LIGHTNOVELONLINE Meanwhile in the Deadmines
“Who the hell is Otto of Westfall?” Edwin VanCleef put down the missive, pinching the bridge of his nose with irritation. Apparently Garrick Glazier, a glassmaker who had joined the Brotherhood back when it was still just a bunch of disgruntled craftsmen, had managed to get himself trapped in Northshire Valley. He’d been ready to pour one out for the poor idiot when he gotten to the important part.
Someone calling themselves Otto of Westfall had appeared out of fucking nowhere, claimed to be a member of the Brotherhood, and summoned a portal for the team to cross the mountains out of the valley unseen. An overly optimistic part of him wanted to believe that the Brotherhood had a powerful new ally, but years serving as a spy had beaten that part down, and being stabbed in the back by his employers had slit its throat.
Portals were advanced magic. Back when he was still SI:7, he could have put in a request and gotten a file containing less than two hundred names: every known human mage with the ability to make portals, sorted by their city of origin. Mostly from Dalaran, but every kingdom had a few. Mages hadn’t been his area of expertise, but he knew Westfall; a mage that powerful coming out of a rural area, even from one of the bigger towns, would have been a hometown hero for the whole region. Smart kids would get told stories about any little thing the great mage had ever done. None of that had happened, so it was probably bullshit. Probably wasn’t enough, though; he needed to get as much information on this guy as he could.
He didn’t have up to date records, but he had a composite sketch from interviews with Garrick’s team. “Vanessa? Get in here. I need you to tell me if you recognize someone from school.” Westfall had only one academy open to commoners that would teach magic. His daughter had gone to Moonbrook Academy for years while he was in the field or building Stormwind. By the look of this guy, he’d have been there at the same time as Vanessa, assuming he had gone to school in Westfall, and she had a good head for faces.
She came in, dressed in her civilian clothes like she was about to head out on a recruitment drive, and he passed her the sketch that had been brought to him by courier. She looked it over carefully before shrugging. “He looks a bit like Thorvald, but given that Thorvald is mixing gunpowder down the hall right now I’m pretty sure we can count him out. Why are you asking?”
“Otto here just turned himself into a folk hero in east Elwynn. Glazier got himself in over his head, and this guy swooped in and started swinging his dick around. Got ‘em all out without any casualties, refused to explain anything, left. Calls himself Otto of Westfall and looks about twenty. I was hoping you’d come in here and say ‘oh yeah, Otto, that magical prodigy I recruited a while back and didn’t mention,’ because what you just told me makes this a lot more of a headache. He’s either lying about where he’s from, or he’s some noble brat who probably isn’t any friend of ours.”
In a happier time, Edwin’s reaction to something like this would be to laugh it off. Invite the kid in for a drink, maybe scare him a bit for the disrespect, thank him for saving his men, generally hash things out like honest men. A part of him still wanted to do that. Unfortunately, these days he had enemies on all sides. Whether he meant to be or not, Otto was a threat now. He needed to be identified, questioned, and either brought on board or neutralized. They couldn’t have the men thinking a total wild card like this spoke with any authority.
“I know that look. Let me handle this one. It sounds exciting.” His daughter wasn’t a great fighter, a hole in her training he was probably responsible for, but she was an excellent recruiter, a natural infiltrator, and a brilliant alchemist. “Hope Saldean” had directly recruited over a hundred specialized agents to fill key positions he’d needed. She wasn’t wrong to volunteer; she was the best person to send if they wanted to come out the other end of this with a living, useful Otto of Westfall. But she was also the only family he had.
“Alright. I’ll allow it. But you are going with a full strike team, if you find he is dangerous to us in any way, this becomes an assassination. Don’t play with fire on this one, Nessa. Anyone who can pull half of what’s in that report is very dangerous if they think you’re a threat.”
“Alright Daddy, I can work with that. Get me a copy of that report and I’ll get a team together.” She smiled at him fondly and left the room.
‘Be safe, Vanessa,’ he thought as he watched her go. ‘I’m doing all of this for you.’