What We Do to Survive

The rest of the week passed almost too well. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but, well, it just never did. For the first time in way too long, everything was just… going exactly how I’d wanted it to?

By the third day, my two elves had begun to lactate. The production rate was still slightly lower than I’d hoped for, but Igor’s notes had mentioned that it would slowly increase over the coming weeks until it matched the nearly legendary quantities that elven women were known for. It likely didn’t help that the two were still rather young by elven standards even if they were both decades my senior. Elves didn’t tend to reproduce until well into their third century, so it made sense they would not have the same output as the older subjects Igor experimented with.

Seeing the white-gold liquid slowly pumping into the prepared holding tank took a massive weight off my back. Despite seeing the evidence of Igor’s own horrific farm, I’d still had some doubts over if what I was doing would work. What if he’d given me a faulty recipe, or maybe my minor adjustments had ruined something important without me noticing? What would I have done if the two elves had died from the potion I’d fed them, maybe in a bad reaction to some innocent component? I didn’t really want to think about it.

It also helped that I could finally see first hand the value of the milk. I’d of course read about all its wondrous properties, but it was good to confirm some of those stories first hand. Though I hadn’t yet risked drinking any myself, I’d run several tests and the results had blown away any lingering doubts that had been plaguing me. It was one of the most mana-rich substances I had ever seen, far more so than what I’d been collecting from Mistletoe previously.

Beyond the obvious payoff, I’d also gotten some rather interesting data from the entire experience. With Rea taking care of the other two girls, I’d had plenty of time to monitor the changes in the two elves’ bodies. Watching the shifts in their internal mana flows and biology had been extremely educational, pushing my understanding of how their innate circulations worked forward by leaps and bounds.

Though I had no plans of copying this particular circulation wholesale, the biology just wasn’t compatible and I had no interest in turning myself into a cow, there was a lot to learn from the process. For instance, I’d discovered that, like some of the authors I’d consulted had speculated, about 2/3s of the milk’s volume was produced out of nearly pure mana. It neatly explained how elves could produce so much of the highly nutritious substance while consuming a nearly inconsequential amount of calories themselves.

It did however raise some more questions, namely, how the hell elven biology could literally create permanent matter from pure mana, something that was typically only doable using fifth-circle or higher spellcraft. I could faintly see the patterns of mana that seemed to be doing most of the heavy lifting for the process, but they were just too faint and intricate for me to make out with my current tools and perception.

Regardless, I had high hopes that this new information would contribute to my own magical research. I’d already made several minor modifications to my own circulations based on what I’d observed, and the results were rather promising. By borrowing some of the mechanisms by which the new bits of circulation had interconnected with the rest of their bodies’ mana channels, I’d managed to decrease the time it took me to restore my own internal mana circulations after they were disrupted by nearly half!

Though not directly useful, it was a very handy innovation that would likely save me weeks of meditation until I finally managed to keep my circulations active at all times. Additionally, it was a technique I had never come across, despite having read a large chunk of the Academy’s literature on the subject. That meant that there was still a lot to discover on this topic, lending me new hope that my task to manually adapt the circulations of powerful beasts was possible.

My other projects were also proceeding very nicely. Rea’s enthusiasm had done wonders for breaking the spirits of my other captives. Briella had cracked first, pleading on hands and knees that she would do anything for the pain to stop. Her binding had gone off without a hitch. I’d used a small portion of the newly available milk in order to craft the ritual circle and it had made the entire process much simpler than I’d dared to hope.

As I’d planned, I purchased a vial of boundless focus elixir from the Academy. The small crystal bottle contained five doses of the costly potion and I’d used a single dose during her binding ritual. With it, combined with the increased magical conductivity the elven milk had given to the runic symbols, I’d managed to execute the seven-sectioned ritual without any issues. It had taken some time to charge everything, but I’d managed to hold the entire ‘spell’ in my mind and it had worked perfectly.

I had taken some time to be sure of course, leaving Briella’s magic suppressed as I carefully probed the edges of the bond. Once I was certain it had ‘sunk in’ properly, I ran through some more overt tests, questioning the girl under several layers of truth spells and other enchantments to prevent any sort of deception. Only once I was absolutely certain that she wouldn’t try to murder me the moment I gave her a shred of freedom did I finally let my guard down slightly.

As I’d expected, Briella hadn’t changed nearly as much as Rea had, or at least the changes were much more subdued. I didn’t have a particularly accurate baseline of how she’d been before the ritual, only my own observations and the notes that Miranda had made, but I felt that she would have no issues blending back in with the rest of the student population. She was slightly quieter, though I had a feeling that might have been lingering trauma from the past days of confinement as opposed to something caused by the binding. There were several other small changes, primarily in personal preferences that had been warped by my own due to the ritual, but those were all things that I felt could be hidden or passed over as irrelevant.

