Fallen Mage Regressor

The world focused to a single point.

All Mal could see was Hemp's face looking back at him in his mind's eye, her unnaturally crimson gaze piercing him like daggers.

It wasn't a rat.

She wasn't a rat.

“Boy? What's with that look on your face?”

Mal smoothed over his expression and gave a smile.

“How interesting. If I happen to see red eyes, I'll be sure to tell you.”

“Yes, yes. I appreciate it, boy. Stop by the church at some point—I have a feeling we'd get along swimmingly.”

And I have a feeling that I wouldn't be able to resist putting a knife in your chest, so probably not, Mal thought.

“Thank you for the offer,” Mal said.

Two pairs of footsteps.

“Can you get these cuffs off of me? Seriously, this is ridiculous!”

The door swung open. Rolam and the guardswoman stepped out. Rolam had a frown on his face and his hands behind his back. He lit up when he saw Mal.

“You actually came!” he said. “I thought for sure that you were just going to abandon me!”

“Why would you put me down as your emergency contact if that's what you thought?”

“Did you think that Philo would be willing to post my bail?”

“No, but I'm actually pretty sure Nima would be willing to do it.”

“Oh.” Philo looked up at the ceiling. “That's a good point. Why didn't I contact Nima?”

A click. The cuffs jangled as the guardswoman took them off of Rolam's wrists.

“Now stay out of trouble, please?” she said.

She looked over to the side, tt Theologue Cornelias. “Sir? May I help you?”

He smiled. “Yes, I have some business with the guard station. Can we go somewhere private?”

“Of course, sir. Follow me.”

The two stepped into the back and the door shut behind them.

Drip.

Drip.

“Mal?”

Mal shifted his gaze over at Rolam. “What is it?”

“You're—you're bleeding, Mal.”

Mal turned his head down toward his hand. His nails—sharp and untrimmed—had dug deep into his palm. Red flowed down between his fingers like a cool water stream before it dripped onto the tiles.

“So I am."

“So would you believe me if I said that I was completely innocent?”

Mal shot Rolam a heavy look. Rolam leaned back in his picnic chair as if he had a sword pointed at his throat.

“No,” Mal said. “No, I wouldn’t believe you.”

“It's the truth! Seriously, this time I actually didn't do anything wrong.” He paused. “Probably.”

The clink of plates against each other. A woman approached the two of them. “Your orders, sir,” a man said.

He set down a sandwich in front of Rolam and a glass of water for Mal.

“Will that be all?” the man asked.

Rolam opened his mouth and Mal cut him off. “No, that'll be all.”

The man gave a quick nod, then turned around and walked back into the cafe.

Mal stared at his reflection in the glass of water.

“I can't believe you dragged me out to a cafe. I can't believe I agreed,” Mal said.

“Hey, the food's really good! I've been here a few times on weekends. It's not super high class, but the view is really nice.”

“The view is just other buildings. We're in the middle of a city street.”

“Yeah, but the buildings are really nice.”

That was true. It was Exodi City. You'd have to look long and hard to find architecture that wasn't visually pleasing. Still, an outdoor patio in the front of a busy city street wasn't exactly Mal's idea of luxury.

“The lady said that you harassed a noblewoman,” Mal said.

“That is a gross exaggeration!”

“Then how about you explain it to me?” Mal rested his cheek on his palm and slouched into it. “I'm genuinely curious as to what your explanation is going to be.”

“Basically, there was this noblewoman in disguise. She was visiting the school for whatever reason, and she caught my eye.”

“Go on.”

“One thing goes to the next and then we strike up a conversation. It all seems to be going well enough, and I decide to pull out one of my lines—”

“I'm going to take a wild guess and say that your version of 'well enough' means that she didn't run away screaming.”

“—And when I said my line, she looked at me like I was a piece of manure on the side of the road!”

“What was the line?”

Rolam leaned in and pursed his lips. “Darling, you are the most honorable woman I think I've ever met.”

Mal shuddered in his seat. “I don't think I blame her.”

“Harsh! But whatever the case, her dad holds enough pull around here that they listen to her without question and had me tossed into the slammer.”

“Right.” Mal stood up from his seat. “Let's get back to school, I have things to do.”

“Nah, you can head on without me. I've still got some stuff I need to do in the city.”

Normally, Mal wouldn't have given two flying dung heaps what Rolam got up to in his spare time. But there'd been a slight narrowing of the eyes and a clippedness to his tone that Mal had only heard on a handful of occasions.

“For what?” Mal said.

“I heard some really worrying things while I was in jail.” Rolam chewed the inside of his lip. “I think I need to look into it myself just to make sure that it's all rumors. I'm sure it's nothing, but I won't be able to rest well otherwise—”

“What are these rumors?”

Rolam glanced left and right, then leaned in.

