Fallen Mage Regressor

Mal's hand twitched. The voices of the people outside the alley came back and the shadows seemed a little darker.

"What?" he said. "I don't think I understood you."

"I request that you don't heal my core," she said.

"Okay." Mal clenched his jaw. "Why?"

"It would be improper. My role is to serve you, and—"

Mal cut her off. "But I thought you wanted magic! Wasn't there a goal you wanted to achieve? Some kind of dream you have in mind?"

"I do."

"So why won't you take it?"

Her eyes darted away and her eyebrows furrowed together. An unsteady breath came from her, and it was almost like she was trying to answer the question herself. She shook her head.

"I can't."

"Okay." Mal breathed deeply. "It's about duty, right? If I have a servant with knowledge of magic, then she can be even more effective. She'll be better able to defend me, and provide help toward my studies."

“No amount of service under the terms we have could possibly repay the debt that I would incur from allowing you to do such a thing." Her lips thinned. “Infernal mana is dangerous, and you’d put yourself at immense risk, from what I understand.”

A slow, creeping sense of frustration gripped Mal's chest. “Who were you to decide that? Last I checked, your job was to follow orders.”

“My job is to follow the orders of your father, and the Patoal household. Not you.”

“Stop using my father as an excuse! Just tell me why you won’t take the damned cure!”

Mal’s breath ran out at the tail end of his sentence, air came back into his lungs in short, ragged gasps.

Lusia stepped forward. Her amber eyes glared up at him, in the light they almost looked unnatural.

“Even I understand that if I do this, there would be a price,” she said. “A price that I can’t afford to pay. I don’t know what it is, but I at least understand that much.”

“There is no price!” Mal hissed. “The only thing I’m asking you to do is your damned job.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re lying.”

“For goodness’ sakes, I just want to help you!”

His voice echoed in the alleyway.

Mal's heart stopped and stumbled backward. He hadn’t meant to say that, and it wasn’t even the truth. Trying to help her? Where did he get off on saying something like that? After everything he’d done, he was going to try to pretend that he was some sort of savior?

“I don’t understand you," she said.

Mal mechanically tilted his head up.

Lusia’s eyes had widened more than he’d ever seen on her face. She shook her head.

“I...” Her voice trailed off. “If you’re going to do this, I desire for the conditions to be set in stone.”

There was something about the way she put emphasis on conditions that made Mal want to squirm in place. “What do you mean?”

“An unspecified debt doesn’t sit well with me. I want the terms to be explicit.”

“And what would these terms look like?” Mal slowly asked.

She shut her eyes and breathed out. The tension drained from her shoulders and it seemed like the brief flickers of emotion that Mal had seen were nothing more than a dream.

“Effective immediately, my contract will transfer from your father to you. In addition, the terms will change from until the age of twenty to life.”

The words rang in Mal’s head.

For life?

The earth almost shook underneath Mal’s feet.

In theory, this was everything that he could have wanted. A highly dangerous, powerful asset loyal only to him for the rest of the asset’s life.

It was a dream scenario for a future dark lord.

Why would you do this? He thought. What could possibly motivate you to go to such lengths?

Mal’s fist clenched into tight little wads.

His dream had been to finally repay his debt by seeing her freed. That had always been the endgame. She would become cured, and then she would receive a sum of money, and then she would travel far, far away from him where he would never again do anything to hurt her as he had in the first timeline.

And then she has the gall to do something like this.

If Mal rejected her, then she would remain in the state that she’s always been in. A hollow core, whatever dream she had in mind out of reach forever. If he accepted her proposition, then she would remain bound to him for the rest of her life.

“In the end, I couldn’t break the cycle, could I?” He muttered.

If she heard him, she didn’t respond.

The fight drained out of him.

“Fine.” He scoffed. “And you’re really going to do this? Sell yourself to a nobleman when freedom was just on the cusp?”

