Eldritch Guidance

Chapter 59: Sleuth-Hawks

Within one of the lecture halls was a gathering of people. Half the people in the room were wearing a blue police uniform, and the other half were wearing the uniform of the enforcers. Each enforcer's clothing was mostly white with a different coloration on the accent of the uniform, to indicate which college they were from. Half the enforcers here were students.

The lecture hall they were in was large and grand with rows of desks for students to sit at. At the front of the room was a large desk for a teacher to sit at with a large arcane projection screen behind it. To the side were shelves of books on various subjects related to magic.

Originally meant for students, the hall was being used for a meeting today. Some people were already sitting at the table, waiting patiently for the meeting to begin. Others were walking around making idle chatter.

Off to the side was Alan. He was wearing the white uniform of the enforcer with a purple accent, indicating that he was now part of the Arcane Eye College. The former Lionheart student looked around at the people gathered here and felt somewhat out of place.

“What am I even doing here?” he wondered to himself.

There wasn't really anything that he could specifically point to that was making him feel awkward about being here. But, the series of insane events that led up to this moment just felt surreal. From the strange murders, Sorin's true nature being revealed, to the training he did with Mitra.

Between the two of them, only Jafar had completed his training. His friend could now use basic combat magic. Alan's ability had improved in using fusion magic, however, it was still far from being useful. Mitra told him that they would continue the training while he wasn't actively working for the Sleuth-Hawks, and he dreaded that.

As Alan was thinking about Mitra's brutal training, Jafar approached his side.

Jafar: “Feels quite weird, doesn't it.”

Alan looked down to see Jafar wearing a similar uniform to his own.

Alan: “Yeah. A lot has happened.”

Jafar: “Still can’t believe we're in the Arcane Eye College now.”

It was literally yesterday that both Alan and Jafar were inducted into the Arcane Eye College. A dream that neither ever really thought they would accomplish. Friends and family were so happy to hear that they had gotten into such a famous college, even if the circumstances of how they got in were less than ideal.

While this wasn't exactly how Alan wanted to get into this college, he was still going to take this chance. People who graduate from Arcane Eye usually go on to become archmages. It was the best opportunity for him to one day become an archmage himself. All to keep his promise to his friends from Hoxly and Cris.

Alan: “Now comes the hard part of graduating from this college.”

Jafar: “Successfully graduating from this college is even more difficult than getting into, you know.”

Alan: “I know. But if we do well in the Sleuth-Hawks, it will help. We’re getting a ton of credits by being part of this program.”

Jafar: “I guess.“

Both students just stood there watching everyone talking to themselves, too shy to go converse with anybody themselves. It looked like Alan and Jafar would stand there not talking to anybody else, but someone suddenly came up to them.

The person to come up to them presented as male and was the only other Arcane Eye student who was in the room with them. He had a dark complexion with short black curly hair in the style of a taper fade and was just an inch shorter than Alan. The student seemed to carry himself with an air of importance, whether he intended to give that impression or not.

Arcane Eye Student: “Excuse me. Are you two perhaps Alan and Jafar?”

Alan: “Yeah. I’m Alan and this Jafar," he said while gesturing to his friend. “A pleasure to meet you,” he responded, trying to be friendly to someone that was likely both his and Jafar's senior.

Arcane Eye Student: “No, the pleasure is mine. I wanted to meet the heroes who avenged my brother,” he said with a warm smile.

Alan: “Oh,” he responded with surprise. “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, who was your brother?”

Alan wasn't expecting to run into anyone who had family affected by the Sorin conspiracy today. After that event, he and his friends were inundated by praise and thanks from the families of the victims for stopping the Grayscale professor.

Of course, they always felt awkward about it and tried to avoid such praise, since it wasn't entirely them that stopped Sorin.

Johannes: “Oh dear, sorry. I should introduce myself. I’m Johannes Scefer. Edward Scefer was my little brother.”

Alan: “Wait, you're Edward’s brother?” he said, surprised.

Alan examined Johannes again. He recalled Edward, the one Alan saved from a falling statue, was blond-haired and green-eyed with a light complexion. Not even Edwards’ facial features were similar to his brother's. They looked nothing alike, so it was surprising to hear they were related.

Johannes: “Yes. Um, before you ask, Edward was adopted,” he said, already able to tell what Alan was thinking.

Alan: “Ohhh.”

Jafar: “I’m sorry if this is rude. Since I haven’t interacted with the upper class much. But, was Edward a refiner?” he asked, as he realized something.

