Book 4. Chapter 11

    Like she’d predicted, Myra’s caravan left the same day. Brin kept an Invisible Eye on it, but from a far distance so that he wouldn’t feel like a voyeur. The caravan didn’t run into any trouble leaving the city, and he didn’t think they’d run into much trouble out in the wild. Without a dream monster mommy sending waves of monsters at her son, the caravan would probably travel safely.

    The rest of them split up as well; Zilly went with Sion towards his family''s mansion, Davi went to find Jeffrey, and Brin went back to find Hogg. He kept an Invisible Eye with Davi though, just so that he''d know what they decided on.

    He rushed through the streets of the city, and now every stranger or blind alley seemed dangerous and nefarious. It probably wouldn''t be today; he''d just learned of it. But it could be. It could happen any time, day or night.

    He sent out another flurry of Invisible Eyes, each guided by a directed thread, telling them to scan the city and seek out the impressment gangs.

    Even before he got home, he started to find them. In warehouses near the docks, ranks of soldiers were crowded inside. They only left one or two at a time to conceal their numbers, and slept on rows and rows of cots and hastily-made bunks. [Hunter] Caio had known what he was talking about.

    When he got to the house, he dashed inside and was relieved to find that Hogg was home, though he was asleep on his reclining chair. Brin closed the door extra loud to wake him up, and then threw a spell for blocking sound around the room.

    "Impressment," Brin announced.

    Hogg woke and sat up with a surprising amount of clarity. "Now?"

    "No. The boss of Lurilan''s lodge told us they''re in the city, but we don''t know when it''s going to happen."

    "Then we have some time," said Hogg, leaning back down in his chair. "Let me get some eyes out there."

    "Already on it," said Brin. He threw a spell against the wall, making a screen that would show Hogg what his Invisible Eye was seeing. "And this is just the first one I found."

    Hogg eyed the image of soldiers crowded in a warehouse with a tired frown. "Yeah, that definitely looks like impressment. Put an Invisible Eye on a spiral search pattern, see if you can find the ones that are aiming for us."

    Brin created a directed thread with the instructions to do just that. "Myra''s already left, Davi is probably on his way, and Zilly is going to stay with Sion. He''s invited us to come stay with him as well. Do you really think they''ll come after us? I think I''ve done a pretty good job of pretending to be a [Glasser]. Although, come to think of it, we’re screwed. Everyone knows you’re a Rare. Aw man, I just got my workshop the way I like it."

    "Well, I''m not exactly hopping to leave either. Let''s see what our eyes can figure out first, and then we''ll decide," said Hogg.

    "If you''re sure..." said Brin, though he was relieved. He liked Sion, but the thought of staying at that house all the time sounded suffocating.

    “I’ve been through a dozen impressment ambushes. We’ll get through this just fine. [Mages] aren’t the type of people you grab off the street in the middle of the night. They’ll try asking politely first. And as for you, you can just turn invisible,” said Hogg.

    “If they know I’m Lumina’s heir, she could get in trouble if I run away,” said Brin.

    “If they know you’re Lumina’s son, they could get in trouble if they try to nab you,” Hogg countered. “To be honest, I’m more worried about what Lumina is going to tell us when we have another chat in two weeks. We should act like that’s a deadline, and finish everything we need to before then.”

    Brin stared hard at the door to his workshop. He’d need to prioritize. There wasn’t much he could improve with his glass here, but if he stopped messing with that he could focus on [Multithreading] and improving his laser.

    “What do you think I should focus on?” asked Brin.

    “[Meditation],” Hogg said without hesitating. “Work on those exercises I gave you and get it up to 15, preferably 20. If you can do that in a week, I can spend the second week teaching you what I know about [Split Focus].”

    Brin readjusted his plans.

    First, he created a conscious thread to get started on working on [Meditation].

    CT1: Yeah, no. That’s not happening. Returning.

    Not to be deterred, he went to his workshop. Marksi followed him, and immediately started making sounds about being hungry. Brin threw a few illusionary berries together, scattering across the floor and rolling them around so that Marksi would have to work for it. Ever since he’d gotten [Illusionist], he’d never had to worry about keeping Marksi fed with magic. He loved the illusions that Brin could make, though he couldn’t manage to consume Hogg’s hard light.

    The next day was more of the same, for all of them. Zilly trained at the Wogan estate, often borrowing some of their guards or their [Steward] when he had time. Myra walked, and Davi practiced not being seen.

    Brin practiced [Meditation] with his main mind, but he found that using [Multithreading] was actually beneficial for this. It was easier to calm his mind and focus on his breathing when time was moving faster for some reason. He kept two conscious threads running. One to mess around with his laser, and the other to monitor his directed threads running Invisible Eyes. In addition to keeping tabs on his friends, he also searched the town for more undercover agents.