“Indentured servitude isn’t slavery. That’s the entire reason why I desire for my contract to remain in place, as it puts limits on your requests.” She shook her head. “Besides that, for my wish to come true, no price is too great.”

You wouldn’t have had to pay a price if you weren’t so damned stubborn, he thought.

On the outside, his expression remained the same. “The deal is struck,” he said. “In exchange for the healing of your core, the contract between you and my father transfers to me, effective immediately.”

“For life,” she said.

“So it would seem.”

A voice from the other side of the building.

“Mal! Lusia!”

Rolam. They’d finished their little tour.

Mal turned his head. “Coming!”

He made to walk out of the alleyway. A moment later, Lusia’s footsteps echoed behind him.

I really am the worst, aren’t I?

A week passed after Mal had once again ruined his servant’s life.

Conversations between them had turned stilted and awkward. Mal was unable to muster up much more than disdain for her and she didn’t seem inclined to close the distance.

It was sad, because for a few moments, Mal had almost felt like she was something of a fr—

He shook off the thoughts and focused on his reading material. He’d managed to get access to an obscure tome describing how the healing process was done. Thankfully, there wasn’t much risk for the consumer of the brew. Instead, Mal would just be risking his life every time he tried to combine the ingredients.

Fun.

He bounced his leg and tried to get some blood flow back into it. The others had insisted that he wouldn’t be exercising once they realized how injured he was. Philo had happily accepted his explanation of Mal feeling under the weather, though Rolam obviously knew some aspect of the truth. Nima seemed suspicious as well, but he didn’t press the issue.

He hadn’t cared what Lusia had thought, nor did he care to learn.

His main focus for that week had been teaching Rolam, Philo, and Nima a technique for mana recovery.

It was a basic move, one taught to students by the end of the first year, but Mal had judged that this was unnecessary and they could be taught it earlier.

The basic idea was to draw in mana through breath as opposed to absorbing it through the skin. You would be able to store up mana inside of your stomach where it would access the bloodstream easier, as opposed to trying to force it through muscle and bone to reach the veins.

The danger, of course, was that there was a small risk of popping your stomach like some sort of flesh balloon, but Mal was pretty sure they would be able to handle it.

His plants were doing well, too. His Elderroot and Sleepleaf had sprouted up, small green buds of life.

The exception was his Airgrass, which seemed comparatively weak. The buds were pale white—and while that was somewhat to be expected with Airgrass, this had gone far beyond the healthy limits.

He had the Airgrass up on the window to get plenty of fresh air, so that wasn't the problem, was it?

He'd watched the Airgrass, distressed. The only thing that had happened was that when a breeze outside hit the dorm walls, The grass shivered… despite the breeze not touching it. Odd, but ultimately not helpful.

Mal slapped his cheeks. He was getting too caught up in reflection. He focused back on the book.

He clicked his tongue. He would have to work with Lusia and teach her mana flow concepts in order for her to effectively transfer the infernal essence into her own core.

The problem was that as someone without a trace of magic, she couldn’t very well do that. He would have to assist her by channeling mana into her body so that she could become acquainted with the “feeling” of doing so. It was a painful procedure that Mal had been subjected to when his core had been damaged in the original timeline. He would never wish such a thing upon another person, but...

If it would help fix her, that was just what he would have to do.

There was a rattling sound from his window.

He glanced over at it only to see it shut as per usual.

"Okay," he stood up and walked over to it to double check. "That's strange."

The window was fogged and damaged beyond any kind of usability.

If there was something outside, there was no way to know other than opening the window.

He considered doing so before he shook his head. "Not worth the effort."

He sat back down at his desk and flipped through the books. He wrote down a few quick notes on a piece of paper and his eyes fluttered shut briefly. He slapped his cheek and the jolt of pain woke him back up.

"Need to stay focused," he muttered. "Let's try to just get through this chapter."

The window rattled again.

This time, he ignored it.

"Probably just the wind," he said.

He'd just gotten to the page on the infusion recipe when the window rattled for a third time.

