Page 25 of I Ran Away to Evil #3
The Void Mage
Julian
Julian looked up from the west wing garden. He was standing at the fountain below his window and absently playing with his locket.
There were guards everywhere .
He’d searched the west wing. Twice. And the gardens, the stables, and the path around the wall leading back to the gardens. He wasn’t expecting to find anything, and so far, he hadn’t.
“John,” he said, and the man formed out of Julian’s shadow.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“How is the search?”
John reported, “Visha is making everyone do a second pass through the dungeons, Tully is flirting with a maid behind the stables, Jeffry is with the kitchen staff reading over order forms so he can track if someone requests food from an unregistered suite. And Pram is outside the palace walls asking if anyone has spotted something suspicious.”
“Good, and yourself?”
“I have tried four different [Tracking] perks on items I liberated from Julia’s room. Nothing has worked so far,” he said calmly..
Julian didn’t mind the theft. “So it was a kidnapping.”
“Unless your sister leveled up since last we met.”
Julian grabbed one of the shirts. “Tell Mother that I’m moving my search to the city.”
John vanished as Julian leapt over the palace wall and found himself walking down the same streets he’d frequented the night before.
His [Tracking] might not be as powerful as John’s, but he could still try.
He would comb the entire city thrice over by morning if he had to. His little sister was missing .
Julian resisted the urge to punch something and tried [Tracking] in the market.
Nothing.
The only thing keeping hold of his barely contained frustration was the fact the lists they’d confiscated all unanimously stated the same thing: No permadeath.
He moved on from the marketplace to the north end of the city, [Tracking] every three blocks. The alarms hadn’t sounded, but he could see palace knights searching with the city guard. The extra security wasn’t given a second look by the citizens due to Madame Potts’s warnings.
What he wouldn’t give for a Potts’s Cast right now.
“Your Grace.” One of the palace knights ran up to him. “We have news.”
“Report,” Julian ordered, a shred of hope filling his voice.
“Her Grace teleported to the Mercenary Guild in Servalt,” the knight told him. “She found three people who had worked for Blackfog in the past and brought them back for questioning.”
“Where are they?”
“In the main parlor, Your Grace.”
Julian raised an eyebrow. “Not the prison interrogation rooms?”
The knight shook his head. “The parlor.”
Julian ran back the way he’d come.
He was there in minutes, and didn’t hold back his anticipation as he burst into the parlor. A human, an elf, and a fox he’d never met before stared up at him. Whatever conversation had been happening stopped at his entrance, and his mother frowned.
“Son. Please, join us.”
Julian refused to feel like a boy being chastised, taking the seat nearest her, head held high. “What have I missed?”
“Barry was just telling us about his experience as a Blackfog.” Grand Duchess Calisto waved a hand at a human swordsman sitting across from her.
Their Royal Highness Rowen stood by the window, and Chloe sat pouting in a chair on the opposite side of his mother.
The necromancer did not look happy, but she remained silent.
The three … guests were all comfortably settled in with tea and sweets.
“Ah, yes, well, we’d done odd jobs for the network before, and every time, it were by official quest.” Barry scratched his head, looking surprisingly relaxed.
The human had brown skin and shoulder-length dark-green hair with blond streaks.
His hands were marred with calluses and knife wounds.
“And while it’s good money, it’s also pretty dangerous work, you know? ”
“What Barry is trying to say,” an elf with soft-pink skin and brown hair dressed in wizards robes nervously cut in, “is that we joined the subjugation quest in the Dark Enchanted Forest. We both met the criteria because my father is from Nilheim and Barry was born in Gren’s Keep.”
“That’s none of their business, Lomen.” Barry shot the elf a betrayed look. “I don’t go around telling everyone your dad’s a male—”
“Alright, alright! I’m sorry.” Lomen rushed to cut off the human. “I just wanted to explain from the beginning.”
“Or we can just tell them we took a quest and they gave us a list of targets and how to defeat them.” Barry said.
“That’s what I got as well,” the fox added. She had long orange-red hair and black eyes.
“Who gave you the list?” Grand Duchess Calisto sipped her tea.
“The Void mage.” Barry shuddered. “She was very meticulous and even gave us poisons catered to each person we were supposed to fight.” He stopped there, reached out for a cookie from the table, and ate it happily. Everyone waited but Barry seemed content to eat his cookie.
Julian didn’t have much patience. “And the Void mage?”
The fox answered. “She’s a Charisma based class—about my height, blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and pink magic.”
“And she’s weird ,” Barry added.
Lomen drew a hand down his face in frustration. “That isn’t helpful, Barry.”
“But it’s true!”
“He’s right,” the fox said. “Every time she spoke, it made my skin crawl.”
“Suki, Barry, and Lomen.” Julian’s mother set down her teacup and pushed it aside, directing her aura at the three.
The entire room suddenly felt the pressure of the power released by her level.
She might be a Crafting class, but she was still over level eighty .
“We believe that this Void mage has captured my daughter. For what purpose, I do not know—but you’re going to help us find her. ”