Reborn Healer Chapter 51

“Magic item!” Erica called out.

She wasn’t the only one monitoring this interrogation room, obviously. Though she had reached Adept and comfortably settled into place with her power and was interrogating a restrained pre-teen whose magical focus had been removed from him, there was always the potential of something coming out of the blue.

He should have been entirely harmless. Erica’s memories had supported the information that they’d gotten from the reports, which had been that he was a combat mage largely focused on self-buff spells alongside some force manipulation. Back then, he’d already been able to use strong enough buff spells to shrug off the poison in Erica’s needles like it was nothing.

Now, his magical focus seemed to have grown alongside him. The dark spear he’d been carrying when captured was clearly what he used for spellcasting, and its lethal tip and sickle-head must have served a dual purpose as a regular weapon.

The item itself was clearly magical, being made of deep obsidian as it was, but Erica didn’t know how. What she did know was that it was sliding into the shield wall separating them and trying to make its way to him.

The people outside would be alert, but she doubted they would interfere unless it became clear she couldn’t handle this on her own. A large part of this was to examine what kind of person he was.

She herself had played up her resentment. Obviously she hated the boy for burning her so badly she’d spent weeks recovering after, but he’d also been defending himself. The ideas behind the incident that had killed Nathaniel and torn her throat apart had always sat poorly with her.

More than once, she had wondered if she deserved it. Erica had proven herself to be the kind of person who would follow orders to violently capture a child young enough that he probably hadn’t even known the alphabet. Before she’d joined Southern Star, she might have cheered on the execution of someone like herself.

But she hadn’t chosen to leave this life even after she’d recovered, even after she’d learned that the guild’s healing policies didn’t cover “cosmetic damage” that didn’t affect her ability to be productive as a card-carrying adventurer. Erica hadn’t even left when the opportunity to do so had come up thanks to Southern Star being folded into Grancrest.

To some extent, she could blame that on her needing the money for her father, but in dark nights when she was alone with her thoughts, she knew the truth of things.

Erica was not a good person. She lived for this because she didn’t know what else she could do with her life.

And that was how she found herself with a fistful of needles in each hand, each of them primed with enough poison to put down an elephant, facing down a completely helpless prisoner.

His magical focus skittered against the forcefield, unable to penetrate it.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she rasped. Though she’d been briefly panicked that it would break through, the forcefield was powered by items much more powerful than anything either of them here could manage. “The more you fight, the harder you make this for yourself.”

“I thought better of you,” the combat mage with the moniker “Red” replied. “You’d think that eating shit like that would be a learning experience. You really want to do this again?”

“I’m not above killing a child,” she lied.

“Yes you are,” he said immediately. “You’re not a good liar.”

The spear was still moving. It was within expectations, at least. Mages relied on their focuses to a fault. Though there were quite a few who could still manipulate unformed magic without one, Tarn’s spellcasters were almost invariably reliant on a focus to ensure that their spells were properly formed and capable of delivering the kind of power and precision they needed.

As such, a great deal of mage combat, both offensive and defensive, revolved around eliminating an enemy’s focus while retaining one’s own. A focus enchanted to seek its user was unsurprising, and was unconcerning in the moment.

“We just want to ask you questions,” Erica said.

“And you want to use me to get to my friend,” he added languidly. “Good luck with that, by the way. She cares about herself way too much to fall for some obvious bait your guild puts out.”

To be honest, Erica had her doubts about what the guild was doing as well. Obviously flawed morality aside, she didn’t know what they were trying to do nor whether this particular track was going to lead to success, but she hadn’t stayed active this long by not following orders.

“That’s not for you to worry about,” she said.

“See?” the boy said, shaking his head. “You doubt it too, right? What point is there in getting me for this? I get trying to take me off the board because I’ve been annoying, but I don’t think your bosses are really aiming for whatever they told you they are.”

Erica stared at him uneasily. Just like before, he proved to have a terrifying ability to read people.

For the time being, she set that aside and focused on the spear still fruitlessly beating against the forcefield between them. “Would you mind turning that charm off?”

“You still have your needles up,” he pointed out. “Besides, I’m guessing that even if I do, I’m not going to like what happens to me. I’m not unaware of politics anymore. I know what your guild does to people it doesn’t like. Beats the fuck out of me why they don’t catch flak from the kingdom for doing it, but I guess it’s fine as long as they’re acceptable targets.”