The most important part, the loyalty enchantment, seemed to be functioning perfectly. My newest servant couldn’t even think about acting against me. Obeying me and carrying out my will was her absolutely highest priority, greater even than her own self-preservation. She still had her own ideas and desires, but ultimately, I came first. Just as the ritual descriptions had implied.

Now certain that the ritual really did work as intended, I moved my focus back onto my other prisoner. With Briella now happy to assist, Cayla didn’t last much longer. In the end, Briella’s presense proved far more effective against the surprisingly resilient Spellblade then any amount of Rea’s enthusiastic torture. Seeing her ‘friend’ eagerly help Rea with her grisly work was too much and she meekly swore the same oath as Briella had just two days later.

And now? Now came the hard part. Ambushing other students and executing seven-sectioned rituals was tricky, but it was at least something I knew. I’d spent a lot of time focusing on ritual magic over the past few years, and my mana control was excellent for my level of experience. Similarly, while I wasn’t particularly skilled in a direct fight, ambushes were something I had both experience and a deep well of second-hand knowledge to fall back on.

Now, I had to figure out how to get my newly oath-bound slaves back into the student population, hopefully without directing any suspicion towards me or letting anyone know what had happened. “So… Thoughts?”

My question was met with silence. Briella and Cayla sat side-by-side on a low table that both were rather intimately familiar with. The shackles and straps had been temporarily removed, but I could still see the points where they could be easily reattached when they proved necessary again. I was just glad that I’d used a nice, polished metal when I’d built the table a few days after I’d first ‘acquired’ the trio . With the amount of blood and other viscera I, well, mostly Rea, washed off of them, something like wood would have been horribly stained by now.

After a few moments of silence, Cayla finally spoke up, raising her head to look at me. “Master, I believe you are… um, overcomplicating things again, just as you said you sometimes do. I… I don’t think you will need to do too much at all to keep your own name out of things at least, though I can’t be sure since I only have what you… I don’t have all the details of what's been going on for the last two weeks…”

Cayla trailed off, eyes falling back to the ground and body shying back slightly. Before I could ask her to clarify, Briella jumped in as well, “What I think Cayla is saying is, well, I don’t think very many people would suspect that it was you, even if we don’t really do much to hide it. We definitely need to make sure to keep our stories straight, but as long as the two of us can make it back to my room without anyone noticing it should be pretty easy to claim that we managed to escape the ambush and have been healing ever since.”

She paused for a moment, biting her lip as she looked over at Cayla. “With the amount of healing residue on us, I don’t think it will be too hard to sell that story. Since you don’t plan on letting Verdan go anyway, it should be even more believable.”

Huh. That was definitely one idea. “So you think I should just try to play it off as someone targeting the elf?” I asked. “Do you really think people would buy that?”

Both girls nodded earnestly. “Definitely master, it's not even the first time it's happened to Verdan, though um, the last few attempts didn’t work out nearly as well for, well, the aggressor…” Cayla trailed off again, Briella jumping in to finish her thought.

“Everyone knows how valuable elves are, and it doesn’t get much more vulnerable than being a student here. There are only a handful of elves among the faculty, and most of them don’t really care about their students. Young elves that come to Avalon, particularly the girls, just… don’t tend to last long.”

I considered her words for a moment. It was true that there weren’t very many elves at the Academy. I hadn’t really thought about it much, but outside of Mistletoe I could only think of one other elf left in my year. She was considerably older however, four or five centuries at the very least, and mostly kept to herself. Similarly, the older years were almost entirely devoid of elves as well. I didn’t know everyone in the fourth and fifth year classes, but I knew none of the seventh years were elves and only one of the sixth years men was.

“I’ve… never really thought about it that way,” I said slowly. “It makes sense. I never would have dared go after either of those two,” I jerked my head at the restrained duo, “if there was a risk of an Elder hanging around one of them.”

“Exactly.”

“Well then.” We sat in near silence for another minute, the only sound Rea’s quiet shuffling as she dusted my bookshelf. “So, I guess that should work pretty well. As long as we’re careful, I should be able to conceal us for the few minutes it takes to move you. I think Briella, your room is right next to the stairwell?” She nodded. “That should work then. I have a powerful anti-scrying artifact and my illusions should be strong enough to hide us. If we go at the right time of night, we shouldn’t bump into anyone either.”

“I don’t see any issues with that plan, master. Though we should figure out our next few steps before we go through with this.”

“And as you said, we need to um, get our stories straight,” Cayla chimed in. “Do we… we want to maybe try to shift the blame onto someone? Say that we don’t know who it was? It's probably better to say we don’t know, but it's… it’s up to you.”