Alan: “Huh? What’s a refiner?”

Johnannes sighed.

Johannes: “That is actually rude to ask. So, keep that in mind for the future for other people. But…yes. It’s as you say.”

Alan: “Can someone tell me what a refiner is?”

Jafar: “Alan, a refiner is someone that has strong magical abilities that are adopted into a family for their abilities. They are raised and then married off to someone within the same family they are adopted into. Mostly it is nobles that do it to keep their family magic from diminishing. They call that process refining the blood. Thus, refiner,” he explained to Alan.

Hearing that, Alan felt a disgust that he hid from Johannes. If what Alan just heard was correct, it sounded to him that nobles were marrying their adopted siblings. The idea of it was revolting to Alan. Marrying a sibling, even an adopted one, seemed wrong to the former Lionheart student.

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Johannes: “Yes. It’s a practice that was adopted to try and correct the old practice of inbreeding to preserve magical power. Even though the Scefer have mostly avoided those kinds of problems, we are still forced to participate in this archaic practice. Edward was to be married into the Volti family, an allied family who requested a refiner candidate from us. But, please don’t misunderstand. Even though Edward was a refiner and adopted, he was still my brother. I loved him dearly. And, I was so devastated when he died, and further devastated when I learned what Sorin did to him.”

Alan: “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Johannes: “I could say the same to you. You have also lost someone important.”

Alan: “Yeah…” he said as he thought about Cris.

Johannes: “I guess that's why we’re both here. For retribution to those who still remain that hurt the people we love.”

Jafar: “I take it you mean Jixi.”

Johannes: “Correct. While I can’t get my full revenge, since you’ve already dealt with Sorin, I can still punish everyone who assisted in twisting my brother into a cruel mockery of his former self. As I understand, people have been telling me my brother was a bit of an… asshole before he died. I hate that it might be the way many remember him.”

Alan: “He wasn't always like that? Um, sorry. Our first interaction wasn't very pleasant.”

Johannes: “It’s OK. No, he was always reserved, but never cruel or mean. He certainly didn’t act snobbish. But his personality seemed to suddenly change when he started attending the University. Our parents thought it was maybe a bad influence and urged me to try and correct Edward's behavior while I was here. But, we now know it was likely Sorin tampering that changed my dear brother’s personality.“

Alan: “I wish I could have known the real Edward.” he said, trying to be polite.

Johannes: “I do too. I think you two would have gotten along.”

Alan didn’t think he and Edward would have gotten along. He still had a sore spot for most nobles, due to them being the reason for the civil war in Gix and destroying his home. He didn’t think very highly of them and spent most of his life trying to avoid them when possible.

Suddenly, the door to the room swung open and the chatter in the area died down. Walking into the room was Mitra with a bunch of other senior enforcers. Seeing that Mitra had arrived, many in the room started to take a seat, expecting the meeting to start soon.

Seeing this, Alan and Jafar followed and also took a seat.

The total number of enforcers that walked in was seven. Each head enforcer represents a different college, indicated by the coloration of the accent of their clothing. All the recent arrivals stood behind Mithra, suggesting that she was leading the group.

Mitra looked around at the people who gathered. She noted that it seemed all the police officers were sitting on one side of the room, and the enforcers on the other. A clear separation and something she would have to correct for this project she was leading to be successful.

Mitra: “I see that everyone is here. So let me explain wha—”

Mitra was cut off mid-sentence as the door to the lecture hall swung open and another person rushed inside. The person was a man wearing a trench coat and was sweaty, likely from running. He looked to be one of the younger police officers. All the police officers here recognize this person as Dan, from Joe’s unit.

Dan: “Huff, huff. Sorry I’m late. There was something important I had to do. I didn’t miss anything?” he said, breathing heavily.

Mitra: “No, we're just starting. Take a seat,” she said with a raised eyebrow

Dan swallowed his saliva and nodded. He then walked over to the nearest desk and sat down, inadvertently breaking the separation of police and enforcers in the room. As Dan sat right beside Alan. Dan just smiled at Alan and then turned back to Mitra. The young officer then pulled out a small booklet, intending to take some notes.

Alan looked at the young officer and felt that he was a little different. He didn’t feel as imposing as the other officers and his clothing was different. He was the only cop here wearing a trench coat.

Mitra: “OK. Now that’s out of the way. Let me explain everything to you. This whole project was put forward by me. I want both the police and the enforcers to be working together on various types of investigations. My enforcers here lack real-world experience and I think it would be helpful if they did by working with the police. And, the police will get the full assistance of the university and additional manpower. It should be a win-win for both sides.”

