Aida
Aida goggled at him. “Your…what?” she said, stunned.
“My magic” the strange young man named Toma repeated matter-of-factly, as if what he was saying made any kind of damn sense at all.
“Your…magic” Aida repeated slowly “What the hell kind of magic could you possibly have?” she asked, mostly to herself. And why on earth didn’t I sense it when I was working on him?
Toma, who obviously didn’t have any idea what the big deal was, looked a little offended. “I can use illusion magic” he said. “I guess I’m a little like you. It was something I was born knowing how to do. And for some reason, it makes other magic not work as well on me.”
Aida felt as if she needed to sit down.
He was another wild mage.
There was another one.
Holy. Shit.
.
.
.
She wasn’t alone
.
.
.
Toma frowned at her. “Are you okay?” he asked “You look really pale”
Aida just stared at him for a long moment. Was he serious?? How did he not know what a big deal this was?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she finally said softly.
Toma looked confused. “About my magic? I dunno, I guess because it hadn’t come up before now? What with the whole almost dying thing and all… it didn’t seem super important before.”
“You’re like me. You said… you… were like me.” Aida suddenly sat up on her knees, put her hands on his shoulders and pulled him closer to her until their noses were very nearly touching. She stared into his eyes and repeated again “You’re like me.”
Before he could say anything, she released her grip on him and sat back down, giggling a little manically to herself. It was several minutes before she collected herself enough to explain.
“Do you know how fucking rare wild mages are? I’ve never even heard of another one. They happen maybe once in a generation, if that. I honestly thought I was all alone. But now…” she was so overcome with emotion at the idea that she actually felt tears sting her eyes as she looked at him.
The distant sound of a door slamming shut shocked her back into her senses.
Woah, girl! Shit. Get it together. What the hell is the matter with you? This is not the time or the place to go to pieces! There’ll be plenty of time to get into this later. For now, we need to focus on getting out of here and finding someplace safe.
Toma heard the same thing she had, apparently, because he was halfway back to his straw pile by time she started saying “Quick, lay down and stay quiet.” By time the guard arrived at the door, he was as still and silent as a corpse.
“Oy” came the gruff voice of the guard from beyond the door “everyone still alive in there?”
“Barely” Aida responded. “This man is getting worse. You goons did a hell of a number on him. I keep telling you idiots there’s nothing else I can do. He’ll die if you don’t get him a better healer soon.”
“Boss said ye’d say that” the guard sneered “He said to tell ya to get off your pretty ass and do yer job already. He said he’d be real nice to ya if ya do.” He guffawed loudly at his own wit, and flipped open the small flap to slide a tray of food into the cell. “He says to tell ya he’s gonna send someone down to check on the kid tomorrow. He’d better not be dead, or Boss is gonna be pissed off.”
Aida rolled her eyes. “Tell your boss that if he doesn’t want a dead body down here, he’d better send someone fast. I can’t promise how much longer your little toy is gonna hold out. You men do good work.”
The guard guffawed again, and continued on down the hallway.
The two prisoners sat in silence in the dark for a long while, listening to the quiet, until they were sure that the guard was not going to return.
“Crap” Aida finally said. “I think he knows.”
Toma
“What do you mean, he knows?” Toma narrowed his eyes, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “We’ve been careful to keep our voices down. How could he know?”
Aida shrugged, looking miserable. “That conversation. It was…off. I’ve spoken to that same guard every day since you’ve been here, and it has always been the same. Gruff and abrupt. Tonight, though… For that guy, he sounded downright giddy.”
Toma nodded, feeling suddenly nauseous. “A little like maybe he just came from giving his boss some good news?”
“Yeah. Exactly like that.” Aida agreed. “They must have had someone listening at the window or something. Crap.”
Toma chewed on his bottom lip and stared at Aida while he considered the situation. If they had been listening to the conversation earlier, which they must have been if they decided they knew Aida’s secret…
That meant they probably didn’t know about him, yet. Because why would you keep eavesdropping after you learned what you wanted to know? Right?
As far as they knew, he was just an average thief who happened to steal from the wrong kitchen. Which, to be fair, was exactly what he had been doing when they nabbed him. Thankfully, he had been tired that day and so hadn’t been using magic for the job they caught him pulling. Which meant that he and Aida still had the element of surprise working in their favor.
Toma smiled. The smile grew broader when Aida raised her eyebrows and looked at him with a questioning gaze.
“Don’t worry, sunshine." he said with a grin "I told you I’d get you out of here, didn't I? I know what to do.”
They spent the next several hours going over the details of the plan while they shared the meager meal the guard had left for them. The pale grey light of dawn was just beginning to creep into the cell when they heard a door slam again.
Perfect Toma thought as he leapt to his feet and took his position. As the sound of boots striking stone echoed down the hallway, Toma concentrated and felt the air flicker around him as his power took effect.
This illusion was a fairly simple one. He cloaked himself and Aida in the illusion of shadow, blending in with the still-dark wall behind him. The cell would appear completely empty to anyone looking in.
The same guard who had come before was back again, except that this time he wasn’t alone. Standing beside him was none other than Magnus the Jackal himself.
The man was nothing if not predictable.
The jangling of keys was followed closely by the angry clank of the rusted lock turning. The hinges on the iron door groaned as it swung open. The guard and Magnus stepped confidently into the cell and looked around.
By time the two men had processed the empty room, Toma and Aida had slipped silently through the door. Maintaining his shadowy illusion, Toma grabbed onto the bars of the door and quickly swung it closed behind them. The key turned again in the lock just as Magnus’ hands closed around the bars.
See ya later, you bastard, Toma thought to himself as he followed Aida down the hallway toward the door.
Before they opened the door that lead into the compound, Aida quickly knelt down and began the second stage of their plan. She touched each of Toma’s shoes. After a moment he felt the leather soles grow slightly warm, and then shift oddly beneath his feet. She repeated the process on her own shoes, and then stood up. So it had worked, Toma thought. He had been a little skeptical when she explained that because the leather had once been living flesh, she could still manipulate it to some extent.
They used the guard’s keys to unlock and open the wooden door, and quietly made their way into the light of early dawn. They would need to move quickly now, since the household was about to wake for the day. He adjusted the illusion surrounding them so that they blended in with the wall they were walking quietly along.
Toma took a moment to look behind him at the tracks they were leaving in the dust behind them, and was impressed all over again with Aida’s talent and brains. The tracks looked for all the world just like horse tracks. And they looked like they were heading into the compound rather than away from it. Who the hell would ever think to make shoes that looked like horse shoes,he mused, and to flip them so they looked like they were heading in reverse? He’d have to remember that trick, he decided. It’d come in handy someday. Assuming he actually lived through the mess they were in now, of course.
After what felt like possibly the longest ten minutes in history, he and Aida made it to the small servant’s entrance at the rear of the compound, and slipped through it without being noticed. As they were making their final escape into the trees of the forest behind Magnus’ stronghold, they heard the warlord’s enraged roar coming from far behind them. They broke into a run.
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