    To his embarrassment, it was actually Hogg who found the agents sent to watch them specifically. There was a little apartment a block away, where two officers from the army stayed. They had pictures of dozens of different men and women pinned to a big map on the wall, marking the locations of all the different Rare-Classed people in their neighborhood.

    Hogg’s picture was displayed with two red circles around his face. Brin’s picture was tacked underneath it, with a red ‘X’ crossing him out. Neither he nor Hogg were exactly sure what that meant, but they could only guess that Hogg was a target while Brin should be left alone.

    Hogg also found an [Illusionist] who’d been staying in the Mayor’s house this whole time. He’d already protected the house from illusionary eavesdroppers, but Brin would have to be careful of any illusions he cast in public from now on.

    By the second day, he’d pretty much found the limit of what he could do with lasers, so he made that thread switch to practicing with [Multithreading]. His fight with Rhun had shown him some of the strength and weaknesses of fighting with illusions. As it was, it was just a distraction, for him as well as for his opponent, so he spent some time figuring out how to make it useful.

    He decided to create what he called “battle programs”, a set of instructions that a directed thread could follow during battle. The trick of substituting a Mirror Image with a glass statue had been a good idea, but he needed to be able to do that with four or five of them at a time, and he needed to be able to do it effortlessly, instead of needing to synchronize with a conscious thread in real time.

    He also wanted to create a fallback for what would happen if he were ever to fight someone who knew he was an illusionist. If that happened he’d be at a disadvantage because his opponent would know they couldn’t trust their eyes and ears, but he’d have a huge advantage in the fact that he’d be able to use all of his abilities to their fullest.

    Days passed, and the impressment didn’t come. From what he saw with his Invisible Eyes, the mood around town was growing increasingly tense as more and more people figured out what was going to happen. Fewer people were seen on the streets at night, and there was always an extremely long line leaving the city walls every day, as the guard had taken to interrogating everyone who came through.

    Most of the rumors, as well as the theories that made the newspapers, was that there was a dangerous criminal loose in the city. There had to be a bunch of people that knew by now that the impressment was on its way, but they weren’t saying anything in public.

    He stayed indoors, and Hogg sent out a Mirror Image made of hard light whenever they needed shopping done or some other errand run. Despite his and Hogg’s best efforts, they never figured out exactly what day the draft would happen, so it stayed as a little nugget of worry in Brin’s mind, always spurring him to greater focus and effort. He practiced every trick he could think of, getting creative with the way he could use illusions and glass weapons together, and memorizing spells to alter his appearance in different ways.

    His friends weren’t any less busy. He kept Invisible Eyes on them, so he knew they trained themselves with frantic energy. Zilly practiced fighting and worked out, Rhun did the same, and even Sion was busy with meetings. Sometimes new deals with new [Merchants], but usually status meetings for the Wogans’ many investments and projects.

    Marksi often stayed in the workshop and played with whatever random illusions Brin happened to be working on, but just as often he spent his time outdoors, harassing the neighborhood rats and fighting wild dogs and cats for his territory.

    Davi was busy, too, but his training was the most nonsensical. Jeffrey had him running around town on silly errands, or tasked him with convincing strangers to give him random objects in their possession, or had him practice his lute in strange positions, underwater or standing on his head. The most normal training he did was when Jeffrey ordered him to spar with Zillly while the older [Bard] used his magic to try to trip him up. One thing was clear, Zilly really had gotten better in the last ten levels. She held her own against Davi now, and took him apart when Jeffrey played against him.

    Frankly, it looked like bullying, but Davi did everything he was asked without a single word of complaint, though Brin could tell that the growing tension was starting to get to him. Did Jeffrey want Davi to get drafted? Was he just wasting time until then? If that was the case, Brin promised himself he’d find a way to get Davi off the hook.

    The [Meditation] went quickly. The System didn’t punish him for the fact that he’d done all this before, so he could often get levels by repeating exercises that he remembered had given him progress the first time around.

    By the fourth day, he reached [Meditation] level 15. Hogg told him to keep going. The next day he didn’t get a single level in [Meditation], which got him worried. Meditating was easier when he didn’t devote his entire attention to it, but he thought he might also be limiting the bonuses he got for it. The sixth day, he dismissed all his threads and focused his entire mind only on running through the [Meditation] exercises Hogg had given him, earning two more levels.

    When a week had finally passed, Brin woke up feeling like it was Christmas morning. Finally, he could leave this house and do something else. Today was the day of Zilly and Rhun’s duel.

    Magic: 202 - 206

    Mental Control: 236 - 248

    Will: 147 - 148

    Shape Glass: 41 - 42

    Call Light through Glass: 50 - 54

    Call Sound through Glass: 38 - 40

    Meditation: 11 - 17