Officer: “Excuse me. Can I ask a question? Or are we saving questions for later?” he said, with his hand raised.

Dan looked to see that the officer that spoke out was Lewis’s. He had brown hair and wore a pair of black pants with a white shirt and a protective police vest over top. The man was head of his own investigation unit and had a rivalry between him and Joe. Dan always thought he was a stand-up guy until he tried to trick the young officer into taking more frivolous work onto himself and his unit.

Mitra: “You may ask. I’ll answer any question you all have as I explain things.”

Lewis: “Thank you. With all due respect, but are you making us babysit a bunch of students?”

At that question, there was chatter in the room. Some of the enforcers looked indignant at the suggestion, while some other police officers had a realization that what Lewis was saying may be the case.

Mitra: “Are you telling me you intend to babysit me? An ‘S’ class mage?”

While there is no hard measure of a mage’s skill and capability, the Union states government still employs a type of ranking system to try and measure those aspects. The ranks range from anywhere from “S” to “F” for anyone not an archmage. “S” being the most skilled and powerful and “F” being the weakest.

Mitra was an S-class mage and was much closer to being an archmage than not.

Lewis: “N-No. That’s not what I—” he nervously said, before getting cut off.

Mitra: “Let me make this clear. I don’t care if you're a cop, enforcer, student, ‘S’ or ‘F’ rank mage. We’re all going to be working together for the betterment of this city. So throw away whatever presumption you have towards this project and everyone working on it. You will not be working just with students, but with me as well. Along with the other head enforcers who are also ‘S’ class mages. And, before any of you cops grumble about working with students, know that some of the students you’ll be working with are probably a higher class mage than many of you. Now, does anyone have more questions or problems about working together?”

There was deftly silence to what Mitra stated. No one was willing to push back.

Mitra: “Good. So now I'll continue. As part of this new project, we’ll be breaking off everyone into different groups. As I understand it, the police already have units formed. So I intend to pair members of the enforcer off into those groups to work together. With at least two people in charge of each unit, one police officer and the other an enforcer. I will assign the enforcer leader and assume that whoever is the current leader of the respective units will lead. Is that clear?”

There was a little bit of mumbling and a bunch of people nodding along. No one bothered to ask any clarifying questions.

Mitra: “Seems like it was clear. Now onto what we are investigating. While in the future we will help in any ongoing investigation the police might be doing, we currently at this time want to focus everyone here on a problem at the university. Some of you might have heard, but one of our teachers was performing necromancy on our students. He was stopped, but there was more to it."

Officer: “What do you mean by that?” a different officer asked.

Mitra: “I’m getting there. We did an internal investigation and have found signs that Sorin, the one who was performing necromancy on students, was not working alone. We found documents in Sorin’s private lab. They had names of people assisting him in acquiring the materials he needed to perform the type of necromancy he was using. It should also be mentioned, but Sorin was specifically using soul-binding magic.”

At the mention of soul-binding magic, the room broke out in chatter.

There existed countless types of forbidden magic in the world, but soul-binding magic was considered particularly heinous within society. Governments and religious organizations actively condemn that type of magic. A type of magic that can only be considered a form of cruel and unusual form of torture.

The idea of someone using necromancy on young students here was already unthinkable to everyone in that room, but using soul-binding magic made the whole situation even more outrageous.

Alan had a pained look on his face at the mention of soul-binding magic. Thinking about how much his friend Cris must have suffered when he was turned into an undead.

Mitra: “Then there was Sorin’s assistant Jixi. He was also mentioned in Sorin’s document helping directly with the necrotic experiment being performed on the students. He’s the main suspect in this investigation at this time. And, the person the Sleuth-Hawks will be looking for.”

Lewis: “Do you guys not already have him detained?”

Mitra: “No. He went missing soon after Sorin’s plot was discovered. So part of the investigation will be finding where Jixi is and capturing him if possible.”

Enforcer: “That whole incident with the undead happened a few weeks ago. He may have already left the city by now,” a senior-looking enforcer spoke up.

Mitra: “Jixi might have, but not necessarily everyone else we have identified helping Sorin. So, we will be focusing on bringing in those people first, and if we’re lucky, one of them might know where Jixi might have gone. Now, I will tell you who is working with whom, and which group will investigate which person.”

Mitra then began to call out names of enforcers and which police unit they would be joining.