115 Road games

Emp was currently trying to teach the two Porter sisters how to escape. After their first shocking attempt, Emp walked back to his initial position and let them some time to recover their wits before he called out that he was going to start counting down again.

This time around, the two girls stood closer to each other and kept their wooden swords pointed towards him. That was still the wrong answer, the moment Emp reached the count of five, he rushed past them turned around and grabbed them both from behind. There was another duo of screams and they got lifted up in the air. Far from having the time to turn their heads around, they didn't even have the time to understand that he had ran behind them.

"You both died again."

"It's impossible, how can you be so fast?" Erin mumbled.

"I saw a lot of people faster than me, I'm probably not even in the top fifty in the empire."

"I think you might be in the top twenty instead, that speed is just ridiculous. Aren't you going too hard on those two kids?" Martin said with a frown.

Calla, sat on the wagon next to martin was also making a face of worry.

"I'm trying to help them so of course I'll go all out."

Seeing that Martin didn't get it, he turned towards Erin instead.

"I'm sure you understand, you need to work hard to get anything, if I went easy on you and I let you win just like that, you wouldn't improve at all. You're going to loose and loose and loose again but in the end, you'll have learned something."

Erin did understand, he could read it in her eyes.

Her and her sister worked hard everyday to earn a few coins to eat. They failed and failed and failed again but they kept trying. They slept in alleyways and fought stray cats for the right to eat the rats they beat with rocks.

The two sisters might have put themselves in trouble many times but there was one thing they never fell for. When some men or women came to tell them they could earn coins with almost no efforts, they never trusted them and never fell for their tricks. Money was hard to get, that was what they had learned throughout their lives, the struggle of their father to pay for the living of everyone and then their own struggle to get a simple copper coin. They knew that working hard was the only way to earn good things, Emp made perfect sense to the two of them. Easy things were either pointless or a trap.

"I want to try again." Erin told him with a bit more strength than earlier.

Emp nodded and after releasing them, walked back to his starting place.

"I can't believe that motivated them further." Martin commented while Emp announced he was starting the countdown again.

This time, the two girls looked at each other, nodded and ran on the other side of the wagon.

Since he didn't hear any more footsteps, Emp guessed they probably wanted to ambush him when he turned the corner around the wagon. They might even be watching both side carefully. They weren't fast enough to hit him even if they saw him go around but worse, Emp didn't have to go around the wagon at all. At the end of the count of five, he jumped over the wagon, landed in between them and before they could understand what the sound they just heard was, he had grabbed them both again.

It was the third time he caught them now and from so close, they smelled really bad. The two of them as well as their clothes were in dire need of a bath but now was not time.

"Dead." He said simply.

"From were did you even come from?" Leonni complained.

"I jumped the wagon. The world around you isn't flat, the monsters and the people in it aren't tied to the ground." Emp told them. "They can come from above or under too."

"A bird stole our meal once, we didn't see it because it came from the roof over our head." Erin recalled.

"Mr. Pigeon was hungry too but it was our hard earned food not his!" Leonni complained.

"So what did you do?"

"We hid the food in our bag so it couldn't be stolen by the bird again."

Emp doubted hiding in a bag would help them defeat him at all but he nodded anyway to acknowledge her answer and everyone returned to their starting place.

On their next attempt, they hid under the wagon thinking he wouldn't be able to grab them and they'd be able to poke him with the wooden sword if he tried. Emp used a spell to move the earth under them and push them out of their hiding place. They cried in alarm as the ground carried them out and Emp caught them easily again.

"You think I'm no smarter than a bird? That's rather insulting."

"How did you drag us out!?"

"I used a spell, I told you things could come from bellow too. You'll have to find better than that."

"We're trying again then!" Leonni yelled excitedly.

She seemed to be starting to really enjoy that game.

"I didn't know you were a mage." Erin said with a frown.

