Chương 23: Book 2 Chapter 4: The Hero we Deserve

"This is a very nice rock!" Jim suddenly exclaimed loudly, feeling the skeletal professor's hand grip his shoulder like a vice. The student rubbed his hand on the cold stone of the wall.

"I just love how it feels on my skin, don't you agree, professor?" he asked.

"I don't have skin," professor Quatzel deadpanned.

"I'd think you're rubbing salt in the wound, but I don't have flesh either." He gave a laugh, jaws clacking together with a loud rattling sound, like pebbles being shaken in a cup.

"You caught me," Jim admitted while turning around to look at the professor in the empty eye sockets.

"Do with me what you must, kill me if need be."

"... What?" the professor asked, tilting his head in evident confusion.

"Everyone is plotting something, everyone is hiding something. Isn't this what you all do when you find an inquiring mind? Silence it so that it may never find the truth?" Jim asked brazenly. Professor Quatzel seemed weirded out enough by Jim's words that he dropped his hand, a weird light flickering in his eyes.

"I was just trying to scare you a little bit, sheesh," he enunciated.

"I don't care what you're doing, who you're doing it with, or how close you are to accidentally discovering the hardly secret room the staff use to store their good liquor after the student alcohol raid incident of last year."

"Then I'll be on my-""I'm still giving you detention though," the professor interrupted him. Jim sullenly glared at the creature.

"What gives you the right, you separatist," he complained.

"The academy charter, mostly," Quatzel replied.

"Not that I'd bother enforcing it if I wasn't bound to it. Anyway, we have class next week, swing by my office after and I'll have you copy some lines."

"That's it?" Jim asked, somewhat confused.

"Staying at the academy premises past closing time is a minor misdemeanor at best, the punishment is proportionate," the lich said, starting to walk towards the exit, Jim following behind instinctively. Jim thought back to the amount of people who'd killed him for less. But… Quatzel was the bad guy, he'd led Mitelos in a rebellion against the kingdom with the use of dark magic and had been serving off his punishment at the academy ever since.

Also, well, considering what Combat Magic 2 actually consisted of, he'd killed Jim hundreds of times over.

"Off you go," the professor said once they'd reached the main gate, which was now closed. The skeleton put a white hand on a small nook on the side and opened a little side-door.

"Try not to forget the detention, or else…" he said threateningly. Jim paused after having walked through the door.

"Or else what?" he asked with furrowed brows. The professor sighed, and Jim suspected that if he had eyes, he would have rolled them.

"Or else I'll have to issue an official reprimand. Gather three and you'll be expelled, real scary stuff," the lich said with a sigh.

"Does anyone even read that stupid rule book anymore?" he muttered quietly as he slammed the door shut in Jim's face, leaving the student standing outside the academy somewhat confused. Woodenly, the Savant turned around and started heading for the dorms. Then he remembered that he was supposed to meet Harry and hurried his step. The entire encounter had been confusing, but there was one thing he was sure of. Hiding behind that wall was definitely more than just an alcohol cabinet.

-/- The detective Jim encountered in the alley behind the student dormitory after being led there by an incredibly annoying pigeon looked, for lack of a better word, frazzled and smelled like a bucket of piss.

"Are you drunk?" Jim asked dubiously as he looked at the man's gaunt cheeks, his hollow eyes and his patchy beard. The popped blood vessels in Harry's eyes were visible even in the dark. He was hunched over, but still towering over Jim.

"I fucking wish I was," the man muttered quietly.

"We need to talk."

"I see you finally managed to move off your ass and investigate," Jim said critically, looking around.

"Aren't you going to put up a privacy ward, or something?" he asked.

"Funny thing about privacy wards," Harry muttered.

"Put one up and you suddenly become much more suspicious. Have a quiet conversation in an alley and nobody cares." Jim nodded.

"Well, what did you find?"

"They're definitely excavating some tunnels underneath the city," Harry muttered.

"Although the smithy you mentioned to me wasn't part of the network yet. Managed to find one entrance hidden cleverly in a public park in the embassy district however. That's how I knew it was real. Found several other entrances hidden in various abandoned locations around the city, was followed back home once, lost my office, had to fake my own death, been living in the streets under the guise of a beggar for weeks now."

"That explains the smell," Jim commented quietly with a nod, as if having solved a great mystery, ignoring the rest of what had been said.

"Yeah, it does," Harry said through ground teeth.

"Anyway, I waited on infiltrating the tunnels until tonight because that little meeting you told me about should have drawn away most of the cult's resources. You were right, there is a giant ass chamber there, with different tunnels leading to different parts of the city. Richean, mostly."

"The bastards," Jim muttered angrily before pausing.

"Wait, cult?"

"Managed to catch some snippets of conversation with the help of my network," Harry said quietly, nodding his head towards the slightly higher than average amount of pigeons sitting at the end of both exits to the alley they were conversing in.

"All you really need to know is that whenever there's a great power like the calamity, some will think that it should be worshipped instead of banished. I don't know if this group has any connection to the one that carried out the terror attacks five years ago, but they certainly seem to have some sort of reverence for the monsters of this world. More worryingly, they definitely have an in at the Royal Secret Service, which is its own kind of problematic." Love what you're reading?

