Chapter 3: Chapter 1-part 2 prison
Approaching the cell door Kacey sees she's in a moderately sized jail that looks straight from something in lord of the rings, the cells in front are almost identical, with a floor above holding more cells; not many people as most cells are empty but coughs and moans echo throughout the hollow air, But directly in front of her is a younger looking skinny but very tall man with a small patchy beard, he wears some ragged clothes with a brown leather overcoat and has some large goggles above his eyes,what is especially peculiar is he's currently staring at Kacey in awe.
"Uh lady? How did you do that?" He whispers, what does he mean Kacey thinks.
"Im just as confused what do you mean how did I do that I haven't done anything?."
The man kind of does a double take before making a small grin and giggling, "how did you just teleport in here, I haven't seen someone who knew the teleport spell so intricately in years?".
Teleport? Kacey thinks, I just woke up. "Where am I?" Kacey replies in a bit of shock,
"well currently your in my uncles prison, he holds people who owe him money here.. if you meant where in a broader sense your in Vold Village you most definitely don't look like your a local."
Local? Vold Village HIS UNCLES PRISON??
"hey wait why are you here it's your uncles right, just get him to help us ou-" as Kacey says this the man kind of losss his grin and glares towards the door.
"Shhh I think I hear the keys" the man says as he recedes back into his cell. Kacey kind of gets closer looking out into the hall toward the door, The door creaks open but only a sillouette can be made out.
The man speaks with a old raspy voice,
"So Riv hahaha how's the stay so far.. wouldn't Vells face be priceless.. seeing you locked up in my prison" the man continues to giggle as he seems to walk closer, he stops occasionally to stare into cells along the hall spouting insults to those locked away
"you look a bit sad terry, haha maybe your wife should've paid those bills"
"how's your idiot boy handling that money for me smith, your pathetic scum family couldn't even manage a store without my help haha"
hurtful words spew from his mouth as he travels close stepping slowly. Finally, a man seemingly as tall as the man locked in front of me stops before his cage, wearing silk clothes and leather pants, white receding hair, wrinkled hands holding a stack of papers. The man turns to the opposite of Kacey and looks the caged man directly,
"Riv haha this is what happens when you try stealing from me, stealing back your fathers goods?, foolish!.. but coming from my dull brothers equally dull son, what should I expect." He says with spite
The man looks around for a while, Riv remains sulking on his bench. "How's this Riv, I'll keep ya in here for a week to learn ya lesson, I'll set ya free but if I ever catch you back in Vold village or on my turf, I'll be using the rust of these bars to forge the very sword that cuts you down.. Did ya hear me boy?!," he shouts, Riv looks toward his uncle and then to kacey , he mouths the words "sell me more"? Huh. But before Kacey clicked to the fact he said teleport, the uncle turns to her, with bloodshot eyes stares her down and through gritted teeth says
"Who is this Riv?, I thought I told them no prisoners near your cell, young woman who might you be"
Kacey freezes up, but reply's as confidentially as she can muster, "um my name is Kacey Ashfen, I'm not quite sure what I'm doing here"
the uncle looks back to Riv and then to Kacey, he then raises his hand and it shines orange, the rust on the bars of the cell lifts leaving a polished metal underneath, he then in front of Kacey forms a razor sharp blade from the rust and brings it down onto her chest slicing her.
The uncle proceeds to giggle almost maniacally before turning away and talking to Riv. "thats a well deserved warning to just what I can do"
the uncle shouts to the everyone else,
"a warning to all of you, to what I can do and don't forget it",
"I'll fetch the cell guard, he'll be here in 45 minutes to move this girl away from you", the uncle proceeds to walk away angrily slamming at cages trying to startle people before leaving the prison room through the iron door. Kacey feels sick to her stomach, her chest hurts, she is frightened of what just occurred before her, did this man just strip the bars of its rust with.. magic??, maybe? or it could be some mutant powers, she can't straighten her head, flopping onto the bench the cold drips of water and echoing cause her face to feel heavy and foggy.
"Lady.. I'm sorry, I wanted you to use your powers to get out of here.. My uncles a dangerous guy, at any moment I know he's going to just kill me, or y-" Kacey interrupts angrily,
"I don't blame you just be quiet, let me think for a minute"
she remains in her spot for 10 minutes her head growing heavier and her chest tightening, but before she stops breathing entirely.. an echo from within her which sounds and feels completely different to the rest of her surroundings, calming yet unfamiliar, Kacey focuses harder on this, closing her eyes and listening only to the wave that has washed over her. She sees all black, looking up she sees an eclipse of light as if she's at the bottom of a well, the ground below her is wet and the air is cool and calming. A word slides into her thoughts as she lifts her hand to the cold stony wall, "spectrify" she whispers, Kacey opens her eyes and the world is in a foreign filter, she's now standing. Turing to the bench she was on she sees she is still in place breathing but not moving, Kacey herself otherwise is on a different plane of existence, viewing the world in the eyes of a ghost, the language and understanding floods her mind. She knows that this is a strange spell that resides deep within her.
