Inner Discord

Chapter 14

'Okay, now that that's out of the way, let us continue,' I spoke up again. 'When we arrived there at the building, we had no doubts anymore. We were certain of everything we mentioned earlier.'

'But now there posed a new problem: what did you expect us to do there?' Boeithe continued.

'The answer was simple: you just wanted us to enter the building. But it was not the one before us. It was the one meant for training.'

Now Aphron looked confused. 'I don't think you could derive that only from my letter?...'

Boeithe answered his question. 'It wasn't the letter itself that we found weird, it was the building. There were no windows and it was too small and out in the open ever to be able to serve as training camp. There wasn't even an entrance.'

'Thus we concluded that couldn't be the right one. The question was where we could find it,' I said with a grin. 'But we were certain you wouldn't leave us without a hint. And given you thought we were so stupid, it would probably be a real obvious one.'

'But firstly has to be mentioned there was something else that rendered us suspicious... We knew how you spied on us during the first assignment, but we had no clue how you would do it here.'

'There were luckily only three options, of which one was that you were really close, the second one the same way as before...'

'And the third one using your magic another way,' Boeithe finished my sentence.

Aphron laughed. 'Hah, I don't think I grasp how there can't be more possibilities? Why don't you even consider I wasn't spying on you during the second assignment?'

It was me who now answered: 'That's simple. You won't take the risk of letting me give up when you need me, do you? And that one also eliminates the second one.'

'Why would that be?' Aphron asked.

'Simple: because Phoneus had to focus fully on what he had to do, and your soul magic wouldn't let him. But that leaves two options... If we consider the first one to be true, that meant we were in your vision range, but then you would be too remarkable...,' Boeithe remarked.

'And with the third one you wouldn't be ready to stop me if I wanted to leave. So which one is it?' I finished instead of Boeithe.

'The answer is: both. You were close by and used your magic to observe us. That meant you must have teleportation magic and light magic, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to observe us like that.'

There was a long pause. I thought Aphron was probably trying to grasp it all, although he kept laughing that irritating smile of his. Finally I spoke up again. 'Back to the problem now: we knew that you were observing us, so we decided that I would inspect the building whilst Boeithe looked at the letter and later on would give a crap explanation about it. What I saw there was that weird crack, with the universal symbol of magic around it.'

Now Boeithe continued: 'As soon as Phoneus told me about it, I reached the same conclusion he did: that must be that hint you gave us. And to give you an excuse why we would investigate that, I took care of putting it in my crappy explanation.'

'Firstly I tried to use earth magic on it. But the walls didn't bend and the middle turned red.'

'We feigned we knew nothing about it, but in fact we both had noticed immediately that it must have been Kallistoi blood: the elf's blood that is said to possess a highly defensive power. Together with a spell that would easily protect the wall from breaking.'

'But there was also put a spell on the building that would not allow you to teleport inside. We figured that must have been a side result of the walls not breaking. And then we understood everything.'

'If we tried to break the walls, that blood would come free together with a gas. That gas is paralyzing, meaning if we didn't figure it out fast enough you would paralyze us and give a hint. That was the only remaining possibility, because you didn't want us to do that long over it, because you had already lost too much time, and you already believed we were completely wrong.'

'We figured the gas must work extra fast when you tried to teleport or drink the blood.'

'Why when you drink the blood? Because it is spread because of it, so you would inhale a big proportion of it automatically if it came in your mouth.'

'But then regarding the solution: the universal symbol indicated that you wanted me to use all of my magics at the same time. That would show us the entrance, which means you also have to have technology magic to make those magic detectors. But we wanted to take it a little further.'

'We were going to capture you and surprise you, to let you know we were smart enough to solve it. So we thought up a plan.'

'We were going to feign that we fell unconscious by doing things that would fasten the gas' working. But in fact, we feigned it. That was some good theater, isn't it?'

'I have to admit something, though. I really drunk the blood, stopping the gas' working with my soul magic, and I drank a little too much, which caused me to fall unconscious for real for five minutes.'

Boeithe looked surprised. 'Really? Phoneus, I didn't know that. You should have said so earlier. I didn't want you to.'

I ignored her and continued: 'We figured you were going to let someone of your guards, Eu and Ophelimos, let behind the hint for us. So we had a little time.'

'In which we spread the gas using Phoneus' air magic, searched for the entrance, barged in inside here, and captured you.'

'We utterly defeated you, isn't it, Aphron?'

But Aphron just laughed. He laughed so hard that tears came out of his eyes.