A shiver ran down Erica’s spine. Thanks to her time in the guild, she knew what he was referring to now. Grancrest was one of the more religious groups in the mostly secular Halcyon, and their methods were a fair bit more brutal as a result.

“Yeah, stop summoning my spear so you can leave me dangling by the neck from one of your glorious spires,” Red spat. “Great idea. You know, I think I am glad to see you. You ever get that feeling where you remember someone from long ago in your past and wonder how they’re doing? It’s nice knowing that at least one person is exactly the same piece of shit now as they used to be.”

Erica couldn’t help the anger that rose in her stomach at that, which surprised even her. She’d thought she’d accepted who she was, but there was still a part of her that screamed no, that’s not me, I’m better than this when he spoke.

“What do you know about Mizuki of the Blood?” she asked, forcing the conversation back onto the track she was supposed to keep it at.

That surprised the boy enough that the spear actually stopped rattling against the shield.

He stared at her dead on, his eyes sharp with a lethal light Erica didn’t think even she could replicate.

“Where did you get that name from?” he asked.

“That’s not important,” she said, happy they were finally getting somewhere. “What matters is if you are willing to cooperate. Are you aware of the elven movements in the southern frontier?”

“Of course I am. The hell do you mean it’s not important? As far I as know, no guilds are speaking to the elves, and…” Red trailed off, a medley of emotions playing over his face. They settled on anger. “Oh, that fucker.”

Erica didn’t know who that was supposed to refer to, but it was promising that he was engaging in this. Her assigned purpose was to either bring him into the fold or aggravate him into revealing more about his connections to the true target of Grancrest’s operation. There was also apparently some suspicion about his family and their connections to the guilds, but she hadn’t been given much information on that aspect.

That latter part honestly, truly terrified Erica. She still remembered the sensation of dying and returning to a guild hall full of blood. The warning back then had also been in direct relation to this boy. Coming near him again had promised to be dangerous.

In fact, the only thing that had convinced her to go through with this was the appearance of a figure she had been dreading for years. 

Revenant. The very word could cause a rowdy tavern to quiet, let alone the actual appearance of one. Having one talk to her had struck her with the kind of awful terror that she imagined would have emerged when meeting a god back when thoes deities still walked the planet.

When that man had assured her personally that this boy’s mother would be a non-factor this time, she had no choice but to listen.

“Your friend is an elf by blood,” she said, noticing that Red hadn’t said anything since his angry declaration. “Your Federation would use her as a pawn in their game. We wouldn’t.”

The kid stared straight at her, bafflement clear on his face. “You literally had a Highmaster come and abduct me so that you could try to get her, and you’re accusing my guild of playing political games?”

“Your guild ignored a call from a Halcyon Lord Prince,” Erica replied flatly. “Did you know that?”

Evidently, he didn’t. His reaction was proof enough of that. That said, Red accepted it surprisingly quickly.

“She was right, I guess,” he sighed. “So what do you want out of me?”

“For you to cooperate,” Erica said. “You are one of the elf’s friends.”

“Half,” Red corrected her. “And I don’t know if I would call myself one of her friends.”

“Do you want to do this the hard way?” she asked. “I wouldn’t be so opposed to that.”

“Yes, you would be.” His sigh was deeper this time, like he was truly fed up with a baby rather than arguing against his interrogator. “Are you supposed to be scaring me? You don’t have the conviction to seriously hurt me.”

That, more than anything else, got under Erica’s skin. The conviction? She hadn’t thrown everything she’d thought she’d known about herself away just to be told she didn’t have the stones to do what she was told.

“I don’t think you’d like to find out,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I’d be fine.” Red shrugged awkwardly, restricted by restraints that couldn’t even be broken by Master-class warriors, let alone an Adept mage. “I can’t tell you what you want to know, anyway. All the important stuff is under a binding vow.”

“You entered a binding vow?” she asked, startled. “How? With what ritualist?”

“Figure it out. I can’t tell you.”

Erica shook her head, trusting that someone observing would be paying attention. “Then in any case, you can still cooperate. There are no ritualists that can establish a binding vow in the Grancrest, but we can work out a deal in which you participate as an honorary member of our guild for the time being.”

“All so you can capture one person I know and feed her to the city,” Red said. “That’s what your guild started all of this over? If she’s important enough to start a war over, then this whol ematter feels important enough for me to not immediately bend the knee on.”