"I'm not, I just know what I need to. Speaking of magic, Martin, do you know how to check for affinities?"

Martin seemed perplexed by his question.

"I do... You want me to to find out for these two?"

"Yes."

"You're not planning on teaching them magic, are you?"

The two girls seemed extremely excited by the perspective but Emp disappointed them both.

"No, it's too dangerous, I just want to help them for self-magic."

The sisters lowered their shoulders dejectedly. They might have been excited about learning magic but not only Emp wasn't talented enough in that domain to teach it, it was too dangerous for those two girls prone to catastrophe. They couldn't follow simple cooking instructions from calla right, giving them instruction on how to cast a spell was asking for a disaster.

"All right then, if it's just that I'll help but it will take me two hours to set everything up."

"Then we have two hours of training still. Do your best girls."

Every other attempt they made over the next two hours ended in their instant defeat. After three more tries, they completely gave up on trying to hit him with the swords and just started just running away. Because he was much faster than them, he had an easy time catching up to them every time but they did improve slightly over the two hours. Instead of catching them under a second, they managed to escape him for three whole seconds on their last attempt by zigzagging around the tents in the main camp of the caravan.

Emp caught them both by the waist again and hoisted them over his shoulders to carry them back to their wagon. At this point, the two girls were dead tired. They had been running for hours now and they were rather relieved to be carried back. It was really good already that they had beat their record while being this tired.

"You know, somehow, when you play that game with them, you really make me think of a cursed-blood of the wolf tribe." Martin told him while he dropped the girls on their feet.

"The scarier I look, the easier it is to get into the game and seriously try to escape." He answered with a shrug.

"I wonder if we were wrong about him not being a bad guy." Leonni told her sister.

"We aren't, he's just pretending to scare us." Erin told her sister.

Emp didn't think he was a bad guy but it didn't mean that he actually wasn't. Maybe he wasn't objective and didn't have the right image of himself? He didn't bother thinking further into it and Asked Martin if everything was ready instead.

"It is, who goes first?"

"Me!" The two girls answered at the same time.

The two immediately started glaring at each other and bickering to know which would go first. Because they couldn't agree, Emp had to cut in between and have the smaller Leonni go first.

"Anyway, you'll have your own turn right after."

Erin moaned in and kicked some dirt in frustration but still did as she was asked and let her sister go first.

"You're gonna pay for that powder, right?" Martin asked Emp, just to be sure.

"Yes, sure. I can ask Heinrich for replacements instead if you'd like."

"That would be great." He said with relief.

Martin explained to them how it all worked and had the little girl step in the center of the circle of jars. A long spell was cast and the powders all flew into the air like in Emp's memory.

It was the first time he was seeing it from outside of the dust storm and the feeling was a bit different. When inside, you would get blinded by all the swirling colored powders but from outside, it just looked like that dust was thrown at the one standing in the middle.

There was a slight breeze around them and because of it, all the powders that didn't react with Leonni just flew away and all over the wagon and themselves. Emp ended up covered in dust even though he wasn't the one being tested.

At the center of the circle, a big chunk of black powder had gathered around the girl like a protective shell, slowly hovering in a fine layer around her. Leonni had some mixed feeling about this, she was really excited to see magic and eager to find out about that powder but she was also disappointed that it was the ugly black that stayed around her. She'd have liked the bright colors like yellow or red more than black.

"What does that mean?" Asked Erin after coughing away the dust and waving her arms around to get rid of it.

"The black powder is probably linked to the darkness element." Emp guessed.

"Congratulation Leonni Porter, you have an affinity to the darkness!" Martin clapped as he confirmed Emp's words.

"Is that good? I don't like to stay in the dark, it's scary." Leonni said as she watched the layer of black powder collapse and flow away like the rest.

"All affinities are good. Even though the name of that one sounds scary it isn't at all. Darkness has a lot of good spells too you know? Like light, it's very versatile. They often say that those with a darkness affinity are really good at hiding and really playful."

