Death's End

Chapter 17 - First Appearance

The soft breeze caressed her face as she sat the final pebble inscribed with a symbol of power down on the garden floor. The Finder's Ritual designed to locate missing people was best used in a place where they most frequented. For Ludger's love of nature, Mirayoung chose the garden in his house's backyard to erect the ritual.

This was evident by the effort invested into the rows of rose bushes and fruit trees, and vegetable plot of leeks, beans and cabbages. Ludger's absence was also greatly felt as some parts were overgrown with weeds, indicating he had not been home for more days than Mirayoung expected.

Her heart sank even more, knowing Ludger well enough that he would task someone else, or even borrow a golem from the administration branch to care for his garden if he were heading for an expedition outside the wall; the lack thereof would hint at a worrying sign.

Charged by Fermand, the Order of Array had aided Mirayoung over the last few days in setting up the array that would enable this ritual. The sigils were complex to engrave and consume much energy. A single wrong stroke would render the symbol powerless, necessitating a complete redo. Even as an archmagus, Mirayoung alone would have taken weeks longer. And she had spent nearly the entire day setting up the array as the sun had set by the time it was ready.

Not only was the array effortful to prepare, it was a difficult ritual to partake in; but no part of Mirayoung grumbled. Ludger was her ex-lover and someone special to her. They had known each other for nearly three centuries, along with a romance that spanned over a decade.

She remembered it was more than hundred and fifty years ago when they both embarked on a three-week quest in Leopall under the request of Queen Ludwina, the then-ruler of Leopall who sought their help to defend against pirates who had unwittingly acquired enchanted weapons, aided by a rogue mage. Those three weeks saw them draw closer to each other till the last night, culminating in the hours of passion in one of the towers of Leopall.

That passionate night also saw Ludger sharing about his spirits, and even conjuring one. The name was Gegak, a spirit born from the erosion and rot of the sea. It could be described as a human-like entity with wide, unfocused eyes and overly smooth translucent skin.

It was a strange but loyal spirit in Ludger's service, and one whose seafaring nature proved crucial to track the pirates. And Ludger, with his love for nature extending to the sea, sailing and everything in between, contracted with many pelagic and seafaring spirits.

Holding this memory in her head, Mirayoung stood at the centre of the ritual and began to weave potent words. Her breathing deepened as her heart beat faster. The arcane energy flowed out from within her, swirling around the intricate array set up for the ritual so much that the pebbles that lined it began to glow.

Unlike using the Cabal Network to trace to an agreed item held by the other person, the Finder's Ritual was more akin to a brute-force approach of identifying the missing person's arcane signature in a given radius. The longer the ritual ran, the more it drained the caster. Mirayoung had enlisted a few arcane gems that she previously stored, pebbling them in the array to help reduce the strain on her own reserve.

It was also more effective on mages, who came with larger arcane reserves since the ritual's name was quite a misnomer as it searched more for an arcane signature than a person itself. An ordinary peasant would be as invisible as the blade of grass in a field to the caster of the ritual.

"Ludger, where're you?" Mirayoung said. The ritual expanded her mind, letting her view the whole Guild like she was atop a now-extinct griffin. From that view, she surveyed the city of mages, seeking the slightest whiff of Ludger's arcane scent. As if the griffin had swooped down on a prey, the view descended till the murky towers in the dark grew in size. Before she knew it, she was traversing through the well-planned alleys, cruising above the lake and watching the clustering mages at the intersection of the Guild's town square returning to their houses.