Dan took a tottering step away from the hooded man and almost fell once again. The man sighed and waved his arm, revealing a glimpse of dull silver wrapped around the hand concealed in his robes. The invisible grip wrapped around Dan’s waist tightened, preventing him from slouching over. It didn’t hurt, and on a certain level, he appreciated the way it helped him take some pressure off of the injured portions of his body, but it served as a reminder that he wasn’t escaping from this situation.
Even if he did, where would Dan go? The night was far from over, and with zero functional arms, barely able to stand, he wasn’t in a position to fight off anything more menacing than a toddler. In the distance, something howled and was answered almost immediately by another howl, this one far closer. A shiver ran down his spine.
The hooded figure began to lose patience. “Human, comparing my power to yours is like comparing the stars in the sky to a handful of embers, but even I would prefer not to face an entire pack of stalkers enraged over losing one of their numbers. It is time to move as best your damaged body can carry you.”
Another hand motion and flash of silver, and the invisible force nudged him. Not enough to knock him over or harm him, but enough to make the point. The man turned around and began walking away, trusting Dan to follow him. Dan glanced into the darkness behind him once before turning back to the mysterious departing form. He could follow the man or die. Maybe he would get an explanation once they got wherever the man was going, but all he had to look forward to out here was the lower intestines of some nightmare beast. With a sigh, he trudged after him.
After almost twenty minutes of travel with only a brief pause for his guide to fire some sort of spear of force into the darkness to drive off a monster that Dan hadn’t even realized was tailing them, they reached the man’s abode. It glowed silver in the darkness and resembled a wide, two-story mansion. He didn’t recognize the frescos and artwork carved into the home’s pillars, which was hardly a surprise, but Dan knew quality when he saw it. Whoever this man was, that artwork cost serious money.
Without a further word, Dan’s rescuer strode into the building and turned to wait for him. He gritted his teeth against the dull ache that filled his entire body and followed. The System had shut off most of his damaged nerve endings, but that didn’t stop the rest of his body from complaining about the general damage and blood loss. As soon as he stepped past the row of pillars that lined the outside of the building, the man put his hand onto one of them.
This time, a tungsten vambrace showed clearly on the man’s wrist. Whoever he was, he could afford mythril, and he used the same sort of spellcasting aids that the elves did. A second later, a bubble of force appeared around the entire mansion, locking out the night. Whatever the man had done, it didn’t have the acrid purple light of the sanctuary runes. Instead, it created a soap bubble of energy around them.
Finally, the man turned to Dan and motioned for him to follow as he stepped into the mansion itself. Somehow, the interior was even more opulent than the outside. Almost every surface was made of marble with frescos of semi-precious gems depicting various battles adorning the atrium. Silently, Dan followed the man until they reached what looked like a cross between a kitchen and a pantry. An oven stood on one wall of the room while the other was lined with steel bins. Inside the bins were the frost-covered limbs of various monsters. Somehow, despite standing only fifteen feet away from the stack of frozen remains, Dan didn’t even feel a hint of cold.
“I apologize for the haste and the state of my larder,” the man said absently, walking over to a cabinet and searching through various vials of liquid. “Normally, I would greet a guest with a feast and entertainment, but for the past couple years, I have been living far from civilization. The only food I can offer is from the bodies of the monsters that patrol these mountains, and I haven’t even seen a servant or musician in the past year. I suppose you will have to accept my limited hospitality.”
The man found the vial he was looking for and turned around to face Dan. “Here, I’m going to pour a minor healing potion in your mouth. I don’t have a source to get more, so I hate to waste these, but you look unable to feed and care for yourself. I would rather waste a potion than deal with that bother, so congratulations.”
The man approached and tipped the vial back, pouring the thick sludge down Dan’s throat. It tasted bad. Like, rotting garbage bad. Then, his throat grew warm and his mana reacted to whatever he had drunk.
Unknown substance detected. Analyzing.
Substance is rich in nutrients and mana. No other foreign contaminants detected.
<USER>’s body is attempting to repair itself. Assisting.