“The Bird Eaters. Someone was saying they're becoming active in the city.”

Mal stiffened. He got back into his seat and focused his attention on Rolam.

“I want you to tell me everything that you heard, now.”

Rolam's back stiffened. The clatter of plates continued to ring out in the background along with the faint chatter of the other cafe-goers.

“Yeah, um.” Rolam muttered. “Right, so apparently a few of the guys in there are from the Black Quarter. It was about a month or so ago when they first got worried. There was a fight—a student from our school and two individuals with beak masks.”

Mal grimaced.

“So other people saw that, huh?” Mal muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Is that all?”

Rolam shook his head. “I wish. Apparently one of the guys was a smuggler. He'd been moving items in and out of the city, bypassing the guards. Normally he doesn't ask questions, that's his whole gig. But when the box started glowing purple, he had some serious concerns. He looked inside and it was just a bunch of seeds, so he wasn’t really worried. Then he spotted that his supplier had a Blackcaw charm and realized he was in over his head. He actually went into the slammer of his own volition. He told the guards everything, and he's hoping to avoid the wrath of the cult by staying in prison.”

“That's certainly a creative solution, it might even work.”

After that, Mal fell silent. The first one was an incident that he was familiar with. He'd been the student who'd been fighting with those two. He could easily brush that off as two stupid teenagers—the masks had been shoddily made, as were the charms. There was a chance they were apprentices or something else, but on its own, Mal had become less and less worried about Hypode and the other student.

But two mentions of cult activity?

That niggled at his brain in a way that caused his heart to speed up and his foot to bounce.

“What does this have to do with you?” Mal asked. “What are you planning?”

“I managed to get the smuggler to tell me where and who he'd been meeting with. The cult had several hideouts and they all seem to change. The location of the drop-off was always different—but it was weird, they still did things above the board. They had multiple companies registered with the city that the smuggler would deliver to.”

“No, that makes sense. If the scale of the operation is big enough, it would be a nightmare to do everything completely underground. Especially with the kinds of waves that they'd be making from the amount of supplies they'd be obtaining. No, getting at least some of their stuff legally, and putting themselves in the public eye is actually a clever way of avoiding detection.”

Rolam's eyes shot open. “That makes sense. It's hiding in plain sight!”

“Exactly.”

Rolam paled. “Wait, you said the reason they'd do this is because of scale. So doesn't that imply that whatever they're working on must be huge? Like, really, really big?”

Yes. Yes, it did. Like, blow up a section of the school in order to steal an ancient artifact hidden underneath the ground.

Not that Mal would explicitly say that.

“Do you remember the names of these organizations?” Mal asked.

“Yeah, why? Are we gonna go tell the guards?”

“The guards won’t do anything. I guarantee you that smuggler already told them this. If they’re on the case, they’re already on the case. If they’re not, then it’s up to us.”

Rolam paused, then nodded. “Right. It’s the only honorable thing to do. We have a duty to the city and to the school to investigate.”

“Names, Rolam.”

“Right!”

Mal was able to head into the merchant's guild and start piecing things together. While much of their operations were shrouded in secrecy, a little bit of gold went a long way toward making the clerk pliable.

The next thing Mal knew, he had mountains of documents to sift through and absolutely no help, given that Rolam could barely pass his theory classes.

But Mal was undeterred. He set up shop in a corner of the guild room and got to work.

As he suspected, they were almost certainly building bombs. The materials to build them were hidden inside of the transaction records.

The cult had been clever enough to put in additional purchases that had nothing to do with the bombs, just to throw off the trail.

But Mal wouldn’t be fooled by something like that. Not when he knew what was coming.

“So they’re doing something bad?” Rolam said.

“Yes. Something very, very bad. The stuff that they’re buying legally is suspect enough. But with the things that they’re smuggling in, they could blow up half the school.”

“Blow up?!”

His voice raised to a fever pitch. The handful of other merchants in the guild hall shot him a dirty look.

Rolam shrank back into his seat.

“Are you sure?” Rolam said. “What can we do?”

“What do you think we’re going to do? We’re going to hunt them down and put a stop to it.”

“Oh—okay. That is the honorable thing—but how? Do you know where they’re assembling this dangerous item?”

Mal clicked his tongue. It was a good question.

The transaction records only showed that the company had bought the items. It didn’t show where those items were going. Once it was in the hands of the company, the cult would be able to move it back and forth between the different companies in whatever way they pleased. And Mal suspected that was exactly what they’d done—purposefully shuffling it back and forth to conceal the true final destination.

And of course, there was always the fear that this was a dead end and these companies really were just buying suspicious items for legitimate reasons.

Mal massaged his temple using his fingers. “No. I don’t know. I don’t even know how I would know.”

Rolam took some of the papers and read it over for himself. Mal cracked a smirk. “What, you think you’ll be able to find something—?”

