"You got the... goods, little man?", asked a towering figure of a man. He saw but a shadow before him, a small and harmless shadow whose details the man was unable to discern due to poor lightning conditions. Not that this was a drawback or a mistake of the location for their meeting, the darkness was much desired.

  "Yes, I have the goods, now take them and go, Felix", said the smaller shadow. Now-named Felix found their voice a little odd but he made no comment or interruption to the flow of their meeting. He slowly extended his right hand forward. A small satchel was placed there by the other person.

  "And the instructions?..", Felix's voice trailed off. The smaller figure shrugged.

  "You find them inside the satchel."

  Felix stood motionless for several seconds. Then, he nodded, turned around and walked towards the dead end.

  "Don't forget to keep me updated", the smaller figure's voice said and Felix glanced behind his shoulder and observed them waving a goodbye. Felix gave no response.

  The smaller figure, as the reader might have guessed, was of course, our protagonist Joredan Elizen. Joredan obserbed how Felix disappeared in the shadows near the dead end. Out of curiosity, he walked forward and touched the walls around him. It seemed Felix could pass through objects or teleport away somehow. Joredan shrugged.

  "Magic is truly a useful force", he said to himself.

  Now, though, began the nerve-wrecking way back. Joredan sneaked out of home in a sort of trance, and he found Felix's presence — though Joredan was sure Felix wasn't a true name, though this was beside the point — comforting, even though the man was probably a thief, a murderer or who knows else. But now, Joredan grew suddenly nervous about stepping out of the alley, undoubtedly, many people were patrolling the streets. He couldn't stay here either, of course. So, he walked back towards the street and paused at the beginning of the alley.

  He focused his ears. To his left he believed he heard steps in some distance. He peered out. He immediately looked back in the alleyway to see if by some chance Felix, or somebody else, would pop out the wall and startle him, but saw and heard nothing. He peered left again and saw what he believed were two guards walking on the opposite side of the street, turning right and disappearing behind a corner. Nothing else seemed animated at this corner of the city and Joredan decided to try his luck and ran out the alleyway. He crossed the street in seconds and entered another alley and then turned right, then left and went straight. His home street was only a couple blocks away.

  He almost walked out of the alley into another pair of night guards. He stopped just behind the end of it in time.

  "Huh, you heard that?", Joredan heard a deep female voice ask her colleague. Joredan held his breath in alarm.

  'Are you kidding me?', he thought, 'I can't be caught by measly night guards of all people just when my amazing life just begun!'

  "Yeah, heard what?" This was the other guard talking to the first one.

  "Hmm...", the first guard trailed off.

  The duo continued walking, getting closer to the alley Joredan was standing in. Joredan could hear their rhythmic steps.

  "Somewhere around here. Aha!", the first guard said, as she turned into the alleyway where Joredan was.

  "Now what have we here, Jasper?", she asked her colleague in triumph.

  * * *

  Jasper and the first guard looked through the alley. Jasper's face was apathetic as he moved his eyes around.

  "..."

  "There is nobody here?", asked the first guard in puzzlement.

  "..." Jasper said nothing again at first, then looked at his colleague. "Must have been... the wind?", he offered.

  The female guard shrugged. Her eyes lit up, however, then she spotted Joredan.

  'Noo!', the latter thought frantically, standing as still as possible. He and the guards stood two meters apart from each other.

  "See that beautiful plant in a pot, Jasper?"

  Jasper looked at the spot where Joredan was as indicated by his felow guard.

  Jasper shrugged and said, "Yeah, I see it well enough."

  The female guard then jumped in the air in apparent excitement and grabbed Joredan, lifting him in the air. She turned and walked out of the alleyway. Jasper followed her.

  "You see, I am something of a collector of plants, Jasper, and thus I can confidently say that this plant over here", she spoke with enthusiasm as she motioned to the plant in her hands with her chin, "I determine to be of undescribable quality!"

  "Alright, alright, but are your really gonna carry it with you from now on? We are on duty, remember?", Jasper asked cautiously.

  His colleague exhaled air out of her mouth in a contemptuous manner. "It'll be fine, if we meet anyone, we will just say this plant is an artifact hiding revolutionary secrets and was used by rebels to exchange messages!"

  "An idea most wonderful, indeed", Jasper agreed with a nod after a moment of consideration.

  Joredan was rightfully terrified, these guards were crazy and his disguise worked too well on them.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  You see, before these guards entered the alley, Joredan reached out and tangled up their mana. It wasn't something he learned out of some textbook on magic but rather a trick he gained through copious amounts of creative freestyle practice.