He stood up and his chair slid behind him with a screech.

The window was open.

Mal dropped into a crouch and his shoulders slackened.

There was no point in pretending that he hadn't noticed that somebody was in his room. But the question was how? How could someone accomplish such a thing, and why?

The bracelet on his wrist twitched.

"You're an awful paranoid sort, aren't you?"

Mal jolted forward and dropped into a combat roll. He flipped back around, hand with bracelet pointed in the direction of the noise.

The orange hair and red eyes gave him pause. He dropped his wrist and sighed, then stood back up to his full height.

"Must you scare me like that, Hemp?"

She laughed and cocked a hand on her hip. "I figured it was only fair because you didn't give me your address."

Mal, ever the gracious host (not), pulled up a chair for Hemp from the dormitory common room. She'd proceeded to ignore the chair and had decided to perch on top of his desk like some sort of crow. When he came back to the room, she'd been shamelessly looking at his notes, squinting at them like they were written in a foreign language.

"What's up with this chicken scratch?" she said. She flipped through the paper, then shook her head. "This is barely readable."

"It's cursive." He raised an eyebrow. "I'm more surprised that you can read at all."

She fell backward into his desk chair, then stretched out like an alleyway cat.

"Of course I can read," she said. "I did learn a little bit later than you fancy nobles, but it would have been hard to find locations and read maps without being able to understand my letters."

Mal grunted, then set down the chair and sat opposite to her.

"So what exactly brings you here? Why are you in my dorm in the dead of night?"

"Why do you think?" She rolled her eyes. "Thought you said that you were coming with me when we broke into that false priest's office."

Mal perked up. "So we're ready to go?"

"I am. I know that house like the back of my own hand. The floor plans, the security system—it's all up in this noggin of mine. Biggest problem we're gonna have to deal with is his sentries. Personalized security golems. They're not smart, but there's a lot of 'em, and if we're spotted by one, the entire city guard will come rushing in."

"Golems are supposed to be expensive, though."

"Good golems are. These ones are crap." She scoffed. "The cheapskate wouldn't shell out for the good stuff. Nonetheless, there's still an obstacle we have to get around. They're all over his property, patrolling tin men."

"Okay, so we'll just have to stay outside of their vision."

"Yeah, that's where things get tricky." She sighed and drooped her head. "His whole place has a fence surrounding the entire property. That ain't so bad, but it does mean that any kind of direct approach is going to be a fool's game. We'll be spotted by the sentries in an instant."

"So what can we do?"

"Well wouldn't you know it, he lives in a neighborhood. And while his security is top of the line, his neighbors' ain't."

Mal stroked his chin. "I see where you're going with this. We're going to break into the neighbor's home, then... what, hop the fence?"

"You're thinking way too simple."

She reached into her pockets and a small metallic object came out of them. It was a complex design that reminded Mal of the inside of a clock. Dozens of gears interlinked with one another in a complex system.

"Thanks to your advance," she said. "I was able to shell out for a magical drill. Poor baby’s been used to hell and back, it ain't gonna last us long—just far enough to get underneath the house."

"And then we can park right underneath the office, right?"

"Unfortunately, the fat bastard—" she grimaced. "I mean the fat loser has his office on the second floor."

"Is he going to be home?"

"He's having a late night at the church. Today is a holy day, and he's required to stay there the whole night. We have all the time in the world."

"So we'll just head up the stairs, rifle through his office, and get what I'm looking for."

"Yep. Of course, you'll be the one picking all the magical locks, since you said you'd be able to handle it." She raised an eyebrow. "Can you?"

"You said that you'd be able to walk me through it, right?"

She scoffed and rolled her eyes.

"A non-mage teaching a mage how to pick magical locks. What has the world come to?"

"Oh, don't worry about it. It'll be fine."

"I've never heard that before."

She stepped back over to the window. Hemp looked back at him and smirked. "Let's get going."

Mal nodded.

"Indeed," he said. "It's time to perform a robbery."

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