries ago."
Sael stared at the house.
He'd assumed it had fallen into disrepair, been reclaimed by the wilderness or bought by someone else after enough time passed that the property records got confused about who actually owned it. He knew his old house in Gatsby had become a historical place people would visit, not out of reverence so much as curiosity. He didn’t resent it; he just found it strange, the idea of strangers walking through rooms where he’d once lived, running their fingers along banisters he’d worn smooth without ever meaning to. Stranger still that those ordinary, absentminded touches had become something worth preserving.
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"Margaret's been maintaining it," Richter said, answering the unspoken question. "She didn't want to presume, but she thought... well. She thought you might come back eventually."
The garden made sense now.
"I had the interior updated," Richter continued. "Nothing dramatic, the structure's sound, and Margaret was quite insistent I not change the 'character' of the place. But new furniture where the old had rotted, fresh paint, that sort of thing. Modern conveniences while keeping the same feel." He paused. "I hope that's acceptable."
Sael continued staring at the house.
"If you'd prefer the castle suite after all—"
"No." The word came out rougher than Sael intended. He cleared his throat. "This is... fine."
'Fine' was an understatement of criminal proportions, but Sael had never been particularly skilled at expressing gratitude for things that hit too close to memories he generally preferred to keep locked away in the part of his mind labeled 'do not open unless you want to spend three days being useless and maudlin.'
Richter seemed to understand anyway. His smile softened into something more sympathetic. "Margaret left the key under the blue pot by the door. She said you'd know which one."
Of course he knew which one. Eirlys had painted it blue specifically so they could remember which pot hid the spare key.
The river continued its gentle rushing in the background, the smoke continued curling from the chimney, and Sael continued standing there like an idiot, looking at a house he hadn't seen in centuries, trying very hard not to feel anything in particular about it.