Before long, the city rose before them again. This time, with Mag’s help, they avoided the puppet patrols all the way through the suburbs, but before long, they ran out of trees. Ike stood at the edge of the woods, staring ahead of him. This was the last stand. From here on up, the roads became well-paved, the houses fine and nicely-painted, and the gardens small, prim, and proper. In other words, this was the edge of the mortals’ quarters. From here on up, they entered the mages’ city.
The whole thing was eerily empty, to Ike’s eyes. White buildings, white roads, white sidewalks. Only the rare garden provided a snarl of untamed, long-overgrown green. The buildings stood right on top of one another, butted up one against the next. They were clean, with no dust or dirt. The white paint showed no sign of weathering. It was empty and still, yet as pristine as if someone were actively maintaining the houses. Unlike the houses in the suburbs, there weren’t centuries of dust, grime, and decay.
Ike extended his aether, but he didn’t sense anything. Not a puppet, nor a mage. Not even a mortal, for that matter. The houses immediately around them were empty.
Ike glanced at Wisp. "Want to scout ahead?"
"Huh? Oh—sure," she replied. Her body shrunk, and she turned into a little spider. Hopping away from him, she scurried into the town.
"Heheh, not the scout for once," Mag muttered beside Ike.
"You’re a bit too big this time," Ike told him. He’d considered it, but for all that Mag had the flight advantage, he was obviously a magical beast. Even if Mag turned into a normal-sized magpie, he’d still have scales in place of his white feathers. There was nothing anyone could do about that. Unlike Wisp, a spider, the scaled magpie didn’t blend in at all.
It’s a matter of what works in what situation, Ike thought to himself. Wisp worked in urban situations, with lots of nooks for a spider to hide. As long as she suppressed her mana, no one would look twice at a spider crawling along. Mag worked better in a broad open space, where he could hide his size and strangeness high in the sky, and there weren’t lots of eyes playing spot-the-difference up close, not to mention that his advantage of wings and being able to cross vast distances quickly was multiplied when they needed to scout a wide area.
He and Mag waited, hunkering at the edge of town. Ike watched everything he could see closely, but there was no sign of life nor movement. The whitewashed town stood perfectly still. A preserved vision of what the town had once been, in its prime, most perfect state, but not a living settlement. The wind blew. Trees drifted and bushes rattled, still trimmed, but not a single maintainer stood in sight.
The hair on the back of Ike’s neck prickled. He’d pulled his mana in, so no one could sense him, but that meant that he couldn’t sense anyone else, either. There was almost certainly no one around. Just because he’d rescinded his mana senses, didn’t mean his eyes and ears didn’t work, and work far better than they ever had as a mortal, at that. And yet, he felt blind without his mana all around him, passively scanning the world for those who might wish to do harm.
Ike chuckled under his breath. He still thought of himself as the same slumrat who’d crawled out from under Brightbriar’s city, but look at him now, twitching because he couldn’t extend his mana. He’d become a mage already, whether he realized it or not. There was already an immeasurable gulf between the him who crouched here, and the him who’d cowered under his uncle.
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He let out a slow breath, letting his thoughts drift. And yet, for all that there was immeasurable distance between this him and the old him, there was equally a gulf between him and Scar or, god forbid, Rufus. He was far younger than them, even if they didn’t believe him, and he’d come from mortal stock, not from among mages, in their fine halls and upper cities.
Come to think of it, I still haven’t been to a proper mage city, Ike thought. Shopkeep’s was overrun by puppets. Clarina’s, too, had been conquered by a usurper, and then overridden. The resort was nice, but it was a trap run by fox beasts to procure tasty mage meat, not a real city. He nodded to himself. After this, he’d go to the king’s city… if for no other reason than to finally experience a mage city. It’d be a nice change of pace from his usual speed, if nothing else.
And then his gaze hardened. And it’ll be where we face down with Brightbriar. Where we try to convince the king of this region that he’s a threat, if he hasn’t been overcome already.
"Ayooo," a familiar voice called, breaking Ike out of his thoughts. He sat up, looking around for Wisp, only to feel her prickly feet press against his cheek. "This city is weird, but in a way that’s good for us." Continue reading on freewebnovel
"Oh, yeah?" Ike asked.
"Yeah. Everyone wears the same clothes and the same masks," Wisp informed him. She hopped off his shoulder and returned to her human form. From a storage ring, she withdrew three copies of the same white robes and the same featureless white mask, marked only by narrow slits for the eyes.
Ike looked at the robes. "Is white becoming our color?"
"We do keep acquiring white robes," Wisp commented, lifting the fabric she held for a better look. "Maybe if we actually bought them instead of stealing them or getting handed them, we’d get different colors."
Ike looked at the robes, then at Wisp. He shook his head. "Nah, couldn’t be me."
Wisp cracked a grin. "You’re right. I love the combo of us two in white-and-gold regalia being absolute gremlins. Though…" She nodded at his clothes.
Ike looked down. "What?"
He didn’t really need to ask. His robes were in tatters. They barely held together, the threads struggling to cling to one another, and that was where they hadn’t been outright burned or cut through. In his downtime, Ike had sewn most of the holes shut, used to fixing clothes from his slum days, but the end result was a off-brown, ragged piece of cloth, not the fine regalia he’d started off with. Most of the gold threading was singed off, blackened, or outright missing, and the fabric could only dream of the color white.
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"You know what. Here. And try to keep them un-burned, un-bloodied, and un-cut this time," Wisp ordered him.
Ike took the robes, only to give Wisp a look. Her robes weren’t in much better shape. True, parts of hers were white, but that was because she’d patched the missing sections with fresh spider thread. The rest of it was just as burned, bloodied, and tattered as Ike’s was. "Yeah, cuz you’re so fresh and clean."
"Watch out, or I’ll take my clothes off again. I’m used to being nude. You humans are the ones who insist on clothes," Wisp returned. Handing the final set of robes to Mag, she dashed off into the forest to change.
Ike stared after her. Usually, a threat of a girl taking off her clothes would be attractive, or at least empty words, but when Wisp said it… "I feel like I was actually threatened."
"You were," Mag confirmed. He spread his wings and flitted up into the trees to get changed.
Shaking his head, Ike found a thicket nearby and quickly swapped into the new robes. He examined the mask before putting it on, checking it visually for any kind of enchantment, then injecting it with his mana just to be sure. When he sensed nothing but unenchanted wood, he slipped it over his face and tied the white ribbon at the back of his head.
He returned to the small clearing they’d started in to find Wisp and Mag already there. The two of them were about the same height, but Mag’s hair was smooth and shiny as a bird’s wing, while Wisp’s was a tangled spider’s web. He nodded.
"Shall we go?"
Wisp nodded. "Follow me."