"Playful?" Erin asked, a bit skeptical.

"Yes, I know it sounds dumb but that's what the dark does, it plays tricks on people and hide things from them. It's also associated with misfortune but let's be honest, the description of those elements rarely ever fits perfectly those that are attuned to them. Humans aren't defined by a single trait and magic was never a precise thing to begin with."

Emp disagreed, Magic was the most complicated and precise thing he ever saw. Also, misfortune was a very fitting thing to associate with those two.

Leonni stepped out of the circle and patted her clothes a bunch of times to remove the black dust while Martin prepared the second test.

Emp took the time to talk some more to the girls.

"Knowing your affinity is a good thing even if you don't know any magic, it will help you two later with the exercises I'll have you do. On top of that, with you being close to the darkness element, I expect you to win at our game faster than you might think."

"What will you have us do?"

"I'll have you find your own magu and learn to use self-magic."

"I thought you said you wouldn't teach us magic."

"Not the magician's magic no. Self-magic is something the knights use a lot. It's a power that come from inside you. I'll explain more later when we're done with finding out the affinity of Erin."

The two girls were really looking forward to it. They would have never expected a week ago to be told they'd learn a trick the knights used.

They regained all their energy and pestered Emp to tell them already but he wouldn't until Erin got tested. When Martin finished preparing a new set of powders, She jumped right into the middle of the circle immediately, eager to know about her affinity but also even more eager to be told about this trick the knights used.

The whole process was repeated again and this time as well, black powder gathered around the girl. The two seemed to share their affinity however, with his increased visual acuity and the help of the speed-self magic, Emp also saw a small quantity of silver powder hiding through the black layer.

That was very interesting.

When Emp had been tested the first time, there were many colors that seemed weaker than the others and Heinrich had said that he had never seen a minor affinity before. It was later revealed that all those affinities were simply dormant and not minor affinities.

Emp didn't know how to interpret the minuscule amount of silver there. Was it dormant like his own were or simply really weak? It could even be a simple mistake. After all, the amount was so small that he was the only one who saw it, it might just have been held up by the black powder.

"You have an affinity for the darkness just like your sister, congratulation." Martin told her.

"Yay, we're the same!" Leonni cheered.

The two sisters were always happy to share things even though they kept fighting over everything that wasn't enough for the two.

Emp let them rejoice and dust away the powder while he asked Martin a question.

"By curiosity, what was the silver powder for again?"

"Metal obviously, that's the most common for the Muraciers." Martin told him as if it should have been obvious for him.

Emp didn't bother to complain about his attitude and asked a follow up question.

"I thought that metals were affected by earth spells?"

"They are but the metal affinity isn't really about the metals themselves. It's just the best way we had to describe that affinity. It's about sharpness of mind like a fine sword and hard resolve like a solid armor, it's an abstract affinity like illusion or mind, it doesn't have an actual element to it. An iron will, like they say."

Emp nodded, aside from the name, it did make some sense.

"Why aren't they just calling it will then?"

"Because it would be even more confusing than calling it metal. Will is a common word in magic studies, metal is not. If you speak to a mage and he talks about metal, you know it's the affinity but if he talks about will, it could be a million different things"

So it was just for the sake of dodging communication problems.

"I got it, thank you."

Before Martin could say anything else, the sisters jumped in front of Emp and spoke loudly to make sure he would hear.

"Will you tell us about the trick now?"

Emp stifled his laughter and told them what they wanted to know. He explained how they needed to look for their magu, how to do it and what they would use it for.

Emp would have liked to be told to find his own magu sooner than he experienced it, he had wasted a lot of time because he had not. He was happy to help those two start with it right away, even if they didn't find it soon, at least they would be on the right track.

It might have seemed ridiculous to teach two random girls he just met about self-magic as they had no relation to him but it made perfect sense for Emp. There was no reason to not teach those two the basic speed enhancement he knew. If they could control it it would help them greatly and that was the most important thing, whether they helped him or not afterwards didn't matter at all.