“We didn’t start your war.”

“Did you not?” Red cocked his head. “Sorry, I must have missed the part where dropping two dozen armed adventurers inside a guild entrance examination with intent to kill as many of us as they could was just a friendly joke between organizations. Let me be clear on this: I have no plan on cooperating with you, and I don’t trust a single fucking word that comes out of your mouth. As far as I’m concerned, the methods you’ve taken so far lead me to believe that I could agree to your terms and find myself swinging from a noose anyway.”

“Your other option is to guarantee that,” Erica replied. “You can work with us or you can serve your purpose as a hostage or as a message. Would you prefer that?”

The kid rolled his eyes, then glared at her, killing intent in his gaze. “If that’s how it’s going to be, then.”

The lifeline started rattling again. Erica, who had managed to somewhat get into the flow of this conversation, got to her feet, needles in hand. She’d been instructed to save these unless they became necessary, but this was devolving enough that she figured it was a good idea to have them ready.

“Oh, fuck off,” Red said. “And sit down.”

His words reverberated with power that shocked her to the core. The accumulating doubts and swirling vortex of complex emotions, all the self-hatred and acceptance and anger that Erica had pushed aside during the course of the conversation—all of it came crashing down on her at once, paralyzing her thoughts.

She sat down, a note of horror crossing her mind.

Soul magic.

He’d activated it just by being in the proximity of his focus. Why had they even brought it in here?

Dread trickled through Erica’s mind, the buried terror of a certain shadow-wielding assassin lancing into her heart.

It’s fine, she told herself. He can’t move.

Except in the moment of her paralysis, in that instant when the soul magic had gotten through her mental defenses, the combat mage sitting across from her had moved.

One of his hands was on the table, which shouldn’t have been possible. Even if he’d somehow managed to hide a magical item on his body, the restraints were impenetrable to anything either of them had access to.

Except the kid had managed to get one mangled, bloody hand on the table in front of him. It was clear just from a visual inspection that he’d broken at least a few bones and dislocated more than one finger, partially flaying it at the same time. There was some other problem with the hand as well, some kind of necrotic infection or some kind.

Even as Erica winced, though, the part of her brain responsible for keeping her alive started screaming at her. She looked past the hand to see that he had made contact with the forcefield between them, stretching his arm to the point of failure in order to try to grab his magical focus.

That forcefield should have held, but shadowy claws connected the focus and Red’s broken hand, carving through it like a hot knife through butter.

Finally breaking herself out of her daze, Erica moved to snatch the spear back before he could grab his focus, but when she got close to it, dark mana snapped at her fingers, sending a sharp spike of pain through her like she’d been burned.

She had spent enough time learning about types of magic to know what she’d just been hit by.

Shadow. Not just one but two banned magic types, where this one would be enough to earn him execution on his own.

That wasn’t what she was most concerned about now, though.

Whatever forbidden spell Red had used to break through the forcefield had eaten through enough of it that he had been able to get this entire shattered hand on his focus—except no, it wasn’t shattered anymore. Magic flashed through it, realigning bones and repairing connective fiber, and suddenly the spear was in his hand.

Erica reacted, finally remembering her training as she threw a handful of poisoned needles at him, but ice-cold fear crawled up her spine.

He had already been beyond abnormally powerful six years ago. Somehow, she’d let herself forget that. This kind of power, this absolute surety… seven hells, the kid had three limbs tied down, had just broken his own hand however many times over, and was inside a box designed specifically to isolate prisoners, and Erica still felt like she was the one who’d been caged.

Was this boy even human?

#

Split the Shadows lvl 7 -> 8

Harmonic Awareness lvl 2 -> 3

Nightmare’s Call lvl 0 -> 1

Nightmare Forged lvl 0 -> 1

Anesthesia lvl 6 -> 7

Having the lifeline in my hand was a comfort. I’d been pretending that I needed it to cast spells, which I hoped would hold up even though I’d needed to draw on Split the Shadows in order to actually obtain it.

I wasn’t entirely sure who’d been pissing who off more during that conversation, but I’d gone along with mother dearest’s advice as well as I could. One way or another, I had decided that I was going to derail their plans for me, and that had meant a whole lot of insulting and using Nightmare’s Call to determine how to most effectively provoke the woman in front of me.

That had led to the current development in my predicament.