Tingling shot up and down his right arm and his back. He suspected that the same process was taking place in his savaged left arm, but the System still hadn’t turned those nerves back on. Given the occasional glimpses he had gotten of the deep wounds in the arm and shoulder, Dan was okay with that. At least the System had stopped the bleeding, but even with proper resources, it was going to take a couple days for the industrious nanites to get him back up and running.
“Now.” The figure pulled back his hood, revealing his fine features, gold eyes, and pointed ears. “My name is Daeson Amberell, and I am very curious about you, Mister…?”
“Thrush,” Dan supplied. “Daniel Thrush.”
HIs mind was racing. Amberell wasn’t just a name in the Tellask Empire. It was a major noble house. Even a random elf was a threat, but an Amberell? A slip up here had the potential to doom Earth.
In all likelihood, the elves were already on their way to check up on the missing voidship, but providing definitive proof that Earth could defend itself against a casual attack was not in the game plan. One thing was clear from the Tellask historical records, that sort of evidence had a tendency to wound the Empire’s pride, and that had a tendency to make the follow-up attack anything but casual.
“Mr. Thrush.” Daeson smiled. He had the sharp, needle-like teeth of a consummate carnivore. “Only a handful of humans can interact with mana directly to the point that they can actually cast spells, and all of those are old men. House Amberell created the class system for its human thralls out of a paternal sense of obligation. Worlds such as Twilight are dangerous, and we were hardly going to waste resources staying here and keeping humanity safe.
“That said,” Daeson continued, “not all of us agreed with the system’s restrictions. True, a class lets a human use their mana without actually knowing how to cast spells, but ultimately, it restricts your race. Without being able to actually cast spells, your species will never be anything other than cannon fodder and common labor for the Elves. Some of my race find that not only acceptable but desirable. Personally, I must confess that, before the Orakh incursions, I didn’t really give the plight of your species much thought.”
Daeson shrugged. “You live such short lives. I would prefer those lives not to be wretched existences, but to a certain extent, all beings suffer. Then the Orakh came, and the Empire started scooping entire tributary kingdoms up and forcing them to the front lines. Even Elven shock troops with millennia of training struggled to hold back the Orakh Hordes. How could we expect human warriors barely thirty years of age, to actually hold them back? You didn’t. It was massacre after massacre while the Elven elite used your sacrifices to buy time.”
“I didn’t think an Elf would be so straightforward about it.” Dan smiled wryly as he replied. “I think most of us expect to get a lecture about the nobility of our sacrifice.”
“Your sacrifice would be noble if it wasn’t a pointless waste,” Daeson answered with a snort. “The classes let humans gain power in a short period of time, but they are designed to stop you from ever being a threat to the stability of the Tellask Empire. True, they let you become stronger or move faster, and sometimes they can replicate actual magic in a limited fashion, but a proper spellcaster of the same rank outclasses them in every possible way. My kind insist that the classes are the limit of human power, and even the laws of the Empire itself ensure that individuals with class tattoos will never receive the same rights as an actual magi. You, though…”
Daeson stepped around Dan, glancing him up and down. “You are what I was looking for when I came to this godforsaken planet. You cast spells like a child, inefficient and limited, but you cast them. You’ve ranked up without the help of a class. You are a diamond in the rough with the potential to actually prove the worth of your species. With you, we can change things. Prove to my rivals that humanity should be given succor and trained into a force to fight the Orakh, rather than spent cheaply to buy time.”
Dan shifted uncomfortably. Daeson’s gaze was that of a hungry man looking at a feast. He couldn’t help but notice that Daeson had only let him get a handful of words in during the entirety of the monologue. For all of his compliments and attempts to assure Dan that he was important, to the elf, he was an interesting lab specimen and nothing more.
“So, Mr. Thrush.” Daeson strode back into his vision, smiling once again. “What do you say to the proposition that you become my disciple? I’ll whip you into proper shape in ten to twenty years, then we can prove to the others at the academy that, as always, I was right and they were wrong.”