The girls asked many questions, in particular, they were curious to know how they would know for sure that they found it. It was frustrating but Emp couldn't really help with that. He didn't know how to explain it or even how it really felt.

It was Martin that gave them a more useful advice by teaching them the word "hide" in the magic language. Since they both had a darkness affinity, the word hide was more likely to move their internal magu than most other things. If it seemed like they were feeling it, they only had to say the word and the reaction would tell them if they were right or wrong, hopefully.

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"But what if we don't have any magic in us?" Leonni asked nervously.

"Don't worry, you do have some, everyone does. On top of that, the black powder reacted to the magu inside you just earlier so there's no doubt its there."

The two girls brightened a lot with his words, they could really learn special knight magic!

"Maybe we'll get as strong as cousin Vinia!" The small sister loudly told the older one.

Emp was reminded again of the name he saw on the list, Vinia Porter. He had eliminated her right away because the file said she was really strict and a fighter too. He had not thought Calla would have been comfortable with her.

That they had a cousin named Vinia could just have been a coincidence though.

"Who's cousin Vinia?" He asked to make sure.

"Our cousin Vinia's a real knight! She's tall and really awesome!" Leonni explained.

"She doesn't talk to us though." Erin added.

"Why?"

"One time, we borrowed her sword to play and we dropped it in the well by accident. She's really angry with us since then."

Somehow, Emp could perfectly imagine it in his head. It really sounded like something they would do and the reaction of Vinia was similar to what he would have expected from her file.

"Is there anyone that's not angry at you?"

"We have a friend called Svaenaha, she's not angry at us."

"We forgot to tell her we were taking the caravan though, she might be worried for us."

Of course, the two sisters forgot to tell their friend about the sudden trip, it would have been strange if they thought about it instead. Maybe Emp should find her and tell her the two girls were alright.

"You're right, she might start to worry for you if you just disappear like that. What does she do usually? Does she work?"

"No, she doesn't. She's a slave because she's a vaelian... You don't have anything against cursed-bloods do you?"

"No, I have a really good cursed-blood friend too, she's from the winged tribe."

"Svaenaha can fly too but she's forbidden to do it, when her master didn't ask her too. She doesn't have a lot of time to play with us but sometimes, she sneaked out some leftover food for us."

"Really? She seems kind, who's her master then, a merchant?"

"She said he's a slave trader. She told us that she costs more than the other slaves because she can fly but there's not many people who need that kind of ability enough to pay more than a normal slave so no one bought her yet. She said she's been with that slaver for a year already."

"I see... Do you two miss her?"

The two girls nodded.

"We've never been away for so long, we should really have said goodbye."

"I hope she's fine and I hope we'll see her again soon."

Emp would go take a look later, at least to let their friend know that the girls were safe. Knowing she was a slave for sale, he was tempted to just buy the rights of ownership and simply bring her to the sisters. It might be an excessive solution though. He didn't need another slave at all and he didn't know for how long the sisters would tag along with Calla and him.

"I'm sure you will and maybe if you try your best, you'll have some good tricks to show her the next time you do."

"She'll be super impressed, that would be great!"

"So all we have to do is sit down and do nothing?" Erin asked again.

With how tired they were from running everywhere since earlier, she was thankful that this task seemed so easy. Emp reminded them that they needed to focus on themselves for it to work, not just do nothing but the girls seemed pretty confident they would be able to do it.

He chose to let them experience it by themselves instead of trying to tell them that it would be hard and told them about what he planned to do with them from now on.

"Now that I'm done with my work on those papers, I'm planning on training everyday and I'll have you do the same. We'll do this special hide and seek game everyday until you win or you're too tired to move anymore."

