Acarald entered the cell. It was a good cell. He had spared no effort to render his dungeons appropriately dark and dreary. The Sorcerist had recently added some handcrafted spiderwebs, which Acarald thought was a bit much, but you had to keep a team together.

  The blade sorceress in the cell was still weak on her feet; as far as he had heard, she had put up quite a fight. No match for Triand, of course. Always a trick up her sleeve, that one. Like with her staff.

  The door closed behind him with an ominous thump.

  “Sorcerer Cunior is dead,” he said simply.

  “Good”, the sorceress said. “Never liked him much.”

  “Yes, he was rather a boisterous young man. Talked more than he could deliver. And his chosen nickname ... It always puts me in such a mood when people break their promises.” He leaned forward. “You wouldn’t be able to lighten my mood, would you?”

  “I can,” she said quickly.

  “Do you have the artefact?”

  “No, but I got a signature off the girl!” The sorceress said the sentence as one word in case the slowly building power around the leader’s hand would decide it had heard enough. “She attacked me. Fire powers. Crude and unsophisticated yet, but very powerful. She’ll be easy to track.”

  Acarald’s face seldom gave away his mood, but he seemed to be pleasantly surprised. “That could be useful. And shows initiative. None of your colleagues would have thought of it. I think we will reinstall you. Not with quite the rank you had before but you’ll keep breathing.”

  “Thank you, Archmage.”

  “Don’t mention it. Clean up and come to my study.” He held the door open for her. Hard to find decent personnel these days. You had to hold on to every brain cell that could be found in your order.

  The members of the Inner Circle unconsciously conjured their protective shields as Acarald stormed into the study.

  “Good news?” the Master of Birds ventured.

  “Exceptional,” Acarald said, summoning the surveillance orb and putting it into calibration mode.

  “Did she have the Eye?”

  “No. But I have a feeling we soon shall find it.”

  A couple hundred miles away another orb lit up. Archmage Urun thumped it experimentally. He had teleported in on short notice, even though Archmage Ambeus knew what that did to his kidneys, and then he’d said duty calls, and Urun had said he would call back, which was not well-received, and now here he was, a few miles outside of Prey and instead of sampling the local fish pies he had to deal with this.

  “There’s orange blobs, alright,” he said. “Now which one is her?”

  “Well, it seems ... none of them,” Archmage Aslius said. He held the slightly smaller WHAT communication crystal higher. Ambeus’ nose flared in its depths.

  “Any fire activity?”

  Aslius looked over at the group of wizards. One was still running up and down the path with the diagnostic wand. “None whatsoever.”

  “Hm.” Ambeus, on his end, held up a second crystal. “Did you get that, Elecor?”

  The Archmages of Riestra leaned closer. All they could hear was a sound very similar to a mouse stuck in a drainpipe.

  “What do you mean, this is not how these things work?” Ambeus boomed into the crystal that held the likeness of Elder Elecor. “There should be a setting for ... Fine, Elecor, I’ll just repeat. They said, no sign of them. What about on your end?”

  Urun put a finger in his ear and scratched for a while. No, the high-pitched squeaking was still there.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Did you lot get that?” Ambeus demanded.

  “No, Archmage,” Aslius said. “Look, if you could just change the setting to ‘order meeting’ ...” He was slightly younger than the rest and thus regarded as the technology expert. Which would have been a great compliment if anyone ever listened to him.

  “How do I do that?”

  “Put your thumb on the Options rune and ...”

  “The what?”

  “It’s on the underside, Archmage ...”

  Ambeus’ face vanished and his desk became visible. His voice sounded faint. “What now?”

  “Now you select the Connection rune and if Elder Elecor would be so good as to do the same thing, you would ...”

  “Hang on, hang on, I need to tell him that.”

  While some indistinct instructions were passed to the other crystal ball, Urun began to whistle as he looked around for something to do. The assistants were taking a break under a grove of trees. Two were pouring over a map. One still fiddled with the diagnostor. Kids!, Urun thought. The Archmage sent him around with kids! Not a single one had passed his fiftieth birthday. One even was barely forty. And they should apprehend that witch woman. He shook his head.

