Chapter 19: Deliberation

Chapter 19: Deliberation

Amber sighed, and stretched, carefully keeping her movements slow and steady to avoid startling anyone. If not for the tension and uncertainty about what would eventually happen to them, this would actually be quite boring. She didn't even have anything to meditate on like Carlos, because those damn suppression cuffs would prevent her from making a soul structure. If she tried, she'd just be feeding her irreplacable soul shell mana into the cuffs.

She wished she'd gone ahead and made her own mana redistributor. It was certainly proving its value for Carlos right now, and now that she bothered to consider it seriously she could see other uses for it even aside from dealing with the cuffs. For one thing, it would let her change her spells database so that she could remove spells she didn't want anymore and reuse the mana to learn other spells. Or she could learn an improved version of a spell by modifying the version she already knew. Or...

She shook her head. That was something to think about later, when they were out of their current predicament. Right now, what they needed was a way to escape.

They couldn't fight their way out. Darmelkon looked like he could chop both of them in half with the same single swing of his enormous sword, and if the rumors she'd heard about his soul development were anywhere near accurate then her spells would barely affect him at all. As for Tornay, he was an Enchanter. She shuddered. He was probably loaded with enough magic items to turn even a newborn baby into an overwhelming threat, and that was ignoring whatever his own capabilities might be.

They couldn't run. They had no back exit to use, and even if they did somehow get away Tornay and Darmelkon would just track them down again. Those two had tracked them even through a teleport to a location no one else had known, and she still didn't know how.

They had to talk their way out. Somehow, they had to convince their pursuers to allow them to go. Her thoughts kept circling around to that inescapable conclusion. She just could not think of any other possibility. And though she hated the idea, selling Purple and the secret of moving him seemed the only potential way to satisfy them.

They did have one potential wild card, but she was fairly sure it wouldn't be enough. Still, she should double check to make certain. [Purple, is there anything you could do? Teleport us out of here, maybe?]

[No. Not enough mana. Also, Tornay restricting. Me. Sorry.]

Amber paused at that. [Restricting? What, something like these suppression cuffs?]

[No. Not in soul. Around me. Devices disrupt control. Try reach out, mana deflected.]

[But you can still talk with me? Is that different?]

[Soul structure make bond strong.]The inaugural upload of this chapter took place via N0v3l-B1n.

[So?]

[I can only talk telepathically with you, not with her.]

[Oh.] Carlos got an impression of some kind of effort from Purple. [Try now.]

Carlos blinked. Did Purple just make a bond between him and Amber? ...He'd ask questions about that later. For now, just go with it. He focused on the idea of sending a mental message to Amber instead of Purple. [Uh, Amber? Hi.]

Amber visibly jerked with surprise. [What the- Carlos??]

[Yeah. Apparently Purple can make bonds between other people now, or something. Anyway, I have a couple questions.]

[Um. Wow, ok. Ask away.]

[Could Darmelkon or Tornay detect what our soul ranks are?]

[Not easily. It's very difficult to detect anything about the interior of another person's soul. Soul rank assessments are rarely done, even for official government actions.]

[Good, I was hoping for something like that. Now, just to make sure, are all adamantium rank people nobles?]

[Yes. High nobles, at that. Proving adamantium rank to earn a promotion to high nobility is one of the few things people bother doing formal rank assessments for.]

[Excellent! Thank you.]

Carlos raised his cuffed arms in Darmelkon's direction and called out to him quietly. "Hey, Lord Merchant! I have something to show you."