“Do you see this name?”

“What name?”

“Look over here. It’s on every other page—the same person. He must be their courier, or their public face. Maybe he would have some sort of information? What if we just follow him and see what happens?”

Mal hummed.

It wasn’t a bad idea. There were certainly worse ones.

“How do you suggest we find this individual, though?” Mal said.

Rolam’s face fell. “I don’t know.”

“Nice attempt. More than I’d been expecting, honestly.”

Rolam squinted his eyes at Mal. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

Mal picked up the papers and went through it again for himself. He’d spotted the individual that Rolam was talking about multiple times, but he’d swiftly crossed him off as a lead very early in the process. There was no way to get his name—he would have to bribe the clerk a lot more for information on this individual, and that was assuming that the clerk even did have that information. Mal strongly suspected that given the lengths the cult had gone to in order to hide their traces, they wouldn’t have made such an amateur mistake as filing the forward face of the organization and giving away his home address by accident.

Maybe Mal could rely on his future knowledge?

There’d been an investigation after the fact. That was how they knew the cult was behind it at all.

Yes, it was coming back to him—the shell companies, the purchasing of legal materials—all of that had been reported in the newspapers the next day.

But was there a location?

Maybe. But Mal couldn’t remember that far back. It had been years ago and—

He stiffened. There hadn’t been a location, but there’d been a detail.

The type of bomb.

There were all the standard things you’d expect to find in a large explosive device. Gunpowder, a fuse, all those nasty things.

But that had just been for stage one of the bomb. The newspaper had stated that it was a multi-stage bomb—a revolutionary design that had been stolen directly from the military by the cult. The first stage was conventional, the second stage was magical—highly focused and concentrated fire mana and wind mana, somehow put inert via intensive spellcasting. When triggered, it was enough to blow up and disintegrate an entire building.

Mal was onto something, there was something there—

Wait...

“You said... what was it you said that the smuggler was transporting? What were they bringing in?”

“Um, it’s hard to recall—”

Mal slammed the table. “You told it to me earlier, what was it?!”

“Seeds! It was just a bunch of seeds!”

The pieces fit together in Mal's head.

That was why the operation took so long.

That was why the cult hadn't made their move.

No matter how much they wanted to accelerate things, they were limited by the cold hard fact that the plants they were growing required time and patience.

Not only that, but specialized conditions. If they were growing plants that had concentrated wind mana, then there was a limited number of areas in the city that would have the type of environment amenable to those plants. They'd have to be high up in the air with plenty of exposure to air.

A limited number... which gave Mal and Rolam a place to start!

“Rolam, they’re growing the materials themselves. There’s only a limited number of places they can be growing them. We’re going to be looking for places at the tops of hills where they’re also receiving sunlight. If we can spot a large garden, then it’s safe to assume that’s the spot.”

Rolam blinked.

“Wait, how did you figure all that out—?”

“No time, we need to get moving!”

It had taken several hours, but they’d managed to find what Mal assumed to be the correct location.

The fact that there was a raised garden bed sitting on top of a tower was kind of a dead giveaway.

Also the air mana floating in midair as a massive cluster of light.

“You know that nobody’s been here in ages, right? Like, there are spiderwebs on the fencing!”

The two of them were hidden behind a bush in front of an abandoned church.

Superficially, it looked clean—there were probably people to keep an eye on the exterior, if nothing else. They were, after all, still in Exodi City.

With that said...

“Look at the interior. There’s broken pews and cobwebs,” Rolam said. “Why would they do that?”

“Why is there a clearly attended to garden on top of the bell tower?”

Rolam opened his mouth, then shut it.

Mal cast a side-eye at Rolam. “You’ve been acting odd this whole time. I thought you’d be jumping at the bit for a chance to defeat some cultists.”

“I didn’t think we’d actually be fighting them! This honorable one was under the assumption that we’d gather the appropriate materials and send it to the authority!”

“I’ve seen you fight a demon without hesitation. What has you so riled up about the cult?”

“It’s not the fact that it’s the cult, it’s the fact that they’re people!” Rolam hissed. “It’s one thing to slay a monster, but if we fight them, I’m going to have to—”

A dawning sense of understanding came over Mal.

“You’re not scared of them,” Mal said. “You’re scared for them.”

Rolam froze, tense as a taut steel line.

Mal didn’t have time to work through Rolam’s issues.

“You can stand out here if you want,” Mal said. “But if you go in there with me, I need to know that I can trust you to have my back.”

“You mean—”

“If it’s me or them, you need to be able to choose me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Rolam gulped. His face turned a pale white. Finally, he gave a shaky nod.

“I understand.”

“Good.”

They waited in the bushes for another hour. The faint sound of whispers and footsteps.

Mal poked his head out from behind his hiding spot.