  People had different levels of resistance to having their mana tampered with and Joredan was sad that he let his Mom, his first and most frequent test subject, grow completely immune to this.

  He supposed the reason for her building the immunity to his mental magic manipulations was exactly because he spent too much time on her, a mistake he vowed never to repeat again. Now he stuck with experiments on people he was unlikely to meet again so they would not be likely to build resistance to his amazing magic.

  It was obvious that his tugging at their mana caused the guards to manifest a delusion that he was some sort of a plant in a pot. This was unfortunate, but not all was lost, they didn't actually catch him, although it was a little hard to believe that while he was literally carried God knows where.

  "Well, Suro, where are we going now?" Jasper asked as the two guards walked side by side.

  Suro replied, "Let's put the tree in our room."

  The three of them: Suro, Jasper and Joredan soon reached what the latter assumed was an outpost of the Guards. It was located inside the nearest section of the thick innermost city wall.

  Joredan had to use most of his focus on doing the same trick with anyone else they passed.

  Jasper and Suro supposedly moved towards wherever it was they lived.

  Currently they walked in the hall made of stone walls along with various other guards.

  Finally, Joredan's trick grew old and he was actually spotted by someone.

  One of the guards' walking parallel to Suro and Jasper in the opposite direction suddenly stopped. She stared at the duo, or a trio, really, dumbstruck, especially at Joredan. Everyone else stopped also, not sure what's going on but merely copying the blond guard's puzzled expression.

  "What?", the blond guard said, glaring at Joredan with now narrowed eyes. Joredan turned to look at her with a small smile and put an index finger to his lips, hoping she would take the hint and drop it. He shook his head for extra effext.

  But she fumed instead.

  "What's going on," another dark-haired guard came up and looked at the situation in question.

  Joredan was caught, it was clear there was little he could do about this.

  For now, only the blond guard saw him as his actual human form, but he was sure all of them would soon become aware of what's going on.

  So, Joredan did what any law-abiding citizen would prefer to do: he whipped out a throwing dart out of his robe and ...! He was about to throw it at the blond guard and hopefully murder her in a completely legal, self defense kind of way but she was much faster, her sword appeared in her hand in a flash almost as if it teleported there, and then Joredan's right hand flew off away from his body and some red juice appeares out of nowhere, spraying the floor nearby along with one other guard. Every other guard dodged the spraying.

  That single guard somehow managed to moved in such a manner that all the red spray landed inside his mouth. He closes his mouth and swallowed with a satisfied smile. "Mmmm, tomato juice... My favorite...", he said happily.

  Any mana manipulation flew out of the window and Joredan begun cackling from the immense pain while he clutched his poor right hand with his left one.

  Everyone else was freed from his mild mind control and all except the guard who was enjoyed the impromptu tomaro juie drinking session looked at Joredan with alarmed confusion.

  "What's going on," the dark haired guard from before asked.

  Suro let Joredan go and before the cackling young man reached the grey stony ground, kicked him as if he was a ball. He was launched forward at a high speed. The guards who happened to stand in the way cried out and dodged.

  Joredan landed inside a room far away at the end of the corridor. Suro nonchalantly wiped her hands off with a smirk. Her colleagues applauded her skills appreciatively.

  "I found a spy with information on the rebels," she said with satisfaction. Jasper gave no reaction but everyone else gasped. Again everyone, Jasper joining th this time though he looked bored, clapped in appreciation.

  "Well, done, Suro!", said one voice.

  "Yeah, good job, the promotion is just waiting for you!", another seconded.

  A sleepy looking man walked up to them and scratched his head, pointing at the room at the end of the corridor. Before he could say a word, the blond guard lifted her up and informed him of what occurred.

  "Go interrogate the rebel, Snark," she commanded. Snark nodded tiredly.

  "Fine, as you command, captain."

  He turned back and walked slowly towards the room. Everyone observed him in silence and the moment he was far away down the corridor, entered the room and closed the metal door, the celebration begun anew, with more and more guards congratulating Suro on her service to the motherland.

  Suro was very proud of herself and nodded over and over with a smile and a hand placed on top of her chest where the heart was, symbolizing her humble, honest nature. Jasper looked at this whole scene with a calculating glint in his eyes.

  * * *

  Joredan was dragged by Snark into the room. Joredan couldn't help but laugh boisterously because the pain he felt at where his hand was was too funny.