She places her hand to the bars walking slowly and she steps through the bars with ease, she try's grabbing at the now clean, cold iron, it no longer feels like anything yet she has a firm grasp. Her surroundings feel empty yet she sees how full they are. Kacey looks at Riv and within his chest a well? Glowing a soft blue, it looks empty but Kacey twists to view the other prisoners. They all have different wells with varying amounts of water within. Through the iron door she feels as if a tall well is overflowing but the feeling grows weaker. In realisation Kacey steps towards the door in search of keys. None to be found. Stepping through the iron door Kacey feels progressively weaker but still able to go on. A guard leaves a room with a mug in hand and keys in the other walking away from the door. Kacey attempts to knock his coffee away, as the hot liquid falls to the mans feet he very angrily groans,
"aaaah what? FUCK!"
Kacey recognises this as the man shouting earlier, she grabs the keys as he has placed them down to wipe up the coffee and fetch his mug. She runs back toward the cells, feeling stronger but her energy is quickly being eaten by the spells effect. She reenters spectrifying the keys she holds allowing them to pass through, quickly she unlocks Riv and her cell before phasing back within herself.
"WHAT WAS That!?" Riv almost shouts but muffles himself quickly, "you start doing this weird pose you say spectrify and now the cage is unlocked, uh what?",
Kacey reply's quietly but fearfully,
"I'm not sure yet, but I am kind of sure? but we have no time, I'm afraid of what your uncle will do to me please do you know the way out?"
Riv nods and grabs kaceys hand leading her away, while walking Kacey feels exhausted, her chest throbbing and bleeding, whatever she just did took a lot of her energy. Riv grabs her hand leads her over to a barred window, "my dad got out of here once through here, iv been trying to get out of the cell but they cleared my well, couldn't do shit." Riv pushes out one of the bars, it was fake, and climbs out reaching kaceys hand to assist. Kacey denys the hand and climbs the window herself, having not trusted Riv entirely as of yet.
The two find themselves out of town finding shelter under some overhanging stone. As Kacey sits to breathe, she's only been focused on the escape, but as she breathes deeply and Riv apply's some torn cloth to her cut, she finally takes the environment in with all senses now a lot clearer, wildlife flourishing, trees, grass and bushes filling her nostrils with a fresh green smell, the darkening sky spinning slowly above the lush green canopy.
Kacey looks to Riv, he is struggling to sit still and she asks softly "what the fuck is going on?".
Riv hesitantly faces Kacey he seems very uncomfortable.
"lady-" Kacey interrupts with "my name is Kacey and I assume your Riv, correct?".
"Yes sorry l, my name is Riv.. Kacey I can't thank you enough for that but I'm a bit shaken as to what happened myself, first you teleported into the prison while ASLEEP, you woke up and all that crazy shit happened… Well anyway, you seemed to use some Arc that iv never seen before, which is awesome, I don't think we were getting out without that spell of yours?"
Kacey gets a bit stressed but remains calm and says "Riv what's the situation with your uncle what's your motif here?"
Riv chokes a bit on his spit and reply's "that's my uncle Charlie, he runs a gang that pretty much owns Vold Village, my father passed away a month ago and iv been trying to get some of his notes and study papers back, but I got caught breaking in. Charlie has hated my father for decades, my father got locked up one time here cause Charlie's goons come and took him with some cheap Arc magic. My father broke out and went straight to Charlie and kicked his ass haha, since then there was an agreement that Charlie wouldn't mess with my father if my father didn't mess with Charlie, but now that my fathers dead Charlie wants me out of his turf for good, I'd be happy to leave but he's got some valuable spells my father was working on, stuff the world has never seen kind of like what you did earlier, must take a pretty big well to use some arc like that and fit a teleportation spell as well haha." Riv stops and looks to Kacey awkwardly, "do you mind if I ask what your deal is? Only fair innit".
Kacey looks at him and says "there's not much I can tell you, all I know is I didn't teleport into that prison, I truly did just wake up in there, but after that I'm not sure I could trust you with what I have to say just yet". She has a stern face before looking up again and asking,
"ok so i have a couple questions, 1. What is this well and 2. What is Arc, before I can answer more I need some stuff cleared up."