“You’re probably right. I don’t really have anyone in particular I would want to accuse and pointing fingers is just going to make you enemies. Since I plan to associate with you publicly in the future, I don’t need any more people eying my back.”

“Of course.”

“Understood.”

“Very good. We can iron out the specifics later. Now, what is the plan for connecting us publicly? You are mine and I think in this case, it would be more useful for our association to be at least somewhat visible?”

Charon Goldgiver rubbed his tired eyes, numbers swimming behind his eyelids as he tried to stave off his rapidly worsening headache. He was tired, so very tired, but there was still work to do. There was always more work to do.

For what must have been the hundredth time just that day, Charon cursed his fool of a king. A charismatic and powerful man he may be, but he had no head for numbers. Without Charon’s efforts, and the work of dozens of junior accountants and bureaucrats, the young king would have driven the nation to ruin by now.

Charon sighed. That was slightly unfair to the young king. He was a kind ruler and his decisions were primarily made with the good of the kingdom in mind. It wasn’t that he was squandering the treasury for his own amusement, but rather that he was… overly generous with plans to construct new infrastructure and similar projects.

Still, Charon just wished that the boy would listen to him for a change. It was beginning to drive him insane, just sitting at the table and listening as other advisors slowly drained dry centuries of accumulated wealth. Sure it was nice that two new schools had been opened outside major cities. Sure the old inland roads needed to be updated, monster attacks ensured they always needed to be updated. Sure all the other million and one ideas swimming through the young man’s head would benefit the people in innumerable tiny ways, but that wouldn’t matter if they ran out of money and starved to death first.

A quiet knock pulled him from his reverie and he shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “Come in,” he called out, sitting up straighter in his padded chair as he craned his neck to look over his shoulder.

Ancient hinges creaked quietly as the door slowly opened. Charon squinted, trying to make out who it was. The corridor outside was dark, the visitor visible only as an outline cast by the mage-lights illuminating his office.

“Hello? Who–” the visitor stepped forward, throwing back his hood and shutting the door with an ominous thud. “Oh, Arnold, very good! I just was going to–”

“Silence,” the man commanded, and Charon’s mouth shut with a click. Why, that was a very impolite thing to say. Sure Arnold was technically a more senior royal advisor, but they had served together for many years. There was no need to be rude!

Charon tried to open his mouth, prepared to tell the younger man off. Just because he was a general didn’t mean that he could just order Charon around! Perhaps, Charon thought with a hidden smile, he would divert a bit more coin away from Arnold’s division. That would show him!

Arnold reached into a pocket and withdrew a small charm that instantly drew Charon’s attention. That… it looked so very… familiar? He stared at the small crystal, unable to pay attention as Arnold began to say something. The words washed over his mind, whispering… something? But he could not tear his eyes away from the crystal. It…

Charon opened his eyes to find his god standing before him. He scrambled out of his seat, falling to the floor in a deep bow, “My lord! I’m so sorry, I didn’t recognize you for a moment! Please, take a seat, take a seat. I’m afraid there is only one chair in the room but it…”

“Peace, Charon.” Arnold stepped around the aging man’s kneeling form to drop heavily into the just vacated spot. “How goes the work?”

“Very well sir! Everything is moving into position. I’ve been using the king’s recent infrastructure plans to shift extra coinage to your allies. It’s nothing overt, I don’t think any of the others will notice, but we are steadily getting closer to our goal. Just a few more months, I think. I have yet to find a way into the vault, but I think I’m getting closer. By my reckoning, the king will choose to withdraw some of the royal treasures to help pay for his little projects, and then we will have it!”

“Very good, Charon. Well done as always.” Though his face was still pressed up against soft carpet, Charon imagined that his lord was smiling. Just the idea of it, the idea of pleasing his lord, brought a broad smile to his face and warmth to his chest.

“Thank you, my lord. Do you require anything else from me? I am always eager to serve.”

There was a short pause. For a moment, Charon worried that he had overstepped. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked for more work? It was his duty to obey, not ask things of the master! Then, Arnold finally spoke up again. “No, I think that is all. Make sure to have new copies drawn up off all the ledgers and deliver them to the usual place.”

“Of course, my lord.”

“Very good. Then I shall take my leave. Hide yourself, my servant.”

“Yes my lord.”

Several minutes later, Charon opened his eyes groggily. He was sitting in his chair, head lolled back and one hand hanging over the side of the chair. What… he had been… oh. He must have drifted off again. That was concerning, it had happened more and more often in the past months. Perhaps more coffee was in order, the drink was expensive to import but so very worth it on long nights like these.

Charon sat up, straightening the stack of papers that must have been messed up when he had dozed off. Well, back to work. There was always so very much to get done.