The two girls made some horrified faces but Emp didn't care, it was the best way for them to improve fast. He didn't want to teach them how to use a bow or a sword so that they could die the next day because they didn't know when and how to run. Even if they ended up too clumsy to learn anything from him, at least he would feel more at peace knowing they now knew how to escape death. He ignored their reactions and got two copies of the ring of allegiance out of his bag.

He showed the two these ordinary iron rings while they were still thinking about how their legs would hurt forever. After a few seconds, they focused on the rings and he told them about some of what they did.

"Maybe you'll have better luck winning if you run into the woods to hide but it's dangerous to get lost or encounter an actual monster. You should take those rings, they will let me know if you're in trouble and it will stop you from getting lost."

"How will those two tiny iron rings help?"

"They're magic. They make a link with mine so I can use it to know if you need my help. I know it sounds shady because it's like a tool to spy on you and I could definitely use it to cheat on our game but I won't do any of that. I swear I'll only use it for emergencies and if you really don't want me to find you, you could still remove it. Just think of putting it back on whenever you plan on going into the woods, alright?"

The two girls seemed perplexed but still took the rings.

Leonni put hers on and saw it change around her finger. In no time at all, it was covered with a red and black lacquer and showed two small horns. Emp wasn't surprised, she had burned his whole stack of documents after all, she was like a little devil bringing him trouble.

The girl was really impressed by the change and could barely believe it was actually magic. Curious, the older sister put the other ring on her own finger and saw it change as well. Hers turned into silver and black but instead of a simple band showed a chain of tiny shields with the same two small horns on the top.

"Hey, why is yours better than mine?" Leonni complained.

Emp held more respect for the older sister because she did her best to take care of her sister even though she had trouble to simply take care of herself. She had the will to do whatever it took to help Leonni.

"Don't worry." He told Leonni. "It will change over time, ask Calla to show you her ring and you'll see."

"Calla has one too? Let's go check!"

The girl took the hand of her older sister and dragged her towards Calla.

"Don't forget to search for your magu after you're done looking at the rings." Emp told them as they left

*-*-*-*

In the following days, he had the two sisters do those two activities over and over again. He ran after them all day long and once they were too tired, he left them to look for their internal magu while he was training on his own.

They failed to find it by the time Dark-glint was on the horizon and they also failed to escape him in their games even though they had improved a lot. The truth was that they had gotten pretty good at hiding and running but like Emp had promised, he didn't go easy on them at all and gave it his all.

Emp would run after them into the woods, jump over the trees to look from above, follow their tracks as if he was hunting an animal and used the blessing of space to go through the woods at high speed. In return, the girls learned to erase their tracks, go through small spaces where he couldn't use his high speed as an advantage, use the environment to hide themselves and move as soon as he wasn't looking to get further away.

They got pretty good at it, they would hang themselves from the branches midway up a tree and let him run under them before climbing down without a noise and rushing the other way, they moved through the underbrush without making a sound and stayed low whenever they felt he was close.

They weren't as good as someone who did it for a living like a hunter, a spy or a scout but, they improved quick since Emp went all out and told them every time exactly how he got them. Their record ended up being a whole ten minutes which was really good in Emp's opinion.

Throughout the whole time they ran around in the woods, for the whole trip to Dark-glint, Emp had to intervene only once to save the girls from something unexpected.

That time, they were running like usual when Leonni ran into a twin headed beetle. She screamed in surprise and then in fright as the creature ran after her. She didn't try to throw rocks at it and turned around to escape instead. She did exactly like she was doing in her game against Emp and tried to loose the beast.

It worked for a whole minute, she was doing really well. Even If Emp didn't intervene, he was pretty sure she would have escaped the beetle just fine. He still saved her as soon as he arrived though, the poor girl was way too scared to let her escape on her own.

Emp showed up from nowhere and kicked the beetle from the side.

There was a loud crack and its belly burst open while his foot dug deeply into it and under its shell, killing it right away.