  He hadn’t had the displeasure of teaching Triand too often when she had been at Riestra. Bit of an odd duck, he’d always thought. No respect for tradition. And always a “Wouldn’t it be easier” on her lips. No wonder she had gotten along with Acarald. He’d always had something to complain about as well.

  And she’d just never known when to quit. Well, not until something exploded. Maybe they should have locked her up after the first time, but well, you had to expect accidents with the powerful ones ...

  That probably explained why she was running around with the Eye of Manisum. And whatever did she plan to do with it now, drop it down a well? He should be home in Riestra overseeing the recruitment process of the new wizards, after all he’d come up with the slogan “two percent off your tuition fee for every donated pint of blood”, and instead he had to deal with this.

  Behind him, Aslius seemed to give up trying to teach the Archmage the basics of remote communication and resumed the back and forth with Ambeus.

  “No sightings on his end either,” Ambeus said finally.

  It was a good thing, Urun thought, that Archmage Ambeus had snooped, uh, inspected Acarald’s quarters so regularly when he was still part of the order. Acarald had a habit of making copies of everything. It was exhilarating to use the old chap’s technology against him. Fighting fire with more and better fire was a wizard’s natural purpose, after all. Unfortunately, his notes were about as organised as ... as ... well, apparently there was a system, but Acarald was the only one who understood it.

  “It might be a problem with the Synthesised Arcane Diagnostic Magnificator,” one of Archmage Aslius’ students, who had been spending several days with the blueprint, said.

  “Did you hear that, Elecor? They haven’t got the synthetic arcane diaphragm ready!”

  “That’s not ...”

  Urun walked away once the technobabble began to give him a headache. He selected a nearby tree, pulled the hood of his robes over his eyes, and decided it was time for a kip. Archmage privileges and all. Darn technology. Back in the old days you just summoned a demon. Oh, not that those buggers knew any more, but well, if even a demon didn’t have the answer to your question you didn’t feel bad about shrugging and doing something else instead. Now they had all those arcane agnostics and whatnot, but it was bloody useless if you couldn’t even see the Faceless coming. Hah, you only ever saw their blobs light up after the fact, when they were already fighting ...

  Urun sat up and bolted towards Aslius, who was explaining the difference between the mobile and the stationary version with tears in his beard, and snatched the WHAT crystal out of his hand. “I just had an idea!”

  The wizards listened with unusual attention. Ambeus nodded and turned to the orb that contained Archmage Elecor, who shook his head.

  “Look, it won’t work, and we have our own problems, some of those masked buggers were spotted on the road, we have an assistant still missing, possibly abducted, the other sanctums have gotten wind of this ...”

  Ambeus furrowed bushy brows. “What do you mean, the other sanctums? Which ones?”

  “Well, news travels fast, especially if you have librarians ...”

  “Oh, wonderful. So we’ll have to have diplomacy again to decide who will keep watch over the damned thing when all this is over ...”

  “You know, our archives are more than ...”

  “Not you too!”

  “I’m sure we can discuss this later,” Elecor said quickly. “Now, Archmage Urun’s suggestion ...”

  “It’s not a bad idea to follow the Faceless’s signatures,” Ambeus shrugged like a man who grasped at any straw.

  “Granted, you never know if it might be the same ones. I remember you telling me he went through assistants like through socks ...”

  “Was terrible, so much paperwork. Couldn’t see the desk for letters of resignation.”

  “I think we might be able to get something off the Faceless we had here,” Elecor said. “I’ll see what the dean for magical detection can do. But no promises.”

  “Splendid.”

  “What about the other sanctums?”

  “It seems we have no choice but to fill them in. They will find out sooner or later,” Ambeus grumbled.

  Elecor’s shoulders became briefly visible as he shrugged. “Well, we could use this to our advantage.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “We could ... pay them for information on her. If she’s spotted anywhere.”

  “A bounty? That’s what commoners do!”

  “But no one needs to know about the Eye. Only that we’re looking for her. For ... destruction of magical property, threats made against our orders ... things like that. It wouldn’t even be a lie.”

  “Hrm. I’m afraid you have a point …” Ambeus’s face drew closer in the crystal. “Urun! Are you still there? Tell Aslius to get the other sanctums on the line somehow. We’re about to get nasty.”