Arablest/ Prototype

However, I wasn’t able to sleep very well that night. Something was bothering me; I felt that something was wrong, but I couldn’t figure it out.

What exactly was I worried about? As far as I knew, there was no one else around, and Iris had promised not to go after Shin.

I stared at the canvas that made up my tent, wondering what was wrong. I must have stared for hours, thinking. I was trying to sleep, but my thoughts wouldn’t let me fall asleep entirely.

Because I was half asleep the entire time I wasn’t exactly thinking properly, but I recalled up the conversation Iris and I had.

And that was when it hit me.

She had fooled me with carefully chosen words, and I didn’t even notice. That, I suppose, was my fault, even if I was half asleep.

“I promise that I won’t go after Shin right now.” She had said the phrase “right now”! And it had been hours since that conversation!

Fully awake now, I jumped up and nearly knocked my tent down, which wasted a few more seconds while I made sure it wouldn’t collapse. I then rushed over to Iris’s tent, and cautiously looked inside.

Even if I had hoped otherwise, I was as I expected: the tent was empty, and Iris and her things were nowhere to be found. Except the dagger she gave me.

It was obvious that she went after Shin. The question was, would she survive? It would be suicide if I went after her, even if I had wakened everyone else up. Even General Ira had told me she would rather not face Shin. She said that Shin had been able to kill even some of her fellow Sages in a fair fight, despite their magical advantage, which I thought was pretty ridiculous. How powerful can this Shin person be, anyways? Surely there were limits to how powerful anybody could be.

But, what could I do?

In the end, I woke everyone up.

It was actually easier to wake them up then I thought it would have been; many of them were sleeping light, with their hands on their weapons, and Tomer was actually half awake the entire time. He even saw Iris going into my tent, although he didn’t notice Iris leaving. He said she probably slipped out from behind her tent, where he couldn’t see her, and he hadn’t heard anything.

“Well.” Tomer spoke first after we had all awaken. “There isn’t much we can do about Iris, is there? A few of us already know Shin’s ability, and none of us are probably good enough to face up to him.“

“Even if we all fight together as a team?” Kal asked. “We shouldn’t leave any comrade behind.”
“We shouldn’t get ourselves killed. Our mission is to protect Jeremy, remember? Shin is a deadly adversary, and even if we did have a chance together, the fact that we have to protect Jeremy is only going to get in the way.”
“Our mission with Jeremy will take too long, though…” Kal said.
“I know that! I want to help too, but there isn’t much that we can do.” Tomer replied.
“Simple. You all go after Iris, and I stay here, although I would rather General Ira stay with me. I need her help for what I need to do, and if we all go after Iris, it would be like Tomer said: I am the weak point, and Shin would probably kill me quickly, making you fail your main mission. So even if I wanted to go, I can not, but everyone else can. I’m sure General Ira alone is enough to help me find what I need.” I replied. “How does that sound? If you really need some magical support or something, you still have Dameon. He obviously isn’t as skilled as General Ira, but he’s still talented and has great potential.”
“Not to mention that he would certainly be more useful than not, especially with his accuracy and timing.” General Ira continued. “This plan might work, assuming you guys could still take on Shin. In fact, you don’t even have to defeat him; all you have to do is retrieve Iris and make sure she doesn’t get herself killed. If you do manage to find Shin then maybe words can prevent him from attacking, as well.”

I looked at General Ira. It seemed like she had thought even more about it then I did, which was fine by me. She certainly had more experience than I did, and I never was a tactician in the first place.

“In that case, let’s go, quickly.” Kal said. “We all have a few minutes to grab what we need, and then we’re going after Iris.”
“Make sure not to die.” I called after them.

And in a few minutes General Ira and I were alone.

“You know,” General Ira started. “You thought up a decent plan before I did. I only added onto yours after you said it.”

Wait, what?

“Seriously? I didn’t think it was that good. You should have gone, too, if they want to have a better chance of surviving.”
“On the contrary, I’m a general of Thrycia. If Shin saw me then he wouldn’t have much of a reason not to attack.”

I hadn’t realized that.