  “Look, Snark, my hand is just lying there on the floor outside, isn't this amusing?”, he managed to say inbetween long laughs.

  “Name?”, Snark asked gruffly.

  “J-J-Jacobson…”, Joredan managed to say through his pain-riddled laughs.

  Snark tied him to a chair and then peeked out of the door. He looked at the hall where a party was now taking place and shouted, “Where is his hand, bring it here!”

  Someone heard and turned to look at him, then waved. That persom begun looking for the hand on the floor, waving between dancing soldiers. Snark stared at them in jealousy.

  “Why must I handle all the dirty stuff while they always have all the fun?”, he asked Joredan. The prisoner gave no reply, too busy trembling, shaking, laughing and sipping out tomato juice from his injured wrist.

  Snark sighed. “Jacob, Jacob,” he shook his head as he walked towards him. He grabbed a saw-like item from a table nearby and put it near Joredan's uninjured left hand's wrist. Joredan screamed just before Snark pressed the saw and cutting the hand off.

  “That will teach you… Something.”, quipped Snark cleverly.

  The door fully opened as a guard came in, holding what was apparently Joredan's right hand in a plastic bag. Snark snatched it.

  “Go away, Bart”, he grumbled.

  The guard nodded with a smile and closed the door.

  Snark turned to look at the prisoner. “So, why they capture you, anyway, dude?”

  Joredan laughed louder and scream shriller.

  “Fine, you love your hands too much, I can tell”, Snark said and grabbed a bottle. He took some balm out of it, applied it to both detached arms and placed one to Joredan's left wrist. Smoke emanated as the flesh connected. It was apparently rather painful to Joredan, given his reaction.

  Snark ignored this and healed the right hand.

  He looked down at the hands, feeling something was amiss.

  “Seems I messed up the sides, my bad”, he said apologetically when he saw that he connected Joredan's hands to opposite wrists.

  It seemed the preparation for interrogating Joredan would take longer. Snark sighed and picked the saw up again.

  It was some time later that Snark managed to correctly re-heal Joredan's, or Jacob's — as Joredan introduced himself to Snark — hands.

  He looked down at the young boy. The boy was clearly unhinged, mumbling to himself, laughing, cackling, looking around crazily. Snark had no way of knowing if it was the pain of getting his hands cut off and re-healed nine times in a row (can you really blame Snark for being so inattentive when he was so unappreciated by his fellow guards and also it was a full moon today, which messed with his mood and made him more grumpy) or if Joredan was unhinged to begin with.

  “So, why were you… captured by my fellows over there?”, Snark asked.

  Joredan gave no reply, maybe he didn't even hear him. Snark sighed again. “Okay, maybe a little pain will help make you more talkative. I heard fire puts fire out.”

  He took an innovative magical artifact that arrived last month from a chest. Joredan seemed to react to this as his face morphed from laughter to despair and his eyes widened as he tried to get away from the tool inching closer to his face.

  Snark smiled to himself in kind satisfaction.

  ‘See, I am so good at being an interrogator’, he thought, ‘if only those bastards appreciated me more, then I could be truly happy.’

  Just as the tool was about to press against Joredan's eyes, the door to the room opened. Snark paused and looked back. He straightened. A group of soldiers, the guards from before, walked in.

  “Aye, done partying, I take it?”, Snark said with a stink-eye aimed at them.

  Among them was the blond captain, who was named Etraphina, the redheaded Suro, the observant Jasper and two others, Alleid and Stensa.

  Etraphina asked as she observed the now-whimpering Joredan, “Any results with him?”

  “Listen, you brought him in here and left me with no explanation, m'am, and his mental state is unstable.”

  Etraphina looked dissatisfied. She walked to their captive and leaned forward, cupping the young man's face in her hand. She looked on as he trembled, his face morphed expression rapidly, sweat dropped down his flushed face profusely and his eyes had no idea where to settle looking or at what focus as his pupils rapidly dilated and contracted. Snark and the others silently stood, looking in attention. After a few seconds of observation, Etraphina stepped back.

  “Got a towel?”

  Snark obediently handed her one, which she used to wipe her hand. She then turned around and said in a careless tone of the voice, “This guy is clearly unstable, just kill him and be done with it.”.

  The soldiers left just quickly, leaving Snark the only guard alone with Joredan. Snark shrugged and took a vial from a shelf and forcefully fed it to Joredan. The boy died after about a minute. Finally, the room was silent.

  “Some peace at last”, Snark huffed. He sat on his bed, opened a book and read at his leisure.