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"What do you mean?" Jim asked, drawing a derisive snort.

"You think these clowns were the first ones to have the bright idea of tunnelling underneath the city? It's a tale as old as time, escape, smuggling, assassination. The capital is the territory of the royal family, they've had the underground secured since they came into power. What I'm wondering is how the cult managed to dig their tunnels in a way that avoided the existing network completely, and how they did so without getting caught."

"The royal faction must be in on it," Jim suddenly decided.

"Never liked the look of those foreign bastards. Did you know they fined my family for very normal agricultural business practices?" Harry narrowed his eyes.

"Do you mean the grain syndicate scandal that caused a minor famine in Mitelos?"

"If they didn't want us to buy all that grain and store it, then why was it on the market in the first place?" Jim asked triumphantly.

"I don't have time for this," Harry cursed quietly.

"Your family's questionable ethics aside, you might just be right about your assumption that they're in it together, or, well, at least in the assumption that the royal family is intentionally shutting an eye." Jim paused, not knowing how to proceed with the situation now that someone had actually agreed with him. It didn't happen that often, likely due to his higher level of intelligence and education elevating his thought patterns beyond the broadly feasible.

Nevertheless, he was still aware enough to ask a simple question.

"But why?"

"It's the fucking struggle between factions like always," Harry cursed quietly.

"The royal family has access to a banned magic that would save the kingdom from calamity. Issue is, banned magics can only be used once before the gods intervene."

"Wouldn't that mean they would want to reduce the risk of the calamity, not increase it?" Jim asked curiously, feeling like he was slowly starting to piece together parts of the puzzle.

"It's a balancing act, you know how in the last calamity they were rumoured to have been involved with the flame-bearer running away to Ezengard instead of resolving the issue once and for all? Well, the thing is, if the kingdom manages to repel a calamity once without losing many resources, it may just grow beyond the need for the failsafe the royals have staked their usefulness on. They need people to die, just not too many of them, and preferably from the other factions," Harry explained darkly.

"That's…" Jim muttered.

"The mage faction then, the headmaster, I see, that's why he was after Alice."

"What?" Harry asked.

"The republicans, they likely want to solve the calamity once and for all, or at least limit the destruction. The time after a not so ruinous calamity would be the best time to get rid of the royal family," Jim quickly argued. Harry paused, looked Jim up and down.

"Yes, exactly. An interesting fact I found out while running around was not revealed through someone's presence, but rather, their lack thereof. Why is the headmaster running around everywhere? It's odd. Where are the other archmages, the really powerful ones? They all disappeared from the map a month ago, as if they're waiting for something. Paladin Albun is similarly nowhere to be found, it's weird. All the individually powerful individuals in the republican faction have disappeared recently, it makes no sense."

"It doesn't," Jim agreed before sighing.

"Still, what a messy situation. Things are becoming clearer, which is what I wanted, but now I just want to run off to Riche and forget about everything even more."

"Run off!?" Harry asked with bulging eyes, taking a threatening step towards Jim.

"People's lives are at stake here! That meeting the headmaster interrupted, this so-called Alice, she managed to escape after he chased her down and killed her co-conspirators. She might still succeed with her plan. We have to stop her!"

"Be realistic here," Jim said harshly.

"I'm a well-connected talented mage of some means and you're," he paused and looked the flagging man up and down, he'd seen better days, not that his starting point had been very high, "Well, you're, really, you're making me say it, you're you. What are we supposed to do? The royal family is in cahoots with the cult, the headmaster isn't someone I'm willing to talk to and we have no connections to the aristocrats. We have information, but no uncorrupted authority we can reliably report to. It's hopeless.

I say let the dice fall where they may." In an act unbefitting of a mage of some talen- of a mage, Harry jumped forward quite suddenly, grabbed Jim by the front of his robe and slammed him harshly against the wall of the alley.

"You came to me with this bullshit. I lost everything during the investigation. People think I'm dead! We have one advantage, we have your visions! Let's use them!"

"Hypothetical visions!" Jim shouted right back, feet dangling in the air.

"Unhand me you brute. I already told you all I know!" Harry let go, causing Jim to fall on his ass.

"We can do the thing the headmaster failed to do," Harry said more quietly, an almost religious fervour in his voice.

"We can hunt down Alice, the one part of this conspiracy we know of and can reasonably tackle. If everyone does their part in fighting the calamity, the damage can be mitigated. Lives can be saved."

"What about my life?" Jim asked sullenly.

"Grow a fucking spine already!" Harry cursed, extending a hand to the downed student.

"Here's your chance to be more than some spoiled brat, take it!" Jim stared at the extended hand, pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket, used it to cover his hand before accepting the gesture and standing up. If he failed… If he failed and died… Then, according to the rules of his prophetic powers, this attempt would become a vision sent to the past?

"Fine," he said reluctantly.

"I'll help investigate and let you take cover behind my shield, but I'm not fighting any sort of calamity. The moment it comes to that, I'm gone."

"Have it your way," Harry growled.

"I will, thank you very much!"