“Well, we have different thought processes, then, you’re actually pretty decent as a tactician. Combine our thinking together and we could come up with the best of plans!” Ira said, chuckling. “But what was your reason for keeping me here?”
“Because I would need your skills the most to help me find my way home.” I replied. “Remember what you told me about magical signatures? Well, I have a suspicion that I was brought to this area through magical means, so I needed someone like you to check.”
“I see. Personally, I had my suspicions as well when you asked me, but I didn’t bring any materials to make a copy of any magical signature. However, that same day I sent a homing pigeon back to Thrycia, telling my apprentice Lisa that I would need such materials. How Lisa chooses to get the materials back to me will be interesting. I wonder what magical means she will come up with.”
“I… see.” I replied. By now it was almost morning. “Shall we get going, or should we wait for them?”
“I think we’re close enough to the plains as it is. Let’s go take a look.”

And so we did.

It didn’t take very long to reach the plains, maybe an hour at most. Maybe. I’ve gotten worse with the time these days. Either way, General Ira and I conversed about various things on our way there, and I spent some of time trying to convince us that I was not a genius.

It was when we had gone only about 20 yards into the plain when General Ira stopped talking.

“Jeremy, I think you are right. I can sense a magical signature… and it’s still incredibly strong. The ratio of magical residue compared to the signature tells me it’s been here… for at least a year. That’s a long time.”
“Wait, magical residue?” I asked. I didn’t remember her talking about that before.
“That’s exactly what it sounds like. Magical residue is a residue left behind, obviously more present in more powerful spells. It’s only completely gone when the signature is gone as well, although the speed at which both degenerate is different, which is convenient for being able to tell when the spell was cast. That’s why many assassins don’t use magic to assassinate, as well. Brixus didn’t use magic against you, remember? None of us knew, but funnily enough even if he did we wouldn’t have recognized it, seeing we didn’t know before.”
“How do you know who’s signature it might belong to?” I asked.
“Well, you have to know that the signature that came from someone first. Otherwise, collecting the signature might as well be useless, because tracking the spell caster would become difficult. Of course, you could always go asking every caster to cast a spell and compare signatures, but that usually will take forever, not to mention fail because the caster could pretend not to know magic. “
“I see.” I replied.
“It’s even possible to change your signature, but that requires you to completely change who you are, which is quite hard. You can’t do that with magic.”
“That’s interesting.” I replied. “So unless someone could recognize this signature, even if you were to take a sample it would pretty much be pointless unless we were lucky.”
“Correct. You know, if I had known you sooner and if you had a good magical ability, You would have made a great apprentice. You learn and understand quickly.”
“Perhaps.” I said, tired of trying to convince others I’m not as good as everyone says.
“And, here it is. Just in time.” Ira said seconds later.

I looked around. “What’s here?” I asked, looking at her. She was looking at the sky, so I did too.

There was a bird circling above us, but it was too far up for me to see much.

“It looks like Lisa sent it by bird, too. Well, I guess it works. I just wish that sometimes she would show me more of her skills. ”
“I probably would have used a bird too.” I said. “It still works, and it gets the job done.”
“Yes, that’s true. What am I complaining about?” She chuckled. “Still, let’s make a copy. The signature does seem familiar, although I was never one to be able to identify any.”

It didn’t take very long. She took the parchment, and had the signature engraved into it. The parchment came from Lisa, which had been treated through magical means, which allowed Ira to engrave the signature.

“Can we go to where the residue is strongest?” I asked. I wanted to look around the area where I landed more carefully.
“Certainly, we probably have time. Let’s go.”

I didn’t find anything interesting. Although, it was nice to be sure that Ira was right; this was the place, since I recognized the area. Sort of.

“Come, let’s go back.” I said.

On our way back we struck up another conversation. General Ira was quite fun to talk with. Although, like everyone else here, she didn’t know as much as I did about the world around us due to my education, she did know more than I did about this place, and as she said, we were both intellectuals.

Which I suppose was true. I just wish they would stop making me more than I really am.

So we went back to camp, and talked for the rest of the day waiting for the rest of the group to come back.

They didn’t appear until the next day.