Page 44 of Is It Wrong to Escape My Fate?
“Unbelievable,” he scoffed with a laugh, shaking his head. “Any other noble will be honored to have their men personally chosen by the Captain of the Army, sanctioned by the Crown Prince himself.”
I huffed, tossing my hair. “Well, I’m not most nobles.” And wasn’t that the truth, with my otherworldliness and different life experiences.
Grimwald swiped a hand over his jaw. “That you’re not,” he mumbled, crimson eyes assessing me. “I can see why it’s easy for the Prince to claim you into his inner circle.”
What inner circle? Publicly announced as the Caregiver, without me knowing what that entailed? I decided to voice this train of thought aloud. “Do you mean the Champions?”
He smirked. “What else can it be? I suppose I’ll be seeing you around even more.”
What did that mean? As soon as he walked away, Mia, who had been dutifully standing by my side and observing, got my attention.
“The Priestesses had a new prophecy last night — they Saw a man with black hair, dressed in a military uniform and leading an army before the ultimate battle in the Demon Lord’s castle. His red eyes stood out in their Vision. The Hero immediately identified him as the Captain.”
Samuel Grimwald was the third member of the Twelve Champions.
I stared at his retreating, smug back, and it only reinforced that my research needed my focus.
The library was a quiet respite in all the bullshit happening to me lately. Mia read along with me, but instead of teleportation books, she was reading a romance fiction. I envied her a little. My knights were outside on the yard, right where I could see them through a nearby window; they exercised their morning routines as usual.
Back to the task at hand, I learned there were three important parts for standard teleportation: transporting one or more entities to a specific location. First, the Sigil — or the combination of Runes — should be understood by the caster as it would be written, painted or whichever method to inscribe it, with the mana pulled out of you. Simply copying it from a book wouldn’t achieve the same effect if you didn’t understand what each Rune meant; the magic wouldn’t hold. Thankfully, a Sigil was a semi-permanent inscription, like charcoal on paper. They didn’t need to be inscribed every time, but they did fade over time and needed to be redrawn once in a while.
Second — the mage must have enough mana to cast the actual spell. This was why it was common to have a different teleport mage to inscribe the Sigil than the mage to cast the spell; both required tremendous amounts of magic.
Lastly, third — as the spell is cast, the mage must have a clear vision in their mind of the target destination. It couldn’t be vague or blurry; they should be familiar with the location or else the teleported entities might not arrive at the place they wanted to.
There were also advanced forms of teleportation. There were past accounts of powerful mages able to teleport without a Sigil, but those were second or third-hand knowledge at best. No one in recent history knew how to accomplish it. Mass teleportation spells, however, were properly documented; it involved inscribing several Sigils linked together with several mages casting the spell in unison. These were still in active use, how entire armies could travel to the battlefield’s region without massive delays.
Knowing these things, it made me wonder: if all you needed to teleport to a location was intimate familiarity, would it be possible to go back to my apartment? I definitely knew the place; I raised myself there for three years. Then all I had to focus on was understanding the Sigil and learning the spell.
Progress, finally!
“Can I skip lunch?” I asked Mia when I noticed the time on the wall clock. That would be an extra hour to read some more.
“Unfortunately not, my lady,” Mia looked regretful. “We promised Lord Alec to keep you healthy.”
The mention of my brother made me curious. “Have you met Alec this past week?”
“Rather than him, I visited my brother a couple of times,” Mia admitted. “Lord Alec was too busy. From what I had seen,he had a special room in his dorm for his research. Milo told me it had something to do with Recovery magic.”
I didn’t know Alec specialized in that branch of magic.
At my confused look, Mia supplied, “Lord Alec is learning to be a support mage rather than a healer, my lady. Before Master Derrick became the family physician, the household had a much older doctor, Master Jeremus, if you could remember him. He taught Lord Alec about healing and support magic before he passed.
“I realize this might be partly the reason for your fuzzy memory, but you were a sickly girl,” Mia clarified even more, fiddling with her book. “He might not say it, but I think Lord Alec chose this path for you. Even though you had been steadily getting healthier over the years.”
My heart twinged at the thought. My brain didn’t supply me with any memories or even a slight remembrance of it, but the knowledge he would choose a life path for his sister was gut wrenching. It wasn’t easy to make me cry, but with Alec, it didn’t take much to do it. A tear slid down my cheek, and I was about to wipe it away when I heard Mia gasp and a different hand did it for me.
“Who made you cry?” the green-haired librarian asked as he pulled his hand away from my face.
“Myself,” I muttered, wiping the other eye before the tear fell. “Were you watching?”
How else would he know? Besides, I already knew he did; either my senses were attuned to his presence, or he wasn’t being subtle at all. I liked to think it was the first one because that meant I could notice him despite trying his best not to.
“Lord Caenum,” Mia quickly stood and bowed, and I froze on my seat.
Caenum?As in the same Caenum who hosted us for a night on the way to the academy? The same Caenum who proposed marriage to me?
“Theodore,” he mumbled, not taking his eyes off me.