Kacey has never felt this confident in her life, standing up to someone even slightly was never a thing she could dream of doing, it's the exact reason why she was so overloaded with work.
"Kacey, you haven't heard of Arc or Wells I mean you use Arc how can't you know?" Riv looks looks stressed but Kacey just glares and he continues to talk, "ok well um, so.. Wells are like a library, a couple centuries ago a great scholar discovered what places the limitations on magic, and it's the well within us, using the well allows someone to like.. remember a spell book or scroll down to a letter, but this will take up some storage kind of like a book in a library or water in a well some people prefer to say. Remembering a spell so fluently allows the caster to cast it more effectively, so for example, a spell like uuuuuh fireball, it takes up a fair amount of space in the well, we say its worth 250 Arcons, which is our system of measurement, every person has a different limit on how many Arcons they can hold, some have 1000 some have 100, the limit your born with is the limit you hold for life, however the more adept you are with magic, it allows you to hold a spell within your well for less, so fireball now only holds 200 instead of 250. This we call spell strength, it also affects how exhausted you are when casting. Most of these terms are only used by scholars but they explain it the best. Now Arc? Well Arc is the new age of magic, spells like fireball we call magic, something common and was found a long time ago for the Great War, post the Great War scholars discovered that magic has no limitation only the people who wield it have limitation, thus birthing a new generation of magic, people were finding new spells of all kinds some so specific as their purpose is to transform cutlery into different cutlery, others the power to control rust, or yours the power to enter some kind of spectral form, Arc is just a term we use for magic made after the Great War, to signify that it has not been made with limitations in mind. Although that's the downside, most spells made in the new age become too complicated and require ridiculous amounts of Well space to contain, that rust Arc you saw my uncle use, he has a well of roughly 2000 Arcon and it takes up 75% of it, due to the fact the wizard he bought it off spent 130 years researching it to its perfection, once he learned it, he burnt the book allowing him to be the only one to contain powers so perfected. I myself have a small well something around 200 but I study spells and train often, not that it matters, they used some amulet he said he got of the black market to clear my well, so I have no magic or Arc at the moment. That's not even all of it but for now that explains a bit of everything.
Kacey sits back, she takes a solid 30 minutes of silence to take in everything he just said, Kacey thinks to herself "sp well and sp strength, both of them before I came here on that character sheet were marked '?' That must be what he's referring to spell well and spell strength, wait, if spells fill your well, why is mine empty, I think I remember being inside and all that was there was this puddle.
Kacey pipes up "Is there a way to see your own well? When I was in spectral form, I could see your well and who I presume was your uncles, but I couldn't see my own. Is there a way?" Riv looks at her with suprise but nods and says "yea but only those who know the inspect magic spell can tell you, there are none in Vold Village, but I know a nearby city, I was going to head there right after getting my fathers documents." Kacey keeps to herself what else she saw within her vision, purely to deceive her away from the true gravity of what the situation might become.
Riv has gotten a fire ready, the night air is cool but not cold, quite crickets scatter the forest floor filling the quiet night with white noise. The wall of the stone by overhang lit by the fire with Riv firmly laying against it still unsure of himself it seems, Kacey concerned asks "Riv, what's bothering you." He looks to her with a small grin that fades quickly "I'm just nervous",
"about what" Kacey replies,
"well I'm going back there tomorrow, and I'm getting those documents, if he kills me well, it would be horrifying but it's the last thing I have of my family really."
Kacey hearing this and seeing his resolve, reaches for her pocket, still wearing her casual clothes (ripped jeans and a striped shirt) from the night before only their dirty now. She pulls out a ring, the ring is gold with a small enscription on the inside, "we love you kacey", it's a gift from her family and Michael for her 20th birthday. She never wears it as to not scuff the gold, but always carry's it on her. She feels empty suddenly, looking to Riv and back to the ring she feels determined to help him find these documents, she is still unsure of how to feel about anything, but helping someone get their life together is a start. Suddenly Kacey remembers, "wait where's my katana?, I asked for a katana". Riv looks at her confused but ignores it. Kacey realises Riv has no clue what she means or if he even knows what a katana is, this does feel strangely like a Tolkien fantasy setting, if he wrote isekai novels anyway, smiling to herself, realising she herself has been isekai'd, she turns and starts to fall asleep "hey Riv, let's get those documents together, I think they have my sword anyway.", Riv doesn't reply but she can tell he smiled.
New chapter coming 21/9/2021 (maybe lol)
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