Leonni ran up to him and hugged him strongly with tears streaming down her face. She had not expected to encounter something this scary. Being chased by a huge beetle clacking its mandibles at her was a frightening experience.

Emp tried to comfort her with a few taps on her back.

"Everything's fine, I got rid of it already. I told you I would come save you if you were in trouble."

"Thank you Emp! I'm never calling you a bad guy again!"

"Didn't you already stop?"

"I'm doing it for real this time!"

Emp answered with a weak sigh and just patted her back some more.

Erin showed up not too long after and Leonni jumped into her arms the moment she saw her. The older sister was surprised to see the large corpse of the giant bug.

"I was wondering why you suddenly stopped chasing me and went for the opposite direction. I'm glad you're safe Leonni."

"He saved me from the monster Erin!"

"That thing is huge, how did you kill it?"

"He kicked it!"

Erin moved her gaze to his boots sticky from the bug's insides and seemed to think that his feet was way more monstrous than the bug.

By curiosity, she led her younger sister to the corpse and lifted the wooden sword high above her head to strike it.

"It's really dead right?" Leonni asked nervously before Erin could hit it.

Erin froze and looked back to Emp. He nodded to reassure them both.

"It is, there's nothing to fear."

With the insurance that it was absolutely dead, Erin smashed the wooden sword against its carapace. It made a clanking noise and the sword bounced back without doing any damage. Erin looked back at his feet again with a mix of worry and admiration.

Thinking it was the best time to make them understand once and for all, Emp stepped to their side and asked for the sword with a small hand gesture. After Erin gave it to him, he poked the creature from the top were the carapace was still intact and pushed the sword through it. The wood bent a bit but the shell broke first with a crack and the sword was pushed inside. Erin's eyes went wide.

"That sword is good enough to beat it, you're just not strong enough yet. That beetle is one of the weakest monster in the woods, there's a reason I told you that you needed to learn to run and hide first. If you can do it, I'll teach you how to beat it next."

The two girls nodded to tell him they understood. As long as they got this for sure, Emp was certain that they would be fine. Since they seemed to understand, he told them about the beetle instead of continuing to tell them about how weak they were. It wasn't fun at all to be told they were weak after all.

"I'll give you some tips to escape the beetle now in case you meet another one. The important thing to know about it is that it is pretty dumb even though it has two heads. They never get along so its easy to have it fall into traps. They never look at were they're going because they always only look at what they're chasing. This means you could have them fall into a pit or if you're together, you could stand on either side of a tree, the two heads would go for you two separately and then his large horn would poke into the tree and he'd be stuck. You could also just climb into a tree, that beetle can't climb properly and it can't jump like me. Do you understand?"

The two nodded again. Emp removed the sword from the corpse of the creature and gave it back to Erin before making the corpse disappear into the bag.

After a bit of hesitation, Erin asked the question that was bothering her.

"How come you're so strong Emp? You said you were a student, was it a lie?"

"No, it's not a lie, I'm really just a student for now."

"What are you studying then?"

"A bunch of things, I'll tell you later if you deserve to know. For now, it's an important secret and I don't know if I can trust you two with it."

"What's you family name then, you insisted to know ours but you didn't tell us yours."

"That's part of the secret."

"That's unfair!" Leonni called.

"I know it feels that way but you'll just have to trust me for now. We're almost in Dark-glint, once we're there, we'll see what I can tell you and if I show you some new things. In the meantime, you still have a few days to try and beat me or find your magu."

The two girls were a bit upset because those two things were absurdly hard to do but they still did their best until they saw the palisade of dark-glint appear from the wagon.

With their record of ten minutes and all the efforts they made even though their legs and arms hurt, Emp felt inclined to help them more once in the village. He didn't tell them right away though and kept the suspense going while he watched the wooden palisade get bigger and bigger as they came closer to it.

"We're almost back home." Emp told Calla with a big smile. He couldn't wait to see everyone.