A Jaded Life

Chapter 1338

It was almost sad how readily the group Joshua had assembled turned on him, at least in spirit. Maybe it would have been different if he had been there to manage the aftermath of his disappearance, as impossible as that was, but without his presence, it seemed that the people who were with him were quite quick to assume the worst. Sure, I had made sure to make it look exactly as if what they thought had happened had actually happened, but they sure swallowed it down, hook, line and sinker.

Nobody questioned whether the tracks they found were actually made by him, and while they did wonder why he had left, they readily assumed that he wanted to get to the tower first and get some sort of advantage for himself. Really, they were ready to assume the worst, making me wonder if Joshua had some sort of magical trick to make people agree with him. Otherwise, how would he have been able to spread the rumours back in Maggie’s community, or to get these four people to team up with him so they would get to Jademoon Tower safely? They certainly didn’t seem to be his friends, and only one of them seemed to worry about his disappearance at all, but not that much. Instead, they were all considering what sort of shit they would give him after they caught up with him, or met him at my tower. Their ideas were creative, if nothing else, increasing the likelihood of some sort of mental shenanigans that had now fallen off. Those often led to hostility in the aftermath, even if the people affected weren’t fully aware of why they felt hostile toward a former manipulator.

Watching the group follow the tracks I had laid down after their breakfast was just as trivial as following them to their campsite, and it even gave me a better read on these people. If they wanted to learn magic, I wanted to know what sort of people they were and whether one of them needed to be taken care of, as I had with Joshua. Or if they merely needed some gentle guidance, until they decided to take their nefarious schemes elsewhere. I wasn’t about to try forbidding such schemes, unless they were targeted at me, as Joshua’s schemes had been.

Unless the magic they had an affinity to was too dangerous, which basically meant Blood, Soul, Death and Mind Magic. Basically, the stuff that could rapidly spiral out of control and create a mess much greater than the involved power suggested. I had no interest in unleashing the sort of mayhem on the world that any of those affinities could create. Magical plagues, roaming undead, mind-controlled cultists or any combination of those weren’t something the world needed any more of, not with the mess already around.

The four people I had been watching were ripped from their casual, almost teasing, mental state when they encountered the first signs that something bad had happened to Joshua. It was quite the obvious change; they went from a subdued sort of vigilance, the sort of mental state necessary when wandering a potentially dangerous area, to high alert in an instant. Quiet words were exchanged, too soft for me to hear with my distant scrying construct, but the change in their stances and general demeanour was easy enough to observe.

Nodding to myself, I watched as they carefully advanced, checking to make sure that the predator wasn’t nearby while making sure that they didn’t disturb any of the tracks, just in case they wanted to study them closer. It was, quite honestly, somewhat impressive. No panic, no serious cracks in their composure, just the quiet, focused professionalism needed to deal with this sort of mess. Maybe these four would be excellent students, which would mean I would have to thank Joshua at some point. I might even have to reward him, though that reward could come as something suitable, like a painless, clean death, once I was done with my other experiments. Just because he might have supplied four adequate students to me didn’t mean I would give his previous manipulations a pass, not with the mess he had created in Maggie’s community.

The four of them started to investigate, but it didn’t take long for them to draw the conclusions I wanted them to. The side I had prepared was completely realistic, to the point that only a truly skilled tracker would have noticed anything amiss. Someone with a load of experience and the right combination of skills, traits and attributes. And even someone like that would have needed an initial suspicion, an incredibly strong intuition or a generous helping of luck to notice anything amiss.

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Without a combination of all of those, the physical evidence was just too convincing. Occam’s Razor at its finest, the explanation with the fewest assumptions generally being the correct one. Sure, there were cases where the razor was dull and just didn’t cut it, but identifying them was a challenge at the best of times.

No, if anything gave away my involvement in Joshua’s disappearance, it would be my behaviour. The physical evidence was compelling, especially after I had dumped Joshua in my newly created prison and erased any evidence that he had ever been within my tower. Likely an overkill, it wasn’t as if I was planning to show the secret cells in the tower to anyone, at least not to anyone who would ever leave them under their own power, but it was the principle of the matter. In a world with numerous ways to divine the truth, I made sure to erase as much evidence as possible. Just in case.

I kept observing the four until they gave up trying to find additional information. They had found what they considered the truth: that Joshua had a run-in with a hungry bear and got himself killed because of it. With that determined, they continued on their path to Jademoon Tower. Given their speed and general caution, they’d need about three, maybe four or five, more hours to get there, depending on unpredictable circumstances.

More than enough time to let me visit Joshua, make sure his new accommodations are adequate for housing him, and that he is well-aware of his predicament. So, I dismissed the construct I used to keep an eye on these four and let myself drop into the shadows. After crossing a good part of the continent in an impossibly short time, I stepped back out, letting myself drop onto the throne within my northern shelter.

Looking down through the grate of stone and crystal, I could see that Joshua was still out-cold. Maybe I had hit him a little too hard with my Mind Magic, but I wanted to take him out instantly, leaving no chance that he might try something, whether to fight back or alert the guys he had been with. Either might have become a complication I wanted to avoid.

Reaching out, I sent a pulse of magic into his mind, causing the mental equivalent of a loud gong to ring in his head. For a moment, his face twisted into a grimace of pain, then he started to twitch, his eyes flickering open after a second or two.

I could see him try to look around, only to realise that he could barely see the tip of his nose, with only traces of light from a distant crystal filtering into the hole he was in. He immediately started calling for help, his hands clumsily feeling around, trying to explore his surroundings. Only to find nothing but perfectly smooth stone. It had been a bit of a challenge to polish things into these completely smooth surfaces, but I felt it was worth it. Keeping prisoners disoriented and confused could be vital to acquiring information and breaking resistance. Withholding information from them aided in that.

For a moment, I considered calling out to him, maybe mocking him for being trapped as he was, but I decided against it. Instead, I activated one of the light crystals set into the grate of his cell, giving him just enough light to barely make out the outline of his cell and, maybe most importantly, letting him see the toilet. That was the primary reason for the light, I didn’t want him to make a mess I would have to clean up. Plus, if I gave him the privilege of a toilet in the beginning, I could always take it away later as a punishment.

Or offer him other basic comforts, like running water, better food or even something like a shower, if he cooperated with me and my experiments.

His shouting continued, turning desperate, but I didn’t give away that I was watching him, even as he cursed my name, likely guessing that I had to be involved as someone with a motive and, more importantly, with the means to pull this off.

Not that it would help him any, knowing that I was responsible. He was within my grasp, and nothing would change that.