Two individuals in black cloaks were approaching the church. It had already turned night, so they almost seemed to blend in with the shadows.

One of them reached the fence gate and slipped a key into the lock. The hinges screeched as the gate swung open. The two entered inside and left it open.

Rolam pursed his lips. “We need to go in behind them, don’t we?”

“Not yet. They left the gate open for a reason.”

Rolam cast a doubtful look, but nodded. A few minutes later, another set of footsteps. This time it was three individuals in black cloaks. They entered in through the open gate and walked into the building.

Mal grinned as he watched their trailing backs. “They messed up,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Rolam looked at the back of their cloaks as well. “I don’t understand.”

“The only reason why they would be bringing in so many people is because this is also a meeting area, not just a storeroom.”

Rolam’s breathing picked up. “This is it, isn’t it? I was half hoping this was some sort of elaborate joke, but they’re real, aren’t they?”

Mal turned his head away from the church and down at Rolam. “Remember what we talked about.”

“I know! I know.”

A few minutes more. Another group of three. This time, they shut the gate behind themselves before they entered in.

“Now what?” Rolam said, still crouched.

“We’re going to hop the fence.”

“Oh.” He cast a long look at the metal bars. “For some reason I thought that you were going to pick the lock or something.”

“I could do that, but I don’t want to risk triggering some sort of trap. With the walls, they couldn’t have put up any sort of spell since it would have gotten spotted by the city guard.”

Rolam stood to his full height and approached the bars. The top was spiked, preventing easy grasping.

He jumped up and slipped his index and middle finger into a small gap between the spikes. He propelled himself upward and cleared the fence easily. His feet touched down on the other side, his knees bending to absorb the impact.

Mal stared at the near superhuman feat.

“I’m not going to be able to do that,” Mal said.

Rolam looked around, then pointed at a tree. “Can you climb that?”

Oh yeah. That could work.

Mal scurried his way up the tree until he was at a point where he was above the fence. Was it just him or was the ground extremely far away?

“Mal? Are you going to jump?” Rolam asked.

“Yes. Just give me a minute. I’m just trying to figure out my angle.”

“It’s easy, you just jump.”

Not all of us are freaks of nature like you, Rolam, Mal thought.

Rolam glanced back at the church. “The longer you’re up there, the higher the odds that somebody looks out that window and sees you.”

“I know,” Mal said. “Believe it or not, I’m fully aware of that fact, Rolam.”

“If you know then why haven’t you jumped?”

Mal took several deep breaths.

He shut his eyes, planted his feet into the bark, and tensed his legs.

He jumped off the tree and over the fence. The ground sped toward him like a rocket. His body was entirely out of position. He was going to break his neck if he didn’t do something. He tried his best to angle his shoulder such that he could get a roll in—

Two hands grabbed him out of the air. His momentum slowed to a gentle stop.

He stared up at Rolam who had a cheeky grin on his face.

“Put me down,” Mal said.

“Whatever you say, princess.”

“I can break your spine in seventeen different ways.”

Rolam’s smirk immediately turned into a grimace. He awkwardly set Mal onto the ground and took two steps back.

“What’s next?” Rolam said.

“First, let’s try to get an idea what they’re doing in there. With me.”

The two crept along the ground until they were right up against the walls of the church. They peeked in at an angle that would make it difficult for the cultists to see them.

They were gathered around in a circle, a chalk ritual written on the floor. A pentacle.

Rolam turned around and dropped down, his fists clenched. “They’re trying to summon a demon. Even I know what that symbol means!”

Mal remained in his position. He slowly shook his head. “If that’s meant to summon a demon, it’s the worst summoning circle I think I’ve ever seen.”

Not only that, but Mal would have remembered if there was another demon attack that happened outside of the city. Mal knew that he was accelerating and screwing up events due to all of his changes, but demon summonings took time and materials. They’d been able to do it early a few weeks ago because they already had all of them on hand. They’d just been waiting for the optimal time.

But Mal doubted they would be able to pull it off again. Why would you have multiple rituals stored up for demonic summonings just in case? It was a huge liability. What if the hideout got raided? Everybody implicated would all be executed by the city guard.

And again, the shape! If Mal didn’t know any better, he’d say that the circle had been created by a first-year student.

Mal narrowed his eyes and focused on the cultists themselves. Those beak-like masks were all wrong. Too short, too skinny, the metal was imperfect...

Wait a second...

“We’re going for shock and awe. Just follow my lead.”

Mal stood to his feet. Rolam’s eyes shot open to the size of dinner plates. “Mal? What are you doing?!”

Mal ignored him and walked over to the front door. He slammed it open and stepped inside. All of the “cultists” jumped and stepped back.

“What do we have here?” Mal asked. “It looks like a bunch of cockroaches decided to make this place their home. I think someone should take care of that, don’t you?”

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