I’d decided that the conversation was just going to lead to them doing to me what my guild had done to any number of Grancrest adventurers, so I’d taken it into my own hands. I’d needed to cast a localized, carefully manipulated version of Anesthesia before breaking half the bones in my right hand to get out of one of the restraints. While I was used to pain, getting hit by a spell and forcing myself to break a bone was completely different.

Over the last few years, I’d gained a fair number of new tricks.

Unfortunately, Erica had also gotten more powerful since the last time I’d seen her. I threw up a Shield immediately in an attempt to deflect the needles, but a couple of them pierced straight through my protections. Using my Danger Sense and Harmonic Awareness to twist my body with my limited range of movement, I managed to dodge one, but the other landed in my shoulder.

Poison flushed through my system with reckless abandon. From extensive experience of getting poisoned, intentionally or not, I was sure I could survive this degree of poison, but even dedicating a ton of effort to enhanced Cure Poisons aimed at my myself was going to be a losing battle. Whatever she’d put in these needles was strong enough that it was probably going to burn through my system at least a little bit.

That meant I was on a timer. I had no illusions that I would be able to break out of wherever I was alone, especially given the abilities of the mage who’d taken me down, but I could definitely do some damage during that time.

First order of business: I needed go get out of this damn chair.

It was harder to wield my lifeline with any grace given its new size, but the additions to Nightmare Forged meant that I could change its shape with will and mana. I leaned down as much as I could, ducking my head under the table as another couple of darts soared right over me. As I did, I rearranged my lifeline, forming two sharp axe-like blades at a set interval.

In a single motion, assisted by an Enhance Strength, I cut my legs off at the shin, right above where they were bound to the bolted-down chair I’d been imprisoned in.

Naturally, that came with a lot of blood, a fair amount of pain, and an instant loss of balance, but it also meant a shocked moment where Erica just gawked as well as much more freedom of movement. I leveraged my lifeline to shove myself off the chair that only one hand was still bound to, crumpling to the floor.

“Stay back,” I hissed at her, trusting that the mess of panic and guilt I’d thrown her into would be messy enough for me to play on with Nightmare’s Call.

A thread connected the two of us, my soul pumping sensation into hers, and she flinched. Nice.

From there, I had to cast Doubletime to do what I needed to before blood loss could make me dizzy. The restraints were designed to hold full limbs, which meant that I could drop my lifeline, use my free hand to extract the amputated leg-parts, then reattach them to myself. Actually doing that was a lot more awkward than my plans had been, but I managed to yank them out with some trouble, casting a sharp Heal on both legs.

It was sloppy. Even as I got back to my feet, I could tell that it would be awkward to walk on, but that was fine.

“Fireball!”

I still needed to deal with Erica, and the barrier was steadily filling the holes I’d made in it. This was the only method I had to do it properly.

Quietly grateful for Lena’s training, I formed my Fireball carefully, sure to make it small enough to fit through the holes and not blow up on my side and dense enough to do damage.

Erica saw it coming, dropping to the floor as my spell shot through the gap in the barrier and detonated on the other side. The heat and force propagated back to my end, but the chair was sufficient to block most of it.

The same didn’t seem to be true on Erica’s side, where the burned woman seemed to have been thrown sideways into a wall, embers catching on her cloak.

“Hey, just a tip,” I grunted, casting Cure Poisons again to fight off the spreading venom she’d put in that needle, “As a doctor, I’d say that while you’re recovering from a burn, you should try not to aggravate it.”

Having said that, I immediately cast Fireball again. My window of opportunity was just about closing, but I could fit one more into the other end.

Owing to my slow casting time, unfortunately, Erica managed to gather herself fast enough to roll away, a hidden door in the side of the room swinging open as she clambered out.

Ah, shit.

I let the spell die out, conserving the mana I would have spent on Fireball before turning my attention instead to freeing myself from the chair and getting the hell out of here.

Unfortunately, my suspicions about this place were quickly proved correct when that same door swung open, revealing a very different but sadly familiar figure on the other side.

“Oh, it’s you again,” I muttered.

Highmaster Lanaeus stood on the other side, stone-faced.  I would have thrown a Fireball at him even knowing he could deflect it, but the barrier had unfortunately fully replenished.

“Federation member Red,” he said. “You have been confirmed to cast soul magic and shadow magic. You have murdered members of our own. For your crimes against the gods and our honorable guild, I hereby sentence you to death.”